THE MOTOR BOAT DISASTER
It was Miss Betsey Taylor who had first discovered Madge's absence. Just
before daylight she awakened with the feeling that some one had stolen
into her stateroom, for she was dreaming of her lost money. Miss Betsey
sat straight up in bed and looked about her small cabin. There was no
one to be seen.
"Miss Betsey," called Miss Jenny Ann from the berth above, "what is the
matter?" Nor would Miss Jones go back to sleep until she had explored
the houseboat thoroughly.
As she stole into the next cabin where the girls slept she noticed that
Madge was not in her bed. She must have heard the same noise that had
disturbed Miss Betsey, and gone to investigate the cause. But Miss Jenny
Ann could not ascertain the cause of the noise nor did she find Madge on
the decks. She aroused Phil and they sought for her together. Then
Eleanor and Lillian joined them, and Miss Betsey, a prey to curiosity,
came forth to find out what all the commotion was about.
It took a very brief space of time to examine the entire houseboat. The
girls held the lanterns and scurried about, calling "Madge!" It seemed
incredible that she did not answer.
Tom was the first of the boys on the motor launch to be disturbed by the
unusual sounds from the "Merry Maid." His first thought was fire. With a
cry to the other boys on the "Sea Gull" he rushed to the houseboat. But
the appearance of the five young men, who had come to join in the search
for the lost Madge, merely added to the confusion. They tumbled over one
another, and as they were half asleep, most of them did not know what or
whom they were looking for.
"Come on, Brewster," commanded Tom Curtis, "it is absurd to think that
Miss Morton can be anywhere near and not have heard us. It may be she
became restless and went for a little walk on the shore; let us look
there."
David and Tom crept along the river bank, their eyes turned to the
ground. They detected Madge's footprints leading away from the launch
and then returning to the houseboat. The revelation only added to the
mystery.
There was one thought in the minds of the seekers. Could Madge have
walked in her sleep and fallen over into the water? The river was
shallow along the bank, but she might have been borne by the current out
into the stream. It did not seem a very probable idea. But then, no one
had any possible explanation to offer for the little captain's vanishing
into the night like this. No one had yet seen that the rowboat, too, was
missing.
It was an hour after the first alarm, and daylight was beginning to
dawn, when Phyllis Alden heard a noise from Miss Betsey's stateroom. She
went in, to find the old lady seated on her trunk wringing her hands.
She had been awake so long that she was tired and querulous. Her
corkscrew curls were carefully arranged and she was fully dressed. Her
head was bobbing with indignation. "I am perfectly willing to confess
that I am worried about that child," she announced to Phyllis. "But I
knew, as soon as I set my eyes upon her, that wherever Madge Morton went
there was sure to be some kind of excitement. It may not be her fault,
but----" Miss Betsey paused dramatically. "And your father, Phyllis
Alden, was a great goose, and I an even greater one, to trust myself on
this ridiculous houseboat excursion. A rest cure! Good for my nerves to
be among young people!" Miss Betsey fairly snorted. "I shall be a happy
woman when I am safe in my own home again!"
Phyllis hurried into the galley and came back with a glass of milk for
the exhausted old lady. "Come, take a walk around the boat with me,
Miss Betsey," she invited comfortingly. "We can't do anything more to
find Madge until the morning comes."
Phil was always a consolation to persons in trouble, she was so quiet
and steadfast. She wrapped Miss Betsey in a light woolen shawl and
together they walked up and down the little houseboat deck. Phyllis kept
her eyes fixed on the shore. Madge had surely gone out for a walk and
something had detained her. Her loyal friend would not confess even to
herself the uneasiness she really felt.
Miss Betsey and Phil stood for a quiet minute in the stern of the "Merry
Maid," watching the morning break in a splendor of yellow and rose
across the eastern sky. Not far away Miss Jenny Ann was talking to
several of the boys, with her arms about Eleanor and Lillian.
