Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island Part 3

So, without an instant's pause, he made his way to the foot of the riffles, where their search would really begin. How soon it would end, there was no telling; it might be one mile; it might be twenty. But Jerry grimly determined that he would carry the undertaking through to the end.

The riffles was really a succession of pools of treacherous depths, joined by foaming, rock-broken rapids. The bank was lined with great boulders through which a day-time path wound a difficult way. Jerry wasted no time in trying to follow it, but skirted far around through a waist-high cornfield. A barb-wire fence held him prisoner long enough to allow Dave to break cover first on the opposite sh.o.r.e and send a vigorous but quavery "h.e.l.lo" across the water.

"I'm stuck on the fence!" shouted Jerry in return. "Go ahead. I'll be along directly."

But he noticed that Dave stood waiting on the sh.o.r.e when he finally managed to release himself and broke through the thin fringe of willows. "All right, Dave," he urged. "Let's not be losing any time."

For a while the going was much easier. On Jerry's side a wide reach of sand lay smooth and firm in the pale moonlight. On Dave's side a few yards of sand lay between a steep bank and the water's edge, but every few hundred feet a shallow creek broke through and forced wading.

There was no chance for the boat to have stranded here, and the boys hurried along. Within a mile the character of the ground changed. Now the water lapped along under high, steep banks, with tiny, willow-covered islands alternating with ba.s.s-haunted snags of dislodged trees barricaded with driftwood. The moon cast queer shadows and more than once Jerry's heart felt a wild thrill as he fancied he saw a boat hull outlined against the silvered current.

Every few hundred yards the two boys stopped and sent encouraging shouts across the widening water. It was a lonesome, disheartening task, with every step making the task all the harder. Deep bays cut into the sh.o.r.e line; the feeder creeks grew wider and deeper. The night air was chill on their dripping shoulders. Plum Run was no longer a run--it was a real river, and Dave's voice sounded far off when he came out on some bare point to shout his constant:

"Nothing doing--yet."

They were now on a part of the river that was comparatively strange to them. Jerry had more than once followed the Plum this far south, but it had always been by boat, or at best on the west bank, Dave's territory, where a chain of lakes followed the course of the river. Each new twist and turn sent a shiver of nervous dread through him. Many the story of rattlers and copperheads he had heard from fishermen and campers--and the night was filled with unexpected and disturbing noises, overhead and underfoot. Of course he knew that snakes are not abroad at night, but the knowledge did not help his nerves.

Moreover, they were drawing near Lost Island, and no boy of Watertown had ever been known to cast a line within half a mile of that dreaded spot. For Lost Island was the "haunted castle" of the neighborhood. It was nothing more than a large, weed-and-willow-covered five acres, a wrecked dam jutting out from the east bank, and a great gaunt pile of foundation masonry standing high and dry on a bare knoll at the north end.

It had a history--never twice told the same. The dam had been dynamited, that much was sure. By whom, no one knew. The house, if ever a house had been built over those rain-bleached rocks, had been struck by lightning, hurricane, blown up by giant powder, rotted away--a dozen other tragic ends, as the whim of the story-teller dictated. The owner had been murdered, lynched, had committed suicide--no one knew, but everyone was positive that there was something fearfully, terribly wrong with Lost Island.

It was one of the few islands in Plum Run which was not flooded over by the spring freshets, and the land was fertile, yet no one had ever been known to live there through a season; this in spite of the fact that Lost Island was known as "squatter's land," open to settlement by anyone who desired it.

And Lost Island lay barely half a mile farther down the river. Jerry fervently hoped that their search would be ended before they were in the shadow of that forsaken territory. His nerves were not calmed any by the tremble in Dave's voice as he shouted across:

"Lost Island's just below us, Jerry. Shall we go on?"

"Sure thing, Dave!" called Jerry with a confidence he did not feel. "It can't be any worse than what we've already gone through--and we've gone through _that_ all right."

"Supposing," hesitated Dave, "supposing the boat's grounded on Lost Island itself----"

"It's the boat we're looking for, isn't it?" But Jerry knew as he spoke, that, hard as the going was, he would be well satisfied to discover the boat five weary miles farther on.

