But the boys had other interests in addition to radiophony to absorb their attention. At last word had come that the tourists had started home, and the boys were excited at the thought of soon seeing their parents and Rose again. They had written that they would come from Norfolk to Boston on the steamer Horolusa, a combination freight and passenger ship.
“Say!” exclaimed Bob, when he read this, “wouldn’t it be great if they’d send us a wireless message from their ship when they pass Ocean Point on the way to Boston?”
“You bet it would,” said Joe. “Do you suppose they’ll think of it?”
“They’ll probably be passing here some time to-morrow,” said Jimmy; “so it will be up to us to keep close to the radio outfit in case they do send a message. Probably they’ll never think of it, though.”
“I hope they have good weather for the trip,” said Bob. “It doesn’t look very favorable just now.”
“It doesn’t, for a fact,” agreed Joe. “It’s been cloudy and muggy for the last two days, and it’s worse than ever to-day. But it probably won’t amount to anything. There isn’t apt to be a bad storm at this time of year.”
But the weather failed to justify Joe’s optimism. As the day wore on the cloudiness increased, and toward evening a breeze sprang up that kept freshening until it had attained the proportions of a gale. All that night it blew with increasing violence, and the next day, when the boys went down to look at the ocean, they were alarmed at the size and fury of the surf. Toward evening their anxiety increased, as no word had come from the Horolusa, although they had spent the afternoon at their radio set. They overheard messages of distress from other vessels, however, and knew that the storm was creating havoc along the coast. Night came on early, with the gale still blowing with unabated fury, and after supper Bob proposed that they go to the big radio station and see if there was any news there of the Horolusa.
“That will be fine,” said Jimmy. “If they haven’t received any news of the ship there, we can be pretty sure that she is all right, because they would have been sure to get any distress message if it had been sent out.”
The boys made a hasty end of their meal, and then started through the storm and darkness for the wireless station. It was raining in torrents that were driven before the gale and penetrated the thickest clothing. The only light the boys had came from an occasional jagged flash of lightning, and they kept to the path more by instinct than knowledge of its direction. But, with heads lowered to the storm, they plodded doggedly on, their minds filled with forebodings of disaster to their loved ones. The terrible roar of the breakers on the beach made them shudder with dread.
Suddenly a tremendous flash of lightning split the sky, and in the fraction of a second that the vivid glare endured they saw a man coming toward them whom Bob and Joe recognized at once. It was Dan Cassey, the scoundrel who had tried to cheat Nellie Berwick in the matter of the mortgage on her home.