style="font-size:15px;"> As Frank rounded the point, the waves almost lapping his feet as he edged along the rocky promontory, he came into full view of the adjunct to the little settlement which was mentioned in the preceding chapter. This was nothing more nor less than the hulk of what had once been a fair-sized schooner. But her masts had vanished, and on her decks nothing now rose above the bulwarks but a towering structure of sufficiently odd form to have set the wits of every man in Motthaven who had seen it at their keenest edge.
This structure began about amidships, where it attained a height of some thirty feet. From thence its skeleton form sloped sharply down toward the stern of the dismantled hulk, much in the manner of the “Chute the Chutes” familiar to most lads throughout the land from their having seen them at amusement resorts. The old schooner – formerly rejoicing in the name of Betsy Jane– had been picked up for a song in Portland by the Boy Aviators, who saw in it exactly what they needed for a bit of experimental apparatus. At their orders the inclined “slide” had been built, and when this was accomplished the craft had been towed into the cove, where it now lay anchored by a stout line, about 200 yards off shore.
As Frank came into view of the black old hull, swinging on her mooring line on the turning tide, a “Hampton” motor boat came chugging round the Betsy Jane’s stern. In it were three lads. The one in the bow handling the wheel is already familiar to our readers, who will at once recognize the cherubic, smiling features of the spectacled Billy Barnes. In the stern, tending to the engine – a five horse power one of the make-and-break type – was Harry Chester, Frank’s younger brother, and standing amidships, waving cheerfully to Frank, was a youth best described as being “tubby” of build, with round rosy cheeks and a most good-natured expression of countenance.
This last lad was Ulysses – otherwise “Pudge” Perkins, the son of the aërial scientist who had sent the lads on their strange mission.
“Batter and butterflies!” he shouted, as the boat drew closer and he spied Frank, “how are you, Frank? Get lonely without your chums?”
“No; I rather enjoyed myself,” laughed back Frank, shouting his words across the water; “you see, while you were away I had some quiet, and a chance to work out a few problems.”
“Mumps and mathematics!” sputtered Pudge amiably, “you don’t mean to say I worry you, Frank?”
By this time the motor boat had approached close to her mooring, at which swung a small boat of the dory type. The motor boat was speedily made fast, and the boyish occupants tumbled into the small boat and Harry rapidly sculled them ashore. Before leaving the motor boat some sacks of supplies had been thrown in, and the small craft was so heavily laden that Pudge had to be sternly warned to keep still on peril of swamping it.
“Dories and dingbats! as if my sylphlike form could bother this staunch craft! Yo-ho! my lads, yo-ho! pull for the shore and don’t bother about me.”
The beach was reached without catastrophe, and while Frank helped the others unload the supplies he told them of what had occurred during their absence.
“After you left,” he said, “I got busy figuring on that plane problem. All at once I heard voices, and by listening I soon recognized them as Zenas Daniels and that precious son of his. As I knew what ugly customers they were I turned the current into the fence and sauntered down toward the shore. Sure enough it was Zenas and Zeb and they tried to rush the fence.”
Frank then went on to tell of what had happened. Shouts of laughter greeted his narrative.
“Sugar and somersaults! But I’d have liked to see those chaps do a flip-flap,” chuckled the rotund Pudge, hugging himself in his joy.
“I guess Zenas must have learned that electricity is good for the rheumatiz,” laughed Billy Barnes gleefully; “I’d like to have had a picture of them when they hit the wire,” he added, swinging his inevitable camera at the end of its carrying straps.
“It would have been worth while,” laughed Harry; “but come on, boys, let’s get this stuff up to the hut. Anything to eat, Frank? I’m hungry enough to swallow one of old Zenas’ lobster pots.”
“Sandwiches and sauerkraut! So am I,” chimed in Pudge.
“Great Scott!” cried Billy Barnes, “as if we didn’t know that. If you told us you weren’t hungry it would be something new.”
“Well, I don’t see where I’ve got anything on you when it comes to meal times,” retorted the fat youth.
“Only about six inches more around the waist line,” grinned Billy, dodging a blow from the fleshy youth’s fat but muscular arm.
Shouldering the supplies, which consisted of such staples as bacon, flour, sugar, rice and so forth, the lads made their way up the beach, having first carried the dory’s anchor far up above highwater mark. They took their way along the electrically-charged fence till they came to a spot where there was a gate and a switch to break the connection. Frank turned off the switch, grounded the current, and opened the gate, through which they passed, and entered on a narrow path winding up among the rocks. When they had all gone through, Frank closed the gate, snapped on the switch again and the fence became as mischievous as before.
In single file, headed by Harry, for Frank had now taken a rear place, they toiled up the steep path until, at the summit of the rocky little cliff, it plunged into the woods. Traversing these for a short distance, and always climbing upward, for the island converged to a point in the middle, they at length emerged on a clearing, evidently of nature’s workmanship, for there was no trace of recently felled trees or other human work.
The floor of this clearing was of rock, and off at one side a clear spring bubbled cheerfully over into a barrel set so as to catch the overflow. In the center of the open space stood a small but substantially-built portable house – one of the sectional kind. This formed the living quarters of the young island dwellers. Above it rose, like gaunt, leafless trees, two iron poles set thirty feet apart and stayed by stout guy wires. Between those two poles were suspended, by block and tackle, the aërials, or antennæ, by which messages were caught and sent. Within the hut was the rest of the wireless apparatus, which, with the exception of some improvements of Frank’s devising, was of the portable kind – the same in fact that they had used in Florida. Outside the hut was a small shelter covering a four horse-power gasolene engine, which generated the power for the station.
As most boys are familiar nowadays with the rudiments of wireless telegraphy we are not going into technical details concerning the plant. Suffice it to say that the boys were able to converse with Portland, under favorable conditions, and judged that, in suitable weather, they had a radius of some two hundred and fifty miles.
But it was off to one side of the clearing, the side nearest to the cove, that the most interesting structure on the island was situated. This was more of a covering than a shed, for it consisted merely of a roof supported with uprights; but in bad weather canvas curtains could be drawn so as to make its interior stormproof.
This shed was now open, and under the roof could be seen what was perhaps at the moment the most unique machine of its kind in the world. Looking into that shed you would have said at first that it housed a boat. For the first object that struck your eye was a double-ended, flat-bottomed craft of shimmering aluminum metal, about thirty feet in length and built on the general lines of one of our life-saving craft. That is to say, with “whalebacks” at each end containing air chambers, and plenty of beam and room within the cockpit. A peculiar feature, however, was the addition of four wheels.
But the boat theory would have had to be abandoned the next moment, for above the hull of the