Miss Betsey Taylor glanced down at the mirroring gold and rose of the
water under her feet.
"My gracious, sakes alive, it has gone!" she exclaimed, pointing a
trembling finger toward the river.
"What has gone, Miss Betsey?" inquired Phil. "Don't tell us that
anything else besides Madge has vanished."
"But it has," Miss Betsey Taylor insisted. "Where is that little rowboat
that you girls call the 'Water Witch,' that is always hitched to the
stern of this houseboat? I saw it last night just before I went to bed.
Wherever that child has gone the boat has gone with her."
Everyone crowded around Miss Betsey and Phyllis. Tom and David returned
from their search on the shore. "I am sure I don't know what it all
means," declared Miss Jenny Ann in distracted tones.
"Don't worry so, Miss Jenny Ann," protested Phil. "It only means that
runaway Madge went out for a row by herself on the river last night
after we went to bed." And Phil's voice was not so assured. "Something
must have happened to keep her from getting back home. We shall just
have to look along the river until we find her."
Tom was already aboard his motor launch. It took only a few moments to
get his engine ready for service. "Come on, Sears and Robinson," he
cried, "you can help me by being on the lookout for Miss Morton while I
run the boat. I'll go from one end of the Rappahannock to the other
unless I find her sooner."
"Let me go with you, Tom, please do," pleaded Eleanor, looking very wan
and white in the morning light. "It's too dreadful to wait here on the
houseboat with nothing to do."
Tom nodded his consent. He was too busy to waste time in conversation.
So Harry Sears helped Lillian and Eleanor to the cabin of the "Sea
Gull."
Tom put on full speed, heading his launch up the river. He had been the
captain of his own boat for several years. To-day he was unusually
excited. The speed limit of his boat was eight knots an hour. Tom tested
his motor engine to the extent of its power as he dashed up the river,
the water churning and foaming under him.
Eleanor, Lillian, Harry and George looked vainly up and down the shore
for a sign of Madge. Tom was going so fast they could see nothing.
"Do, please, go a little slower, Tom," begged Eleanor. "We shall never
find Madge at the rate you are traveling."
It was morning on the river. The river craft were moving up and down.
Steamboats carrying freight and heavy barges loaded with coal made it
necessary for Tom to steer carefully.
The "Sea Gull" slowed down. Every now and then Tom would put in
alongside another boat to inquire if a girl in a rowboat had been seen.
No one gave any news of Madge.
After gliding up the Rappahannock for ten miles, and finding no trace of
the lost girl, Tom decided she must have rowed down stream instead of
up. So the "Sea Gull" turned and went down the river.
The launch's engine was not in the best of humors. It may not have liked
being roused so early in the morning, and David Brewster was not by to
tend it under Tom's careful directions. Every now and then the gasoline
engine would emit a strange, whirring noise. Harry Sears, who was
watching the engine, heard it lose a beat in its regular rhythmical
throb. "See here, Tom," he called suddenly, "something is wrong with
this machinery. I can't tell what it is."
Harry had spoken just in time. The motor launch stopped stock still in
the middle of the river. Tom flew to his beloved engine. "Don't worry,"
he urged cheerfully, "I'll have her started again in a few seconds."
Tom kept doing mysterious things to the disgruntled engine. The two boys
and Lillian watched him in fascinated silence. Eleanor was not
interested. They were only a few miles from the houseboat, and she
wondered if Madge could possibly have returned home.
Eleanor stepped out of the little cabin of the launch toward the fore
part of the boat. Drifting down toward them, directly ahead and in their
straight course, was a line of great coal barges, three or four of them
joined together, with a colored man seated on a pile of coal, idly
smoking and paying little heed to where his barges were going. It was
the place of the smaller boats to get out of his way. The barges could
only float with the current.
But the "Sea Gull" was stock still and there was no way to move her.
"Tom!" Eleanor cried quietly, although her face was as white as her
white gown, "if we don't get out of the way those coal barges will sink
us in a few minutes. You will have to hurry to save the 'Sea Gull'."
