The Campfire Girls on Station Island: or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht

“Can’t we take the inside passage – go through the Cape Cod Canal?” asked Dr. Stanley. “That should eliminate all danger.”

“Oh, there’s no danger,” Darry said. “The yacht is as seaworthy as can be. But I don’t want any of you to be uncomfortable.”

“I’m a good sailor,” declared Nell.

“You know Jess and I are used to the water,” Amy hastened to say. “Let us go on, Darry.”

But the wind sprang up a little later and began to blow fitfully. The skipper considered it safer to keep well out to sea. Inshore waters are often dangerous even for a craft of as light draught as the Marigold.

The crowd sat on deck, keeping as much as possible in the shelter of the deckhouse, and were just as jolly as though there was no such thing on the whole ocean as a storm. Dr. Stanley told them several of his funny stories, and amused the young folks immensely.

In the midst of the general hilarity Nell went below for something. She was gone for some minutes and Jessie, at least, began to wonder where she was when she saw Nell’s hand beckoning to her from an open stateroom window. Jessie got up and moved toward the place, wondering what the doctor’s daughter had discovered that so excited her.

“What is it, Nell?” Jess whispered.

“Come down here – do!” exclaimed the other girl, her tone half muffled.

“What is the matter?” Jessie exclaimed, in wonder.

But she slipped around to the other side of the cabin, faced the gale, and reached the companionway. She darted down, being careful to shut tight the slide behind her. Already the waves were buffeting the small yacht and spray was dashing in over the weather rail.

Jessie found some difficulty in keeping her feet in the close cabin. It was so dark outside that the interior of the yacht was gloomy. She groped her way to their stateroom, which was the biggest aboard.

“What is the matter, Nell?” demanded Jessie, pushing open the door and peering in.

Nell Stanley’s face was white. She stood by the open window. At Jessie’s appearance she began to sob and tremble.

“I – I’m so frightened, Jess!” she gasped.

“Why, you silly! I thought you said you were a good sailor?”

“It isn’t that,” Nell told her. “Don’t – don’t you smell it?”

“Don’t I smell what?”

“Come in and shut the door. Now smell – smell hard!”

Jessie began to giggle. “What do you mean? Why! I see a little haze of smoke by the window. Do I, or don’t I?”

“I opened the window to let it out. But – but it comes more and more, Jessie,” stammered the clergyman’s daughter. “I believe the yacht is on fire, Jessie!”

“Oh! Don’t say that!” murmured Jessie Norwood, suddenly frightened herself.

“When I came in the room was full of smoke and – don’t you smell it?”

“It doesn’t smell very nice,” admitted her friend. “Where does the smoke come from? Where can it come from?”

“It must come from below – from the hold under us.”

“But what can be burning? This is not a cargo boat,” said the puzzled Jessie. “We don’t want to frighten them all, especially if it amounts to nothing.”

“I know. That is why I called you first,” Nell declared, anxiously. “I – I wasn’t sure.”

“Well, I am sure of one thing,” said Jessie confidently.

“What is that?”

“This is a very serious thing if it is serious. We must tell Skipper Pandrick at once. Let him decide what is to be done.”

“You wouldn’t tell Darry?”

“The skipper is responsible. We won’t frighten the boys if we don’t need to,” and Jessie tried to open the door again. “Come on. Don’t stay here and get asphyxiated.”

“It is all right with the window open,” said Nell.

She turned to follow her chum and saw Jessie tugging at the door-knob and stopped, amazed. The other girl used both hands, but could not turn the knob. She tugged with all her strength.

“Why, Jessie Norwood! what is the matter with it?” whispered Nell, anxiously.

“The mean old thing won’t open! It’s a spring lock. How did it get locked this way, do you suppose?”

“You slammed it when you came in, Jess,” Nell said. “But I had no idea that it could be locked that way. Especially from the outside. Oh, dear! Shall I shout for one of the boys? Shall I?”

“Don’t!” gasped Jessie, still struggling with the door-knob. “Don’t you know if one of them comes here and sees this smoke, everybody will know it?”

“They’ll have to know it pretty soon,” said Nell. “The smoke is coming in all the time, Jess.”

Jessie could see that well enough. She shrank from creating a panic aboard the yacht, realizing fully what a terrible thing a fire at sea can be. If this hovering fog of smoke meant nothing serious, their outcry for help at the stateroom window would create trouble – maybe serious trouble. Jessie had the right idea, if she could but carry it out – to tell the sailing master of the yacht, and only him.

