ABOARD THE LIGHTSHIP.
“Waal, I want to know!” exclaimed the captain.
Nat had just explained to him his eagerness about the wireless equipment
of the Lightship. The explanation had followed Nat’s story of how he
came to be adrift in the Harleys’ boat, which story had frequently been
compelled to halt while the captain interjected such remarks as “Great
whales and little fishes!” “Land o’ Goshen!” and “Shiverin’ top-sails!”
When Nat had related the villainy of the Harleys and Minory, the old man
had thumped the table savagely with his fist.
“I’d like to have had ’em in the foc’sle of my old ship, the _Sarah Jane
Braithwaite_!” he had exploded. “I’d have shown ’em. Keel-hauling would
have been too good for such a bunch of sojers.”
At the conclusion of his story, Nat had asked to be allowed to utilize
the Lightship’s wireless in trying to raise his friends.
“Waal, I want to know!” was the skipper’s exclamation, already recorded
above. “Anything you want on this ship is yours, young feller, even down
to my wooden leg, although I wouldn’t wish that on yer. Come ahead, I’ll
show you whar the contraption is. Lord! Lord! these are wonderful days,
when lads who can use wireless and fix busted gas engines come drifting
along, a-bumping into just the folks that needs ’em.”
The wireless room was on deck, enclosed in a small cabin at the foot of
the forward mast of the Lightship. Nat saw that it contained a set of
the latest and best instruments, and he soon was sending out broadcast
an appeal to locate the _Nomad_. Following this, he tried on a chance to
raise Goat Island. He had not much idea that there would be anybody
there, but he thought it was worth an effort anyway.
To his amazement when he switched to the receiving apparatus and
adjusted the telephones to his ears, out of space came a reply that
almost made him fall off his chair. It was sent in a hesitating,
unskillful way, very unlike Ding-dong’s expert key-handling, or even
Joe’s.
“_Who wants Goat Island?_”
“_I do, Nat Trevor!_” he rejoined. “_Who is this?_”
“_Nemo_,” came back out of the ether.
“_Nemo!_ Why, that’s the Latin for ‘nobody’” exclaimed Nat, in an amazed
tone.
“_Are you Goat Island?_” flashed back Nat. “_Answer at once!_”
“_This is Goat Island_,” trickled into Nat’s ears in the same awkward,
hesitating fashion; and then came silence. Try as he would, Nat couldn’t
raise it again.
“Well, this is a wireless mystery for fair,” he muttered to himself, for
the captain had left the wireless room to get some hot coffee and food;
“that wasn’t Ding-dong and it wasn’t Joe; now who on earth was it? Some
beginner, that’s plain, for he couldn’t send worth a cent. But then to
cap the climax, telling me it’s ‘Nemo’! It must be spooks, that’s the
only way I can account for it—wireless spooks.”
A minute later there came another message.
“Somebody trying to raise the Lightship,” exclaimed Nat, listening with
all his might. “Maybe this is news of the _Nomad_.”
“_Nomad put in at Santa Barbara last night_,” was the message coming
from the wireless man at the Santa Barbara station, which handled
commercial messages. “_Have found out that all on board are at Arlington
Hotel. Shall I send message?_”
“_Yes. Tell them, please, that this is Nat Trevor, well and able. Am
aboard the Lightship at Pancake Shoals. Tell them to come for me as soon
as possible._”
Nat informed the man that the messages would be paid for at the land end
and bade him good-night. With a light heart, troubled only by the
mystery of the message from Goat Island, he joined the captain below and
told him his good news.
“Waal, I’m glad you found your friends,” said Captain Sim, “but I’ll be
sorry to lose you, my lad. You’re a boy after my own heart. I don’t know
what I should have done without you.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Nat easily. “It just needed a little
monkey-wrench sense, that’s all, and I happened to have given a lot of
attention to that branch of science.”
The captain had prepared an appetizing meal, to which they both did
ample justice.
“Now, lad,” said he, when it was completed, “you just turn in and take a
good sleep and I’ll stand watch.”
As Nat was feeling drowsy again, doubtless owing to the far-reaching
influence of Israel Harley’s opiate, he was nothing loath to accept this
proposition, and turned in and was speedily in the land of dreams. When
the captain awakened him he felt that the last traces of the drug had
vanished, and his senses were as clear as a bell. The sun was high and
the sea smooth and sparkling. Nat had some coffee and rolls and then
joined the captain on deck. He gazed anxiously toward Santa Barbara,
eager to catch the first glimpse of the _Nomad_.
Near by the Lightship several triangular fins were cruising about.
“Sharks!” cried Nat, and recalled with a shudder his terrible experience
with these tigers of the sea when he was cast adrift in a sinking boat
in mid-Pacific.
“So they be. Thar’s lots of them hereabouts,” said the captain, “but
Lor’ bless yer, they’re only little fellows. Very different to the
fellers that attacked me when the _Sarah Jane Braithwaite_ was down
among the Andaman Islands. Like to hear the yarn?”