Tom sprang up from his work at the engine. Eleanor was right. Yet his
motor engine was hopelessly crippled. He could not make it move.
"Get to work with the paddle, Robinson, and paddle for the shore for
dear life," he commanded, seizing the other oar himself. Tom was a
magnificently built fellow, with broad shoulders and muscles as hard as
iron. He never worked harder in his life than he did for the next few
minutes. The girls and Harry Sears watched Tom and George Robinson in
anxious silence. The coal barges were creeping so near that the "Sea
Gull" was in the shadow they cast.
The two boys had to turn the launch half way around with their paddles
before her nose pointed to the land. The man on the coal barge was
shouting hoarse commands when the side of the first barge passed within
six inches of the stern of Tom's launch.
Tom wiped the perspiration from his face. "I think I had better take the
girls to land," he decided. "Then we can find out what is best to be
done."
"Your automobile boat's busted, ain't it?" inquired a friendly voice as
the entire party, except Tom, piled out of the launch to the land.
A colored boy of about eighteen was standing on the river bank grinning
at them. He held a piece of juicy watermelon in his hand.
Eleanor and Lillian eyed it hungrily. They suddenly remembered that they
had had no breakfast.
"The young ladies had better come up to my ole missus's place?" the boy
invited hospitably. "They look kind of petered out. I spect it will take
some time to fix up your boat."
The entire company of young people looked up beyond the sloping river
bank to the farm country back of it. There, on the crest of a small
hill, was a beautiful old Virginia homestead, painted white, with green
shutters and a broad, comfortable porch in front of it. It looked like
home to Eleanor. "Yes; suppose we go up there to rest, Lillian," pleaded
Eleanor. "If Tom can't get his engine mended, we can row back to the
houseboat in a little while."
David Brewster and Phyllis Alden had not waited quietly on the "Merry
Maid" while Tom and his launch party went out in search of Madge.
Five minutes after the "Sea Gull" moved away David left the houseboat
and went on shore.
"Where are you going, David?" called Phyllis after him.
"I am going to look for Miss Morton along the river bank," he answered
in a surly fashion. "Anybody ought to know that if an accident happened
to her rowboat, the boat would have drifted in to the land."
"I am going along with David Brewster, Miss Jenny Ann," announced Phil.
"It's mean to leave you and Miss Betsey alone, but I simply can't stay
behind."
David's face grew dark and sullen. "I won't have a girl poking along
with me," he muttered.
"You will have me," returned Phyllis cheerfully. "I won't be in your
way. I can keep up with you."
At first David did not pay the least attention to Phyllis, who kept
steadily at his heels. Phyllis could not but wonder what was the matter
with this fellow, who was so strange and taciturn until something
stirred him to action.
Only once, when Phil stumbled along a steep incline, David looked back.
"You had better go home, Miss Alden," he remarked more gently. "I'll
find Miss Morton and bring her to you." And Phil, as Madge had been at
another time, was comforted by the boy's assurance.
"I am not tired," she answered, just as gently, "I would rather go on."
At one o'clock David made Phyllis sit down. He disappeared for a few
minutes, but came back with his hands full of peaches and grapes. He had
some milk in a rusty tin cup that he always carried.
"Did some one give this to you?" asked Phil gratefully.
David shook his head. "Stole it," he answered briefly. Phil, who could
see that David was torn with impatience for them to resume their march,
ate the fruit and drank the milk without protest.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon, when David spied the "Water
Witch," drawn up on the river bank out of the reach of the water. Some
unknown force must have led him to Madge's hiding place in the woods.
Afterward he made no explanation either to Phyllis or Madge of his
unexpected acquaintance with the man who had kept Madge a prisoner, and
neither girl asked him any questions.
David managed to get the "Water Witch" out into the river with the
single oar, and a party of young people in another skiff, seeing their
plight, brought them safely home to the houseboat.