When at last guests dragged a fiddle and a guitar from their baggage and sent a wailing, thumping tune drifting across the dark waters, she disappeared, to come popping out in her silver robe, and to execute a true gypsy dance that charmed her small audience.
“Jeanne, you are a grand prize!” Florence exclaimed when she had finished. “If only there were no fire, and this were a regular summer, you would charm all those land-loving people into a visit to our island just to see you dance!”
“Ah, well,” Jeanne replied soberly, “perhaps I shall yet dance before the flames and lead them into the waters where they will drown.”
“Yes,” Florence agreed, with a laugh, “the way the Pied Piper led the rats into the sea.”
Truly, things were looking up a little for young Skipper Dave and his crew. One thing was disturbing. Wherever they docked they heard this complaint, hundreds of men were arriving to fight the fire, the Iroquois was bringing them, but there was lack of organization and very little was being accomplished.
“If only Chips was here,” said a grizzled fisherman, as Dave and Florence left his dock. Strangely enough, they heard this again and again, always spoken by old men and with great respect, “If only Chips was here. If only Chips—”
Dave exclaimed at last, “I’d sure like to be that man Chips! Wonder if he’s real, or only a myth.”
“Wait and see,” said Florence.
If Florence had hoped that the gray-haired man whom they had rescued in such a dramatic manner, with his granddaughter, from Greenstone ridge, would, before leaving the boat, reveal his identity, she was doomed to disappointment. After paying his bill he gave directions for having his boat and other belongings taken ashore, then lost himself in the crowd that lined the dock seeking information regarding the fire.
“We haven’t seen the last of him,” Dave prophesied. “He wasn’t on the island just for a vacation, you may depend upon that.”