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

The afternoon was passing. Another night on the open sea without knowing if the yacht would weather the conditions, was a matter for grave consideration. The doctor and Darry conferred with Skipper Pandrick.

“’Tis hard to say,” the sailing master observed. “There is no knowing what may happen. If the yacht was not so water-logged we might get in under our own steam – ”

“But we can’t make steam enough!” cried Darry.

“Well, no, we don’t seem to,” admitted the skipper.

“And to what port would you sail?” asked Dr. Stanley.

“Well, now, there’s not any handy just now, I admit. If we head back for the land we may be thrown on our beam-ends, I will say. The waves are big ones, as you see.”

“You are not very encouraging, Skipper,” said the minister.

“I wouldn’t be raising any false hopes in your mind, sir,” said Pandrick.

“You’re a jolly old wet blanket, you are,” declared Darry to the sailing master. “What shall we do?”

“We’ll have to take what comes to us,” declared the skipper.

“You are a fatalist, Mr. Pandrick,” said the minister, and Darry was glad to hear him laugh cheerily.

“No, sir. I’m a Universalist,” declared the seaman. “And I’ve all the hope in the world that we’ll come out of this all right.”

“But can’t we do something to help ourselves?” demanded the exasperated Darry.

“Not much that I know of. Here’s hoping the wind goes down and we have calm weather and see the sun again.”

“Hope all you like,” growled the young fellow. “I am going to see if the girls aren’t able to bring something to pass with that radio.”

He found his sister and Jessie rearranging a part of the circuit on the set-board. They were very much in earnest. Thus far, however, they had been unable to get a clear signal out of the air, nor could they send one.

“If we could reach another vessel, or a shore station, and tell them where the yacht is and that she is leaking, we’d be all right, shouldn’t we, Darry?” Jessie asked earnestly.

“But I am not at all sure we need help,” he said, in doubt.

“We may need it!” exclaimed his sister.

“Why – yes, we may,” he admitted, though rather grudgingly.

“Then we want to get this fixed,” Jessie declared. “But there is something wrong here. Do you see this Darry? It seems to me that there must be a part missing. When you and Burd set this up are you sure you followed the instructions of the book in every particular?”

“Of course we did,” Darry said.

“Of course we didn’t!” exclaimed Burd’s voice from the doorway.

“What are you saying?” demanded his friend, promptly.

“What I know. Don’t you remember that you lost the instruction book overboard sometime there, when we were getting the bothersome thing fixed?”

“So I did,” confessed Darry. “But, say! she was all right then.”

“She hasn’t ever been all right,” accused his chum, “and you know it.”

“We sent code signals by the old machine, all right.”

“But we’ve never been able to since we linked it up with this receiving set, and you know it,” said Burd.

“It sounds to me,” said Amy, “as though neither one of you boys knew so awfully much about it.”

“I know one thing,” said Jessie, with determination. “All the parts are not here. These connections are not like any I ever saw before. It is a mystery to me – ”

“Hold on!” exclaimed Darry Drew suddenly. “What did we do with all those little cardboard boxes and paper tubes the parts came in? Couldn’t be we overlooked anything, Burd?”

“Don’t try to hang it on me!” exclaimed his chum. “I never claimed to know a thing about radio. You were the Big Noise when we put the contraption together.”

“Aw, you! Where did we put the things left over?”

“There he goes!” exclaimed the confirmed joker. “He’s like the fellow who took the automobile apart to fix it and had a bushel of parts left over when he was done. He doesn’t know – ”

“Beat it out of here,” roared Darry, “and find that box we put the stuff into. You know.”

Dr. Stanley came up to the radio room while Burd was searching for the rubbish box. The clergyman spoke cheerfully, but he looked very grave.

“Is there any likelihood of our being able to send out a call for assistance, Jessie?” he asked, quietly.

“I don’t see how we can, Doctor Stanley, until we fix this radio set. We can’t get any spark. We have to be able to get a spark to send a message. The message will be stumbling enough, I am afraid, even if we fix the thing, for none of us understands Morse very well. Unless Darry – ”

“Don’t look to me for help,” declared the collegian. “I haven’t sent a message since we put the yacht in commission. We had a fellow aboard here until the other day who knew something about wireless and he was the operator. Not me.”

