Let us now rejoin Frank Chester as he goes to meet the approaching motor boat on which his brother Harry, Billy Barnes and Pudge Perkins, the doctor’s son, had visited the mainland for provisions and mail that morning.
CHAPTER II.—THE WIRELESS.
As Frank rounded the point, the waves almost lapping his feet as he edged along the rocky promontory, he came into full view of the adjunct to the little settlement which was mentioned in the preceding chapter. This was nothing more nor less than the hulk of what had once been a fair-sized schooner. But her masts had vanished, and on her decks nothing now rose above the bulwarks but a towering structure of sufficiently odd form to have set the wits of every man in Motthaven who had seen it at their keenest edge.
This structure began about amidships, where it attained a height of some thirty feet. From thence its skeleton form sloped sharply down toward the stern of the dismantled hulk, much in the manner of the “Chute the Chutes” familiar to most lads throughout the land from their having seen them at amusement resorts. The old schooner—formerly rejoicing in the name of Betsy Jane—had been picked up for a song in Portland by the Boy Aviators, who saw in it exactly what they needed for a bit of experimental apparatus. At their orders the inclined “slide” had been built, and when this was accomplished the craft had been towed into the cove, where it now lay anchored by a stout line, about 200 yards off shore.
As Frank came into view of the black old hull, swinging on her mooring line on the turning tide, a “Hampton” motor boat came chugging round the Betsy Jane’s stern. In it were three lads. The one in the bow handling the wheel is already familiar to our readers, who will at once recognize the cherubic, smiling features of the spectacled Billy Barnes. In the stern, tending to the engine—a five horse power one of the make-and-break type—was Harry Chester, Frank’s younger brother, and standing amidships, waving cheerfully to Frank, was a youth best described as being “tubby” of build, with round rosy cheeks and a most good-natured expression of countenance.
This last lad was Ulysses—otherwise “Pudge” Perkins, the son of the aërial scientist who had sent the lads on their strange mission.
“Batter and butterflies!” he shouted, as the boat drew closer and he spied Frank, “how are you, Frank? Get lonely without your chums?”
“No; I rather enjoyed myself,” laughed back Frank, shouting his words across the water; “you see, while you were away I had some quiet, and a chance to work out a few problems.”
“Mumps and mathematics!” sputtered Pudge amiably, “you don’t mean to say I worry you, Frank?”
By this time the motor boat had approached close to her mooring, at which swung a small boat of the dory type. The motor boat was speedily made fast, and the boyish occupants tumbled into the small boat and Harry rapidly sculled them ashore. Before leaving the motor boat some sacks of supplies had been thrown in, and the small craft was so heavily laden that Pudge had to be sternly warned to keep still on peril of swamping it.