Chapter 17

CAN WE GO TO THE RESCUE?

Several days had passed since Madge and Phil had returned. A big fire roared up the chimney. Madge lay on a blanket spread over some hemlock boughs in one corner of the room. Phil sat near her, feeding the fawn from a cup with a spoon.

Miss Jenny Ann had an open book in her lap, while Eleanor peered over her shoulder. A single candle burned near them. Lillian sat by the fire. Every now and then she threw an armful of pine cones on the fire to make more light in the room.

Miss Jenny Ann was trying to instruct four of her pupils from "Miss Tolliver's Select School for Girls" in the intricacies of algebraical problems.

Since the disappointing trip to the opposite shore of the island Madge had not been well. The sunshine had faded. The cold autumn rains had begun. The food in the larder, supplied from the houseboat, had grown perilously low. It was hard work to spend many hours in hunting or in fishing in such weather. Nuts had commenced to pall as an article of daily diet. Fight as they might, the spirit of the houseboat party had begun to sink toward zero.

Suppose, after all, thought they, that they should not be rescued, even by the first Monday in November, when Madge assured them the duck shooting began? Perhaps there would not be any ducks this year, or else no one would come to shoot them? There was nothing too dreadful to imagine!

Instead of being comforted by Madge's and Phil's report that they were not alone on the island, Miss Jenny Ann was the more uneasy. She did not believe that such a man as the girls had seen would help them to leave this island.

Miss Jenny Ann had been trying to beguile the tedium of the stormy days by interesting the girls in the lessons they would even now have been studying at Miss Tolliver's school if their houseboat had not sailed away from her anchorage. All the old school books had been brought up from the "Merry Maid." At first the girls were much pleased with Miss Jenny Ann's idea. Eleanor declared that it would be splendid not to be behind their classes when they returned to school that fall.

To-night, however, it was quite impossible to take a proper interest in algebraical problems, when each member of the little group had such a serious individual problem staring her in the face. It did not look as though they were likely to return to Miss Tolliver's in the immediate future.

"A penny for your thoughts, girls," remarked Miss Jenny Ann suddenly. "Eleanor, dear, I am going to begin with you. We are all in the dumps to-night. Perhaps it will cheer us up to tell one another our thoughts."

Eleanor shook her head. She had been pretending to look over Miss Jones's shoulder, but her eyes were really full of tears.

"Don't begin with me," she pleaded. "My thoughts wouldn't cheer anybody up."

But the girls were firm. Eleanor must tell them.

"Oh, very well," she agreed. "I was thinking of 'Forest House' and Mother and Father. I could smell Aunt Dinah's light rolls browning in the kitchen oven, and the ham broiling, and----"

"Oh, please stop, Nellie!" begged Madge huskily.

But Eleanor would not stop. "I was wondering if Mother and Father believed now that Madge and I were drowned!"

Eleanor dropped her head. There was a dreadful silence in the room that made Miss Jenny Ann realize that the girls were near to breaking down. "What were you thinking of, Madge?" she demanded in desperation. Madge could usually be depended on to cheer the other girls.

The little captain shook her head despondently. "I was thinking of my father," she answered, almost under her breath. "I was wishing that I could find him, and that he would take me home."

"Lillian, what are you dreaming about to-night?" Miss Jones questioned next.

Lillian glanced plaintively into the fire. She popped a particularly fat kernel of a walnut in her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully before she replied. Then, still picking at her nuts with a hairpin, she confessed: "I was thinking, Miss Jenny Ann, that, if once I got back home, I would never, never eat another nut, not even at Christmas."

The girls forgot their woes and shouted with laughter.

Phil stroked her little fawn gently. She glanced up and surveyed her four friends squarely. Her face wore its most serious and determined expression.

"I have been thinking, Miss Jenny Ann, that it is about time for us to leave the island," she announced.

"My dear Phil, how original you are!" broke in Eleanor, with a pettish gesture.

But Miss Jenny Ann looked straight at Phyllis. She knew that Phil meant something more than mere idle talk by her speech. Evidently she had been considering the situation.

"You see, we have had a wonderful time. Except for our worry about our families we have had the very jolliest lark of our lives. But now we must go back home."

Phil clasped her hands together and closed her lips. "I mean that we must spend every single minute of our time and thought in arranging to get away from here."

"What are we to do, Phil?" asked Madge. "We have already tried every method."

"For one thing, we must find some better way to signal passing ships at sea. They must be going by this island constantly, only they do not come near enough to see us. Sometimes I believe we will just have to go aboard the 'Merry Maid' again and drift out from shore," concluded Phil.

Eleanor shivered. "We would be taking too great a chance."

"I wasn't advising it, Nellie. I was just thinking that we might have to do it, if we can't get away by any other means. We would be almost sure to meet a ship. Of course, we could never be on the water as long a time as we were before without being seen. The other time it was just a strange accident, due to the storm and the fog, I suppose."

