T. C. Bridges
Martin Crusoe (1) (A Boy’s Adventure on Wizard Island)

I. The Mysterious Messages

With the telephones of his wireless fixed over his ears, a pencil in his hand, and a writing-pad before him, Martin Vaile sat listening to the signals that came through.

Some minutes passed, and Martin, tapping idly on the paper with his pencil, seemed little interested in the sounds. Then suddenly his attitude changed, his back straightened, and a look of eager interest lit his keen gray eyes.

His pencil began to work, and he rapidly jotted down a series of figures and letters on the paper.

Then he stopped writing and sat waiting, but nothing more came, and, glancing at his watch, he noted the time, slipped off the receiver, and ran his fingers through his close, curly hair.

The door of the big room opened, and a boy came quickly in, a boy about Martin’s age, but as dark and slight as Martin was tall and fair.

“That you, Basil?” said Martin quickly. “I’m glad you’ve come.”

Basil Loring gave the other a quick glance.

“What’s the matter, old man?” he asked lightly. “Why this frown on your marble brow? What horrible news have you been absorbing out of space?”

“Nothing horrible, Basil, but something most unthinkably baffling. I’ve just had the sixth message from the unknown sender.”

“The sixth message?” repeated Basil, looking puzzled. “What in the name of sense are you talking about?”

“Oh, I forgot. You’ve not been here for a week, and don’t know anything about it. Well, every night for six nights past I have had a message from this unknown station. It gives the latitude and longitude, and says ‘Help! Come to me!’”

“Sounds like an S.O.S., Martin. Is it a ship in trouble?”

“Bless you, no. Nothing of the sort. This is from a much more powerful installation than any ship has. Besides, it isn’t a ship. The tuning is different.”

“That’s Greek to me,” said Basil. “Explain.”

“Well, you know we use different length waves for wireless work, and ships use comparatively short waves. By adjusting my apparatus, I can cut those out completely, so that all I catch is from the giant land stations such as the Eiffel Tower or Washington. Their wavelengths are much greater, and cannot be heard with the ordinary adjustment. The other night, as an experiment, I tried an even wider adjustment, and then came this mysterious message, or, rather, the duplicate of it; and each night since, just at the same hour, it has come again. As I told you, this is the sixth.”

Basil stared. “I understand about the waves,” he said. “But surely, Martin, if this is a big station that you are hearing from, it’s easy enough to find where it is! All the big stations are known, aren’t they?”

“This one isn’t,” Martin answered. “I can tell you this much: if the sender states his position correctly, it’s right in the middle of the sea.”

This time Basil was startled.

“If that’s the case, it must be from a ship. And yet you say that it’s from a big installation.”

Suddenly his face cleared. “Tell you what, Martin, it’s someone having a joke with you—some fellow in one of the other big stations playing a game.”

Martin shook his head decidedly.

“It’s not that, Basil. The message does come from the spot it is supposed to come from, or from that neighborhood. You see, nowadays, we are able to tell pretty accurately the direction of wireless signals. I have made experiments during the past week, and, as far as I can gather, the station is exactly where the sender says it is.”

“Then there must be an island there,” said Basil.

“If there is, it is not on my map, and, mind you, I have looked up the best government charts.”

Basil shook his head helplessly.

“It’s beyond me, Martin,” he said. “Show me the spot on the map.”

Martin took a chart out of a drawer and unrolled it. It represented that vast tract of the North Atlantic Ocean between the Canary Islands and the Bermudas, between twenty and thirty degrees north. Near the center of this, but a little to the west, Martin had made a tiny cross in pencil.

“There’s the spot,” he said.

Basil looked at it for some moments. “Why,” he said slowly, “that’s in the Sargasso Sea.”

Martin nodded.

“Exactly. It is right in the center of that tremendous plain of weed which is drifted by circling currents into that dead water, and covers more than a million square miles. That is where the mysterious island must be, and that is the spot from which these queerly-tuned messages must be reaching me.”

Basil stared first at the map and then at Martin.

“If the island is not charted, the only reason can be that the weed has prevented ships from getting to it,” he said. “And if ships can’t get to it, how in the name of sense has this fellow got there? And if he has got there, how did he ever get his wireless there, or put it up?”

“Just the questions I have been asking myself, Basil, and just the questions I mean to solve before I am very much older. I hope to be on that island within a month.”

“You’re going there?” cried Basil. “But how? Of course, you have the yacht, but she can’t travel through the weed any more than any other ship.”

“True, my boy. But if one can’t travel through the weed the other way is to travel over it.”

Basil’s eyes shone.

“A ’plane!” he said breathlessly.

