CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RISING FLOOD

“Well, I don’t see much here to help us,” remarked Bob.

“No, not much that tells anything definite,” agreed Jerry.

“Except parts of what seem to be a journal, or diary,” added Ned.

“But those same leaves from the journal tell a sad story,” spoke Professor Snodgrass.

The three boys and the scientist were in the hut on Snake Island. It was the day after they had taken Noddy and his cronies off, and they were seeking for traces of the person who, according to the bully, had been in the hut before they arrived. They found some preserved food, older than any Noddy could have brought, and scattered pages of a diary.

“It is evident that someone--most likely a man--lived here for a time,” went on the professor, “and that up to recently, he kept an account of his day’s doings, for here is the last entry we can find, dated about a month ago.”

“What does it say?” asked Bob.

“The same thing as for many days before. ‘Searched for it, but could not find it.’”

“What do you suppose ‘it’ can be?” asked Ned.

The professor was silent a moment, and then he said quietly:

“Radium.”

“What!” cried Jerry. “Do you think someone has been here ahead of us, looking for the radium treasure?”

“I am sure of it,” said Uriah Snodgrass, “and what is more, I believe it was Mr. Bentwell.”

“Then where is he now?” demanded Bob.

“That I don’t know,” and the professor’s voice was solemn. “Probably he is dead. He must have been here on this lonely island nearly a year. How he lived in that time no one can tell. When he and his companions were wrecked there must have been some food saved. Or, he may have been able to trap, or kill, small animals that are on the island, or that were brought down by the floods. He may have caught fish. At any rate, we know that someone was alive here up to a month ago, for the date in the book tells us that. Where he went to, we can only guess.”

“The snakes,” suggested Ned in a low voice.

“Yes, the snakes may have killed him,” agreed the professor. “It is a sad ending to the life of a noted scholar, alone on this terrible island. I shall preserve this record he has left, for his family.”

“But where is the rest of it?” asked Jerry. “There are only a few pages here.”

“The others were destroyed, somehow,” replied Professor Snodgrass. “The same agency that made away with Mr. Bentwell may have destroyed the record of his uneventful search, or Noddy and his cronies, not understanding the value of the book, may have used pages of it to light a fire with, for on the hearth you can see where a fire has recently been kindled. It is too bad, for a scientific person, like Mr. Bentwell, probably made valuable observations of what took place in this wonderful canyon of the Colorado.”

“Well, it isn’t doing us any good to stay here,” spoke Jerry. “It’s only making us more gloomy. I vote that we get out, and make a careful search for the radium. We won’t be bothered by Noddy and his crowd now, and there isn’t likely to be another flood, right away.”

“I agree with you,” said the professor. “We will be better off by doing some active work. I’ll take charge of what is left of the journal, and we’ll begin our search. What food is left we’ll pack away in the hut. Who knows but what some other daring adventurer, who seeks to navigate the river, may be wrecked here? It may save his life.”

The food was carefully put away, and it was likely to keep for some time, since there were no evidences that the waters had ever risen quite as high as the hut. Then our friends began their search.

It was kept up for several days, and, as thoroughly as they could, they covered every part of the island, beginning at the shore and working back toward the big mound in the center, with its tall pillar of sandstone rock.

“I guess we’ll have to make a record in our notebooks, the same as poor Mr. Bentwell did, ‘nothing doing,’” remarked Bob one day, after nearly a week of searching.

“Well, we’ve got all that hill to explore yet,” replied Ned. “And that’s the most likely place for the radium; isn’t it, Professor?”

“No, I can’t say that it is,” was the reply of the scientist. “I think, if we find it at all, that it will be on comparatively low ground. But it begins to look as if our hunt for the treasure was likely to result in failure.”

“And you haven’t got your two-tailed toad yet,” said Jerry.

“No, but I have hopes, boys,” and with that the professor, leaving the three chums to search for traces of radium, went off by himself to look for the specimen he so much wanted.

All that day the two searches were kept up, but without result. At night they assembled in the airship, which had been anchored on a level piece of high ground, near the upper end of the island, above the hut.

“Well, we’ll put in a few more days,” suggested Ned, as they arose from the supper table, “and then I think we’d better get back home, and admit that we’re beaten.”

“I don’t like to give up,” said Jerry.

“Neither do I,” came from the professor. “And yet I think we had better get ready to leave. I don’t like the looks of the weather, and the barometer is falling more rapidly than I care to see it.”

“Do you think a storm is brewing?” asked Bob.

“I do, and a bad one, too. I think we had better stay here one more day, and then move. I’ll have to look in some other place for the rare toad.”

When they went to bed that night there was a low muttering of thunder, and fitful lightning, and Jerry insisted on his chums helping him make the airship more secure by ropes attached to trees.

“We don’t want to be blown away in the night,” he said.

They all slept so soundly that they did not notice the increasing roar of the river, as it rose in flood, due to heavy rains above Snake Island. The river was always roaring, as it tore past the black cliffs, and split in twain at the island, and, though the rain added to this noise, it did not awaken the adventurers.

It was not until early morning that Ned, sitting up in his berth, was conscious of an uneasy, bobbing motion.

“Hello!” he cried, hopping out. “What’s the matter? Why did you start, Jerry? I thought you were going to stay another day.”

“Start! I haven’t started!” cried Jerry. “What are you talking about?”

Then, as he leaped out on the floor, he nearly lost his balance, as the _Comet_ pitched and tossed. Jerry gave a hasty glance out of the window.

“Boys,” he cried, “we’re afloat on the biggest flood the Colorado ever had, I guess! We’re still anchored, but the trees are under water! The ropes are holding us!”

“But how can we float?” asked Bob.

“On the hydroplanes, of course,” said Jerry. “You know we’ve been resting on them, instead of the bicycle wheels, for I wanted to take the weight off the tires. Lucky for us that I did, or we wouldn’t float. And now we’re on the surface of the river, and it’s still rising!”