“Amy and I have a code book with the alphabet in it,” said Jessie slowly. “I think if somebody read the dots and dashes to me I could send a short message. But there is something wrong with this circuit.”

Just then Burd Alling came back. He brought with him a big corrugated cardboard container. In that the various parts of the radio outfit had been packed.

“What do you think about it?” he asked. “There is something here that I never saw before. See this jigamarig, Jess? Think it belongs on the contraption?”

“Oh!” cried Jessie, eagerly, pouncing on the small object that Burd held out to her. “I know what that is.”

“Then you beat me. I don’t,” declared Burd.

“Let’s see what else there is,” said Darry, diving into the box. “I left you to get out the parts, Burd; you know I did.”

“Oh, splash!” exclaimed his friend. “We might as well admit that we don’t know as much about radio as these girls. They leave us lashed to the post.”

But Jessie and Amy did not even feel what at another time Amy would have called “augmented ego.” The occasion was too serious.

The day was passing into evening, and a very solemn evening it was. The wind whined through the strands of the wire rigging. The waves knocked the yacht about. The passengers all felt weary and forlorn.

The two girl chums felt the situation less acutely than anybody else, perhaps, because they were so busy. That radio had to be repaired. That is what Jessie told Amy, and Amy agreed. The safety of the whole yacht’s company seemed dependent upon what the two radio girls could do.

“And we must not fall down on it, Jess,” Amy said vigorously. “How goes it now?”

“This thing that Burd found goes right in here. We have got to reset a good part of the circuit to do it. I don’t see how the boys could have made such a mistake.”

“Proves what I have always maintained,” declared Amy Drew. “We girls are smarter than those boys, even if the said boys do go to college. Bah! What is college, anyway?”

“Just a prison,” said Burd sepulchrally from the doorway.

“Close that door!” exclaimed Jessie. “Don’t let that spray drift in here.”

“Yes. Do go away, Burd, and see if the yacht is sinking any more. Don’t bother us,” commanded Amy.

The men were keeping the pumps at work, but it was an anxious time. It was long dark and the lamps were lighted when Jessie pronounced the set complete. Darry and Burd came in again and asked what they could do?

“Root for us. Nothing more,” said Amy. “Jessie has fixed this thing and she is going to have the honor of sending the message – if a message can be sent.“

“Well,” remarked Burd Alling, “I guess it is up to you girls to save the situation. I have just found out that there isn’t as much provender as I was given reason to believe when we started. We ought to be in Boston right now. And see where we are!”

“That is exactly what we can’t see,” said Jessie. “But we must know. Did you get the latitude and longitude from the skipper, Darry?”

“Yes. Here it is, approximately. He got a chance to shoot the sun this noon.”

“The cruel thing!” gibed his sister. “But anyway, I hope he has got the situation near enough so some vessel can find us.”

“Let us see, first, if we can send a message intelligibly,” said Jessie, putting on the head harness, and speaking seriously. “It will be awful, perhaps, if we can’t. I know that the yacht is almost unmanageable.”

“You’ve said something,” returned Burd. “The fuel is low, as well as the supplies in the galley. We haven’t got much left – ”

“But hope,” said Jessie, softly.

CHAPTER XXIV – THE MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE

Henrietta Haney was a very lonely little girl after the yacht sailed from Station Island. Not that she had nobody to play with, for she had. There were other children besides Sally Stanley of her own age, or thereabout, in the bungalow colony. And as she had been in Dogtown, Henrietta soon became the leading spirit of her crowd.

She even taught them some of her games, and once more became “Spotted Snake, the Witch,” and scared some of the children almost as much as she had scared the Dogtown youngsters with her supposed occult powers.

She was running and screaming and tearing her clothes most of the time when she was away from Mrs. Norwood, but in the company of Jessie’s mother she truly tried to “be a little lady.”

“Be it ever so painful, little Hen is going to learn to be worthy of you and Jessie, Mary,” laughed Mrs. Drew, who was like her daughter in being able always to see the fun in things. “What do you really expect will come of the child?”

“I think she will make quite a woman in time. And before that time arrives,” added Mrs. Norwood, “she has much to learn, as you say. In some ways Henrietta has had an unhappy childhood – although she doesn’t know it. I hope she will have better times from now on.”