“I shall take the Bat, Basil. She will do the trick if anything will. A flying boat ought to be the very thing for the Sargasso.”

Basil drew a long breath.

“Bully!” he said. “Oh, Martin, I wish I could come with you!”

“I wish you could, Basil,” replied Martin gravely; “but I’m afraid it’s out of the question. You’ve got to go back for your last term at ‘prep.’ school. In any case, your father would not hear of it.”

“What about yours?” questioned Basil, quickly.

“I am wiring him tomorrow,” Martin answered.

Twenty-four hours later Martin stood on the wide-stretching lawn. The stately house lay behind him; in front the Atlantic sparkled under the spring sun, and in the cove below lay the Flying Fox, a magnificent ocean-going craft of twelve hundred tons, in which Martin and his father had traveled thousands of miles across the seas of all the world. Martin’s father was a very rich man, whose business interests lay in many countries.

The boy’s eyes were on the drive. He was expecting the telegraph boy, with the answer to the message he had sent the previous day to his father, who was in Florida attending to one of the great land settlement projects he and his partner, Morton Willard, had started there.

A boy on a bicycle came up the distant drive, and Martin walked quickly down the slope to meet him.

“Telegram for you, sir,” said the lad.

“Thanks,” answered Martin with a smile.

“Dad is prompt,” he said. “I hardly hoped to hear today.”

He tore the envelope open, unfolded the flimsy sheet, and read the message.

The color faded from his face; his eyes went blank; he staggered and fell on the grassy bank. The slip fell from his shaking fingers.

Then, with a big effort, he pulled himself together, and, picking up the telegram, forced himself to read it again. This was the message:

DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU YOUR FATHER DIED SUDDENLY TODAY RESULT OF HEART FAILURE. AM MAKING ALL ARRANGEMENTS FOR FUNERAL AND WRITING BY THIS MAIL. WILLARD, SEMINOLE HOTEL, LACOOCHEE, FLORIDA.

“Dead! My father dead!” groaned poor Martin.

The shock was terrible, for Martin’s mother had died when he was only a baby, and he and his father had been the greatest chums imaginable.

And now his father had died, hundreds of miles from home, without a last word!

For many minutes Martin sat there, staring blankly in front of him, but with his mind’s eyes fixed on his father’s face as he had last seen him, barely a month before. When at last he rose and went to the house he looked five years older than when he had left it.

How the next days passed Martin hardly knew. Everyone was as kind as could be, but he was in a dazed state and hardly knew what was happening around him.

What roused him at last was a visit from the family lawyer, Mr. Vincent Meldrum. He arrived with a bag full of papers and a very grave face. They met in the library, an oak-paneled room full of Mr. Harrington Vaile’s books.

“Martin,” began Mr. Meldrum, “I am going to tell you at once that I have bad news for you.”

“It can’t be any worse than I have had already,” said poor Martin. “You needn’t be afraid to tell me.”

The lawyer looked at Martin and sighed.

“Martin,” he said, “I have known you from a child, and I believe you have plenty of pluck. You will need it all, I fear. Having said that, I will not keep you in suspense. The big land scheme at Cleansand Bay has come to utter smash and the papers are saying it was a swindle from the beginning.”

Martin leaped to his feet.

“A swindle! Who accuses my father of having anything to do with a swindle?”

“Steady, Martin—steady!” begged the lawyer. “You and I know better, but others do not. I fear there is no doubt about the swindle; but your father did not know this. He took Mr. Willard’s word that the scheme was sound. Willard ran the whole thing, and, as you will remember, kept your father away from Florida on one excuse or another until quite lately.”

Again Martin sprang to his feet.

“Then he murdered my father!” he cried fiercely.

Mr. Meldrum raised his hand.

“You must not make rash accusations, Martin,” he said gravely. “There is no suspicion, let alone proof, that Mr. Willard did anything of the kind: in any case your father’s heart was said to be weak.”

“Then it was the shock that killed him,” declared Martin; “the shock of finding that he was mixed up in a swindle.”

“That is possible,” replied the lawyer. “Now listen, Martin. This is a bad business. The loss to the investors runs into an enormous sum. I fear that all your father’s property will be seized to pay the debt. There is this much comfort. The courts cannot touch the money you have under your mother’s will, so you will have a small but sufficient income to—”

Martin broke in with a quick question.

“Is my father’s money enough to satisfy the creditors?”

“I doubt it, Martin.”

“Then you will take every penny, Mr. Meldrum—every penny, do you hear? Sell the house, the yacht—everything. Do you think I would let anyone say that my dad had swindled them?”