The brass knob seemed as firmly fixed in place as though it had never been moved since it came from the shop. Jessie, at last, came away from it. She peered out of the small window. If she could only catch the skipper’s eye!

But she could not. At that moment there was not a soul in sight from the window. She saw sea and sky, and that was all.

“Oh dear, Jess!” murmured Nell Stanley, at last giving way to fear. “What shall we do? We’ll be burned up in here!”

“Don’t talk so, Nell!” commanded Jessie. “Do you want to scare me to death?”

“It’s enough to scare anybody to death,” proclaimed the minister’s daughter. “I’m going to scream for father.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” her friend declared. “Shrieking about this will do no good, and may do harm. Can’t you see – ”

“Not much, with all this smoke in my eyes,” grumbled Nell.

“Don’t be a goose! If we yell, everybody will come running, and will get excited when they see the smoke.”

“But, Jess,” Nell said very sensibly, “all the time we delay the fire is gathering headway.”

“If it is a fire.”

“Goodness me! Where there’s so much smoke there must be fire. How you talk!”

“I don’t want to be shown up as a ‘fraid cat and a killjoy,” cried Jessie. “The boys are always laughing at us, anyway, because we get scared at little things: mice, and falling overboard, and a puff of wind. I am deadly sick of hearing: ‘Isn’t that just like a girl?’ So there!”

“Well, for pity’s sake!” gasped the clergyman’s daughter. “That is just like a girl! Afraid of what boys will say of one! Not me!”

“Girls ought to be just as fearless as boys, and have as much initiative. Now, Nell Stanley, suppose Darry and Burd were shut up in this stateroom under these circumstances. What do you suppose they would do?”

Nell laughed aloud, serious as the situation was. “I guess Burd would put his head out of that window and bawl for help.”

“Darry wouldn’t,” declared Jessie, firmly. “He would know what to do. He would realize that it would not do to start a panic.”

“But if the door has been locked on us?”

“Darry would know what to do with that old lock. He’d – he’d find a way. Find out what the matter with it was.”

Jessie sprang at the door again. She stooped down and looked at the under side of the brass lock. Then she uttered a shrill squeal of delight.

“What is it now?” gasped Nell.

“I’ve got it! There is a snap here that holds the knob so you can’t turn it! I must have snapped it when I came in!” She jerked the door open and ran. “Come on, Nell!”

“Well, of all things!” gasped her friend.

But she followed her friend out of the stateroom. They ran as well as they could through the cabin and got out upon the open deck. Skipper Pandrick, in glistening oilskins and sou’wester was far aft with his glasses to his eyes. He was watching a dark spot upon the stormy horizon that might have been steamer smoke, or a gathering storm cloud.

The girls ran up to him, but Jessie pulled Nell’s sleeve to admonish her to say nothing that might be overheard by the other passengers.

“What’s doing, young ladies?” asked the skipper, curiously, seeing their flushed and excited faces.

“Will – will you come below – to our stateroom – for a moment, Mr. Pandrick?” stammered Jessie. “There is something we want to show you. It is really something serious. Please come below at once.”

CHAPTER XXI – WORK FOR ALL

The skipper looked rather queerly at the two excited girls, but he went below with them without further objection. In fact, Skipper Pandrick was a man of very few words; he proved this when Nell opened the stateroom door and he saw the smoke swirling about the apartment.

“I reckon you girls ain’t been smoking in here,” he said grimly. “Then I reckon that smoke comes from below.”

“Is the ship really on fire?” gasped Jessie.

“Something’s afire, sure as you’re a foot high,” said the skipper vigorously, and stormed out of the stateroom and out of the cabin.

There was a hatch in the main deck amidships. He called two of the men and had it raised. The passengers as yet had no idea that anything was wrong, for Jessie and Nell kept away from them.

But they watched what the skipper did. He had brought an electric pocket torch from below and he flashed this before him as he descended the iron ladder into the hold. Almost at once, however, a whiff of smoke rose through the open hatchway.

“Glory be, Tom!” said one sailor to his mate. “What do you make of that?”

“You can’t make nothing of smoke, but smoke,” returned the other man. “It’s just as useless as a pig’s squeal is to the butcher.”

But Jessie believed that the incident called for no humor. If there was a fire below —

“Hi, you boys!” came the muffled voice of Skipper Pandrick from below, “couple on the pump-line and send the nozzle end below. There’s something here, sure enough.”

