"Is there any likelihood of our being able to send out a call for assistance, Jessie?" he asked, quietly.
"I don't see how we can, Doctor Stanley, until we fix this radio set. We can't get any spark. We have to be able to get a spark to send a message. The message will be stumbling enough, I am afraid, even if we fix the thing, for none of us understands Morse very well. Unless Darry----"
"Don't look to me for help," declared the collegian. "I haven't sent a message since we put the yacht in commission. We had a fellow aboard here until the other day who knew something about wireless and he was the operator. Not me."
"Amy and I have a code book with the alphabet in it," said Jessie slowly. "I think if somebody read the dots and dashes to me I could send a short message. But there is something wrong with this circuit."
Just then Burd Alling came back. He brought with him a big corrugated cardboard container. In that the various parts of the radio outfit had been packed.
"What do you think about it?" he asked. "There _is_ something here that I never saw before. See this jigamarig, Jess? Think it belongs on the contraption?"
"Oh!" cried Jessie, eagerly, pouncing on the small object that Burd held out to her. "I know what that is."
"Then you beat me. I don't," declared Burd.
"Let's see what else there is," said Darry, diving into the box. "I left you to get out the parts, Burd; you know I did."
"Oh, splash!" exclaimed his friend. "We might as well admit that we don't know as much about radio as these girls. They leave us lashed to the post."
But Jessie and Amy did not even feel what at another time Amy would have called "augmented ego." The occasion was too serious.
The day was passing into evening, and a very solemn evening it was. The wind whined through the strands of the wire rigging. The waves knocked the yacht about. The passengers all felt weary and forlorn.
The two girl chums felt the situation less acutely than anybody else, perhaps, because they were so busy. That radio had to be repaired. That is what Jessie told Amy, and Amy agreed. The safety of the whole yacht's company seemed dependent upon what the two radio girls could do.
"And we must not fall down on it, Jess," Amy said vigorously. "How goes it now?"
"This thing that Burd found goes right in here. We have got to reset a good part of the circuit to do it. I don't see how the boys could have made such a mistake."
"Proves what I have always maintained," declared Amy Drew. "We girls are smarter than those boys, even if the said boys do go to college. Bah!
What is college, anyway?"
"Just a prison," said Burd sepulchrally from the doorway.
"Close that door!" exclaimed Jessie. "Don't let that spray drift in here."
"Yes. Do go away, Burd, and see if the yacht is sinking any more. Don't bother us," commanded Amy.
The men were keeping the pumps at work, but it was an anxious time. It was long dark and the lamps were lighted when Jessie pronounced the set complete. Darry and Burd came in again and asked what they could do?
"Root for us. Nothing more," said Amy. "Jessie has fixed this thing and she is going to have the honor of sending the message--if a message can be sent."
"Well," remarked Burd Alling, "I guess it is up to you girls to save the situation. I have just found out that there isn't as much provender as I was given reason to believe when we started. We ought to be in Boston right now. And see where we are!"
"That is exactly what we can't see," said Jessie. "But we must know. Did you get the latitude and longitude from the skipper, Darry?"
"Yes. Here it is, approximately. He got a chance to shoot the sun this noon."
"The cruel thing!" gibed his sister. "But anyway, I hope he has got the situation near enough so some vessel can find us."
"Let us see, first, if we can send a message intelligibly," said Jessie, putting on the head harness, and speaking seriously. "It will be awful, perhaps, if we can't. I know that the yacht is almost unmanageable."
"You've said something," returned Burd. "The fuel is low, as well as the supplies in the galley. We haven't got much left----"
"But hope," said Jessie, softly.
CHAPTER XXIV--THE MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE
Henrietta Haney was a very lonely little girl after the yacht sailed from Station Island. Not that she had nobody to play with, for she had.
There were other children besides Sally Stanley of her own age, or thereabout, in the bungalow colony. And as she had been in Dogtown, Henrietta soon became the leading spirit of her crowd.
She even taught them some of her games, and once more became "Spotted Snake, the Witch," and scared some of the children almost as much as she had scared the Dogtown youngsters with her supposed occult powers.
She was running and screaming and tearing her clothes most of the time when she was away from Mrs. Norwood, but in the company of Jessie's mother she truly tried to "be a little lady."
"Be it ever so painful, little Hen is going to learn to be worthy of you and Jessie, Mary," laughed Mrs. Drew, who was like her daughter in being able always to see the fun in things. "What do you really expect will come of the child?"
"I think she will make quite a woman in time. And before that time arrives," added Mrs. Norwood, "she has much to learn, as you say. In some ways Henrietta has had an unhappy childhood--although she doesn't know it. I hope she will have better times from now on."
"You are sure to make her have good times, Mary," said Mrs. Drew. "I hope she will appreciate all that Jessie and you do for her."
"She is rather young for one to expect appreciation from her," Mrs.
Norwood said, smiling. "But the little thing is grateful."
Without Jessie and Amy, however, Henrietta confessed she was very lonely. Sometimes she listened to the radio all alone, sitting quietly and hearing even lectures and business talks out of the air that ordinarily could not have interested the child. But she said it reminded her of "Miss Jessie" just to sit with the ear-tabs on.
She had heard about the older girls going to the lighthouse station to interview the wireless operator there, and although Henrietta knew that the government reservation at that end of the island was no part of the old Padriac Haney estate, she wandered down there alone on the second day of the yacht's absence and climbed up into the tower.
The storm had blown itself out on shore, and the sun was going down in golden glory. Out at sea, although the waves still rolled high and the clouds were tumultuous in appearance, there was nothing to threaten a continuation of the unsettled weather.
Henrietta had no idea how long it would be before the yacht reached Boston, although she had heard a good deal of talk about it. She had watched the _Marigold_ steam out of sight into the east, and it seemed to the little girl that her friends were just there, beyond the horizon line, where she had seen the last patch of the _Marigold's_ smoke disappear.
The wireless operator had seen Henrietta before, cavorting about the beach and leading the other children in their play, and he was prepared for some of her oddities. But she surprised him by her very first speech.
"You're the man that can send words out over the ocean, aren't you?"
"I can send signals," he admitted, but rather puzzled.
"Can folks like Miss Jessie and Miss Amy hear 'em?" demanded Henrietta.
"Only if they are on a boat that has a wireless outfit."
"They got it on that _Marigold_," announced Henrietta.
"Oh! The yacht that sailed yesterday! Yes, she carried antenna."