The Motor Rangers' Cloud Cruiser. Goldfrap John Henry
brilliantly as Joe and Ding-dong both poured out their praise unstintedly.
“But, say,” exclaimed Joe, rubbing his head and looking suddenly bewildered, “I’ve got an awful bump here. I guess I must have hit my head before your brave – ”
“I hit it for you to keep you quiet,” burst out Nat; “and if you don’t shut up now, I’ll bust it again.”
Going on deck, the three lads found that it had grown lighter. But the water still boiled about them furiously. Clouds of sulphurous steam arose from it, making them cough and choke.
In the brighter light they had quite an extensive view of their surroundings. But, of the islands, not a trace appeared. They had vanished as if they had been the fabric of a dream.
“By George! I have it!” cried Joe suddenly. “Those islands were of volcanic origin. Didn’t you notice how bare and bleak they were? I’ll bet that in this disturbance, whatever it is, they have subsided as suddenly as they arose.”
“Such cases are not uncommon,” rejoined Nat. “Only last year, Captain Rose, of the missionary schooner Galilee, of San Francisco, reported seeing an island of some extent arise and then vanish again before his very eyes.”
“W-w-w-well,” sputtered Ding-dong, with a grin and a return to his old manner, “w-w-w-we can r-r-r-report the same thing; but as t-t-this isn’t a go-go-gospel schooner maybe nobody w-w-w-will believe us.”
“My suggestion is, that we get the engines going and get out of this without delay,” said Nat.
“Here, too,” agreed Joe Hartley. “There’s nothing to hang about here for.”
An examination of the engines showed that, in falling, Ding-dong had shut off the gasolene supply valve, and had thus stopped the motors. This was soon remedied and the motors set going again. As the Nomad cut her way through the boiling sea where lately the twin islands had stood, they all felt like raising a fervent prayer of thanks to Providence for their wonderful deliverance.
“I’ve often heard of such things on the Pacific, but I never expected to live through one,” was Nat’s comment.
“Nor I,” was Joe’s rejoinder; “and I don’t know that I should care to repeat the experience. But hullo!” he broke off suddenly, “what’s that? No, not over there; off this way!”
He pointed excitedly to a small black object, which, in the now clear atmosphere, was visible at the distance of about a mile to the southeast of them.
“It’s a boat,” announced Nat, after a brief scrutiny of the strange object.
CHAPTER IV.
PROFESSOR GRIGG AND MR. TUBBS
“So it is. What on earth can it be doing out here? Wait a jiffy, I’ll go below and get the glasses.”
Joe, now fully recovered, dived into the after cabin and soon reappeared with a pair of powerful binoculars.
Nat focused them on the distant object, which, by this time, was visible, even to the naked eye, and reported it to be a small boat, painted white, and looking like a ship’s dinghy, or small lifeboat.
Excitement ran high on board the Nomad when Nat proclaimed that he was almost certain he had seen an arm wave from the small craft.
“I couldn’t be quite sure, though,” he admitted. “Here, Joe, you take a look.”
The chubby-faced Joe now bent the glasses on the object of their scrutiny.
He gazed intently for a minute, and then uttered a shout.
“By ginger, Nat, you’re right!” he exclaimed. “There is someone on board. There must be something the matter with them, though, for they seem to be collapsed in a kind of bundle on the thwarts.”
“We must make all speed to their aid,” said Nat, signaling for more power. “Poor fellows, if they have been adrift in all that flare-up, they must be about dead.”
“I should say so,” agreed Joe.
As they neared the boat, Nat began blowing long blasts on the electric whistle, to let the occupants know that aid was at hand. In response, a figure upreared itself in the drifting craft, waved feebly once or twice, and then subsided in a limp-looking heap.
“I reckon we’re only just about in time,” said Nat grimly, coaxing another knot out of the Nomad.
As they drew alongside the boat, they saw that not one but two persons occupied it. The one who had signaled them from a distance proved to be a short, stocky little man, with a crop of brilliant red hair and a pair of twinkling blue eyes. The merry flash in those optics had not been dulled, even by the terrible ordeal through which, it was apparent, he and his companion had passed.
“Hullo, shipmates! Glad to see you!” he chirruped, grinning up at the boys on the bridge with a look of intense good humor.
His white duck clothes were scorched, and his rubicund hair, on close inspection, proved to be singed, but nothing appeared capable of downing his amiability.
His companion was of a different character entirely. He was dressed in duck trousers and black alpaca coat. White canvas shoes adorned his extremely large feet. But it was his face that attracted the boys’ attention. It was large, round and learned looking, with a thin-lipped mouth cutting the lower part of it like a gash. Above this, a huge, bony nose protruded, across which was perched a pair of big, horn-rimmed spectacles. A crop of sparse gray locks crowned his high forehead and was scattered sparingly over his large, but well-shaped head, which was bare.
“God bless my soul, George Washington Tubbs, but I’ve lost my hat again!” he exclaimed to his companion, as the Nomad drew alongside.
“We’d have lost more than that, I fancy, if it hadn’t been for this here craft,” observed George Washington Tubbs, with a wink at the boys. “We’d have been a pair of buckwheat cakes, well browned, professor, when they found us.”
“I wish I could find my hat,” muttered the spectacled individual in a contemplative tone, peering about under the seats.
“It was blown off when the island busted up,” rejoined Mr. Tubbs. “But we’re keeping these gentlemen waiting. I presume,” he went on, addressing the boys, “that it is your intention to rescue us?”
Nat could hardly keep from laughing. His first impression was that they had encountered a pair of harmless lunatics. But something in the manner of both men precluded this idea almost as soon as it was formed.
“Won’t you come aboard?” he said politely.
It seemed as inadequate a remark as Stanley’s famous one to Livingston in the wilds of Africa; but, for the life of him, Nat couldn’t have found other words.
“Thanks; yes, we will,” responded Mr. Tubbs, with decisive briskness. “Oh, by the way! Don’t move! Don’t stir! Just as you are, till I tell you!”
Nat’s suspicions of lunacy began to revive.
Mr. Tubbs bent swiftly, and picked up what looked like a large camera from the bottom of the boat. Only it was unlike any camera the boys had ever seen. It was a varnished wooden box, with a big handle at the side. Mr. Tubbs gravely set it up on its tripod and began turning the handle rapidly.
“Now, you can move about! Let’s get action now!” he shouted, waving his free hand.
“This will be a dandy film!” he continued, addressing the world at large. “Gallant rescue of Professor Thaddeus Grigg and an obscure individual named Tubbs, following the disappearance of the volcanic isles.”
In good-natured acquiescence to Mr. Tubbs’ orders, the boys began bustling about. Ding-dong Bell, who had come on deck when he got the signal to stop his engines, was particularly active.
“Now, then, professor,” admonished Mr. Tubbs, “up with you.”
“Without my hat?” moaned the professor; but he nevertheless clambered over the side of the