"You ought to know," exclaimed Vincent almost savagely. "You were the one who insisted on using it when we were making up our plans."
"Six hundred? Oh, yes," Alfred said indifferently. "Well, what of it?"
"Just this much of it," said Vincent thoughtfully. "I"ve been going over and over it in my mind the last little while. What if we send out our S. O. S. now and some selfish landlubber such as we were is talking about matters of little importance and muddles our message? We might be left to drown."
"Aw, can that sob stuff," grumbled Alfred angrily. "Are you going to send that S. O. S. or am I?"
"I will," said Vincent, preparing to climb to a position on the plane above him where the radiophone was located. "But"--he suddenly began to sway dizzily--"but where are we?"
He sank back into his seat. For a full moment, with the waves tossing the plane about and the black clouds mounting higher and higher, the two boys stared at one another in silence. Yes, where were they? Who could tell? They were not trained mariners. They could not have taken a reckoning even had they been in possession of the needed instruments.
"Why," said Alfred hesitatingly, "we must be somewhere near that spot where the island was supposed to be located. That"s as near as we can come to it. Send out that lat.i.tude and longitude; then we"ll climb back into the air. We"ll be safer there than on the water and we can keep the searchlight shooting out flashes in all directions. A ship coming to our aid will see the light."
"If they come," Vincent whispered.
"Hurry!" exclaimed Alfred, as a giant wave, rising above its mates, threatened to tear their plane into shreds.
With benumbed and trembling fingers the boy unwrapped his instruments, adjusted a coil, twisted a k.n.o.b and threw in his switch. Then his heart stood still. The motor did not start. Had it been dampened and short-circuited? Would it refuse to go? Were they already lost?
Just as he was giving up in despair, there came a humming sound and a moment later the well-known signal of distress had been flashed out across the waves. Three times he repeated it. Three times in a few sharp words he told their general location and their plight. Then with wildly beating heart, he pressed the receivers to his ears and awaited a reply.
A moment pa.s.sed, two, three, four; but there came no answering call.
Only the buzz and snap of the ever-increasing static greeted his straining ears.
Once more he sent out the message; again he listened. Still no response.
"C"m"on," came from the boy below. "It"s getting dangerous. You can get a message off in the air. Gotta get out o" here. Gotta climb. May not be able to make it even now."
As the other boy glanced down at the white-capped waves all about them he realized that his companion spoke the truth.
Hurriedly rewrapping his instruments, all but the receivers, which by the aid of an extension he brought down with him, he made his way to his seat and strapped on his harness.
"All right," he breathed.
Once more the motors thundered. For a long distance they raced through blinding spray. Little by little this diminished until with a swoop, like a sea gull, the magnificent plane shot upward. The next instant they felt a dash of cold rain upon their cheeks. Was the storm upon them? Or was this merely a warning dash which had reached them far in advance of the deluge? For the moment they could not tell.
CHAPTER XVI
A CONFESSION
For an hour Curlie Carson had been seated in the radiophone cabin of the _Kittlewake_. During that time his delicately adjusted amplifier and his wonderful ears had enabled him to pick up many weird and unusual messages. Listening in at sea before a great storm is like wandering on the beach after that same storm; you never can tell what you may pick up. But though fragments of many messages had come to him, not one of any importance to the _Kittlewake_ had reached his ears. If during that time any message from the _Stormy Petrel_ had been sent out, it had been lost in the crash and snap of static which now kept up a constant din in his ears.
Again doubt a.s.sailed him. He had no positive knowledge that the boys in the plane had gone in search of that mysterious island of the old chart. They might, for all he knew, be at this moment enjoying a rich feast on some island off the coast of America.
"Cuba, for instance," he told himself. "Not at all impossible. Short trip for such a seaplane."
"And here," he grumbled angrily to himself, "here I am risking my own life and the life of my companions and crew, inviting death to all these, and this on a mere conjecture. Guess I"m a fool."
The gale was rising every moment. Even as he spoke the prow of the boat reared in air, to come down with such an impact as made one believe she had stepped on something solid.
Just when Curlie"s patience with himself and all the rest of the world was exhausted, Joe Marion opened the door. The wind, boosting him across the threshold, slammed the door after him.
"Whew!" he sputtered. "Going to be rotten. Tell you what, I don"t like it. Dangerous, I"d say!"
"Nothing"s dangerous," smiled Curlie, greatly pleased to see that someone at least was more disturbed than himself. "Nothing"s really dangerous since the invention of the radiophone. Ocean, desert, Arctic wilderness; it"s all the same. Sick, lost, shipwrecked? All you"ve got to do is keep your head clear and your radiophone dry and tuned up.
It"ll find you a way out."
"Yes, but," hesitated Joe, "how the deuce you going to pack a radiophone outfit, all those coils, batteries and boxes, when you"re shipwrecked?
How you going to keep "em dry with the rain pelting you from above and the salt water beating at you from below? Lot of sense to that! Huh!" he grunted contemptuously. "That for your radiophone!" He snapped his finger. "And that for your old sloppy ocean! Give me a square yard of good old terra firma and I"ll get along without all your modern inventions."
"It can be done, though," said Curlie thoughtfully.
"What can?"
"Radiophone kept dry after a wreck at sea."
"How?"
Curlie did not answer the question. Instead, he snapped the receiver from his head and handed it to Joe.
"Take this and listen in." He rose stiffly. "This business is getting on my nerves. I"ve got to get out for a breath of splendid fresh sea breeze."
"Nerves?" said Joe incredulously. "You got nerves?"
"Sometimes. Just now I have."
On the deck Curlie experienced difficulty in walking. As he worked his way forward he found that one moment his legs were far too long and his foot came down with a suddenness that set his teeth chattering; the next moment his legs had grown suddenly short. It was like stepping down stairs in the dark and taking two steps at a time when you expected to take but one.
"Never saw such a rumpus on the sea," he grumbled. "Going to be worse,"
he told himself as a chain of lightning, leaping across the sky, illumined the bank of black clouds that lay before them. "Going to be lots worse."
Poking his head into the wheel-house, he bellowed above the storm: "How"s she go?"
"Seen worse"n "er," the skipper shouted back.
"Ought to be at the spot we started for in half an hour--that island on the old chart."
"Never was no island," the skipper roared.
"Maybe not."
"Supposin" we get there, what then?"
"Don"t know yet."