"Oh!" ejaculated Jessie and, whirling suddenly around, started for the galley slide.
"Where are you going?" cried Amy. "Do help me with this flopping fish. I can't get the hook out."
Her chum did not halt. She knew that nobody had thought to look into the cook's galley that had been shut up after lunch. She forced back the slide and peered in.
There on the deck of the little compartment, with her back against the wall, or bulkhead, was Henrietta. On one side was a jar of strawberry jam only half full. Much of the sticky sweet was smeared upon the cracker clutched in the child's hand and upon her face and the front of her frock. Henrietta was asleep!
"What is it?" demanded Amy, who had followed her more excited chum.
"What's happened to her?"
"Look at that!" exclaimed Jessie, dramatically.
Darry and Burd drew near. Amy burst into stifled laughter.
"What do you know about that kid? She asked me if she could have a bite between meals and I told her of course she could. But I never thought she would take me so at my word." Amy's laughter was no longer stifled.
"Fishing in the jam jar is more to Hen's taste than fishing in the ocean," observed Darry.
"Nervy kid!" exclaimed Burd. "I'd like some of that jam myself."
"Bring him away," commanded Jessie, pushing to the slide. "She might as well sleep. We will know where she is, anyway."
This little scare rather broke up the fishing for the Roselawn girls and the college boys. They went to the wireless room which had been built on deck behind the wheelhouse, and Darry put on the head harness and opened the key by which he took the messages he was able to obtain out of the air.
The girls were particularly interested in this form of radio telegraphy at this time. Darry had bought and was establishing a regular radio telephone receiving set, too. He could give Jessie and Amy a deal of information about the Morse alphabet as used in the commercial wireless service.
"Practice makes perfect," he told them. "You can buy an ordinary key and sounder and practice until you can send fast. While you are learning that you automatically learn to read Morse. But I'll have the radio set all right shortly and then we can get the station concerts."
"How near we'll be to that station on the island!" Amy cried. "It ought to sound as though it were right in our ears."
"Not through your radiophone," said her brother. "That station is a great brute of a commercial and signal station. It sends clear to the European shore. No concerts broadcasted from there. Now, let's see if we can get some gossip out of the air."
The girls took turns listening in, even though they could not understand more than a letter or two of Morse. Darry translated for their benefit certain general messages he caught. They learned that operators on the trans-Atlantic liners and on the cargo boats often talked back and forth, swapping yarns, news, and personal information. Occasionally a navy operator "crashed in" with a few words.
Calls came for vessels all up and down the North Atlantic. Information as to weather indications were broadcasted from Arlington. The air seemed full of voices, each to be caught at a certain wave-length.
"It is wonderful!" Jessie exclaimed. "'Gossip out of the air' is the right name for it. Just think of it, Amy! When we were born there was very little known about all this wonderful wireless."
"Sh!" commanded her chum. "Don't remind folks how frightfully young we are."
CHAPTER X--ISLAND ADVENTURES
The _Marigold_ loafed along within sight of the beaches that evening and the girls and their friends reclined in the deck-chairs and watched the parti-colored electric lights that wreathed the shore-front. Jessie was careful to keep Henrietta near by. She began to realize that looking after the freckle-faced little girl was going to be something of a trial.
Henrietta finally grew sleepy and Jessie and Amy took her below, helped her undress, and tucked her into a berth. The Roselawn girls' mothers were much amused by this. Their daughters had taken a task upon themselves that would, as Mrs. Norwood said, teach them something.
"And it will not hurt them," Mrs. Drew agreed, with an answering smile.
"Amy, especially, needs to know what 'duty' means."
"Anyway, we'll know where she is while she is asleep," Jessie said to her chum, as they left the little girl.
"If she isn't a somnambulist," chuckled Amy. "We forgot to ask Mrs.
Foley or Bertha that."
The ground swell lulled the girls to sleep that night, and even Henrietta did not awake until the first breakfast call in the morning.
Through the port-light Jessie and Amy saw Burd Alling "bursting his cheeks with sound" as he essayed the changes on the key-bugle.
The _Marigold_ was slipping along the coast easily, with the northern end of Station Island already in sight. The castle-like hotel sprawled all over the headland, but the widest bathing beach was just below it.
Next were the premises of the Hackle Island Gold Club, with its pastures, shrubberies, and several water-holes. It was to a part of these enclosed premises that Mr. Norwood said little Henrietta Haney was laying claim.
"And I believe she will get it in time. Most of the land on which those summer houses beyond the golf course stand is also within the lines of the Padriac Haney place."
He explained this to them while they all paced the deck after breakfast.
The yacht was headed in toward the dock near the bungalows, some of which were very cheaply built and stood upon stilts near the shore.
The tall gray staff of the abandoned lighthouse was the landmark at the extreme southern end of the island. The sending and receiving station of the commercial wireless company was at the lighthouse, and the party aboard the _Marigold_ could see the very tall antenna connected therewith.
The yacht landed the party and their baggage about ten o'clock. Mrs.
Norwood's servants were at hand to help, and a decrepit express wagon belonging to a "native" aided in the transportation of the goods to the big bungalow which was some rods back from the shore. There were no automobiles on the island.
"Is this my house?" Henrietta demanded the moment she learned which dwelling the party of vacationists would occupy.
"It may prove to be your house in the end," Jessie told her.
"When's the end?" was the blunt query. "How long do I have to wait?"
"We can't tell that. My mother has the house for the summer. She has hired it for us all to live in."
"Who does she pay? Do I get any of the money?" continued the little girl. "If this island is going to be mine some time, why not now? Why wait for something that is mine?"
It was very difficult for Jessie and Amy to make her understand the situation. In fact, she began to feel and express doubts about the attempt that was being made to discover and settle the legal phases of the Padriac Haney estate.
"If I don't get my money and my island pretty soon somebody else will get it instead," was the little girl's confident statement.
"Oh, Jess!" exclaimed Amy under her breath, "suppose that should be so.
You know Belle Ringold's father is trying to prove his title to the same property."
"Hush!" said Jessie. "Don't let little Hen hear about that. She is getting hard to manage as it is. Henrietta! Where are you going now?"
she called after the little girl.
"I'm going out to take a look at some of my island," declared the child, as she banged the screen door.
"She's sure to get into trouble," Jessie observed, sighing.