“Hi, stranger! A perilous ride we’re having!” Lying on the floor was a heavy-built man with iron-gray hair, and skin bronzed almost to mahogany. His face was drawn with pain and one leg was stiffly bound in crude splints made of broken chair slats. “Captain Jan Bartlot, explorer, welcomes you to his home.” A hand was extended as Lee crawled across the floor. “Devil of an exploration we’re on now! Looks like our last one, though I’ve been in worse fixes and come out—once in Egypt, another time in Borneo.”
Lee felt that this was some mysterious dream he was having. The flood, the drifting, this man with bronzed face and queer accent—all seemed part and parcel of the dream. It was too strange to be true.
But it was true. And this did look to be the last voyage in this life for the man and the boy unless rescue came to them. But how could they get help—how let people know of their perilous position?
His radio could do it! If only he could make it work.
Lee’s whole body was a mass of weariness; his head was still dizzy. But as his senses cleared, he mechanically set to work to repair his little shoulder-pack radio. On the wave-rocked floor he spread out the parts. The heavy little cogwheels, the crankshaft, the coil of stout wire—these could be patched together. Lee rummaged through the derelict house for repair material. He smashed open the swollen doors of closets and cupboards and found glass jars, some tins, nails and pieces of wire. With these he went forward with his task. But it was hopeless! He could find nothing to replace the delicate network of minute wiring that had crossed the little selenized sheets in the transmitter and receiver. The blow that had torn this fragile meshwork away had destroyed all usefulness of the radio. There was nothing for Lee to do except wait and watch the flood wastes for some rescue boat.
Meantime he would try to keep the stranger with the broken leg as comfortable as possible on that dipping, careening house floor. It is remarkable how, in times of dire stress, two utter strangers can be drawn together. In a short time they are as old friends. Friendship made and cemented by danger! Lee Renaud and Captain Bartlot talked of many things.
One could almost forget present danger in listening to Captain Bartlot, mining explorer, tell of the weird, out-of-the-way places of the world where he had gone in search of the rare stones and minerals that were his hobbies. He had prospected down in tropic jungles, where one had to dodge the poison darts of black head-hunters, where one encountered monster animals and reptiles. He had gone into the Arctic wastes, into the underground treasure-houses of buried cities, into the tombs of the ancients.
“If this ark of ours would only stop pitching so, why, boy, I’d show you some of the specimens I have in this case,” Bartlot said, his hand touching a leather roll that lay beside him on the floor. “There’s one of those rare green fire-diamonds from out of an Aztec king’s tomb, and a piece of nickel-iron star stone from a meteor that fell in frozen Greenland. Rather far extremes, eh? A New York museum wants to buy my collection. I came back to my old home where I could catalog my specimens in peace and write up their histories for museum records. And after all my travels and close calls, here I am in my own living-room, my leg smashed by a cabinet sliding across the floor, and the whole house adrift on the flood tide of my native Alabama River.”
The lurching of the drifting house ended the sentence in a groan, as the injured man, despite Lee’s efforts, rolled across the floor.
“The water is coming in fast now,” said Lee. “Do you think I could help you upstairs?”