Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island Part 7

"I've got to see him."

"All right--if you don't wake him up."

"I've got to talk to him--I've got big news."

"Big news? Of--of Tod?" Big Mr. Aikens was not the kind of man to become easily excited, but his manner was eager enough.

"Of Tod--yes!" cried Jerry.

"What is it? Have you found his--his body?"

"Better than that, Mr. Aikens--Oh, I'm almost dead sure!"

Jerry was so excited himself that his voice shook. As for Mr. Aikens, he leaped over and caught Jerry's arm and was shaking it wildly up and down. Neither one noticed that a white-faced man stood in the opposite doorway, and that his eyes were simply blazing with expectancy.

"What do you mean? What _can_ you mean!" demanded Mr. Aikens.

"I believe that Tod Fulton is----"

"Not alive?" almost screamed a voice from across the room. "Not alive!"

"Alive and on Lost Island!"

CHAPTER VI

TO THE RESCUE!

This much of the interview was perfectly clear to Jerry afterwards, but what followed he could not quite understand at the time or later. For a moment it was almost laughable. There stood Aikens fiercely clutching one arm and waving it up and down as if to pump further information from him. Mr. Fulton, after the first dazed instant, darted across the room and grabbed Jerry's other arm.

"_Where_ is he? Tell me--quick!" he demanded.

Then it was that Jerry could not understand, for the look that came over Mr. Fulton's face at his reply was neither belief nor doubt. His eyebrows almost met in a frown as he repeated mechanically:

"On Lost Island, you say? But--but--how do you know? You weren't _on_ Lost Island, were you?"

"No--o," answered Jerry slowly.

A look of relief, quickly hidden, came to Mr. Fulton's face, but Jerry saw it, and wondered.

"Did someone tell you he was there, then?"

"Someone told me he _wasn't_ there----" began Jerry, when the ting-a-ling of a telephone bell cut him short.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Fulton and hurried from the room. His m.u.f.fled voice could be heard in a lengthy conversation. Jerry impatiently awaited his return, anxious to tell the rest of his story. Imagine then his surprise when Tod's father delayed his return unreasonably, and his only response to Jerry's eager sentences was, "Yes, yes, I know."

Jerry's heart sank unaccountably--he sensed the fact that Mr. Fulton was not listening, was only waiting, in fact, till the boy should finish and he could decently get rid of Jerry. The story was consequently hurried through. Disappointed beyond description, Jerry left the house, not even noticing that Mr. Fulton had left the room even before Jerry had reached the door.

Something was wrong somewhere; Jerry had expected that his story would be literally s.n.a.t.c.hed out of his mouth; instead it had been smothered under the dampest kind of wet blanket. Feeling not a little sore over his failure to impress the two men with the importance of his discoveries, Jerry plodded along home, determined that as soon as he had gulped down a little breakfast he would hike back to Lost Island alone and make one more attempt to gain the cover of its wooded banks.

Even that plan was doomed to disappointment. Jerry's mother had saved a goodly breakfast for him, and bustled about making him comfortable.

Contrary to Jerry's expectations, she had no word of blame for his having remained away overnight without asking consent, and even listened with sympathetic ear to the story of his adventures. But just at the moment when Jerry was about to announce his intention to return, Mrs. Ring was called to the back door, to return a few minutes later with the announcement that it had been Mr. Aikens, and that Jerry was not to worry any more about Lost Island.

"But I've simply got to go back, ma," sputtered Jerry, his mouth uncomfortably full of pancake. "Mr. Fulton isn't going to--well, he didn't show much interest in my theories---"

"But Mr. Aikens seemed to think he did. You just rest easy, son. If two grown men can't take care of your Lost Islander--and your theories, too, why, well--you just get ready to pile into bed, that's all."

"But, ma--there's the boat."

"It'll take care of itself till you get there."

"But, ma----"

"Hush up, now. Into bed with you."

"But can I go after the boat when I----"

Mrs. Ring caught up a flat piece of wood from the back of the kitchen range, and laughingly but firmly put an end to the coaxing, Jerry retreating hastily to the shelter of his bedroom.

Both Jerry and his father stood in awe of tiny Mrs. Ring, who barely reached to overgrown Jerry's shoulder.

"Wake me up at twelve, will you, ma?" called Jerry, in his most wheedling voice. His mother only laughed, but Jerry felt sure she would. Besides, there was his dollar alarm clock.

Jerry repented his request when sharp at twelve o'clock he was called for noonday dinner. He was sleepy and cross and not a bit hungry. His muscles were sore, and the drill to Lost Island did not have quite the romance by broad daylight that it had had a few hours before.

Jerry watched his father put on his hat and hurry back to work, with a great deal of relief. His mother was much easier to handle in a case of this sort.

"You won't mind if I don't get back till late?" he asked, hoping she would give her unqualified consent to his remaining away as long as he saw fit. "You promised me I could go camping this summer--let me take it now, _please_, ma."

"Will you promise me to come back and let me pick the birdshot out of you after you've made a landing on Lost Island?" she asked in mock anxiety. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Ring was about as proud of her big boy as a mother well could be without making herself a nuisance to the neighbors. From his earliest boyhood she had cultivated the independence of spirit he showed with his first pair of real trousers, and now she often strained a point to let him exercise it. To be sure, she sometimes wondered how much was genuine self-confidence and how much was a reckless love of adventure.

Now she raised her eyebrows in denial, but at the eager look on the boy's face she relented. "Trot along, Jerry," she agreed, with a quick pat at his shoulder--the Rings were not much at kissing each other. "If you can't take care of yourself by now, you never will be able to. I know you're as anxious as you can be about Tod--I do hope it turns out that you are right about him."

With a muttered, "I've got to be right," Jerry set about making himself a couple of substantial sandwiches and stuffing them in the pocket of his canvas hunting coat, which he took along for emergencies.

"Good-bye, ma," he called over his shoulder. "I'll be back as soon as I can bring Tod with me."

Once outside, he wasted no time but struck off at once cross-lots to rout out Dave Thomas and Frank Ellery. Fortunately Frank came first, otherwise Jerry might not have been equal to the task of waking up Dave. They tried everything they had ever heard of. They tickled his feet; they set off a bra.s.s-lunged alarm clock under his very nose; they dumped him roughly out of his bed, but even on the bare floor he slumbered peacefully on. Cold water brought only temporary success.

They were in despair.

It was Frank who finally solved the problem. Seating himself on the foot of the bed, he raised his head much in the fashion of a hound baying at the moon--the sound that issued from his throat would put to shame the most ambitious hound that ever howled. Jerry caught up a pillow and would have shied it at the head of the offender, but the perfectly serious look on Frank's face withheld his arm. Gradually it dawned on him that the boy was trying to sing--and, more than that, it was one of Dave's favorite songs he was murdering.

Then it was that Jerry understood Frank's strategy. The bed-clothes began to heave; they had piled them all atop Dave as he lay on the floor. Frank began on the chorus. A wriggling leg emerged from beneath the comforts. Jerry joined in, his voice a villainous imitation of Frank's discords. Another leg came to view.

They began to repeat the chorus, further off key than before. One line was all they were suffered to torture. A catapult of boy, bedclothes and pillows bounded from the floor and sent Frank spinning into the bed, while Jerry barely saved himself from a spill on the floor.