The girls and Miss Jenny Ann frowned thoughtfully. Somehow Phil's idea did not seem to be very pleasing.

It was just such a night as the one on which the pretty houseboat had been cut adrift. The room was still, except for the crackling of the fire. The noises were all on the outside. The owls hooted dismally in the near-by trees. Farther off in the forest sounded the screech of a wildcat. The rain poured down.

A sudden, violent knocking began on the front door of the lodge. It was uncanny--terrifying. Not a single time since the houseboat party came to the lodge in the woods had a hand knocked at their door. To-night, in the heart of a storm, the sound of the blows upon the door filled them with dread.

Miss Jenny Ann rose with shaking knees. Instead of opening the door she quietly pushed her chair against it. It was a feeble barrier. The door was closed only by a wooden latch, which Phil had made.

The banging continued. "Who's there?" Miss Jenny Ann demanded.

There was no reply. Phil came over and stood by her chaperon's side.

"Tell us who it is at the door and we will open to you. We can not open to a stranger," she declared.

Still the stupid beating on the door with no response to the questioning.

Phyllis stood close to the door. "Come here, Madge," she whispered. "Now listen." The two girls were quiet as mice. One nodded to the other. They had each heard a curious guttural sound outside their lodge door.

"It's the deaf and dumb boy, Miss Jenny Ann. Shall we let him come in?" asked Madge.

Miss Jones nodded, and Phil unlatched the door. In the same instant Madge slipped her revolver into her hand, but she kept it hidden behind her skirts.

The boy came slowly into the room, blinking at the light after the darkness of the woods outside. He was wet to the skin and shaking with cold. He gave a grunt of delight at the sight of the fire, then crossed and stood before it, warming his outstretched hands. As though frightened, the lad looked furtively from one young woman to the other.

Five minutes passed. The deaf and dumb lad made no explanation of his surprising visit. It was impossible to ask him why he had come. The houseboat party stared at him in perplexity. The boy stared back again. He was completely fascinated by the beauty of the room and the circle of pretty girls. He had apparently forgotten his errand.

Finally Madge grew tired of waiting for him to make a sign. Surely this wild gypsy boy had not come to their lodge on such a night just to make them a social call. How could she get any information out of him?

With a sudden inspiration she handed the lad a pencil and a piece of paper. Perhaps the boy had some education. Madge printed in large letters the simple words, "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" She handed the slip to the youth.

He puzzled over it for a moment. Then his face lit up happily. He pulled out of his pocket a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to Madge.

Madge surveyed it gingerly, turning the paper first on one side, then on the other. "The boy is an idiot," she announced positively. "Else why should he have come over here on such a night with this dirty scrap of paper? It hasn't a word written on it." Madge tossed the paper to the ground contemptuously.

The lad made a rush for it. This time he passed it to Phil. He ran his finger along some smudges on the paper.

"Wait, Phil," Miss Jenny Ann suggested, coming toward her with the candle. Phil held up the paper and Miss Jenny Ann put the candle close to it. Five pairs of eyes surveyed it at different ranges.

Written apparently with the finger, in coffee, was the solitary word, "HELP." Below were some indefinite initials, a J, and an N, and a T.

This call out of the darkness was uncanny. From whom could it have come? Madge and Phyllis knew that it must have been sent by the man who was shut up in the house on the farther side of the island.

The girls looked at one another questioningly. "What can we do, Miss Jenny Ann?" asked Phil anxiously.

"Nothing," Miss Jenny Ann responded in a tone that was final.

"Please allow us to write a note, then, and send it back by this boy?" pleaded Madge. "Think how dreadful to be shut up somewhere without a sign from the outside world. I'll just say that we are sorry we can not come to rescue this person, as we have no way of helping him, and that we don't know who he is. It wouldn't be any harm to say that we hope some one else will come to save him, would it, Phil?"

Miss Jenny Ann smiled over Madge's letter, but offered no objection to it.

The boy seemed quite satisfied. Just as he turned to leave, Phyllis called him back.

It occurred to her that she might ask the lad some questions about the mysterious prisoner whom he was trying to befriend, probably at the risk of his own life.

Phil wrote the word, "MAN?" The boy nodded. Then she put down, "OLD?" The youth shook his head violently.

"Ask the boy if the man is crazy, Phil."

Phil printed the word, "crazy," but the boy did not understand. The word was too large to be included in his vocabulary. She tried, "mad," and he bowed his head repeatedly. He frowned, walked up and down the room and stamped his foot.

Even Miss Jenny Ann smiled. "I am afraid we do not know whether the prisoner is insane or just very angry," she said. "But, whoever he is, we certainly have no concern with him. I don't wish to be unkind, but, children, it seems to me that at present we have troubles enough of our own."

And so the strange messenger was sent back to the unknown prisoner with nothing save the regrets of the houseboat party.