"SAIL HO!"
Alice DeVere was not an ordinary sort of girl. She may have been, once,
but that was before her advent in moving pictures. There had been times
when a sudden emergency would cause her to feel faint, if not actually
to succumb to that interesting ailment, which is so useful, especially
in stories and books.
But Alice, who was the nearest to the scene of what had just happened,
neither fainted, nor became unduly excited. She had seen too many
emergencies in the work of taking moving pictures to become "rattled,"
which is not used in a slangy sense at all, but merely to indicate that
one's nerves vibrate too rapidly. Consequently, after her first scream,
Alice was almost as calm and collected as could be expected of a veteran
sailor.
"Man overboard!" Alice cried, echoing the shout of Hen Lacomb, who, she
noticed, after his first hesitation, began lowering a boat, or trying
to, for it needed two at that task.
"I'll help!" cried Alice rushing to the aid of the strange man who
seemed so friendly with Captain Brisco.
"Oh--you----!" he exclaimed, with a swift look at her. Then he resumed
the work of loosing the ropes so they would run freely in the pulley
blocks of the davits.
Meanwhile Captain Brisco had bawled out an order to the helmsman to
bring the ship up in the wind. A sailor had tossed overboard a
life-ring, and then came to help Lacomb lower the boat, for Alice found
it beyond her strength, eager as she was.
"There he is!" cried Russ, as he rushed to the rail beside Alice. He
pointed to the water. Fortunately the sea was smooth, and rising and
falling on the waves could be seen the head of the old sailor.
"Oh! Oh!" gasped Ruth, who glided over to the side of Alice. "If--if a
shark should come now."
"There aren't any around here!" declared Russ. He did not know whether
there were or not, but he said that to make the girls feel more
comfortable. After all, if there were sharks, whatever he said would be
of no effect, and it was better to take the best view of it, he thought.
"Lower away!" cried Hen Lacomb, and the boat went down to the water.
Two sailors, beside himself, slid down the ropes into it, and took the
oars. They cast off the davit blocks, and began rowing toward the
bobbing head. Old Jack could swim well, it seemed, in spite of his age.
The water was warm, and it was broad daylight, so he was in
comparatively little danger--except from sharks and from the fact that
he had on his clothes, which would soon become soaked and hamper him.
But no sharks appeared; that menacing triangular fin which marks them
was not seen cutting the water, and no big twelve-foot man-eater was
observed to turn on his back in order to bring his curious, under-shot
mouth with its rows of keen teeth to bear on poor Jack Jepson.
If a shark had appeared, it would probably have put an end to the plans
of Mr. Pertell to have his company give an idea of shipwreck by leaping
into the water. No one would have jumped into those waters had they been
shark-infested. But, as I have said, none of the tigers of the deep
showed, and, a little later, Jack was being lifted into the small boat.
They had reached him just when his strength was about exhausted.
"Oh, have they saved him?" asked Miss Pennington, coming on deck very
pale. Alice said afterward she had not had time to put on her "war
paint."
"I--I can't bear to look!" faltered Miss Dixon, following her friend.
"Tell me dear--is he--is he dead?" she asked of Alice.
"Dead! No, of course not!" said Alice, none too politely. "Don't be
silly! He just fell overboard, and they got him back again; that's all."
Miss Dixon looked angry and flounced back to her cabin with her chum.
Jack and his rescuers were hoisted up in the boat, the other sailors
hauling on the ropes, the blocks of which were hooked fast to rings in
the bow and stern posts of the rowing craft.
"Well, you tried to leave us rather suddenly," said Mr. Pertell. "Don't
go trying that again, Jack--at least until we finish making the
pictures," he went on with a whimsical smile. "You're in too many
important scenes to be lost that way."
"I haven't any fancy that way myself," said Jack, who seemed little the
worse for his unexpected bath.
"How did it happen?" asked Captain Brisco of his mate, though it seemed
as though he had been near enough to have seen for himself.
"Why, I was standing near the rail," Jack explained, "talkin' to Mr.
Lacomb, here," and he indicated the strange man, "when, all at once the
ship gives a lurch, and--well, I went over, that's all I guess," and he
looked at Lacomb, as though to get him to confirm the account.
"Yes that's right," said the other. "I--I tried to grab him, but I was
too late. I nearly went over myself," he added, grimly.
"Yes," assented the old salt, "you did," and he shot a look at the
other.
Did Alice fancy it, or did Lacomb wince, and shrink back? And did a look
pass between him and Captain Brisco--a look full of meaning?
Alice was puzzling over these questions in her own mind, when the
helmsman spoke.
"It wasn't _my_ fault," he said. "I was steering all right, but Captain
Brisco came and spoke to me and handed me a paper. I took one hand off
the wheel, and the----"
"No one has said it was your fault," broke in the commander quickly. "I
was giving you a copy of the sailing orders for the day. I wouldn't have
bothered you if I had known a puff of wind and a big wave were coming
along together, to snatch the wheel out of your grip. But it wasn't your
fault. However, no harm is done. You had better get below, Mr. Jepson,
and put on some dry clothes. Mr. Lacomb will stand watch until you feel
all right again."
