CHAPTER XVII A RADIO FREAK

Dim prints fluttered out from the varnished wall--the living-room wall--in the strong breeze blowing through an open window: Pershing, American Commander-in-chief; Foch, Marshal of France; Haig, who held the line; Cadorna, of Flamina’s Italy; Albert of Belgium, kingly of courage!

The Camp Fire Group had held an indoor guessing contest the night before, identifying these and lesser leaders of the Great War, without seeing the names. The pastime over, they had pinned the leaders up on the bare wall of that bungalow living-room.

Now the sea-breeze took its turn at identification as it crept through the window--in the wake of an excited girl whose wildly throbbing heart, like a lamp turned high within her, guided her straight to an adjoining dormitory, a glass-paneled sleeping-porch, closed at present, where was a long row of dim cots.

“I don’t need to grope around for matches. Olive keeps her flash-light by the head of her bed--since she and I haven’t been sleeping in a tent any longer.... What’s this? Oh! her secret that shines in the dark--the powder for radio-paint in that tiny bottle. Perhaps if I wetted a little of it--smeared some more on the dory’s bow--and rowed out a little way, to signal, I’d attract attention better; ’twould act as a foot-light--if they saw it through the glasses--between flashes! Well--here goes!”

Yet as she fluttered forth again through the wind-gap of that window, the Flame turned briefly and waved her hand to those World Heroes upon the wall. Not much tribute to them! At the moment one and all were summed up in the highly colored mental print of her brother Iver, fighting over there.

“He taught me to signal with Morse and Semaphore--to read Wigwag, too! He was wounded in both legs, the very first time he went over the top--crawled on, leading his men--that was at Chateau-Thierry. He’d want me to use the knowledge I got from him.... I’d do it even if that spy were to see me, turn back and kill me, maybe, before the Coast Guards get here.... Priceless stuff, Olive says, this radio-powder. Bah! who cares, if it helps? Now--now, she’s a regular lightning-bug, my camouflaged dory!”

Lost to all sense of economic values, she was wetting a full big pinch of the costly powder on her burning palm, with a drop or two of sea-water, smearing it over the dory’s camouflaged bow--then shoving her off, forgetful even of Betty, a trembling Holly--though of loyalty still evergreen--cowering upon the beach-edge.

“Now! what’s the attention-signal--Morse? Let’s see!” The girl’s left hand pushed her hair back from her brow, she crouching in the lightning-bug dory, a few yards from shore. “Yes! ‘A,’ sent over and over; ‘dit-dar-dit-dar-dit-dar--dit,’ if signaled with a buzzer; short, long, short, long, so on, with the light!”

She was standing now--as the spy had done in the motor-boat, the launch which had melted off into far shadows of the bay--holding her signaling flash-light aloft, pressing her thumb lightly, with rhythmic unevenness, upon a little lever at the side.

And, lo! the shore which she was facing--the wild island-shore merging into the long sand-bar--awoke, opened its eyes, answered with bright blinker flashes of understanding from lonely watch-tower and patrolling surf-man on his tiresome beat.

“Short, short, long! That would be dit-dit-dar--meaning U. N.--they got me! Now--now what message shall I send?... Oh, I wonder if he’ll get me, the spy, turn back an’ get me, before they come? Never mind; Iver----”

One sidelong glance out into the curtaining shadows of the bay! Then, “Catch spy in launch. Out--bay!” slowly spelled out the winking flash-light, pressed by a girl’s unfaltering little thumb.

And fast as the shore had blinked, it responded! There was something unusual about the direct, correct message; about a strange, faint unearthly shimmer, seen through binoculars, bathing the spot--the boat--whence it came, when the flash-light wasn’t speaking.

Tower and patrol, both, flashed their message to the white Coast Guard Station upon the island-shore. A strong search-light scanned the bay.

In its radiance forth leaped the light steel life-boat, rowed by strong arms; the Coast Guard power-boat, the old self-bailer, too, hustling as she could do, in an emergency.

“O dear! I hope she can show a little more speed--that self-bailing ark--than Captain Andy gave her credit for. Otherwise, she won’t overhaul the launch! He--may--get away, after all!... Oh-h, there’s Betty calling! Poor little Betty!”

With signal-flashes in her finger-tips that seemed to light the water round her, the sands ahead, the Flame shoved her dory’s nose up on to the beach again.

A wild-eyed Betty met her! Some one else!

“Is it true--true--that they’re after a spy, the Coast Guards--that you signaled them? You?” cried Atlas.