“You are sure to make her have good times, Mary,” said Mrs. Drew. “I hope she will appreciate all that Jessie and you do for her.”

“She is rather young for one to expect appreciation from her,” Mrs. Norwood said, smiling. “But the little thing is grateful.”

Without Jessie and Amy, however, Henrietta confessed she was very lonely. Sometimes she listened to the radio all alone, sitting quietly and hearing even lectures and business talks out of the air that ordinarily could not have interested the child. But she said it reminded her of “Miss Jessie” just to sit with the ear-tabs on.

She had heard about the older girls going to the lighthouse station to interview the wireless operator there, and although Henrietta knew that the government reservation at that end of the island was no part of the old Padriac Haney estate, she wandered down there alone on the second day of the yacht’s absence and climbed up into the tower.

The storm had blown itself out on shore, and the sun was going down in golden glory. Out at sea, although the waves still rolled high and the clouds were tumultuous in appearance, there was nothing to threaten a continuation of the unsettled weather.

Henrietta had no idea how long it would be before the yacht reached Boston, although she had heard a good deal of talk about it. She had watched the Marigold steam out of sight into the east, and it seemed to the little girl that her friends were just there, beyond the horizon line, where she had seen the last patch of the Marigold’s smoke disappear.

The wireless operator had seen Henrietta before, cavorting about the beach and leading the other children in their play, and he was prepared for some of her oddities. But she surprised him by her very first speech.

“You’re the man that can send words out over the ocean, aren’t you?”

“I can send signals,” he admitted, but rather puzzled.

“Can folks like Miss Jessie and Miss Amy hear ’em?” demanded Henrietta.

“Only if they are on a boat that has a wireless outfit.”

“They got it on that Marigold,” announced Henrietta.

“Oh! The yacht that sailed yesterday! Yes, she carried antenna.”

“And she carried Doctor Stanley and Miss Nell Stanley, too, besides the boys, Mr. Darry and Mr. Burd,” said Henrietta. “Then they can hear you?”

“If they know how to use the wireless they could catch a signal from this station.”

“Miss Jessie knows all about radio,” said Henrietta. “She made it.”

“Oh, she did?”

“Yes. She made it all up. She and Miss Amy built them one at Roselawn. That was before Montmorency Shannon built his. Well, Miss Jessie is out there on the Marigold.”

“So I understand,” said the much amused operator.

“I wish you would – please – send her word that I’d like to have her come back to my island.”

“Are you the little girl who owns this island? I’ve heard about you.”

“Yes. But there ain’t much fun on an island if your friends aren’t on it, too. And Miss Jessie is one of my very dearest friends.”

“I understand,” said the operator gravely, seeing the little girl’s lip trembling. “You would like to have me reach your friend, Miss Jessie – ”

“Her name’s Norwood, too,” put in Henrietta, to make sure.

“Oh, indeed? She is the lawyer, Mr. Norwood’s daughter. I have met her.”

“Yes, sir. She came here once.”

“And you wish to send her a message if it is possible?”

“Yes, sir. I want you should ask her to get to Boston as quick as she can and come back again. We would all like to have her come,” said the little girl, gravely.

“I am going to be on duty myself this evening and I will try to get your message through,” said the operator kindly. “The Marigold, is it?” and he drew the code book toward him in which the signal for every vessel sailing from American ports, even pleasure craft, that carries wireless, is listed.

He turned around to his instrument right then and began to rap out the call for the yacht. He kept it up, off and on, between his other work, all the evening. But no answer was returned.

The operator began to be somewhat puzzled by this fact. Knowing how much interested in radio the girls were who had visited him, he could not understand why they would not be listening in at some time or other on the yacht.

He kept throwing into the ether the signal meant for the Marigold’s call until almost midnight, when he expected to be relieved by his partner. Towards ten o’clock there was some bothersome signals in the ether that annoyed him whenever he took a message or relayed one in the course of the evening’s business.

“Some amateur op. is interfering,” was his expression. “But, I declare! it does sound something like this station call. Can it be – ?”

He lengthened his spark and sent thundering out on the air-waves his usual reply: “I, I, OKW. I, I, OKW.”

Then he held his hand and waited for any return. The same mysterious, scraping sounds continued. A slow hand, he believed, was trying to spell out some message in Morse. But it was being done in a very fumbling manner.

