“Nothing easier,” said the lawyer. “When the operator at the lighthouse station got your message——”
“Oh, bully, Jess! You did it!” cried Amy, breaking in.
“Did you send that message, Jessie?” asked her father. “Well, I am proud of you. The operator came to the house and told me. Although his partner was sending the news of your predicament broadcast over the sea, he told me of the tug lying behind the island, and that it could be chartered.
“So,” explained Mr. Norwood, “I left Drew to fortify the women—and little Henrietta—and went right over and was rowed out to the Pocahontas by an old fisherman who said he knew you girls. I believe he pronounced you ‘cleaners,’ if you know what that means,” laughed the lawyer.
“Henrietta, by the way, was doing incantations of some sort over the wind and weather when I left the bungalow. She said ‘Spotted Snake’ could bring you all safe home.”
“Bless her heart!” exclaimed Jessie.
That afternoon when the tug worked her way carefully into the dock near the bungalow colony on Station Island, Henrietta was the first person the returned wanderers saw on the shore to greet them. She was dancing up and down and screaming something that Jessie and Amy did not catch until they came off the gangplank. Then they made the incantation out to be:
“That Ringold one can’t have my island—so now! The court says so, and Mr. Drew says so, too. He just got it off the telephone and he told me. It’s my island—so there!”
“Why, how glad I am for you, dear!” cried Jessie, running to hug the excited little girl.
“Come ashore! Come ashore! All of you!” cried Henrietta, with a wide gesture. “I invite all of you. This is my island, not that Ringold’s. You can come on it and do anything you like!”