Sara turned a flash-light beam upon him and nodded.

“We--we’ve been searching for you! Just got here!... Oh! isn’t there a boat--a boat of any kind--anywhere--on this old graveyard of a beach? I--I want to take after him, too!... I--must!”

The boyish tones wildly bristled as Atlas’ search-light glance implored the sands, resting for a fatuous moment upon the dim shape of a canoe--Little Owl’s birch-bark canoe.

“Pshaw! you couldn’t go in her; she’s light’s a feather. Here, you may take my--dory!”

“Heavens! Her! She looks as if she had escaped from some--boat--bedlam!” Atlas drew a raving breath.

“Yes--she’s camouflaged--a perfect lightning-bug, too! But you can have her!” With an hysterical laugh the dory’s owner stepped out, laid down her hand-painted oars, deaf to the rude voice maligning her boat--the dim, beauteous home-sands, too. “And I--I won’t ask to go in her, either!” she magnanimously added.

“Gee! but you’re a brick.”

“No more than you are! You held up shipping--that heavy old ship’s rib--or seemed to!”

But Atlas was deaf to the tardy tribute, as the dory, no longer even a bead-eye, but a radio nightmare--all ghostly a-shimmer--dashed out upon the tide.

“Well! Well! we got him--nabbed him. The Coast Guard men said they never saw a dory stretch herself like that one; that I just drove her--sent her for all she was worth!... They--they nearly cracked their sides laughing at her, too, when ’twas all over--wanted to know what ‘nut palace’ she’d escaped from--said the spy must have thought he had an evil spirit on his track!”

It was an hour later. Atlas was holding forth to nineteen girls and their breathless Guardian upon the dark sands--on the very spot where the air-scouts, spy-hunting aviators, had made a landing.

“I--I went ashore with them at the Station--after they searched the launch,” he added.

“Oh! what did they find in her? a--a woman’s wig?” cried Sara, who had been remembering, furiously remembering--minutely recalling--during the past hour. “A--a--the most charming brown wig, with little wavy threads of gray in the mat over the ears; that--that’s what ‘Old Perfect,’ with the feather turban, the muff in April, the rather high cheek-bones, the very smooth skin, wore up at Camp ... Goody! I was envying her the--gray--hairs.” The voice of the fire-witch broke upon a mettlesome little canter of laughter.

“Yes, they did find a dress-suit case with a false bottom; a feminine wig--some further disguise--was stowed away in it.”

“But who--captured--him?” It was a low, thrilled uproar of question. “Not--not the camouflaged dory?”

“No, the Coast Guard captain. The launch was showing her heels to the old self-bailer. The spy shifted his course--put about--was trying to dodge back towards the river--tidal river--down which he came. The steel boat headed him off, and--and the dory, too! Then he jumped overboard, tried to swim. But the captain yelled at him to halt--surrender--or he’d fire. Ex-ci-ting! Well! I should say so.... Good of you to let me take your boat--if she is the most ‘witchetty’ thing that ever floated!”

“You--you upheld shipping.”

Within the radiant ring of the powerful flash-light belting the sands, a boy and girl--Atlas and the Flame who had defied him--looked into each other’s feverish eyes with comradeship, not challenge now--comradeship that might well grow to something more charming, as the years went on--when the white flag of Peace should float once more over a progressive world.

Misunderstanding was of the past--mockery, too! They had come through the Game “with their wings,”--the patient, toiling service-game for freedom and Country; they were one with their brothers of the skies--with the heroes of trench and top, over there.

Or, to change the figure, all had done their bit, and, in two instances, by might and magic of service, automatically swelling, it had become the main bitt to which the main-sheet of safety, the mainsail of progress, were belayed.

And yet--yet--in another minute even that failed to satisfy the girl in the case--left her with a hollow feeling of dissatisfaction--for she was a creature of moods shading like her eyelashes, and suffering from reaction, too!

The flash-light winked itself out in her hand--and all her exultation with it.

She hid her now pale face in the curve of an arm in a green-stained middy-blouse.

“Oh! yes, it’s ex-ci-ting.... Ter-ri-bly exciting!” she moaned to the sands. “But how I wish it was over! I don’t want to distrust those about me. And maybe he thought he had a grain of right--though he was a spy!” The tired concession was breathed into the curve of a trembling elbow. “Cool--cool he was, anyhow--here and there! Oh-h! if only the cry of the children--the little children over in France--could come true, and it was: ‘Fini la Guerre!... Fini--forever--la Guerre!’ If Peace could come again!”