The Boy Aviators on Secret Service; Or, Working with Wireless

by John Henry Goldfrap

That the boys did not sleep their usual peaceful slumbers that night may be imagined. For hours they tossed and turned under their blankets and watched the fire die down and fade first to a ruddy glow and then to blackness.

It might have been an hour after midnight when the moon rose and shimmered over the sea, now perfectly smooth. Had their minds been at ease the boys would have been enraptured with the beauty of the tropic night. As it was, however, the coming of the moon and the illumination of the sea merely served Frank as an opportunity further to scan the scene for any trace of the Carrier Dove.

Casting off his blanket he hastened to the strip of beach on which the smooth swells were breaking with a milder thunder than usual. With his night-glasses he swept the midnight sea from horizon to horizon. There was no result. Thoroughly dejected he cast himself at the foot of a huge palmetto and gazed intently out to sea riveting his mind on the present situation of himself and the little band of which the Boy Aviators were the leaders.

Suddenly the current of his gloomy thoughts was broken in on by an occurrence which brought him to his feet with a bound.

A low lying group of brilliant stars just above the horizon had been blotted out. Something had passed between the boy and the stars. That something could only be a sail, and a sail meant at least rescue from the island.

With a bound Frank, glasses in hand, was knee-deep in the surf.

It was a sail!

With trembling hands he brought the glasses to a better focus. Intently he gazed till his eyes burned in his head.

The craft was a sloop!

Hardly daring to admit to his mind the wild hope that had suddenly arisen, Frank watched the strange sail as it grew nearer. Before the gentle breeze the craft advanced slowly to within a hundred yards of shore and then a dark figure bounded along her decks and there was a loud rattle from her cable as the anchor was let go and she swung into the wind with flapping mainsail. Another moment and her canvas was lowered with a run and she lay at anchor.