"Marooned!" said the Bottomless Pitt.
"Shipwrecked!" said the Monkey.
"Desoited!" cried Katherine, wringing her hands and rolling her eyes.
"Left to perish miserably in the middle of the sea! Now, Count Flamingo, you have your revenge!"
"Just the same," said Gladys when she had finished laughing at Katherine"s absurd heroics, "we"re in a fine pickle. Just how are we going to get out of here?"
"Let"s see," said Katherine, puckering her brow. "What do people usually do on such occasions? We"ve been in "fine pickles" before, and we"ve always gotten out of them. Isn"t the proper thing to do when you"re locked up in a lonely tower to sing siren-like music until the n.o.ble hero hears you and comes to the rescue? Do you suppose my secret lover would ever mistake my sweet voice for anyone else"s, once he heard it wafted in on the breeze?"
"Oh, stop your nonsense, Katherine," said Gladys. "You make me laugh so I can"t think of a thing to do. Captain, how are we going to attract people"s attention?"
"Run up a distress signal, I suppose," replied the Captain, "if we have anything to run up."
"Well, there"s one thing about it," declared Katherine flatly, "I refuse to be the distress signal this time. Every time we"ve had to have one in the past my belongings have been sacrificed."
"Don"t get worried, injured one," said Gladys soothingly. "We can wave the two towels I brought along."
"Just the thing!" said Katherine. "We can wave them when the steamer goes by and they"ll send a lifeboat for us. How romantic! She"s just coming into the channel now. Everybody get ready to call."
The big _Huronic_, the magnificent white steamer that stopped at St. Pierre once a week on her way down to Chicago, swung into sight around a long point of land.
"Now wave!" commanded Katherine, when the _Huronic_ was almost opposite them, and the towels fluttered frantically over the edge of the little balcony. Dozens of handkerchiefs were waved in answer from the deck of the big liner. "They think we"re just waving at them for fun,"
said Katherine, when nothing took place that looked like an effort at rescue.
Making trumpets of their hands they all shrieked in unison, "Help!" But the wind was toward them and carried the sound back. The stately _Huronic_ proceeded serenely on her way without a pause.
"They aren"t going to stop!" said Gladys.
"Oh, let them go on then," said Katherine crossly. Then she added, "I suppose it was kind of foolish to expect a big boat like that to stop and pick up a bunch of folks that didn"t know any better than to climb into an old lighthouse and let their boats float away."
"Isn"t she a beauty, though?" said Gladys, looking after the ship in admiration. The sun shining on the broad, white side of the _Huronic_ as she turned toward St. Pierre made her look like a gleaming, white bird.
"If at first you don"t succeed, try, try again," said Katherine optimistically. "Even if the fair _Huronic_ did spurn us we can no doubt get the attention of a fishing boat. Some of them are always going round. Cheer up, Antha, and don"t look so scared. Remember, you"re with me, and I bear a charmed life!"
And joking over their situation, but, nevertheless, keeping a sharp lookout for anything on the horizon, they settled down to pa.s.s the time.
Meanwhile, the Hounds had reached the woods before St. Pierre, found the directions on the tree and turned off toward the beach to follow the sh.o.r.e to the Point of Pines. But after plodding through the thick, soft sand for a while they decided that that mode of traveling was altogether too fatiguing, and went back into the woods where they found a path which ran in the general line of the sh.o.r.e and which was much easier traveling. But even at that they were pretty well tired when they reached the Point of Pines where they supposed the others would be waiting for them. But there was no glimpse of the Hares at the Point of Pines.
"Where do you suppose they are?" asked Hinpoha, mystified.
"Hiding, I suppose," said Sahwah wearily, sitting down in the soft gra.s.s. "Let"s let them stay hidden until we get rested up. It"s up to us to get dinner I suppose, but I"m just too tired to begin."
"But you will pretty soon, won"t you?" asked Slim anxiously.
"You aren"t hungry already, are you, Slim?" asked Hinpoha teasingly.
