Part 24 (1/2)
”Not very heavy wire for an aerial,” he remarked, ”but heavy enough.
We'll have a perpendicular aerial, which is better than horizontal, and it'll hang pretty high. All that's in our favor.”
When the balloons had risen to a height which allowed the aerial, to which was attached a heavier insulated wire, to float free, he gave the cord to the engineer and began busying himself at putting together what appeared to be a small windmill with curved, bra.s.s fans.
”A windmill,” he explained, ”is the surest method of obtaining a little power. Always a little breeze floating round. Enough to turn a wheel.
This one is connected direct with a small generator. Gives power enough for a radiophone. Might use batteries but they might go dead on you.
Windmill and generator is as good after ten years as ten days.
”There you are,” he heaved a sigh of relief, as he struck the transmitter which he had taken from his apparently inexhaustible ”bag of tricks.”
”Unless I miss my guess, we have a perfectly good radiophone outfit of fair power. All the rest of it is stowed down there in the bottom. We should be heard distinctly at from a hundred to five hundred miles. In the future,” he smiled, ”every lifeboat and raft will be equipped with one of these handy little radiophone outfits, which are really not very expensive.”
Then, with all eyes fixed upon him, he began to converse with the unseen and unknown, who, sailing somewhere on that vast sweep of water, were, they hoped, to become their rescuers.
In perfectly natural tones he spoke of their catastrophe and their present predicament. He gave their approximate location and the names of their party. This after an interval of two minutes, he repeated.
Then, suddenly his lips parted in a smile. The others watched him with strained attention. After a minute had elapsed, he said with apparent satisfaction:
”We'll await your arrival with unmixed pleasure.
”The Steams.h.i.+p Torrence,” he explained, ”in crossing the Atlantic was driven two hundred miles off her course. She is now only about seventy-five miles from us. Being a fast boat, she should reach us in three or four hours.
”And now,” he said with a smile, ”since we have no checker-board on deck and are entirely deprived of musical instruments of any kind, perhaps you would like to hear me tell why I was sure the mysterious island which has caused us so much grief, did not exist.”
”By the way,” he said turning to Vincent, ”do you chance to have the original of that old map with you?”
The boy pointed to his aviator's sodden leather coat. Although he had gained much strength from the warm blankets, he had found himself unable to speak of the tragedy which had befallen his companion on the _Stormy Petrel_. Now as he saw Curlie draw the water-soaked map from the pocket of his coat, a look of horror overspread his face and he muttered hoa.r.s.ely:
”Throw it into the sea. It brings nothing but bad luck.”
”No, no,” said Curlie, ”we won't do that.”
”Then you must keep it,” the other boy exclaimed. ”I don't want ever to see it again. Alfred made me a present of it just before we hopped off.”
”All right,” said Curlie, ”but you are parting with a thing of some value.”
”Value!” exclaimed Vincent. Then he sat staring at Curlie in silence as much as to say: ”You too must have been bitten by the gold-bug.” But that Curlie had not been bitten by that dangerous and poisonous insect will be proved, I think, by the pages which follow.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE STORY OF THE MAP
”You see,” said Curlie, tapping the soggy bit of vellum which he held in his hand, ”the trouble with this map is, not that it is not genuine, but that it's too old. This map,” he paused for emphasis, ”this map was made in fourteen hundred and forty-six.”
Gladys Ardmore gasped. Her brother stared in astonishment.
”It's a fact!” declared Curlie emphatically.