But neither Linda nor Dot gave the weather a thought; they went to sleep that night in the joyful expectation of returning to Jacksonville the following day.
At dawn the storm came, pouring down upon them in torrents, arousing the ocean to terrifying waves, shutting out the sight of the island where the autogiro was waiting—imprisoning the girls once more in their desolate loneliness. And now practically all of their food was gone!
[Chapter XIV]
Searching Parties
When Linda Carlton and Dorothy Crowley left Jacksonville Airport on the morning of June twenty-seventh in the Ladybug, and flew into the Okefenokee Swamp, they fully expected to telephone to their families that night, or at least to send a wire to them, as they had promised. So when Miss Emily Carlton heard nothing from her niece she became anxious, and directed her chauffeur to drive her to Mrs. Crowley's cottage.
Both women were established at Green Falls for the summer, which was the favorite resort of all Linda's friends from Spring City. It was there that the girl had called her aunt from Jacksonville, the night that Dot and the Mackays had arrived. Only one telegram had she received since that time.
Mrs. Crowley, who was less inclined to be nervous than Miss Carlton, tried to reassure the latter, saying that she realized how busy the girls would be. But when June twenty-eighth passed without any word from them, she too became alarmed, and together the two women put in a long distance call to Captain Magee at Jacksonville.
Briefly he told them what he knew—of Linda's decision to go "scouting," as she called it. And of her request for the revolvers.
The shock of that piece of news was almost too much for Miss Carlton. She jumped to the conclusion that the girls were dead.