Richard Bonner

“ For all the attention the negroes below paid to their cries, they might as well have remained silent. The blacks seemed to consider the removal of the hemp to a safe place of far more importance than the lives of the flame-marooned white men.
Just when Jack’s hope had flickered out and a sort of coma of despair was creeping over him the miracle happened.
It was Professor Chadwick who saw it first.
Through the red glow that crimsoned the sky came a huge floating form.
The Professor shouted and pointed upward. Jack raised a pair of dimmed eyes; but the next instant they cleared as if by magic. ”

“ I did not dare to look at Captain Munson’s face. But I could hear his breath come short and quick, just like a man breathes after a long, hard swim. But the next instant we had other things to think of. A volley of small arms from the pirate craft whistled about our ears. She was up to windward and evidently meant to grapple and board us. What followed is hard to describe. I don’t know how most men feel in a fight of that character, but it seemed to me that I was in a dream. I fired and loaded, and fired and loaded, while all about me bullets were flying and fallen men groaning. ”

“ In an almost unbelievably short time the wind had increased to a gale. It shrieked and moaned among the wire supports of the car, and the great bag that held it in mid-air swayed and tore furiously at its fastenings.
Jack kept a sharp lookout for a good spot to land, while Tom relieved Ned at the wheel. Once they saw beneath them a big area of smooth, park-like land, almost devoid of trees. It would have made an ideal landing place, but as they tried to force the Flying Road Racer around to head for it the full force of the wind struck them. ”

“ Beyond shimmered the cobalt-blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. At a small wharf lay a capable-looking motor cruiser, painted white and about forty-five feet in length. She had been moored thus for the past seven days—ever since Jack and his cousin and their colored attendant, Jupe, had landed on the island after an uneventful passage from Galveston.
“Dozed off,” chuckled Tom, regarding Jack as the latter’s eyelids closed drowsily; “well, I don’t know that I blame him. Waiting on Lone Island with nothing to do but read, eat and sleep, does get monotonous after a week of it.” ”

“ It was Professor Chadwick who spoke, in a voice that did not falter in its resolute tones.
His calmness, in the face of death, restored Jack’s pluck and heartened Captain Andrews and Abner Jennings. Even the two sailors appeared to be less panic-stricken.
“We can only leave it for the room above,” objected one of them, however; “the flames will reach there afore long. Might as well die now as an hour later.”
“Shame on you for American seamen!” burst out Captain Andrews, “rouse up there! While there’s life there’s hope.” ”

“ The skipper voiced this opinion after supper, while they sat on deck casting anxious eyes to seaward now and again, for the recollection of the Tarantula was strong upon them. Above all things, they dreaded the reappearance of that drab-colored craft.
“You said you had a plan, Jack,” said Tom, as the skipper disconsolately drew on his pipe, “Now’s the time to broach it. What is it?”
“Just this,” was the simple reply, “we’ve got the aero-auto. It looks as if the time had come to use her.”
“And leave the Vagrant here to be destroyed when Herrera happens along?” demanded Tom. ”

“ Looking over the side of the car they could see it being swept away by the wind, while astern of the tonneau hung a mass of tangled wreckage.
“Good heavens! This is the worst yet,” groaned Captain Andrews. “Adrift in an airship without a rudder! What under the starry dome can we do now?”
“Nothing but hope and pray for the best,” rejoined Jack. “We are helpless indeed without the rudder.”
Fortunately, however, the propeller still worked, and Tom, abandoning the now useless steering wheel, gave all his efforts to aiding Jack in attending to the engines. ”

“ Flashing their lanterns hither and thither the searching party, which they could now see was composed of negroes, from the Mosquito coast in all probability, advanced toward the jungle.
There were a dozen or more of them, headed by the big fellow whom they had noticed on sentry duty. Almost all of them carried the universal weapon of the negro in the tropics, long, glittering-bladed machetes. Some of them took to the path by which Captain Andrews and Jack had reached their present position. Others plunged into the jungle, cutting away the thick growth with their steel blades. ”

“ Jack could trace the spidery outlines of the larger vessel’s spars and wireless aerials and rigging.
“This is Jack Chadwick,” he shouted, not giving a thought to the stranger craft now, but in a torment of anxiety to know what it all portended, “is my father on board?” ”

“ Looking down now they saw beneath them a vast expanse of gray, tumbling billows, tossing and rolling before the wind.
“If we ever took a tumble into the sea it would be all up with us,” commented Jack in a low voice to Tom.
“Yes; even a ship could hardly live in such a storm, and yet—look. Jack, back yonder,—isn’t that,—yes, surely it’s a craft of some sort!”
The lad indicated a point to the southward of them. Rising and falling in the great trough of the billows was a small vessel of some sort. ”

