CHAPTER XIV
More Light and More Mystery
The next two days, Saturday and Sunday, were devoted by the island prisoner to the sending out of further calls, for help, and these calls were met by a campaign of ridicule, similar to that begun by his nemesis on the first day of his imprisonment, according to the diary read by Hal to his companions. A few listeners-in indicated a willingness to come to his rescue, in spite of the plausible ridicule from anonymous source, but when asked where he was imprisoned, ignorance on that subject frustrated all good intentions along that line until his S O S reached Cub at the latter's home on the following Monday.
"I tried to make this mysterious enemy of mine identify himself," wrote the diarist under Saturday date; "but he professed to have a wager posted against me which bound us both to secrecy. This caught me in the solar plexus of my conscience, for I was broadcasting my appeals for help under a false identity. Two or three amateurs looked me up under the name, call, and address that I gave and then broadcast a denunciation of me. It begins to look as if my hazers are going to win a full revenge for the way I laughed at them at college. This day's experience has convinced me that I am in bad throughout the radio atmosphere. It begins to look as if I am up against it and will have to stay here the full two weeks to which those hazing kidnappers of mine sentenced one. I wonder if they will make the term longer because I resorted to the method I have pursued thus far in order to avoid admitting that I had been hazed. Well, I have this consolation, anyway, that they have to pay for my food as long as I am here. They had to furnish me a tent also."
"Caught half a dozen fish today and named this place Friday island because of the day, or night, I was brought here and my subsequent Robinson Crusoe experiences," began the entry for Monday.
Then followed a gleeful memorandum of his apparent success in interesting Cub Perry with an account of his predicament, in spite of the efforts of his radio nemesis to prove him a trifler with the truth. Tuesday's entry closed with a notation of the announcement from Cub that the Catwhisker was about to start on a rescue trip from Oswego to the Lake of the Thousand Islands and would endeavor to find him by radio compass.
"The situation is cleared up very much," Mr. Perry remarked after Hal had finished reading the diary. "The chief problem now remaining to be solved is, what became of your cousin?"
"In other words, that's the mystery before us," said Bud, with a twinkle of fun in his eyes.
"Call it what you will," smiled Mr. Perry. "But it doesn't strike me as in the least mysterious. Evidently he was taken away from this island by the fellows who put him here."
"And what did they do with him?" was the query with which Cub supplemented his father's observation.
"That, of course, we don't know," the latter replied. "They may have taken him over to the Canadian shore and released him for reasons of their own."
"Then it's up to us to find out," Cub inferred.
"Surely. We've had remarkable success thus far. It would be a pity for us to meet with failure. That would spoil our story."
"Story!" exclaimed Bud. "What story?"
"Our story—the one we've been enacting thus far. Look back over our experiences in the last two days and see if you can make anything but a very fascinating yarn out of them."
"It's a radio-college story, isn't it?" Hal suggested.
"Yes," Mr. Perry agreed; "that would be one good way to put it."
"If it didn't involve my cousin in a critical situation, I'd hope the story wouldn't end yet," said Hal. "I'd like to see it run thirty or forty chapters."
"How many chapters do you figure it would make thus far?" asked the director-general of the expedition with a look of keen interest.
"Oh, about ten or fifteen," Hal replied.
"Then, to suit your taste, it ought to be only about half finished."
"Yes, but for my cousin's sake, I wish it were finished right now and
Alvin were safe with us or at home."
"But wishes won't produce results nor cut off chapters," Cub philosophised.
"No, the denouement will work itself out along natural lines under natural laws," Mr. Perry predicted.
"I don't think this story is going to amount to anything as a yarn," Cub announced with a look of superior wisdom.
"Why not?" asked his father.
"Because there's no villain in it. I never did like a story with a tame ending, and the worst kind of a story on earth is one that starts with a thrill and ends with a nap in a sunparlor."
Laughter greeted this grotesque contrast.
"I don't think you need expect any such up-shot in this affair," Mr.
Perry advised.
"Do you expect a villain to show his hand?" Bud inquired.
"It seems to me that we have some villains in the plot already."
"Who are they?" asked Hal.
"How about those sophomores who kidnapped your cousin and marooned him here?"
"Oh, they're only play villains," Cub put in disdainfully.
"How do you know they wouldn't do something worse than haze freshmen?"
"I don't; but until they do they're just play villains, and that doesn't interest me."
"I see," Mr. Perry observed; "you want people to be either very good or very bad."
"No," Cub returned slowly. "I wouldn't put it that way; I don't want anybody to be bad at all; but the fact of the matter is there are lots of good people in the world and a good many bad."
"And to make a good story you think it is necessary to bring good people and bad people together, eh?"
"Well, that's what makes fireworks, isn't it?"
"Oh, ho, I get you now," said Mr. Perry. "You're fond of spectacular things."
"No, I wouldn't put it that way," Cub replied; "but I don't like to see anybody make a bluff at anything and not make good. Now, we've started out with a glorious bluff at some very clever rascality, and it looks as if it's going to prove to be just an ordinary hazing affair."
"It looks to me like a very extraordinary affair, whether it was hazing or not," returned his father.
"And you think we'll find a villain if we investigate it to the end?"
"Why, sure," Mr. Perry smiled. "I shouldn't be surprised if we'd find
Captain Kidd's treasure buried on this island."
"Now you're joking," Bud put in.
"What kind of mathematics would you use to locate that treasure?" Hal inquired with a kind of jovial challenge.
"Cube root," was the reply.
"That means dig at the roots of a four-cornered tree and you'll find a box of pieces of eight shaped like a gambler's dice," Cub inferred.
"That's pretty good imagination, and, I think ought to put us in a frame of mind well suited for further investigation," said Mr. Perry. "Now let's go to the spot where Hal found that diary of his cousin and see if we can't discover something more of significant interest."