The films taken earlier in the day were developed, and that evening after dinner Ruth and Helen joined Mr. Hammond and Mr. Hooley in the projection room to see a “run” of the strip taken at the island where the Frenchmen landed.
“Do you know that that island is the one we landed on ourselves the other evening, Ruth?” Helen remarked, as they took their seats and waited in the darkness for the operator to project the new film.
“Do you mean it? I did not notice. The island where I met that strange old man?”
“The pirate—yes,” giggled Helen. “Only we went ashore at the far end of it.”
“I never thought of it—or of him,” admitted Ruth. “Poor, crazy old fellow—”
The machine began its whirring note and they fell silent. Upon the silver sheet there took shape and actuality the moving barge with its banners and streamers and costumed actors. Then a flash was given of the Indians gathering on the wild shore—wondering, excited, not a little fearful of the strange appearance of the white men. The pageant moved forward to its conclusion—the landing of the strangers and the setting up of the banners and the cross.
But suddenly Ruth shrieked aloud, and Mr. Hammond shouted to the operator to “repeat.” The dense underbrush had parted behind the upper tier of Indians and in the aperture thus made appeared a face and part of the figure of a man—a wild face with straggling hair and beard, and the upper part of his body clad in the rags of a shirt.
“What in thunder was that, Hooley?” cried Mr. Hammond. “Somebody butted in. It’s spoiled the whole thing. I thought your men warned everybody off that island?”
“I never saw that scarecrow before,” declared the director, quite as angrily.
But Ruth squeezed Helen’s hand hard.