Chapter XXI: A Night Alarm

It was a very lonely evening for Ruth and Agnes Kenway. The boys had made the new camp near the spring as snug as possible. An outthrust rock partially sheltered them, and they had the smaller piece of sail-cloth to help keep them dry when they lay down. They had a good fire too.

But the wailing of the seabirds and the lap, lap, lapping of the little waves along the strand sounded very mournful in their ears. This tropic world was very empty and lonely!

Their minds not only reverted constantly to the question of the whereabouts of Tess and Dot, but the question of the safety of their boy friends and their guardian was now added to that first anxiety. Ruth and Agnes did not consider that they were in any immediate personal danger. The thought that they might be left indefinitely on this lonely island they resolutely kept out of the forefront of their minds. But wreck and disaster might have overtaken both the other parties.

Agnes had climbed the hill just before the night fell and tried to spy the raft again. But she could not distinguish it. In fact, that nearest island on which they had seen the flag flying was almost blotted out.

“We cannot see anything until morning,” 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. Think of what the poor Pendletons are going through, for instance.”

“Well, at least,” declared Agnes, “the Pendletons have a roof over their heads.”

“Ye-es,” agreed Ruth thoughtfully. “And they are all together.”

“They have somebody to help them too,” Agnes went on more energetically. “I am sure Guardy’s clerk will dig up some evidence to clear Mr. Pendleton. It only takes time. But we haven’t a soul to help us, Ruthie.”

“I wonder what the folks at St. Sergius think about our absence,” murmured the older girl. “Guardy’s friend, Señor Benno, ought to suspect that we are in some difficulty.”

“I wish he’d send a boat for us—right now!” cried Agnes. “Then we could go after the boys and the raft.”

“And find Tess and Dot,” added Ruth. “This is a dreadful thing, Agnes!”

“Who would have thought they’d do such a thing?” was Agnes’ vigorous speech. “I’m always expecting them to get into mischief when Sammy Pinkney is along. But one would think that with him thousands of miles away, Tess and Dot could be trusted for half an hour alone.”

“I can’t blame them,” sighed Ruth. “Of course they had no intention of sailing away with the motor-boat. It was an accident.”

“And we can’t do a thing to help,” said her sister gloomily, and cuddled down in her blanket.

Worried as she really was, Agnes was not long awake. Ruth tossed and turned and, as on the night before, could not compose herself to sleep. Each faint sound from the sea aroused her sharply. Were their friends coming back? Had they found the motor-boat and the children and repaired the former and brought back the latter?

Thus between sleeping and waking Ruth Kenway lay until long after midnight. A faint mist, as usual, rose from the sea and rolled inshore, masking every object with a soft and glowing mantle. She watched these wisps of fog until her nerves were “jumpy” and her troubled mind was filled with strange imaginings.

Figures seemed stalking along the open shore; but she knew they made no sound and left no footprints on the sand. They were merely phantoms of her overwrought thought.

Then suddenly, but so sharply that she could not deny its existence, something clattered out there on the sea. She sat up with a gasp and reached a nervous hand toward her sister.

Then she waited. Why arouse Agnes and frighten her? It might not be anything of consequence.

The sound was repeated. Ruth could not identify its cause, but she knew it could be no marine creature. It was no noise made by the turtles which sought the island each night at this season of the year.

It was a man-made sound.

The shadows in the fog did not trouble Ruth now. There was something of greater moment out there on the water, she was sure. Ruth crept down to the open shore and listened.

A voice! She almost cried aloud, she was so startled. And for a moment a thrill of delight shocked the girl.

It was a rescue! Somebody had come looking for them! She knew it could not be Mr. Howbridge and the others returning, although she had imagined such a thing as she lay there between waking and sleeping.

Nevertheless, something told Ruth Kenway not to shout. She determined to make no sound until she knew more about these strangers. Or at least, until it seemed that they might be going away from Palm Island without investigating.

