Part 12 (2/2)

The telegraph office was in the railway station and she and Hinpoha sat down after sending the wire and waited for the s.h.i.+p to come in, wondering what the other girls would think when they failed to come back with the gasoline. It was past dinnertime but there was no dinner for them as long as they had no money. From jaunty tourist to penniless pauper in two hours is quite a change. An hour pa.s.sed; two hours, but no gold-laden message came over the wire. Hinpoha had been chewing her fingers for the last hour.

”Oh, please stop that,” cried Gladys irritably, ”you make me nervous.

You remind me of a cannibal.”

”Isn't there a poem about 'My beautiful Cannibalee?” returned Hinpoha.

”I'll go out and eat gra.s.s if that will make you feel any better,” she continued. She strolled outdoors, leaving Gladys listening to the clickety-click of the telegraph instrument and growing more nervous every minute. Presently Hinpoha came back and said she couldn't stand it outside at all because there was a crate of melons and a box of eggs on the station platform, and she was afraid she wouldn't have the strength to resist if she stayed out there with them.

”And it's going to rain,” she announced. ”You ought to see the sky toward the west.”

And then the darkness began to make itself felt; not the blue darkness of twilight, but the black darkness of thunder clouds through which zig-zags of lightning began to stab. A baby, waiting in the station with its mother for the train, began to wail with fright and Hinpoha forgot her hunger in an effort to amuse him. Then the storm broke. The train roared in just as it began and mingled its noise with the thunder. Hardly had it disappeared up the track when there came a crash of thunder that shook the station to its foundations, followed by a dazzling sheet of blue light, and then the telegraph operator bounded out of his little enclosure, white with fear. His instrument had been struck, as well as the wires on the outside of the building and the roof began to burn. Gladys and Hinpoha rushed out into the rain regardless of their unprotected state and found shelter in a near-by shed, from which they watched the progress of what might well be taken for a second deluge.

”If the water rises much higher in the road we won't need any gasoline,” remarked Hinpoha. ”The Striped Beetle will float.”

”I only hope the girls got the storm curtains b.u.t.toned down in time,”

Gladys kept saying over and over again.

”If it starts to float,” persisted Hinpoha, ”do you suppose it will come this way, or will they have to steer it? Would the steering-wheel be any good, I wonder, or would they have to have a rudder? Oh,” she said brightly, ”now I know what they mean by the expression 'turning turtle'. It happens in cases of flood; the car turns turtle and swims home. If it only turned into turtle soup,” she sighed.

Gladys looked up suddenly. ”What time was it when we sent that wire to my bank?” she asked.

”A quarter after one,” replied Hinpoha, promptly. ”I heard a clock chiming somewhere. And I calculated that I would just about last until you got an answer.”

”A quarter after one,” repeated Gladys. ”That's Central time. That was a quarter after two Cleveland time. The bank closes at two o'clock.

They probably never sent me any money!”

”Now you'll have to wire your father after all,” said Hinpoha.

For answer Gladys pointed to the blackened telegraph pole which was lying with its many arms stretched out across the roof of the station.

There would be no wires sent out that day.

By the time the rain had ceased the darkness of the thunder clouds had been succeeded by the darkness of night, and Hinpoha and Gladys took their way wearily back over the flooded road to where the Striped Beetle stood.

”Did you have to dig a well first, before you got that gasoline?”

called Chapa, as they approached. (They _had_ put down the storm curtains, Gladys noted.)

Gladys made her announcement briefly and they all settled down to gloom.

”Talk about being s.h.i.+pwrecked on a desert island,” said Hinpoha. ”I think one can get beautifully s.h.i.+pwrecked on the inhabited mainland. We are experiencing all the thrills of Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss family Robinson combined.”

”We haven't any Man Friday,” observed Gladys.

”What good would he be if we had him?” inquired Hinpoha, gloomily.

”He could act as chauffeur,” replied Gladys, ”and supply the modern flavor.”

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