“If that isn’t nonsense!” Louise exclaimed, peering over her chum’s shoulder. “And the note is signed, ‘Noah.’”
“Someone’s idea of a joke, I suppose,” Penny replied. She tossed the paper away, then reconsidering, retrieved the message and with the bottle, placed it in the cockpit of the boat. “Well, it’s rained a lot this Spring, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the Great Deluge.”
“Noah was a Biblical character,” Louise commented thoughtfully. “I remember that when God told him it would rain forty days and forty nights, he built an ark to resist the flood waters. And he took his family in with him and all the animals, two by two.”
“Noah was a bit before our time,” laughed Penny. “Suppose we shove off for home.”
By dint of much physical exertion, the girls pushed “Pop’s Worry” out into the shallow water. Penny, who had removed shoes and stockings, gave a final thrust and leaped lightly aboard. Raising the wet sail, she allowed it to flap loosely in the wind.
“We’ll have everything snug and dry by the time we reach home,” she declared confidently. “Tired, Lou?”
“A little,” admitted her chum, stretching out full length on the deck. “I like to sail but I don’t like to bail! And just think, if you hadn’t been so crazy to get that blue bottle, we’d have spared ourselves a lot of hard work.”
“Well, a fellow never knows. The bottle might have provided the first clue in an absorbing mystery! Who do you suppose wrote such an odd message?”
“How should I know?” yawned Louise. “Probably some prankster.”
Taking a zigzag course, “Pop’s Worry” tacked slowly upstream. Whipped by a brisk wind, the wet sail gradually dried and regained its former shape.