She now knew what the sounds were which had first startled her. The anchor of a boat had splashed overboard; then the sail had come rattling down. Although the mist hid the craft, she knew just about where it was lying.

Ruth strained her eyes to see. She strained her ears to hear. Out of the mist she felt that something was coming shoreward. Was it a small boat? Was a landing being made—and so softly for a purpose? Who were these people? Were they friends or enemies?

The echo of the voice reached her ears again—flatly and, it seemed, scarcely human in its timbre. But Ruth was confident that it was a man who spoke and that he spoke roughly.

She could not expect that any rescue party sent out from St. Sergius would be altogether made up of the hotel guests. The boatmen engaged on the waterfront for such a venture were likely to be rather rough men.

When she heard the voice for a third time and recognized the words as Spanish or Afro-Spanish the oldest Corner House girl shrank back toward the edge of the jungle in which the camp lay.

Had she heard English spoken by the party coming ashore she would have raised her voice in a glad shout. Now she hesitated, determining to wait upon the landing before she made her presence known.

“If they are looking for us they may say something or do something to prove it,” she thought. Ruth knew a few Spanish words and she began to recall them to mind and get ready for an interview with the strangers when such a moment should arrive. “I suppose I ought to welcome the coming of anybody at all. But these——”

A moving shape suddenly appeared in the mist. A keel grated on the shore. Several voices, all speaking a mixed Spanish, burst out. Ruth heard Agnes stir again and cry out faintly.

The older girl threw herself into the shelter and placed a hand over Agnes’ mouth.

“Hush!” she commanded.

“Oh! Oh! What is it?” gasped the other.

“Wait. There is no danger—perhaps. But they are strangers.”

“What are you saying?” Agnes Kenway demanded, and sat up promptly, pushing her sister’s restraining hand away.

“I tell you somebody has landed.”

“Not Mr. Howbridge and the boys?”

“Of course not! Would I fear them?”

“Then you are frightened, Ruthie?” said her sister. “Tell me.”

Ruth, however, would say no more. She went back to the clump of brush overlooking the sands. If the visitors should prove to be friends she did not want them to escape before she called to them.

The voices did not sound kind at all. Ruth hesitated. Agnes, creeping out after her, likewise listened to the broken snatches of conversation which reached their ears.

“Pirates!” exploded the younger sister, her lips close to Ruth’s ear.

“Pirates your grandmother!” returned Ruth, exasperated.

“Wish Sammy Pinkney was here,” giggled Agnes, for with all their trouble she could joke. “He ought to be a judge of pirates by this time.”

“You needn’t laugh.”

“Maybe not. But I won’t cry—yet,” said Agnes, more cheerful than she had been for some hours.

The two girls, clinging to each other’s hands in the shivery mist, waited and listened. The men who had landed from the boat evidently drew the craft well up on the beach. Then some of them walked up to the spring.

“Agnes!” ejaculated Ruth, impressively, but in a very low voice.

“Yes?”

“They know this island. They are familiar with it. They dropped their anchor right opposite this place in the dark, and now they are coming to the spring.”

“We-ell,” stammered Agnes, “maybe that is good news.”

“They are not likely, then, to be people sent to hunt for us,” announced Ruth. “We must not speak to them.”

“Why?” ejaculated Agnes. “Because we haven’t been introduced?”

“Don’t be a goose. You sound like Neale O’Neil. We must wait to get a good look at them by daylight before we let them see us.”

“But—but, Ruthie,” whispered Agnes, “maybe we might get them to go after the boys and Tess and Dot.”

“They could not do that until morning. We will wait,” Ruth declared firmly.

Her determination could not be shaken. Agnes at this point might have been braver than her sister, but she could not oppose Ruth in her present mood.

The two girls stole off through the scrub timber to the higher ground. They tried to make no sound that would attract the attention of the men who had landed on the island. And in this they evidently succeeded, for their movements were not observed by the strangers.