Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island | Page 8

a wild thrill as he fancied he saw a boat hull outlined against the silvered current.
Every few hundred yards the two boys stopped and sent encouraging shouts across the widening water. It was a lonesome, disheartening task, with every step making the task all the harder. Deep bays cut into the shore line; the feeder creeks grew wider and deeper. The night air was chill on their dripping shoulders. Plum Run was no longer a run--it was a real river, and Dave's voice sounded far off when he came out on some bare point to shout his constant:
"Nothing doing--yet."
They were now on a part of the river that was comparatively strange to them. Jerry had more than once followed the Plum this far south, but it had always been by boat, or at best on the west bank, Dave's territory, where a chain of lakes followed the course of the river. Each new twist and turn sent a shiver of nervous dread through him. Many the story of rattlers and copperheads he had heard from fishermen and campers--and the night was filled with unexpected and disturbing noises, overhead and underfoot. Of course he knew that snakes are not abroad at night, but the knowledge did not help his nerves.
Moreover, they were drawing near Lost Island, and no boy of Watertown had ever been known to cast a line within half a mile of that dreaded spot. For Lost Island was the "haunted castle" of the neighborhood. It was nothing more than a large, weed-and-willow- covered five acres, a wrecked dam jutting out from the east bank, and a great gaunt pile of foundation masonry standing high and dry on a bare knoll at the north end.
It had a history--never twice told the same. The dam had been dynamited, that much was sure. By whom, no one knew. The house, if ever a house had been built over those rain-bleached rocks, had been struck by lightning, hurricane, blown up by giant powder, rotted away--a dozen other tragic ends, as the whim of the story-teller dictated. The owner had been murdered, lynched, had committed suicide--no one knew, but everyone was positive that there was something fearfully, terribly wrong with Lost Island.
It was one of the few islands in Plum Run which was not flooded over by the spring freshets, and the land was fertile, yet no one had ever been known to live there through a season; this in spite of the fact that Lost Island was known as "squatter's land," open to settlement by anyone who desired it.
And Lost Island lay barely half a mile farther down the river. Jerry fervently hoped that their search would be ended before they were in the shadow of that forsaken territory. His nerves were not calmed any by the tremble in Dave's voice as he shouted across:
"Lost Island's just below us, Jerry. Shall we go on?"
"Sure thing, Dave!" called Jerry with a confidence he did not feel. "It can't be any worse than what we've already gone through--and we've gone through that all right."
"Supposing," hesitated Dave, "supposing the boat's grounded on Lost Island itself----"
"It's the boat we're looking for, isn't it?" But Jerry knew as he spoke, that, hard as the going was, he would be well satisfied to discover the boat five weary miles farther on.
Once more they plodded along, the dark, forbidding hulk of Lost Island looming nearer and nearer. Just before passing behind the northern point Jerry came out to the water's edge and had cupped his hands about his mouth for a final reassuring shout, when a sudden discovery made him pause. A shout, that seemed to split in mid-air, convinced him that Dave too had just then caught sight of the astounding object.
It was a gleaming, flickering, ruddy light, and it came from the very center of Lost Island!
Jerry's first thought was fright. But that soon gave way to the wildest of conjectures. Suppose Tod had been in the boat. Suppose he had come to in time, but too weak to do more than remain in the boat till it grounded here on Lost Island. A waterproof match-safe easily accounted for the fire. Jerry refused to allow himself to reason any further. There might be a dozen reasons why Tod had not swum the scant hundred yards to shore.
"Do you see it!" finally came a shout from the other side.
"It's a camp fire," called Jerry. "Do you suppose it could possibly be----"
"It couldn't be Tod, could it!" came the answer, showing the same wild hope that had surged through Jerry.
"Oh--_Tod!_" rang out from two trembly throats on both sides of the river.
There was no reply. At least there came no answering shout. But the next instant Jerry rubbed his eyes in bewilderment. The camp fire had been blotted out