“Why, yes,” said Nat, and added with a smile, “I’ve got a yarn of my own
about them, too.”
“Waal,” began the skipper, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke as he withdrew
his blackened old briar pipe from his mouth, “it was a good many years
ago but I had a wooden pin even at that time, for d’ye see my port main
brace was taken off when a spar fell on me during a typhoon in the
Yaller Sea.
“But, to get to ther particlar day I’m talking of. We was becalmed among
the Andamans. A dead flat calm with the pitch boiling in the seams, and
there we lay under the broiling sun as ‘idle as a painted ship upon a
painted ocean’, as the poet says. My first mate proposed to me that we
should take a swim. Now, although I’m minus one of my spars, I’m a right
smart swimmer, and I agreed.
“We had a fine time sporting round thar in the cool water, but suddenly
somebody on deck hollers, ‘Sharks!’
“Now that’s a hail you want to act quick on, and you take my
alfired-davy on it that we made good time getting back to the ship’s
side. But just as we reached it, what d’ye suppose?”
“A shark got you?” demanded Nat.
“No, he didn’t get me, but he got my wooden leg. Yes, sir, bit it right
off where it was strapped on. Took it off whole and entire. Waal, they
hoisted me on deck and the carpenter rigged up a jury spar for me and I
made out all right, although not so comfortable as I was with my old
one.
“The next day it was still flat calm, and I was leaning over the rail
whistling for a wind, when what should I see but the most caterwampus
disturbance in the water a short distance away. The thing that was
making it, whatever it was, was coming toward the ship, and it didn’t
take me long to make out that it was a shark.
“But I never saw a shark act like that before or since. First it would
jump out of the water like a trout and then come sploshing down again
with a thump that sent the spray scattering for yards in all directions.
Then it would roll over and over and snort and plunge and wrastle about
like all possessed.
“I calls my mate over and points it out to him, and by this time all the
men was leaning over the bulwarks watching the critter. It came nearer
and nearer and I thought I cotched it looking at me with a sort of
reproachful look, if you can imagine a fish looking that way.
“‘Bill,’ says I to the mate, ‘get a shark line,’ we carried them in
those latitudes, ‘bait it up with a bit of fat pork and we’ll find out
what ails that critter.’
“‘Acts to me like it’s got a tummy ache,’ says Bill, as he goes below to
get the tackle, ‘maybe it’s been a-eatin’ of green sea apples.’
“Waal, we chucks the line over, an’ afore long the shark bolts the pork
whole and the hook gets embedded in his jaw and we haul him on board.
Waal, sir,” and here the weather-beaten old seaman looked very hard at
his young listener, “would you believe me when I tells you that what had
been making that shark act so scandolus was my wooden leg?”
“Your wooden leg?” asked Nat seriously.
“Yes, sir, my wooden leg. You see, that shark was the same as bit off my
port spar, and the blooming thing had wedged itself right across its
gullet. It’s a wonder it hadn’t choked to death. It couldn’t swallow
nothing and that was why it was cutting up such didos.”
“It couldn’t swallow anything, captain?” asked Nat solemnly.
“No, sir; not a solitary morsel,” rejoined the captain, wagging his
head.
“Then how did it take the bait?” asked Nat, fairly bursting into
laughter. But the captain never smiled.
“I reckon that was one of the inscrutable ways of Providence to help me
get my leg back,” he said. “See here,” he held up the wooden leg for
inspection, “see those marks? Those were made by shark’s teeth—yes,
siree, it was sure a terrible experience.”
“Well,” chuckled Nat, “I don’t want to doubt your word, captain, but I
guess that yarn is about what the Andaman shark found your leg,—hard to
swallow!”
The captain looked as if he meant to defend his story, but Nat cut him
short with a joyful cry:
“Here comes the _Nomad_! Hooray!”
And the _Nomad_ it was, and a few minutes later there was a reunion of
the Motor Rangers that made the old captain chuckle and stamp his
shark-marked leg and yell:
“Bully for you, boys! You sure ought to be glad to see yer messmate
again. He’s a boy to be proud of.”
Not long after, the _Nomad_ with her crew of three, for Dr. Chalmers,
Mr. Anderson and Nate, and Prof. Jenkins had been left ashore—the latter
in a hospital,—headed for Santa Barbara. For some days thereafter,
during which the professor rapidly regained health, they awaited
anxiously for news of Minory, but none came.
A visit to the cave by the authorities, guided by Nat, resulted in their
finding that “the birds had flown,” doubtless immediately after Nat’s
escape was discovered. They also found a door in the floor which had
been hidden by boxes when Nat was in the cave. This door led to a flight
of steps, which in turn led to a passage, which, on being followed, was
found to open in a rift in the cliffs. To any active person it would
have been an easy matter to gain the top, and this doubtless was the way
Minory escaped. But, although for the present all trace of both the
Harleys and Minory appeared to be lost the boys were destined to hear
from them again and that at no very distant time.