Once more they plodded along, the dark, forbidding hulk of Lost Island looming nearer and nearer. Just before pa.s.sing behind the northern point Jerry came out to the water's edge and had cupped his hands about his mouth for a final rea.s.suring shout, when a sudden discovery made him pause. A shout, that seemed to split in mid-air, convinced him that Dave too had just then caught sight of the astounding object.

It was a gleaming, flickering, ruddy light, and it came from the very center of Lost Island!

Jerry's first thought was fright. But that soon gave way to the wildest of conjectures. Suppose Tod had been in the boat. Suppose he had come to in time, but too weak to do more than remain in the boat till it grounded here on Lost Island. A waterproof match-safe easily accounted for the fire. Jerry refused to allow himself to reason any further.

There might be a dozen reasons why Tod had not swum the scant hundred yards to sh.o.r.e.

"Do you see it!" finally came a shout from the other side.

"It's a camp fire," called Jerry. "Do you suppose it could possibly be----"

"It couldn't be Tod, _could_ it!" came the answer, showing the same wild hope that had surged through Jerry.

"Oh--_Tod!_" rang out from two trembly throats on both sides of the river.

There was no reply. At least there came no answering shout. But the next instant Jerry rubbed his eyes in bewilderment. The camp fire had been blotted out as if by magic. Only the deep gloom of thick-set willows lay before him.

"The fire's gone!" came in alarmed tones from Dave.

"_Tod--Oh, Tod!_" rang out once more through the still night air.

This time there was an answer, but not the one the boys expected. A gruff voice demanded angrily:

"Say, you idiots--what in the thunder you want!"

"We're looking for a boy who was drowned up at----" began Jerry, who was closest to the high point where a man was presently seen stalking through the fringe of bushes.

"Boy who was drowned? _Calling_ for him! Ye crazy loons!" interrupted the man.

"We don't know whether he was drowned or not," answered Jerry hotly.

"Well I'll never tell you," was the surly response. With a disgusted shrug of the shoulders the great hulk of a man slouched back toward the center of the island, pausing just before he disappeared once more in the wilderness to warn:

"Any more of that howling's going to bring a charge of buckshot, and I don't care which of you I hit."

"Do you care if we come over and look along the sh.o.r.e of the island?"

shouted Dave at the retreating figure.

The answer, which was more like a growl than a human response, left no doubt of the man's meaning. Neither boy felt the slightest desire to swim across to Lost Island. Instead Jerry waved his arms over his head and then pointed downstream.

So once more they trudged along, disheartened more than ever, for somehow the actions of that weird figure on Lost Island had made their search look more of a wild goose chase than ever. The island was soon pa.s.sed, but Jerry found himself peering hopelessly across a sluggish, muddy-bottomed slough that promised many a weary minute of wading before he could hope to establish communication with his companion again.

So it was with a great feeling of relief that, once more on solid ground, he heard Dave's call.

"Say, Jerry, we're pretty near down to Tomlinson's wagon bridge. What you say that we hustle on down and meet halfway across--and wait there for daylight. I'm about woozified."

"Good!" agreed Jerry, pleased that the suggestion had come from Dave.

"Even the thought of it rests my old legs till they feel like new. I'll just race you to it!"

But it was a slow sort of race, for neither boy was willing to take a chance in pa.s.sing the most innocent shadow--which always turned out to be a water-soaked log or a back-eddied swirl of foam. Nevertheless, it was a spent Dave who sank gasping to the rough plank floor of the middle span of the wagon bridge a scant second ahead of another puffing boy.

A good ten minutes they lay there, breathing hard. Then both rose and walked over to the edge and leaned heavily against the girders as they looked gloomily down the river.

"Looks almost hopeless, doesn't it!" admitted Jerry, finally.

"Worst of it is we don't really know whether she's down below yet or if we've pa.s.sed it. She was riding pretty low."

"Wonder what that man was doing on Lost Island?" speculated Jerry, crossing wearily to the north edge of the bridge and peering through the gray dawn-mist toward the island, barely visible now. A mere twinkle of light showed among the trees, and he stood there for a long minute. Dave come to his side, and the two waited in silence for the dawn. Jerry had almost fallen asleep standing up, when a sudden clutch at his arm nearly overbalanced him and sent him tumbling off the dizzy height.

"Look!" gasped Dave.

"What is it?" exclaimed Jerry, turning to his companion, all sleep gone.

"I'll swear it's the boat--right under us!"