"Already!" said Slim, looking at his watch. "Do you folks know what time it is? It"s half past two!"
"Mercy!" said Sahwah. "It"s taken us ages to get here. Maybe the beach would have been shorter, anyway."
"Let"s call for the Hares," said Hinpoha. "It"ll take too much time to try to find them. And I"m too tired to go hunting through the woods."
So they called, "Come out, we give up." Their voices echoed against the opposite sh.o.r.e, but there was no other answer. They called again with the same result.
"They"re not here!" said Hinpoha with a prophetic feeling. "Where are we, anyway? Is this the Point of Pines? I believe we"ve come to the wrong place! We should have stuck to the sh.o.r.e after all and not gone off into that path through the woods that turned and twisted so many times. Are you sure this is the Point of Pines?"
"I don"t know whether I"m sure or not," said Sahwah in perplexity. "I certainly thought it was all the time. I may be mistaken."
"I think you are," said Hinpoha. "There isn"t a sign of the Hares here.
How will we find them?"
"I think the best thing to do," said Sahwah calmly, displaying her great talent for leadership in this emergency, "is to stay where we are and let them find us. If we start hunting around for each other in these woods we"ll never get together. We"ll just stay here and build two signal fires. You know that two columns of smoke is the sign for "I"m lost." Well, we"ll just put up the "lost" signal and if they"re hunting for us they"ll see that and come straight over here."
The others agreed that this was the most sensible thing to do under the circ.u.mstances. There was plenty of driftwood, and two good fires were soon going, and the green branches piled on top of them sent up the most gratifying signal smokes.
"Now let"s get our dinner," said Hinpoha, when that was accomplished, "without waiting any longer."
The seven marooned sailors looked and looked in all directions without seeing a single thing to wave at.
"It"s too bad," said Katherine. "Here"s a fine opportunity for some likely young fisherman to make a hero of himself rescuing a band of shipwrecked lady fairs and winning their undying grat.i.tude. Maybe we"d take up a collection and buy him an Ingersoll as a reward. But n.o.body seems to be around anywhere to jump at the chance. It"s a wasted opportunity."
"There seems to be a boat around the other side of that point of land,"
said Gladys, shading her eyes with her hand. "See those two columns of smoke going up?"
"It must be standing still," said the Captain. "The smoke is going up in the same place all the while."
"It"s two boats," said Katherine, "or does a boat have two smokestacks?"
"That"s not boat smoke," said the Captain with a knowing air. "That"s from fires on the sh.o.r.e. They must be on that farther point, just beyond the one we"re looking against."
"Isn"t that the Point of Pines?" asked Gladys.
"It is!" said Katherine. "And I"ll bet you a cooky it"s the Hounds who have built those fires. They"ve been walking all this while and have reached the Point."
"What would they want with two fires, though?" asked Gladys. "And such thick smoke! They can"t possibly be cooking anything over them."
"I know!" cried the Captain. "They"re signal fires. You know Uncle Teddy showed us how to make them. Two smokes mean "We"re lost." They don"t know what to make of it because they didn"t find us there and are signalling for us."
"How perfectly rich!" said Katherine, laughing until her hair tumbled down. "Here we are, cooped up in a lighthouse trying to signal someone to come and get us away, and there they are, wanting us to come and help them. It"s the funniest thing you ever saw!"
And the Hares watched the two smokes ascending into the blue sky and laughed helplessly.
Meanwhile, there was a panic on the Point of Pines. In the middle of the peaceful dinner party two rowboats tied together came floating in toward the sh.o.r.e. The boys waded out and brought them up on the beach.
"Look," cried Hinpoha, picking up something that lay in the bottom of one of them. It was a battered tan khaki hat with the frayed cord hanging down over one side and a picture of a Kewpie drawn on the big b.u.t.ton in front. There was no mistaking it. It was Katherine"s hat.
Migwan screamed. "They"re drowned! They"ve gone out in boats and upset!
That"s why they"re not here. Oh, what will we do?"