Chapter XX: The Flag on the Tree-Top

“But it is practical, Guardy!” cried Agnes, at breakfast. “You know our Ruth is always practical.”

“Far be it from me to say that it is not practical—theoretically,” rejoined Mr. Howbridge, referring, as Agnes did, to the idea of building a raft.

“I guess whatever will float us off this island after the _Isobel_ is good enough to try,” said Neale O’Neil, just a little sullenly.

“We will do all that can be done with the idea, of course,” agreed Mr. Howbridge.

“But,” ventured Ruth slowly, herself a little timid now, “you see something dangerous about it?”

“I hope not, my dear girl.”

“Can’t we build a raft big enough to carry us all?” demanded Luke.

“I suppose even that might be done,” admitted Mr. Howbridge. “But, you know, there are five of us, and we are of some weight. The raft must cover sufficient area to bear us up, and the children as well when we get them, if, perchance, the motor-boat should be unusable.”

“Those logs do float pretty deep in the water,” observed Neale.

“Green logs,” said Luke, joining in. “They are almost awash.”

“Can’t we use the seasoned timber along shore?” asked Ruth, faintly.

“Not so well,” Luke said thoughtfully. “You see, that is of all sizes and shapes. The easiest way to build the raft is with these trimmed logs. But most of the trees were felled during that small hurricane which brought us to the island.”

“Oh!” wailed Agnes, “don’t say that it can’t be done.”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Howbridge, briskly. “We are going to bind those timbers together right after we have eaten, step a mast, bend a sail, and set sail. But we must not make the raft too cumbersome; therefore we cannot all embark in this venture.”

“Oh!” murmured Ruth.

But Agnes shouted: “I’m going! I don’t care, Guardy Howbridge! If Neale goes, I’m going.”

“Agnes!” murmured Ruth, putting a restraining hand upon her sister’s arm.

“You’re going, I suppose, Agnes, even if you have to walk?” chuckled Mr. Howbridge, for he knew the obstreperous Agnes pretty well by this time.

“I don’t care——”

“Yes, you do, child,” said the lawyer more earnestly. “You care very much about getting Tess and Dot back safely. We may have much difficulty in managing the raft. Especially on our return. The boat may be broken, or perhaps we cannot finish repairing the mechanism when we overtake it.

“We must build a raft of limited capacity. It must hold the boys and me, and the children, of course. But the added weight of you and Ruth might sink it so deeply that it could not be managed. You girls will remain here——”

“Alone?” gasped Agnes.

“No. Together,” put in Neale.

“Oh, Guardy!” exclaimed Ruth, “will that be necessary? Are you sure?”

“It is a physical impossibility for us to make these green logs float higher than they do,” said Mr. Howbridge dryly. “Some tropical timber is corky and very light. Not these palm logs. To build the raft of drift timber is, as you can see yourself, my dear, impossible. We must use what we have to hand, and use it at once.”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” murmured Ruth. “There must be no more delay.”

“It will take our best efforts to manage the raft. If the wind holds fair that canvas will make a splendid sail; but it will have to be tended all the time or half of the wind will be spilled, as the sailors say. Two of us at the sail and one at the steering oar. You two girls will have to remain behind.”

“It is not so much the staying here,” said Ruth shakenly. “But I wanted to find the children myself and make sure they are all right.”

“You will have to trust that to us,” said Mr. Howbridge. “I do not believe for a moment that anything will happen to you girls here on Palm Island.”

“Oh, I am not afraid,” Ruth rejoined faintly.

“I think the camp should be moved over to the spring. There is a sheltered place in the side of the hill within ten yards of the spring—almost a cave. As we must take your tent——”

“Don’t bother about us!” cried Ruth. “Hurry and finish your raft.”

But Mr. Howbridge and the two young fellows were determined to leave Ruth and Agnes in as comfortable a situation as possible. In the first place, although no one dwelt on the thought, nobody could tell how long they would be gone from Palm Island.

It was all very well to consider that there was a fair wind blowing away from the island, one that would presumably drive the raft on the course followed by the drifting motor-boat. But how would they ever be able to beat up against this same wind on their return?

Even Neale and Agnes kept still about this. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Once they find the two little girls and the motor-boat, everything else must come right. That was the way the young people looked at it, anyway.