As he said this another balloon of smoke floated up through the open hatch. It was seen from the station of the passengers. Darry jumped up and ran to the hatchway.

“What’s he doing? Smoking down there?” he demanded.

“It’s sure a bad cigar, boss, if he’s smoking it,” said one of the men, grinning.

“Oh, Darry!” gasped Jessie. “The yacht is on fire!”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed the young man, rather impolitely it must be confessed.

He started to descend into the hold. The skipper’s voice rose out of it:

“Get away from there! This ain’t any place for you, Mr. Darry. Hustle that pipe-line.”

“Is it serious, Skipper?” demanded the young collegian, anxiously.

“I don’t know how bad it is yet. Tell the helmsman to head nor’east. Maybe we’d better make for some anchorage, after all.”

Darry ran to the wheelhouse. The other passengers began to get excited. Nell ran to her father and told him what she had first discovered.

“Well, having discovered the fire in time, undoubtedly they will be able to put it out,” said Dr. Stanley, comfortingly.

But this did not prove to be easy. Skipper Pandrick had to come up after a while for a breath of cool air and to remove his oilskins. Darry and Burd got into overalls and helped in handling the hose. The steam needed to work the pump, however, brought the engines down to a very slow movement. The Marigold scarcely kept her headway.

The fire, which had undoubtedly been smouldering a long time, was obstinate. The water the skipper and his helpers poured upon it raised the level of water in the bilge until Darry declared he feared the yacht would be water-logged.

Meanwhile the wind grew in savageness. Instead of being gusty, it blew more and more violently out of the northeast. When the helmsman tried to head into it, under the skipper’s relayed instructions by Darry, the lack of steam kept the old Marigold marking time instead of forging ahead.

“If we have to put the steam to the pump to clear the bilge after this,” grumbled the pessimistic Burd, “we’ll never reach any shelter. Might as well run for the Bermudas.”

“Won’t that be fine!” cried Amy. “I have always wanted to go to the Bermudas, and we’ve never gone.”

“Fine girl, you,” retorted Burd. “You don’t know when you are in danger.”

“Fire’s out!” announced Amy. “The skipper says so. And I am not afraid of a capful of wind.”

There was more danger, however, than the girls imagined. The water that had been poured into the yacht’s hold did not make her any more seaworthy. It was necessary to start the pump to try to clear the hold.

The clapperty-clap; clapperty-clap! of the pump and the water swishing across the deck to be vomited out of the hawse holes was nothing to add to the passengers’ feelings of confidence. Besides, the water came very clear, and at its appearance the skipper looked doleful.

“What’s the matter, Skipper?” asked Darry, seeing quickly that something was still troubling the old man.

“Why, Mr. Darry, that don’t look good to me, and that’s a fact,” the sailing master said.

“Why not? The pump is clearing her fast.”

“Is it?” grumbled Pandrick, shaking his head.

“Of course it is!” exclaimed Darry, with some exasperation. “Don’t be an Old Man of the Sea.”

“That’s exactly what I am, Mr. Darry,” said the skipper. “I’m so old a hand at sea that I’m always looking for trouble. I confess it. And I see trouble – and work for all hands – right here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jessie, who chanced to be by. “The pump works all right just as Darry says, doesn’t it?”

“But, by gorry!” ejaculated the skipper, “it looks as though we were just pumping the whole Atlantic through her seams.”

“Goodness! What do you mean?” Jessie demanded.

“You think she is leaking?” asked Darry, in some trouble.

“Bilge ain’t clean water like that,” answered Pandrick. “That’s as clear as the sea itself. Mind you! I don’t say she leaks more’n enough to keep her sweet. But if those pumps don’t suck purt’ soon, I shall have my suspicions.”

“Darry!” ejaculated Jessie, “your yacht is falling apart. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t believe it,” muttered Darry.

He had, however, to admit it after a time. It seemed as though the Marigold were suffering one misfortune after another. The fire, which might have been very serious, was extinguished; but the yacht lay deep in the troubled sea, rolling heavily, and the water pumped through the pipe was plainly seeping in through the seams of her hull.

“Goodness me! shall we have to take to the boat and the life raft?” demanded Amy.

It was scarcely possible to joke much about the situation. Even Amy Drew’s “famous line of light conversation” could not keep up their spirits.