"Oh, I'll be all right in a little while," Jack said. "I don't need no
one to stand my trick on deck. I'll be back shortly."
He went below, the water dripping from him. The ship was put back on her
course. The excitement had not lasted long.
"Too bad you didn't have a camera ready, Russ," said Paul to the
operator, when matters were normal aboard the _Mary Ellen_ once more.
"You might have filmed a good rescue scene."
"I was too much excited to think about that," Russ admitted. "Besides,
we are going to have plenty of rescue stuff in a few days, and this
wasn't a particularly thrilling one. Poor old Jack! I wonder how it
feels to fall overboard?"
"Not very pleasant," Paul said. He had done it more than once in the
interests of the pictures.
Alice, going below for something a little later, met the old salt on his
way to the deck again, he having changed to dry garments.
"Oh, are you all right?" she asked anxiously, for she and her sister, as
well as Mr. DeVere, had taken a liking to Jepson. "Are you all right?"
"All right, Miss Alice," he replied. "No harm done at all."
"I thought sailors never fell overboard," she said, half jokingly. "I
supposed they were so sure-footed that accidents like that never
happened to them."
"They don't--not usual like, Miss," said Jack with that earnest, honest
air that characterized him.
"Then how did you come to do it?"
"I--I didn't do it, Miss," Jack answered. "I didn't _fall_ overboard."
"You didn't?" cried Alice, not noticing the accent Jepson put on one
word.
"No, Miss. Not exactly."
He looked around as though to make sure no one was listening, and then,
in a hoarse whisper, he said:
"I didn't _fall_ overboard. I was _tossed_!"
Then, before she could ask him what he meant, he gave her a warning
glance, and passed on. Just as he did so, Captain Brisco came along the
passage way.
"I was just coming down to see how you were," he said, with a quick look
at Alice. "I didn't know you were here, Miss DeVere," he continued,
rather awkwardly. "Hope the accident didn't upset you."
"Oh no," she said, glad that it was rather dark, and that the commander
could not notice how pale she had become at hearing the ominous words of
the old sailor.
"Accidents will happen, but they don't always end so luckily," the
captain went on. Jack Jepson had passed up on deck, and Alice, not
feeling in the mood for talking, passed to her cabin. Captain Brisco,
after a moment of hesitation, went up on deck again, and, had anyone
observed him, they would have seen him in close conversation with Hen
Lacomb. The two men spoke in low tones.
Jack Jepson was soon himself again, and on duty as though nothing had
happened. But he had created a very queer state of mind in Alice DeVere.
Her suspicious were increased, and she asked herself a multitude of
questions she could not answer. Nor dared she repeat them, even to her
sister.
"If he were tossed overboard, who did it?" she asked herself. "And why?
The only one near him was Lacomb, and what object could he have in
wanting to drown Jack? Oh, I can't understand it! I _must_ ask Jack what
he meant."
This was not so easy to do as Alice had expected. She wanted to speak to
the old sailor privately, but there was no chance.
That afternoon there began the taking of some of the more important
scenes of the marine drama. These scenes were those that had to be
filmed on the ship itself, and they kept everyone busy. Besides, Alice
did not want to make too obvious an effort to talk to the old salt, as
she feared Captain Brisco would become suspicious. There was a nameless
mystery in the air that had its effect on Alice. Ruth noticed a
difference in her sister, and questioned her about it, but Alice was
able to say it was due to the difficult and exacting work of the new
drama, and, in part, it was.
Several days passed, and she had had no chance to speak to Jack. Each
day was filled with work, or rehearsals, and some of the films had to be
taken several times, due to the uncertain footing on the deck of the
ship, which produced awkward motions on the part of the actors.
It was on a warm afternoon, with a hint of a storm in the atmosphere,
when Mr. Pertell said:
"Well, I guess that will do for a while. This will pretty nearly bring
us up to the shipwreck scene. We shall have to make a landing on one of
the islands here, to get the proper background."
They were then well down among the West Indies.
"Where do we land?" asked Alice, who was on deck with her sister,
standing near Jack Jepson, who was acting as lookout, with a telescope
in his hand.
"Well, I'm not particular," Mr. Pertell said. "Perhaps Jack can suggest
a good place."
"Well, I know something about the locality here," the old sailor
answered, and he looked at Alice with a friendly wink. "I shouldn't want
to go ashore at the place where I escaped from after that mutiny," he
went on. "They might not want to let me go again."
"No, that's so," agreed Mr. Pertell. "It might not be just the thing,
though you could prove your innocence."
"No, I can't! That's the trouble!" cried Jack, who had told his story to
the manager. "I don't want to be caught, and put in jail. I'm going to
keep away from that island where I was locked up."
"Which one was it?" asked Ruth.
"I don't know the name," Jack said, "but I can tell it the minute I set
eyes on it. I don't want to go there. I had enough----"
Jack paused suddenly. The glass went to his eye, and he called out:
"Sail ho!"
"Where away?" demanded the helmsman.
"Two points off on the lee bow. She's a small steamer, and she--she's
flying the British flag!" added the old man.
A strange look of fear came over his face.