Of course, half a dozen shore stations and perhaps half a hundred vessels might have caught the clumsy message, as well. But the operator at Station Island, interested by little Henrietta in the Marigold and her company, felt more than puzzlement over this strange communication out of the air.

“Listen in here, Sammy,” he said to his mate, when the latter came in. “Is it just somebody’s squeak-box making trouble to-night or am I hearing a sure-enough S O S? I wonder if there is a storm at sea?”

“There is,” said his mate, sitting down on the bench and taking up the secondary head harness. “The evening papers are full of it. Northeast gale, and blowing like kildee right now.”

“Arlington gave no particulars at last announcement.”

“Don’t make any difference. The boats outside know it. Hullo! What’s this? ‘S-t-a-t-i-o-n I-s-l-a-n-d.’ What’s the joke? Somebody calling us without using the code letters?”

“Don’t know ’em, maybe,” said the chief operator. “Set down what you get and see if it is like mine.”

The other did so. They compared notes. That strange message set both operators actively to work. One began swiftly to distribute over the Eastern Atlantic the news that a craft needed help in such and such a latitude and longitude. The other operator, without his hat, ran all the way to the bungalows to give Mr. Norwood and Mr. Drew some very serious news.

CHAPTER XXV – SAVED BY RADIO

Jessie Norwood was not tireless. It seemed to her as though her right arm would drop off, she pressed the key of the wireless instrument so frequently. They had written out a brief call of distress, and finally she got it by heart so that Amy did not have to read her the dots and dashes.

But it was a slow process and they had no way of learning if the message was caught and understood by any operator, either ashore or on board a vessel. Hour after hour went slowly by. The Marigold was sinking. The pumps could not keep up with the incoming water; the fuel was almost exhausted and the engines scarcely turned over; the buffeting seas threatened the craft every minute.

Dr. Stanley remained outwardly cheerful. Darry and the others took heart from the clergyman’s words.

“Tell you what,” said Burd. “If we are wrecked on a desert island I shall be glad to have the doctor along. He’d have cheered up old Robinson Crusoe.”

As the evening waned and the sea continued to pound the hull of the laboring yacht the older people aboard, at least, grew more anxious. The young folks in the radio room chattered briskly, although Jessie called them to account once in a while because they made so much noise she could not be sure that she was sending correctly.

Darry tried to relieve her at the key, but he confessed that he “made a mess of it.” The radio girls had spent more time and effort in learning to handle the wireless than the collegians – both Darry and Burd acknowledged it.

“These are some girls!” Darry said, admiringly.

“You spoil ’em,” complained Burd Ailing. “Want to be careful what you say to them.”

“Oh, if anybody can stand a little praise it is Jess and I,” declared Amy, sighing with weariness.

Nobody cared to turn in. The situation was too uncertain. The boys could be with the girls only occasionally, for they had to take their turn at the pumps. It had come to pass that nothing but steady pumping kept the yacht from sinking. They were all thankful that the wind decreased and the waves grew less boisterous.

Towards midnight it was quite calm, only the swells lifted the water-logged yacht in a rhythmic motion that finally became unpleasant. Nell was ill, below; but the others remained on deck and managed to weather the nauseating effects of the heaving sea.

Meanwhile, as often as she could, Jessie Norwood sent out into the air the cry for assistance. She sent it addressed to “Station Island,” for she did not know that each wireless station had a code signal – a combination of letters. But she knew there was but one Station Island off the coast.

The clapperty-clap, clapperty-clap of the pumps rasped their nerves at last until, as Amy declared, they needed to scream! When the sound stopped for the minute while pump-crews were changed, it was a relief.

And finally the spark of the wireless began to skip and fall dead. Good reason! The storage batteries, although very good ones, were beginning to fail. Before daybreak it was impossible to use the sender any more.

Somehow this fact was more depressing than anything that had previously happened. They could only hope, in any event, that their message had been heard and understood; but now even this sad attempt was halted.

Jessie was really too tired to sleep. She and Amy did not go below for long. They changed their clothes and came on deck again and were very glad of the hot cup of coffee Dr. Stanley brought them from the galley. The cook had been set to work on one of the pump crews.

