Grace Brooks Hill

“ The figures of the trio upon the raft were dwarfed at last to the size of manikins. The sail looked like a palm-leaf fan. The raft itself, rising and falling on the surge, became very small, and to the girls’ anxious eyes it seemed nearer to that distant island than to this one on which they were marooned.
“Come,” said Ruth at last, sadly. “Let us go over to the spring and get some supper and go to bed. Watching them any longer will do no good. We cannot help. We can only trust that God will be good to us all. We’ll hope for the best.” ”

“ In this case the wind and lightning drew on with equal velocity; but the rain stayed behind. On and on the forefront of the storm came, as savagely persistent as a pack of wolves, and then leaped upon its prey with a force that seemed to crush every object on the surface of the sea.
The only craft in sight was their own Isobel. The waves flattened about her for a considerable space, and for some moments, as though the wind came from directly overhead.
“Get inside, every one of you girls!” commanded Mr. Howbridge, shouting at the top of his voice. “Close that cabin door and keep it closed.” ”

“ Guardy! Luke! Here we are!” cried the wild girl. “Are the children safe? Tessie! Dot! Tell Agnes if you are all right!”
Her wild cry was echoed from the sea. She could even observe the Isobel approaching. And the voices of the children and those of the boys and Mr. Howbridge were soon distinguishable.
Had the turtle fishers intended the two girls any harm, these cries from the water and the approach of the motor-boat must have warned the natives. Ruth and Agnes stood on the rock, and the fishermen approached to within a few yards of them. ”

“ Agnes sobbed now and then convulsively. And for once Neale could find no silver lining to this cloud of trouble.
The little girls had often caused the older ones anxiety; they had been lost; they had got into mischief that might have proved dangerous; but this situation seemed far and away more terrible than anything that had previously happened to the Corner House girls.
Tess and Dot had drifted away once in a boat at Pleasant Cove, but Tom Jonah, the faithful, had then been in their company. Now they were adrift on an unknown sea, in the dark, and with a hundred perils threatening them. ”

“ Sammy Pinkney was famous for surprising people.
Everybody had at last gone to bed in the big house—Linda and Uncle Rufus on the third floor, and Mrs. McCall and the rest of the family in their several rooms on the second. Midnight had some time passed when everybody was awakened—but that gradually—by a tintinnabulation of silvery bells.
“What is it?” gasped Dot, from her little bed, to Tess, in hers. It was a wonder that the littlest Corner House girl woke up at all, for she was usually a very sound sleeper. But her head was full of Santa Claus on this night. ”

“ Agnes clung to her sister’s hand. The older boys stood back a little.
“Are you hurt?” Ruth Kenway asked softly.
“I believe I am. But I do not know how badly. I cannot move without feeling the most terrible pain in my back. I fell from that limb up there,” and he pointed up into the tree under which he lay.
“I bet he’s broken all his bones,” stated Sammy Pinkney with much confidence.
“Oh, hush!” cried Agnes pityingly.
“Sammy Pinkney!” exclaimed Tess, “you sound as though you hoped he had.”
“Well, folks do break their bones falling from trees. My mother says so.” ”

“ Mr. Howbridge had taken Luke Shepard’s advice, and had booked passage on the steamship Horridole from the port of Boston. Luke met them with Professor Keeps and his outfit at the dock. It was a gay party indeed that went aboard and sought their reservations among the best staterooms on the boat.
“Dear me!” sighed Agnes ecstatically, and now quite her pleasure-loving self, “it is so nice to be wealthy. If we should ever be poor again, Ruth, I know I should be the hatefulest thing in skirts.”
“Why, Aggie! Don’t talk that way.”
“It is the truth,” said the flyaway sister. ”

“ Ruth told her. “I believe Mr. Howbridge and the boys got to the island. If the children are there, then it is all right.”
“All right?” repeated Agnes, with a sniff. “How can you say that? Nothing will be all right again, I guess, until we get back to the Corner House. I wish we had never come South.”
“We could not foresee all this trouble,” rejoined her sister soothingly. “We must not give up hope, Aggie.”
“Humph!”
“If I only knew that Tess and Dot were safe I would feel better. Lots of people have worse troubles than this. ”

“ Tess said reprovingly to Dot.
But Dot was still enthralled. She saw the flying sledge and the leaping wolves, and she hugged Alice tighter than ever.
“O-oo!” she moaned.
“Only one way to save our lives!” repeated 13 Sammy, beating off imaginary wolves over the back of the imaginary sledge. “Give me that baby!”
“Wha-a-at?” shrieked Dot, in real alarm now, her voice mounting to a higher pitch. “My Alice-doll?”
“Only way to stop the wolves! They always throw the children to them so the men and women can escape!” ”

“ Occasionally during the afternoon the two made a pilgrimage to the shore where they could see the Isobel; but they saw nothing else, and certainly did not catch sight of the raft with Mr. Howbridge and Luke and Neale upon it.
The fast falling evening caught the little girls by the edge of the pool in the middle of the island.
“I don’t care,” said Tess, when Dot began to sniffle a bit. “I don’t care if we do have to stay here. Here the sand is warm and there are none of those big turtles to crawl out and maybe bite us.” ”