“ Jack had shut off the motor. Silently as a night bird the great bulk of the flying auto settled earthward.
All this time their eyes had been strained to sight an open space in which they might land without risk of damaging the balloon bag. Tom was the first to see, through the night glasses, such an area of cleared land amid the forest.
It was a tract about ten acres in extent, and formed, as they surmised later, one of the outlying fields of Herrera’s plantation. It had not yet been put into cultivation, however, and afforded as fine a spot for an air craft to ground as could be imagined. ”

“ Suppose you go on deck and see what Captain Andrews and Jupe have observed.”
Ned was back from his errand in a short space of time. His face bore a well-pleased grin, as Jack could see in the light of the solitary incandescent which illumined the cabin, the shades having, of course, been drawn across the portholes before it was switched on.
“Well?” questioned Jack.
“Well,” echoed Ned, “everything is going famously. The light stopped moving outside the bar, and presently Captain Andrews heard the rattle of her anchor chains as she let go her mud-hooks. Everything has been quiet since.” ”

“ All this time the Flying Road Racer was slowly descending. The broken propeller blade had ripped a big hole in the side of the gas bag, through which the vapor was rushing forth.
“Isn’t it possible to repair it?” cried Mr. Jesson.
Jack shook his head.
“Impossible,” he said. “We had better all get on life jackets as quickly as possible. It’s lucky I had them put in that locker; but something I read about an airship being blown out to sea some months ago made me think of it.” ”

“ When Jack stopped and affixed the signature X. Y. Z., he looked up at his cousin wonderingly.
“It’s X. Y. Z. again. He was sending like blue blazes, too. What do you make of it?”
“Blessed if I know. Using his cipher again, too, isn’t he? Say, Jack! See here,—X. Y. Z.,—whoever he is,—is within our radius right now—at this instant. Call him, and see if you can find out who or what he is and where his station is. If the Sea King is badly off he may be of great assistance to us.”
Jack switched his current over for sending out a call. With a puzzled frown on his face he adopted Tom’s suggestion. ”

“ They are at this moment in the Flying Road Racer’s locker, in charge of Tom and Ned,” was the reply.
As Jack spoke they all, by mutual consent, rose and made for the door.
“I shall be glad to get to the air,” remarked Professor Chadwick.
“Yes; it is insufferably hot in here,” agreed Mr. Jesson. “I had not noticed the heat so much while Jack was talking; but now,—phew! It’s like a furnace.”
As he spoke. Jack flung the door open. The next instant he staggered back, the hot blood in his veins frozen with horror. ”

“ Bangs, besides being the wireless operator of the Sea King, was something more. He had been a pupil of Professor Chadwick’s and a school fellow of Jack’s, and was quite a scientific adept along the lines he had chosen to follow.
But Jack and Tom exchanged merely hasty words of greeting with the youngster who stood facing them, pallid-faced under his coat of tan and shaken evidently by some recent shock.
“What is it, Ned? What has happened?” demanded Jack eagerly, as soon as the boys had clasped hands. “Where is father? Why are you out here alone?” ”

“ You couldn’t have thrown a brick on the main boulevards without hitting some ruler who had left his country for his country’s good.”
“All of which disquisition,” said Professor Chadwick dryly, “doesn’t solve our problem.”
“No, indeed,” said Mr. Jesson; “we are as badly off as before.”
“Worse,” exclaimed Jack.
“How’s that?” asked Tom.
“Well, haven’t we lost those gems?”
“Oh, bother the old gems,” said Tom, “we’ve got the box, haven’t we? If any one in the States doesn’t believe we ever had the three gems we can show them the casket as proof that we really did have them once.” ”

“ One morning, not long after the household at High Towers had settled down to its ordinary routine, a telegram came for Jack. It contained astonishing things, things which were—though he didn’t guess it at the time,—to open up an entirely new field of invention for him and his chums, Tom Jesson and Ned Bangs.
The message stated,—but positively, we must keep all that for another telling. In our next volume we will relate further astonishing and stirring occurrences in the lives of our ingenious, progressive young friends. ”

“ Jesson’s were close together over the rifled silver casket.
“Well, gentlemen?” said Ned after a while.
“Well,” echoed Professor Chadwick, “we have made a most astounding discovery. These gems which Jack discovered,—for they are genuine, there’s not a doubt of it,—must have been covered with wax of some sort. The heat of the fire, when the box fell into it, melted this substance, and—well, here are three gems worth, conservatively, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; probably a great deal more.” ”

“ At the same instant the searchlight was extinguished, and from seaward, where they had last seen the speeding craft, came a dull “B-o-o-m!”
“Knocked that searchlight into smithereens,” was Tom’s exclamation as old Jupe, with an alarmed cry, came running forward at the sound of the screaming projectile and the splintering glass.
“At any rate,” was Jack’s grim retort, “they’ve shown us their hands. Tom, old chap, this thing is going to be bigger than we thought.”
“You think then——”
“That we are not the only persons interested in the Sea King. ”

