Tom Slade at Temple Camp Part 17

"If there was only one of these telegraph operators--guys, as I used to call them--star-gazing, we'd pa.s.s the word to him, all right."

"A word to the guys, hey? Come on, hustle!"

A strenuous climb brought them to the brow of a hill from which the lights of several villages, and the more numerous lights of Poughkeepsie could be seen.

"Now, Toma.s.so, see-a if you know-a de lesson--queeck! Connect that up and--look out you don't step on the tube! I wish we had a pedestal or something. When you're roaming, you have to do as the Romans do, hey?

Open your Manual to page 232. No!" he said hurriedly looking over Tom's shoulder. "_Care of the fingernails!_ That's _259_ you've got. What do you think we're going to do, start a manicure parlor? _There_ you are--now keep the place to make a.s.surance doubly sure. Here goes! h.e.l.lo, folks!" he called, as he swung the long shaft fan-wise across the heavens. "Now, three dots for S?"

"Right," said Tom.

Roy sent three short flashes into the night, then paused and sent a longer flash of about three seconds. Another pause, then three of the longer flashes, then a short one, two long ones and a short one.

"S-T-O-P--stop," he said.

"Right-o," concurred Tom.

"Now F--two shorts, a long and a short--is it?"

"You know blamed well it is," said Tom.

Thus the message was sent.

_"Stop freight going north; boy locked in car. Hold. Friends coming up river in boat flying yellow flag."_

They had on board a large yellow flag with TEMPLE CAMP on it, and Roy thought of this as being the best means of identifying the boat for anyone who might be watching for it along the sh.o.r.e.

Three times they flashed the message, then hurried back to the boat and chugged out, anchoring in midstream. The course of the river is as straight as an arrow here. The lights in the small towns of Milton and Camelot were visible on either side; tiny lights flickered along the railroads that skirted either sh.o.r.e, and beyond in the distance twinkled the lights on the great bridge at Poughkeepsie.

"We're right in the steamer's path here," said Tom; "let's hurry."

Roy played the shaft for a minute to attract attention, then threw his message again and again into the skies. The long, bright, silent column seemed to fill the whole heaven as it pierced the darkness in short and long flashes. The chugging of the _Good Turn's_ engine was emphasized by the solemn stillness as they ran in toward sh.o.r.e, and the splash of their dropping anchor awakened a faint echo from the neighboring mountains.

"Well, that's all we can do till morning," said Roy. "What do you say to some eats?"

"Gee, it's big and wild and lonely, isn't it?" said Tom.

They had never thought of the Hudson in this way before.

After breakfast in the morning they started upstream, their big yellow camp flag flying and keeping as near the sh.o.r.e as possible so as to be within hail. Now that the black background of the night had pa.s.sed and the broad daylight was all about them, their hope had begun to wane. The spell seemed broken; the cheerful reality of the morning sunlight upon the water and the hills seemed to dissipate their confidence in that long shaft, and they saw the whole experience of the night as a sort of fantastic dream.

But Pee-wee was gone; there was no dream about that, and the boat did not seem like the same place without him.

The first place they pa.s.sed was Stoneco, but there was no sign of life near the sh.o.r.e, and the _Good Turn_ chugged by unheeded. They ran across to Milton where a couple of men lolled on a wharf and a few people were waiting at the little station. They could not get in very close to the sh.o.r.e on account of the flats, but Roy, making a megaphone of an old newspaper, asked if a flash message had been received there. After much shouting back and forth, he learned that the searchlight had been seen but had been thought to be from one of the night boats plying up and down the river. It had evidently meant nothing to the speaker or to anyone else there. Roy asked if they would please ask the telegraph operator if he had seen it.

"He'd understand it all right," he said, a bit disheartened. But the answer came back that the operator had not seen it.

At Poughkeepsie they made a landing at the wharf. Here expressmen were moving trunks about, a few stragglers waiting for some boat peered through the gates like prisoners; there was a general air of bustle and a "city" atmosphere about the place. A few people gathered about, looking at the _Good Turn_ and watching the boys as they made their way up the wharf.

"Boy Scouts," they heard someone say.

There was the usual good-natured curiosity which follows scouts when they are away from home and which they have come to regard as a matter of course, but the big yellow flag seemed to carry no particular meaning to anyone here.

They walked up to the station where they asked the operator if he had seen the searchlight message or heard anything about it, but he had not.

They inquired who was the night watchman on the wharf, hunted him out, and asked him. He had seen the light and wondered what and where it was.

That was all.

"Foiled again!" said Roy.

They made inquiries of almost everyone they saw, going into a nearby hotel and several of the stores. They inquired at the fire house, where they thought men would have been up at night who might be expected to know the Morse code, but the spokesman there shook his head.

"A fellow who was with us got locked in a freight car," Roy explained, "and we signaled to people up this way to stop the train."

The man smiled; apparently he did not take Roy's explanation very seriously. "Now if you could only get that convict that escaped down yonder----"

"We have no interest in him," said Roy, shortly.

He and Tom had both counted on Poughkeepsie with its police force and fire department and general wide-awakeness, and they went back to the _Good Turn_ pretty well discouraged, particularly as the good people of whom they had inquired had treated them with an air of kindly indulgence, smiling at their story, saying that the scouts were a wide-awake lot, and so forth; interested, but good-naturedly skeptical.

One had said, "Are you making believe to telegraph that way? Well, it's good fun, anyway." Another asked if they had been reading dime novels.

The patronizing tone had rather nettled the boys.

"I'd like to have told that fellow that if we _had_ been reading dime novels, we wouldn't have had time to learn the Morse code," said Roy.

_"The Motor Boat Heroes_!" mocked Tom.

"Yes, volume three thousand, and they haven't learned how to run a gas engine yet! Get out your magnifying gla.s.s, Tom; what's that, a village, up there?"

"A house."

"Some house, too," said Roy, looking at the diminutive structure near the sh.o.r.e. "Put your hand down the chimney and open the front door, hey?"

But as they ran in nearer the sh.o.r.e other houses showed themselves around the edge of the hill and here, too, was a little wharf with several people upon it and near it, on the sh.o.r.e, a surging crowd on the edge of which stood several wagons.

"Guess they must be having a ma.s.s meeting about putting a new spring on the post-office door," said Roy. "Somebody ought to lay a paperweight on that village a windy day like this. It might blow away. Close your throttle a little, Tom and put your timer back; we'll run in and see what's up."

"You don't suppose all that fuss can have anything to do with Pee-wee, do you?" Tom asked.

"No, it looks more as if a German submarine had landed there. There wouldn't be so much of a rumpus if they'd got the kid."

But in another moment Roy's skeptical mood had changed as he saw a tall, slender fellow in brown standing at the end of the wharf with arms outspread.

"What's he doing--posing for the movies?"

"He's semaphoring," Tom answered.

"I'll be jiggered if he isn't!" said Roy, all interest at once.

"C--O--M--E---- I--(he makes his I too much like his C)--N. _What do you know about that!_ Come in!"

The stranger held what seemed to be a large white placard in either hand in place of a flag and his motions were not as clear-cut as they should have been, but to Roy, with whom, as he had often said, the semaph.o.r.e code was like "pumpkin pie," the message was plain.