Part 29 (1/2)

But Mr. Howbridge and the two young fellows were determined to leave Ruth and Agnes in as comfortable a situation as possible. In the first place, although no one dwelt on the thought, n.o.body could tell how long they would be gone from Palm Island.

It was all very well to consider that there was a fair wind blowing away from the island, one that would presumably drive the raft on the course followed by the drifting motor-boat. But how would they ever be able to beat up against this same wind on their return?

Even Neale and Agnes kept still about this. ”Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Once they find the two little girls and the motor-boat, and everything else must come right. That was the way the young people looked at it, anyway.

The repairs upon the engine of the _Isobel_ had been all but complete.

If the boat had not been wrecked upon one of the small islands, the trio hoped to finish the repairs easily and bring the craft back to Palm Island in triumph.

Now the party made haste to transfer all their belongings from the point where the old camp had been established to that spot west of the hill, at the spring. The spring was a fair-flowing stream that bubbled out from under a rock and had worn a course for itself in the sands to high water mark. When the party had first walked around the island they had overlooked this tiny rivulet, as the tide had been coming in and the brackish water had flowed up the course of it.

Agnes climbed the hill to the very foot of the huge palm, carrying an old pair of binoculars with her. She came down with flying hair and excited eyes.

”There is something flapping in the top of a palm tree on that first island! I can see it as plain as plain!” she cried.

”What is it-an old carrion crow?” demanded Neale.

”I don't mean that it is alive,” returned Agnes. ”It is a flag or something!”

”Do you suppose it is something the children have put up to attract our attention?” cried Ruth.

”If it is in the top of a tree, how did they get it up there?”

questioned Luke.

”We-ell. They put up something in the boat; Tess's skirt, I think,” Ruth said.

They could not stop to investigate Agnes Kenway's discovery at this time. But when they went back to the inlet where the raft lay, Mr.

Howbridge climbed upon a rock with the gla.s.ses and examined the fluttering thing which Agnes had marked in the tree-top on the first island of the chain to the east.

There was no other sign of life or occupancy; but certain it was that some sort of pennant fluttered in the breeze. Tess and Dot could not, of course, have climbed so high to fasten a signal of distress, even had they thought of doing such a thing; but this mysterious pennant seemed a promise that the island was occupied.

If the little voyagers had come in the drifting motor-boat to this island and been stranded, they might have found somebody already there-somebody who would take care of them.

Ruth's mind was a little relieved by this thought. Perhaps Tess and Dot were not entirely alone. The thought of their having remained alone over night on the sea or on the lonely strand had made the older sister acutely miserable.

She and Agnes saw the two boys and Mr. Howbridge set sail upon the rude raft with less anxiety than they would have felt had they realized how treacherous both the sea and the weather was in this locality. They had forgotten, in this new trouble, the savageness and abruptness of the storm that had cast them all upon Palm Island.

The raft blundered out of the inlet, the boys guiding it with the oars.

But the great, square sail was already bent upon the mast and one yard.

As Mr. Howbridge had said, as soon as they were really adrift Luke and Neale had to ”tend sheet.” They had to keep the canvas trimmed all the time to hold the wind.

The raft began to move at a pace that momentarily increased. A little ruffle of white water showed before the blunt nose of the heavy craft.

The girls, standing with clasped hands on the rocky sh.o.r.e, watched the ponderously moving raft with great anxiety.

Now and then one of the boys turned to wave a confident hand to Ruth and Agnes. But both Luke and Neale, as well as Mr. Howbridge, felt more worriment for the safety of Ruth and Agnes than they cared to have the girls imagine.

They had been several days on Palm Island and had seen no vessel in the offing but their own and had marked no trace on the island of any former occupant. It might seem that there was really nothing on or about Palm Island to bring to it any person, either kindly or evilly disposed.

There was one thing, however, that Neale O'Neil had pointed out to Mr.