“ Among other things, the lads had constructed a complete miniature railroad on the grounds, and had also built gliders of various types. But their most recent “craze” had been wireless telegraphy. With a dozen lads of their own age they had formed a “Wireless Club,” which met at High Towers every month. But, with the summer vacation, the members of the body had scattered, leaving only Jack and Tom to carry on the work. As Professor Chadwick stinted his son in nothing pertaining to his chosen pursuits, the two lads had assembled as complete an amateur station as could be found in the country. ”

“ A worried look passed over Jack’s face.
“I’m afraid your eyesight is all right, Ned,” he said. “The water is closer than it was, beyond a doubt.”
“And that means?” gasped Captain Andrews. “That we are sinking,” calmly said Professor Chadwick. “There is no use deceiving ourselves. Jack, send out a call for aid. There may be a chance of some ship catching the message.” ”

“ The stocks of these odd firearms, if such they could be called, were large, and contained sixteen “gas globes”—spheres of a tough and glutinous kind of gelatine, filled with the destructive gas—a compound of ammonium nitrate,—in a semi-liquid form.
“How do you fire them?” asked Captain Andrews.
“Handle them just as you would an ordinary gun,” rejoined Jack. “The globes will burst when they strike the Tarantula and spread the gas they contain broadcast. Luckily, the craft is to leeward of us, or we might be in danger of getting a dose of our own medicine when the gas globes detonate.” ”

“ Jack’s “S. O. S.” message had come winging across the sea. As soon as his operator gave him the despatch the rascal conceived the daring plan of impersonating the Sea King and in this guise he flashed back the message inquiring the position of the castaways. He took care to ascertain that the gems were safe.
While profound and peaceful sleep wrapped the party of adventurers, a boat landed on the beach, crowded with men. It came from the Tarantula, which had anchored about two hundred yards to seaward. Every man was armed and among them was Herrera with one or two of his chosen aides. ”

“ There was nothing for us to do but to anchor. At almost the same time one of the crew shouted that a craft resembling the Tarantula was on the southern horizon and overhauling us fast. It didn’t need a second look to show us that the strange vessel was indeed the Tarantula. As she drew close to us there was a flash and a puff of smoke from her bow, and ‘crash!’ our aerials parted,—shot through at the foremast.
“There we were, crippled and helpless, and I didn’t even know for sure if my message to you was clear or no.”
“One question,” put in Jack, “has the Tarantula a wireless?” ”

“ Tom was silent for an instant. Tidings that stun have a way of sinking in slowly. Then, as the two lads stood at the foot of the ladder, he flung his arm around Jack’s shoulder, and from his gritted teeth came speech:
“If harm has come to him. Jack, those who have caused it will have to pay—and pay big!”
And so the two lads ascended the ladder to the Sea King’s deck, followed by the awe-struck Jupe. ”

“ Go down lower!” shouted Captain Andrews in Tom’s ear.
“We can’t,” yelled the lad; “we’re being dragged to the sky. We’ve lost all control.”
“Oh, but this is fearful!” exclaimed Mr. Jesson. “Nothing made by human hands can stand this much longer.”
Truly it seemed a marvel that the craft had held together as long as it had. So fast were they being swung round and round by this time that the car was suspended at quite a sharp angle, swinging outward from the gas bag by the force of the centrifugal motion. ”

“ As he ran he stuffed the message into the pocket of his linen jacket. Tom shot out of the shack after him.
“You’d better lock——” he began.
“Send Jupe to do it,” was the backward flung rejoinder, as Jack sprinted for the bungalow, “we’ve got to get grub on board and fill the water tanks within fifteen minutes.”
“And then what?”
“To sea—at top speed! The best the Vagrant can do will be none too quick! They need us out there,” he flung his arm seaward in an embracing gesture, “need us mighty bad, and it’s up to us to make a record run to the rescue.” ”

“ While Jupe made his preparations for a warm meal, selecting a spot sheltered by brush not far from the remains of the Flying Road Racer, the boys gathered driftwood, of which there seemed to be plenty on the beach, and made a big pile of it. This was lighted, and the warmth of the blaze proved very comforting to the chilled castaways. ”

“ To two lads of inventive mind, no more delightful field for their experiments could have been imagined than High Towers. A park of some fifty or sixty acres surrounded the house, which, among other features of a country estate, possessed a small lake. On this sheet of water Jack and Tom tried out models of a dozen different kinds of craft before they were fourteen. Professor Chadwick gave them practically “the run” of his workshops and experimental sheds, besides instructing them in scientific investigations. ”