As soon as the girls reached the little wooden table holding the wireless, Lillie and Edith instinctively drew back, feeling that as Nathalie was the one who had found the baby she had the prior right to send this call for help. Seating herself, Nathalie quickly adjusted the telephones over her ears and set to work. But to her surprise, as she pressed the wireless key on the detector to close the circuit, she heard no sharp crack, and saw no spark-gap. Again she tried with like result. “Why, what is the matter with it?” she questioned turning towards the girls in some trepidation.
“Let me try,” pleaded Lillie. But alas, she met with no better luck than Nathalie, although she tried one experiment after the other. “I think it is the strangest thing,” she commented staring helplessly before her; “what can be the matter with the thing anyway?”
But Edith, who had dropped down on her hands and knees to examine the battery under the wooden board, now rose to her feet crying, “There is nothing the matter with the condenser, it must be that the aerial wires are not right!”
As the girl made this announcement there was an ominous silence as they stared with distressed, worried faces at one another. “Oh, what can we do?” lamented Nathalie, “could we—”
“I know what we can do,” said Lillie suddenly; “we can row across the Lake to the camp!”
CHAPTER XXIV—THE WIRELESS OPERATOR
“Yes, that is the only thing we can do,” said Nathalie quickly, “but suppose the doctor is not there! You know the boys said they were going on a two or three days’ tramp this week.”
“Well, I’ll tell you how we can settle that problem and make sure,” replied Lillie, whose mind acted quickly. “Suppose we row over while Edith goes on her wheel to Mrs. Hansen’s and telephones to Boonton.”
“What, go all that distance alone in the dark?” protested the Sport in an appalled tone, “and then I don’t know what doctor to telephone to!”
“What, Edith, do you want us to think that you are really afraid?” laughed Lillie; “you, the girl who has never shown the white feather at any dare? Why, I—”