coat. White canvas shoes adorned his extremely large feet. But it was his face that attracted the boys’ attention. It was large, round and learned looking, with a thin-lipped mouth cutting the lower part of it like a gash. Above this, a huge, bony nose protruded, across which was perched a pair of big, horn-rimmed spectacles. A crop of sparse gray locks crowned his high forehead and was scattered sparingly over his large, but well-shaped head, which was bare.
“God bless my soul, George Washington Tubbs, but I’ve lost my hat again!” he exclaimed to his companion, as the Nomad drew alongside.
“We’d have lost more than that, I fancy, if it hadn’t been for this here craft,” observed George Washington Tubbs, with a wink at the boys. “We’d have been a pair of buckwheat cakes, well browned, professor, when they found us.”
“I wish I could find my hat,” muttered the spectacled individual in a contemplative tone, peering about under the seats.
“It was blown off when the island busted up,” rejoined Mr. Tubbs. “But we’re keeping these gentlemen waiting. I presume,” he went on, addressing the boys, “that it is your intention to rescue us?”
Nat could hardly keep from laughing. His first impression was that they had encountered a pair of harmless lunatics. But something in the manner of both men precluded this idea almost as soon as it was formed.
“Won’t you come aboard?” he said politely.
It seemed as inadequate a remark as Stanley’s famous one to Livingston in the wilds of Africa; but, for the life of him, Nat couldn’t have found other words.
“Thanks; yes, we will,” responded Mr. Tubbs, with decisive briskness. “Oh, by the way! Don’t move! Don’t stir! Just as you are, till I tell you!”
Nat’s suspicions of lunacy began to revive.
Mr. Tubbs bent swiftly, and picked up what looked like a large camera from the bottom of the boat. Only it was unlike any camera the boys had ever seen. It was a varnished wooden box, with a big handle at the side. Mr. Tubbs gravely set it up on its tripod and began turning the handle rapidly.
“Now, you can move about! Let’s get action now!” he shouted, waving his free hand.
“This will be a dandy film!” he continued, addressing the world at large. “Gallant rescue of Professor Thaddeus Grigg and an obscure individual named Tubbs, following the disappearance of the volcanic isles.”
In good-natured acquiescence to Mr. Tubbs’ orders, the boys began bustling about. Ding-dong Bell, who had come on deck when he got the signal to stop his engines, was particularly active.
“Now, then, professor,” admonished Mr. Tubbs, “up with you.”
“Without my hat?” moaned the professor; but he nevertheless clambered over the side of the Nomad, the boys helping him, while Mr. Tubbs kept up a running fire of directions.
“Keep in the picture, please. Look around now, professor. Fine! Good! Great!”
These last exclamations came like a series of pistol shots, and seemingly proclaimed that the speaker was well satisfied with the pictures he had made. The professor being on board, Mr. Tubbs followed him, the boys helping him up with his machine, and with a box which, so he informed them, contained extra films.
Professor Grigg, as the red-headed, moving-picture man had called him, was too much exhausted to remain on deck, but retired to the cabin escorted by Ding-dong. As he went he was still murmuring lamentations over his hat.
“It’s his weakness,” explained Mr. Tubbs, who seemed to be in no wise the worse for his experience, “he’s lost ten hats since we left ’Frisco in the Tropic Bird.”
The name instantly recalled to Nat an item he had read in the papers some months before, concerning the setting forth on a mysterious expedition of Professor Grigg of the Smithsonian Institute and one George Washington Tubbs, a moving-picture photographer of some fame. The object of the expedition had been kept a secret, and the newspapermen could elicit no information concerning it. It had been rumored, however, that its purpose was to record the volcanic phenomena of the South Pacific.
“Is – is that the Professor Grigg?” asked Nat, in rather an awestruck tone.
“It is,” responded Mr. Tubbs, “and this is the Mr. Tubbs. I’ve taken moving pictures of the Russo-Japanese war, of the coronation, of the Delhi Durbar, of the fleet on battle practice, of – of everything, in fact. I’ve been up in balloons, down in submarines, sat on the cowcatchers of locomotives, in the seats of racing automobiles, hung by my eyebrows from the steel work of new skyscrapers; but I’ll be jiggered if this isn’t the first time I ever took a moving picture of an island being swallowed up alive – oh, just like you’d swallow an oyster.”
“Then the island was swallowed?” asked Joe, with wide-open eyes.
“Swallowed? I should say so. And with a dose of boiling water, too. But I got my pictures! I got my pictures!” concluded Mr. Tubbs triumphantly.
“But where’s your schooner? How did you come to be drifting about in an open boat?” inquired Nat.
“Ah, as Mr. Kipling says, ‘that’s another story,’” said Mr. Tubbs. “I guess I’ll have to leave that part of it to the professor. But – hullo, here he comes now. I guess he’s feeling better already. Possibly he’ll tell you the story for himself.”
“I shall be very glad to,” said the professor, who, after partaking of some stimulants from the Nomad’s medicine chest, already felt, as he said, “much revived.”
“You see in us, young men,” he continued, “the sole members of the volcanic phenomena expedition of the Smithsonian Institute and the British Royal Geographical Society, who adhered to the duty before them. Would you care to hear how we came to be adrift as you found us?”
“Would we?” came in concert from the boys.
“Then I – ” began the professor, and then broke off and felt his bare head. “Can – can any one lend me a hat?” he asked.
CHAPTER V.
TROUBLE WITH A HAT
He was speedily furnished with a peaked yachting cap belonging to Nat. It sat oddly, almost comically, on his large head, but none of the boys was inclined to laugh at the professor just then. They were far too interested in hearing what the eccentric man had to tell about the voyage of the Tropic Bird.
“We sailed from San Francisco, as you no doubt know from the papers,” said the professor, “without the object of our mission being divulged. There is no harm in telling it now.
“It had been ascertained that a certain phase of the sun spots would be reached on this present day. As you are perhaps aware, it has long been a theory of scientific men that there was some intimate relation between that phenomenon and the volcanic disturbances and earthquakes that occur in these seas from time to time.”
“I think that we learned something like that in physics,” said Nat, nodding.
“In physic?” chuckled Joe, but was frowned down.
The professor went on:
“It was my duty, assigned to me by the Smithsonian Institute