“ She is sure,” choked Agnes. “We saw it from up there on the hill.” 180
Luke and Neale at once dashed away, climbing the hillside with great leaps. But Agnes remained with her guardian.
“We had just found a spring. A good one, too,” murmured the troubled gentleman. “Well, perhaps that is a good thing. If the boat has really drifted away.”
“Oh! It has! It has!” cried the girl. “Everything bad is happening to us. I wish we were at home at the Corner House again.”
“Tut, tut! That is no way to talk,” said Mr. Howbridge, and took her arm as they started in an easterly direction again. ”

“ The tinkle of the bells on the Christmas tree was silvery in tone, and there was nothing about the sound to frighten even Dot. But it was mysterious, and Mrs. MacCall approached the door of the dining-room with some hesitation.
She had only recently left the room with the arrangements completed for Christmas morning when the youngsters should first run down to look at the present-laden tree, and exclaim in “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” at the sight.
She could imagine nothing that would cause the tree to sway and thus make the silvery bells tinkle. ”

“ Had Ruth and Agnes not been so frightened by the fact that their presence on Palm Island had been discovered by the turtle fishers, they would surely have spied the Isobel when she first came 242 into view from behind the smaller island where Tess and Dot had been marooned.
The older girls hid in the jungle down by the rocky point and waited through the evening in much alarm. They heard and even saw some of the rough men passing and repassing the place of their concealment. They dared not go to sleep, and feared that they would have to remain awake, and in hiding, until another day. ”

“ Agnes told Ruth. “She has promised to come to Milton this spring. Just think! The old Corner House will have to put its best foot forward to entertain the Nalbro Hastings. I’m glad we’ve got a car. But don’t you think, Ruthie, we can afford a neat little maid with a cap and apron? Linda is so clumsy.”
“Neale would say you wanted to ‘put on dog,’” ventured Ruth, laughing.
“Now, dear! Consider! This girl is used to everything.”
“Then she must be used to flat-footed Finn servant girls,” declared Ruth gaily. “She must take us as we are.” ”

“ All the time the dear little things are floating farther and farther away.”
“Don’t say another word!” exclaimed Luke, eagerly. “I don’t care if it is dark! Wait! What time is it?” He struck a match and looked at his wrist watch. “Twelve-twenty-five. The darkest time of all the night, but you can see pretty well out here on the shore. There are plenty of fallen logs at the edge of the grove, over toward the inlet where the Isobel lay.”
“So there are, Luke.”
“We’ll want to build the raft there. Then we can push her out right into the wake of the motorboat. I’ll wake Neale. ”

“ During the next few days the Kenways saw a good deal of Miss Hastings. They searched out all the interesting parts of the old town together. The settlement dated back to a time soon after the coming of Columbus to the West Indies. It was not so old as Nassau; but there was an old fort at the harbor’s mouth; a monastery, grim enough of appearance, that might be turned very easily into a fortress overlooking the town; and 112 a nunnery of dazzling white outer walls, but glowing with color inside, where the girls almost wrecked their pocketbooks buying fancy work. ”

“ They will know that we have been hiding from them. If there were men in our party they would have already shown up. No, Ruth, we can’t fool ’em that way.”
“Perhaps you are right,” sighed the older sister. “But where shall we hide?”
“Let’s go back to the other point—where the Isobel was moored. When the boys return they will come there first, of course.”
Agnes spoke much more confidently than she felt. Like her sister she had a strong dislike to meeting these turtle catchers. ”

“ Imagine becoming bored on a desert island in the tropics! But that is exactly what happened in the case of Dot Kenway. Nor was Tess in much finer fettle on the fourth morning of their sojourn on Palm Island.
“I wish we had Tom Jonah here. Or even Billy Bumps,” said Tess to her smaller sister. “There isn’t really much to play with on this place but turtles. And they only lie on their backs and wave their paws at you.”
“It is too bad we didn’t bring that rabbit along that Sammy Pinkney gave us for Christmas,” said Dot, quite as ruefully.
“That old Belgian hare!” ”

“ Neale was relieved by this question. He smiled engagingly.
“You don’t need to worry about what you wear, Aggie. She’s an awfully good kind. And she’s been wanting to know you all along. But—she couldn’t talk.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Agnes flatly.
“Neale says she had a vow,” remarked Tess soberly. “And she did speak sort of funny to me and Dot. But she’s nice.”
“She has nice candy,” observed the littlest Corner House girl. “She gave us some when we were rehearsing for the concert.”
“Of course you will go—and be a good girl,” said Ruth, when she and Agnes were alone. ”

“ But it was through her guardian that Ruth Kenway learned more about Oscar Pendleton and his troubles and learned what was going on in the investigation into the robbery at the warehouse of Kolbeck & Roods. Mr. Howbridge had become interested in the case.
“My clerk has not really raked up anything satisfactory about that affair,” the lawyer reflected, as he sat with Ruth on the deck of the Horridole the second day out from port. “He has got Pendleton’s story from him and—my clerk, I mean—believes the man is innocent. It is not a mere opinion; he gains his judgments through logical reflection. ”