A NIGHT ALARM
It was a very lonely evening for Ruth and Agnes Kenway. The boys had
made the new camp near the spring as snug as possible. An outthrust rock
partially sheltered them, and they had the smaller piece of sail-cloth
to help keep them dry when they lay down. They had a good fire too.
But the wailing of the seabirds and the lap, lap, lapping of the little
waves along the strand sounded very mournful in their ears. This tropic
world was very empty and lonely!
Their minds not only reverted constantly to the question of the
whereabouts of Tess and Dot, but the question of the safety of their boy
friends and their guardian was now added to that first anxiety. Ruth and
Agnes did not consider that they were in any immediate personal danger.
The thought that they might be left indefinitely on this lonely island
they resolutely kept out of the forefront of their minds. But wreck and
disaster might have overtaken both the other parties.
Agnes had climbed the hill just before the night fell and tried to spy
the raft again. But she could not distinguish it. In fact, that nearest
island on which they had seen the flag flying was almost blotted out.
“We cannot see anything until morning,” Ruth told her. “I believe Mr.
Howbridge and the boys got to the island. If the children are there,
then it is all right.”
“All right?” repeated Agnes, with a sniff. “How can you say that?
Nothing will be all right again, I guess, until we get back to the
Corner House. I wish we had never come South.”
“We could not foresee all this trouble,” rejoined her sister soothingly.
“We must not give up hope, Aggie.”
“Humph!”
“If I only knew that Tess and Dot were safe I would feel better. Lots of
people have worse troubles than this. Think of what the poor Pendletons
are going through, for instance.”
“Well, at least,” declared Agnes, “the Pendletons have a roof over their
heads.”
“Ye-es,” agreed Ruth thoughtfully. “And they are all together.”
“They have somebody to help them too,” Agnes went on more energetically.
“I am sure Guardy’s clerk will dig up some evidence to clear Mr.
Pendleton. It only takes time. But we haven’t a soul to help us,
Ruthie.”
“I wonder what the folks at St. Sergius think about our absence,”
murmured the older girl. “Guardy’s friend, Señor Benno, ought to suspect
that we are in some difficulty.”
“I wish he’d send a boat for us—right now!” cried Agnes. “Then we could
go after the boys and the raft.”
“And find Tess and Dot,” added Ruth. “This is a dreadful thing, Agnes!”
“Who would have thought they’d do such a thing?” was Agnes’ vigorous
speech. “I’m always expecting them to get into mischief when Sammy
Pinkney is along. But one would think that with him thousands of miles
away, Tess and Dot could be trusted for half an hour alone.”
“I can’t blame them,” sighed Ruth. “Of course they had no intention of
sailing away with the motor-boat. It was an accident.”
“And we can’t do a thing to help,” said her sister gloomily, and cuddled
down in her blanket.
Worried as she really was, Agnes was not long awake. Ruth tossed and
turned and, as on the night before, could not compose herself to sleep.
Each faint sound from the sea aroused her sharply. Were their friends
coming back? Had they found the motor-boat and the children and repaired
the former and brought back the latter?
Thus between sleeping and waking Ruth Kenway lay until long after
midnight. A faint mist, as usual, rose from the sea and rolled inshore,
masking every object with a soft and glowing mantle. She watched these
wisps of fog until her nerves were “jumpy” and her troubled mind was
filled with strange imaginings.
Figures seemed stalking along the open shore; but she knew they made no
sound and left no footprints on the sand. They were merely phantoms of
her overwrought thought.
Then suddenly, but so sharply that she could not deny its existence,
something clattered out there on the sea. She sat up with a gasp and
reached a nervous hand toward her sister.
Then she waited. Why arouse Agnes and frighten her? It might not be
anything of consequence.
The sound was repeated. Ruth could not identify its cause, but she knew
it could be no marine creature. It was no noise made by the turtles
which sought the island each night at this season of the year.
It was a man-made sound.
The shadows in the fog did not trouble Ruth now. There was something of
greater moment out there on the water, she was sure. Ruth crept down to
the open shore and listened.
A voice! She almost cried aloud, she was so startled. And for a moment a
thrill of delight shocked the girl.
It was a rescue! Somebody had come looking for them! She knew it could
not be Mr. Howbridge and the others returning, although she had imagined
such a thing as she lay there between waking and sleeping.