The repairs upon the engine of the _Isobel_ had been all but complete. If the boat had not been wrecked upon one of the small islands, the trio hoped to finish the repairs easily and bring the craft back to Palm Island in triumph.

Now the party made haste to transfer all their belongings from the point where the old camp had been established to that spot west of the hill, at the spring. The spring was a fair-flowing stream that bubbled out from under a rock and had worn a course for itself in the sands to high water mark. When the party had first walked around the island they had overlooked this tiny rivulet, as the tide had been coming in and the brackish water had flowed up the course of it.

Agnes climbed the hill to the very foot of the huge palm, carrying an old pair of binoculars with her. She came down with flying hair and excited eyes.

“There is something flapping in the top of a palm tree on that first island! I can see it as plain as plain!” she cried.

“What is it—an old carrion crow?” demanded Neale.

“I don’t mean that it is alive,” returned Agnes. “It is a flag or something!”

“Do you suppose it is something the children have put up to attract our attention?” cried Ruth.

“If it is in the top of a tree, how did they get it up there?” questioned Luke.

“We-ell. They put up something in the boat; Tess’s skirt, I think,” Ruth said.

They could not stop to investigate Agnes Kenway’s discovery at this time. But when they went back to the inlet where the raft lay, Mr. Howbridge climbed upon a rock with the glasses and examined the fluttering thing which Agnes had marked in the tree-top on the first island of the chain to the east.

There was no other sign of life or occupancy; but certain it was that some sort of pennant fluttered in the breeze. Tess and Dot could not, of course, have climbed so high to fasten a signal of distress, even had they thought of doing such a thing; but this mysterious pennant seemed a promise that the island was occupied.

If the little voyagers had come in the drifting motor-boat to this island and been stranded, they might have found somebody already there—somebody who would take care of them.

Ruth’s mind was a little relieved by this thought. Perhaps Tess and Dot were not entirely alone. The thought of their having remained alone over night on the sea or on the lonely strand had made the older sister acutely miserable.

She and Agnes saw the two boys and Mr. Howbridge set sail upon the rude raft with less anxiety than they would have felt had they realized how treacherous both the sea and the weather was in this locality. They had forgotten, in this new trouble, the savageness and abruptness of the storm that had cast them all upon Palm Island.

The raft blundered out of the inlet, the boys guiding it with the oars. But the great, square sail was already bent upon the mast and one yard. As Mr. Howbridge had said, as soon as they were really adrift Luke and Neale had to “tend sheet.” They had to keep the canvas trimmed all the time to hold the wind.

The raft began to move at a pace that momentarily increased. A little ruffle of white water showed before the blunt nose of the heavy craft. The girls, standing with clasped hands on the rocky shore, watched the ponderously moving raft with great anxiety.

Now and then one of the boys turned to wave a confident hand to Ruth and Agnes. But both Luke and Neale, as well as Mr. Howbridge, felt more worriment for the safety of Ruth and Agnes than they cared to have the girls imagine.

They had been several days on Palm Island and had seen no vessel in the offing but their own and had marked no trace on the island of any former occupant. It might seem that there was really nothing on or about Palm Island to bring to it any person, either kindly or evilly disposed.

There was one thing, however, that Neale O’Neil had pointed out to Mr. Howbridge. They had considered the possibility in secret of certain fellows of the baser sort coming to the place, but nothing of this had been said before the girls. If they had not thought of that themselves, it was not desirable to bring it to their attention and burden them with one more anxiety.

The three masculine members of the party of castaways had absolutely to go in search of Tess and Dot. The raft could not be made big enough to transport in safety Ruth and Agnes too. Would the raft return? This was a desperate situation.

The girls watched the raft move heavily away in the white glare of the sun, now almost overhead. The blot of shadow cast by the huge sail was very narrow. The glare of the view at last so blinded them that Ruth and Agnes retired to the covert of the cocoanut grove.

From this vantage point they could see the raft as it rose and fell upon the long, sweeping surges. Slowly, but steadily, it moved away from Palm Island toward that islet on which the flag had appeared and upon which Ruth hoped the children had taken refuge.

After the raft was so far away that the boys and girls could not shout back and forth to each other, it seemed that it moved very slowly indeed. Yet as the hours wore on the distance between the shore of Palm Island and the raft could be plainly marked.

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.”

Even the usually voluble Agnes could say nothing cheerful in reply, and the two girls moved away from the point of their vigil.