The girls sat in the deck chairs and stared off across the rolling gray waters. There was no sign of any other vessel just then, but a dim rose color at the sea line showed where the sun would come up after a time.

“But a fog is blowing up from the south, too,” said Amy. “See that cloud, Jess? My dear! Did you ever expect that we would be sitting here on Darry’s yacht waiting for it to sink under us?”

“How can you!” exclaimed Jessie, aghast.

“Well, that is practically what we are doing,” replied her chum. “Thank goodness I have had this cup of coffee, anyway. It braces me – ”

“Even for drowning?” asked Jessie. “Oh! What is that, Amy?”

“It’s a boat! It’s a boat! Ship ahoy!” shrieked Amy, jumping up and dancing about, dropping the cup and saucer to smash upon the deck.

“It’s a steamboat!” cried Darry Drew, from the deck above.

“Head for it if you can, Bob!” commanded Skipper Pandrick to the helmsman.

But before they could see what kind of craft the other was, the fog surrounded them. It wrapped the Marigold around in a thick mantle. They could not see ten yards from her rail.

“We don’t even know if she is looking for us!” exclaimed Dr. Stanley. “That is too bad – too bad.”

“Whistle for it,” urged Amy. “Can’t we?”

“If we use the little steam left for the whistle, we will have to shut down the engines,” declared Darry.

“This is a fine yacht – I don’t think!” scoffed Burd Alling. “And none of you knows a thing about rescuing this boat and crew but me. Watch me save the yacht.”

He marched forward and began to work the foot-power foghorn vigorously. Its mournful note (not unlike a cow’s lowing, as Jessie had said) reverberated through the fog. The sound must have carried miles upon miles.

But it was nearly an hour before they heard any reply. Then the hoarse, brief blast of a tug whistle came to their ears.

“Marigold, ahoy!” shouted a well-known voice across the heaving sea.

“Daddy!” screamed Jessie, springing up and dropping her cup and saucer, likewise to utter ruin. “It’s Daddy Norwood!”

The big tug wallowed nearer. She carried wireless, too, and the Marigold’s company believed, at once, that Jessie’s message had been received aboard the Pocahontas.

“But – then – how did Daddy Norwood come aboard of her?” Jessie demanded.

This was not explained until later when the six passengers were taken aboard the tug and hawsers were passed from the sinking yacht to the very efficient Pocahontas.

“And a pretty penny it will cost, so the skipper says, to get her towed to port,” Darry complained.

“Say!” ejaculated Burd, “suppose she didn’t find us at all and we were paddling around in that boat and on the life raft? That would take the permanent wave out of your hair, old grouch!”

The girls, however, and Dr. Stanley as well, begged Mr. Norwood to explain how he had come in search of the Marigold and had arrived so opportunely.

“Nothing easier,” said the lawyer. “When the operator at the lighthouse station got your message – ”

“Oh, bully, Jess! You did it!” cried Amy, breaking in.

“Did you send that message, Jessie?” asked her father. “Well, I am proud of you. The operator came to the house and told me. Although his partner was sending the news of your predicament broadcast over the sea, he told me of the tug lying behind the island, and that it could be chartered.

“So,” explained Mr. Norwood, “I left Drew to fortify the women – and little Henrietta – and went right over and was rowed out to the Pocahontas by an old fisherman who said he knew you girls. I believe he pronounced you ‘cleaners,’ if you know what that means,” laughed the lawyer.

“Henrietta, by the way, was doing incantations of some sort over the wind and weather when I left the bungalow. She said ‘Spotted Snake’ could bring you all safe home.”

“Bless her heart!” exclaimed Jessie.

That afternoon when the tug worked her way carefully into the dock near the bungalow colony on Station Island, Henrietta was the first person the returned wanderers saw on the shore to greet them. She was dancing up and down and screaming something that Jessie and Amy did not catch until they came off the gangplank. Then they made the incantation out to be:

“That Ringold one can’t have my island – so now! The court says so, and Mr. Drew says so, too. He just got it off the telephone and he told me. It’s my island – so there!”

“Why, how glad I am for you, dear!” cried Jessie, running to hug the excited little girl.

“Come ashore! Come ashore! All of you!” cried Henrietta, with a wide gesture. “I invite all of you. This is my island, not that Ringold’s. You can come on it and do anything you like!”