The wind continued to blow harder and harder. The yacht could no longer head into it. Dr. Stanley looked grave. Nell, first frightened by her discovery of the fire in the hold, was now in tears.

To add to the seriousness of the situation, there was not another vessel in sight.

CHAPTER XXII – A RADIO CALL THAT FAILED

“Of course,” Amy said composedly, “if worse comes to worst, we can send the news by radio that the yacht is sinking and bring to our rescue somebody – somebody – ”

“Yes, we can!” exclaimed Burd Alling. “A revenue cutter, I suppose? Don’t you suppose the United States Government has anything better to do than to look out for people who don’t know enough to look out for themselves?”

“That seems to be the Government’s mission a good deal of the time,” replied Dr. Stanley, with a smile. “But you don’t think it will be necessary to call for help, do you, Darrington?” he asked the sober-looking owner of the yacht.

“Well, the fire’s out, that’s sure – ”

“You bet it is!” growled Burd. “It had to be out, there’s so much water in the hold.”

“But we are not sinking!” cried Amy.

“Lucky we’re not,” said Burd. “The radio doesn’t work.”

“Why, how you talk,” Nell said admonishingly. “You would scare us if we did not know you so well, Burd.”

“You don’t know the half of it!” exclaimed the young fellow. “Fuel is getting low, too. Skipper wants us to work the pump by hand. That means Darry and me to ‘man the pumps.’”

“And we can help,” said Jessie, cheerfully. “If the skipper thinks he needs to make more steam for the engines, why can’t we all take turns at the pump?”

“Sounds like a real shipwreck story,” her chum observed, but doubtfully.

“It will cause a mutiny,” declared Burd. “I didn’t ship on the Marigold to work like Old Bowser on the treadmill. And that is about how I feel.”

“You can get out and walk if you don’t like it,” Darry reminded him.

“And I suppose you think I wouldn’t. For two cents – ”

Just then the yacht pitched sharply and Burd almost lost his footing. The waves were really boisterous and occasionally a squall of rain swooped down and, with the spray, wet the entire deck and those upon it.

Jessie was not greatly afraid of the elements or of what they could do to the yacht. But she was made anxious by the repetition of the statement that the radio was out of order. Originally the Marigold had had a small wireless plant, with storage batteries. Signals by Morse could be exchanged with other ships and with stations ashore within a limited distance.

But when Darry had bought the radio receiving set he had disconnected the broadcasting machine and linked up the regenerative circuit with the stationary batteries. As he had explained to Jessie, both systems could not be used at once.

They had found that neither the receiving set nor the old wireless set worked well. It looked as though the boys had overlooked something in rigging the new set and the radio girls quite realized that in this emergency a general and perhaps a thorough overhauling of the wires and connections would be necessary to discover just where the fault lay.

Jessie called Amy, and they went up into the little wireless room behind the wheelhouse where everything about the plant but the batteries were in place. This was a very different outfit from that in the great station at the old lighthouse on Station Island, which they had visited several days before.

“If we only knew as much as that operator does about wireless,” sighed Jessie to her chum, “there might be some hope of our untangling all this and finding out the trouble.”

“He said he had been five years at it and didn’t know so very much,” Amy reminded her dryly.

“Oh, there will always be something new to learn about radio, of course,” her chum agreed. “But if we had his training in the fundamentals of radio, we would be equipped to handle such a mess as this. To tell you the truth, Amy, I think these two boys have made a cat’s cradle of this thing.”

“And Darry spent more than a year aboard a destroyer and was trained to ‘listen in’ for submarines and all that!”

“An entirely different thing from knowing how to rig wireless,” commented Jessie, getting down on her knees to look under the shelf to which the posts were screwed. “Oh, dear!” she added, as she bumped her head. “I wish this boat wouldn’t pitch so.”

“So say we all of us. What can I do, Jess?”

“Not a thing – for a moment. Let me see: The general rules of radio are easily remembered. The incoming oscillations that have been intercepted by the antenna above the roof of the house are applied across the grid and filament of the detector tube – ”

“That’s this jigger here,” put in Amy, as Jessie struggled up again.

“Yes. That is the tube. Through the relay action of the tube, an amplified current flows through the plate circuit —here. Now,” added Jessie thoughtfully, “if we couple this plate circuit back – No! This is a simple circuit. It is like our old one, Amy. We can’t get much action out of this set. It is not like the new one we are putting in the bungalow.“

“Well, the thing is, can we use it?” Amy demanded. “Can you link the power, or whatever you call it, up with the sending paraphernalia and get an S O S over the water?”