Nevertheless, something told Ruth Kenway not to shout. She determined to
make no sound until she knew more about these strangers. Or at least,
until it seemed that they might be going away from Palm Island without
investigating.
She now knew what the sounds were which had first startled her. The
anchor of a boat had splashed overboard; then the sail had come rattling
down. Although the mist hid the craft, she knew just about where it was
lying.
Ruth strained her eyes to see. She strained her ears to hear. Out of the
mist she felt that something was coming shoreward. Was it a small boat?
Was a landing being made—and so softly for a purpose? Who were these
people? Were they friends or enemies?
The echo of the voice reached her ears again—flatly and, it seemed,
scarcely human in its timbre. But Ruth was confident that it was a man
who spoke and that he spoke roughly.
She could not expect that any rescue party sent out from St. Sergius
would be altogether made up of the hotel guests. The boatmen engaged on
the waterfront for such a venture were likely to be rather rough men.
When she heard the voice for a third time and recognized the words as
Spanish or Afro-Spanish the oldest Corner House girl shrank back toward
the edge of the jungle in which the camp lay.
Had she heard English spoken by the party coming ashore she would have
raised her voice in a glad shout. Now she hesitated, determining to wait
upon the landing before she made her presence known.
“If they are looking for us they may say something or do something to
prove it,” she thought. Ruth knew a few Spanish words and she began to
recall them to mind and get ready for an interview with the strangers
when such a moment should arrive. “I suppose I ought to welcome the
coming of anybody at all. But these——”
A moving shape suddenly appeared in the mist. A keel grated on the
shore. Several voices, all speaking a mixed Spanish, burst out. Ruth
heard Agnes stir again and cry out faintly.
The older girl threw herself into the shelter and placed a hand over
Agnes’ mouth.
“Hush!” she commanded.
“Oh! Oh! What is it?” gasped the other.
“Wait. There is no danger—perhaps. But they are strangers.”
“What are you saying?” Agnes Kenway demanded, and sat up promptly,
pushing her sister’s restraining hand away.
“I tell you somebody has landed.”
“Not Mr. Howbridge and the boys?”
“Of course not! Would I fear them?”
“Then you are frightened, Ruthie?” said her sister. “Tell me.”
Ruth, however, would say no more. She went back to the clump of brush
overlooking the sands. If the visitors should prove to be friends she
did not want them to escape before she called to them.
The voices did not sound kind at all. Ruth hesitated. Agnes, creeping
out after her, likewise listened to the broken snatches of conversation
which reached their ears.
“Pirates!” exploded the younger sister, her lips close to Ruth’s ear.
“Pirates your grandmother!” returned Ruth, exasperated.
“Wish Sammy Pinkney was here,” giggled Agnes, for with all their trouble
she could joke. “He ought to be a judge of pirates by this time.”
“You needn’t laugh.”
“Maybe not. But I won’t cry—yet,” said Agnes, more cheerful than she had
been for some hours.
The two girls, clinging to each other’s hands in the shivery mist,
waited and listened. The men who had landed from the boat evidently drew
the craft well up on the beach. Then some of them walked up to the
spring.
“Agnes!” ejaculated Ruth, impressively, but in a very low voice.
“Yes?”
“They know this island. They are familiar with it. They dropped their
anchor right opposite this place in the dark, and now they are coming to
the spring.”
“We-ell,” stammered Agnes, “maybe that is good news.”
“They are not likely, then, to be people sent to hunt for us,” announced
Ruth. “We must not speak to them.”
“Why?” ejaculated Agnes. “Because we haven’t been introduced?”
“Don’t be a goose. You sound like Neale O’Neil. We must wait to get a
good look at them by daylight before we let them see us.”
“But—but, Ruthie,” whispered Agnes, “maybe we might get them to go after
the boys and Tess and Dot.”
“They could not do that until morning. We will wait,” Ruth declared
firmly.
Her determination could not be shaken. Agnes at this point might have
been braver than her sister, but she could not oppose Ruth in her
present mood.
The two girls stole off through the scrub timber to the higher ground.
They tried to make no sound that would attract the attention of the men
who had landed on the island. And in this they evidently succeeded, for
their movements were not observed by the strangers.