“Goodness, Amy! Don’t talk as though you thought we were really in danger.”

“Humph! I see the Reverend, as Nell calls him, out there with his coat off, in his shirt-sleeves, taking a turn with Burd at the pumps. They have rigged it for man power and are saving steam for the engines.”

“Let me see!” cried Jessie, peering out of the clouded window too. “You’d never think he was a minister. Isn’t he nice?”

Amy began to laugh. “Are all ministers supposed to be such terrible people?”

“No-o,” admitted Jessie, going back to the radio set. “But good as they usually are, we have the very best minister at the Roselawn Church, of any.”

“Yep. So we must plan to save him if anything happens,” giggled Amy.

“Let’s open the switch and see if we can get anything,” her chum said reflectively, picking up the head harness.

“You mean hear if we can get anything,” corrected Amy.

“Never mind splitting hairs, my dear. Is that the switch? Yes. Now!”

She put on the rigging, but all she got out of the air, as she sadly confessed, were sounds like an angry cat spitting at a puppydog.

“It isn’t just static,” she told Amy. “You try it. There is something absolutely wrong with this thing. See! We don’t get a spark.”

“If we did we couldn’t read the letters.”

“I believe I could read some Morse if it came slowly enough,” said Jessie, nodding. “But it is sending, not receiving, I am thinking of, Amy Drew.”

Amy began to look more serious. Jessie was harping on a possibility she did not wish to admit was probable. She went out and, hunting up Darry, demanded to know just how bad he thought they were off, anyway.

“Well, Sis, there is no use making a wry face about it,” the collegian said. “But you see how hard the Reverend and Burd are working, and they can’t keep ahead of the water. The poor old Marigold really is leaking.”

“Is she going to sink? Can’t we get to land – somewhere? Can’t we go back to the island?”

“Shucks, Sis! You know we are miles from Station Island. We are off Montauk – or we were this morning. But we are heading out to sea now – sou’-sou’east. Can’t head into this gale. She pitches too much.”

“And – and isn’t there any help for us, Darry Drew?”

“We don’t need any help yet, do we?” he demanded pluckily. “She is making good weather of it – ”

Just then the yacht rolled so that he had to grab the rail with one hand and Amy with the other, and both of them were well shaken up.

“Woof!” gasped Darry, as they came out of the smother of spray.

“Oh!” exploded Amy. “I swallowed a pail of water that time. Ugh! How bitter the sea is. Now, Darry, I guess we’ll have to send out signals, sha’n’t we?”

“How can we? I’ve tried the old radio already. She is as dumb as the proverbial oyster with the lockjaw.”

“Jessie is going to fix it,” said Amy, with some confidence.

“Yes she is! She’s some smart girl, I admit,” her brother observed. “But I guess that is a job that will take an expert.”

“You just see!” cried Amy. “You think she can’t do anything because she’s a girl.”

“Bless you! Girls equal the men nowadays. I hold Jessie as little less than a wonder. But if a thing can’t be done – ”

“That is what you think because you tried it and failed.”

“Huh!”

“We radio girls will show you!” declared Amy, her head up and preparing to march back to her chum the next time the deck became steady.

But when she started so proudly the yacht rolled unexpectedly and Amy, screaming for help, went sliding along the deck to where Dr. Stanley and Burd were pumping away to clear the bilge. She was saturated – and much meeker in deportment – when Burd fished her out of the scuppers.

CHAPTER XXIII – ONLY HOPE

The condition of the Marigold was actually much more serious than the Roselawn girls at first supposed. Jessie and Amy were so busy in the radio house for a couple of hours and were so interested in what they were doing that they failed to observe that the hull of the yacht was slowly sinking.

Fortunately the wind decreased after a while; but by that time it was scarcely safe to head the yacht into the wind’s eye, as the skipper called it. She wallowed in the big seas in a most unpleasant way and it was fortunate indeed that all the passengers were good sailors.

Nell came and looked into the radio room once or twice; then she felt so bad that she went below to lie down. The doctor worked as hard as any man aboard. And his cheerfulness was always infectious.

The minister knew that they were in peril. He would have been glad to see a rescuing vessel heave into sight. But he gave no sign that he considered the situation at all uncertain or perilous in the least.