peaker were starting
toward him. Dan, abruptly conscious of his lack of attire, said
quickly, "Wait a minute! I haven't anything on, you see. I'm Dan
McNally. I owned the schooner that something happened to off the
island last night."

A delicious, trilling laugh greeted the panic of his first words. Then
the clear, sweet voice, serious again, replied, "So you swam ashore
from the boat I signaled?"

"Yes."

"Gee, but I'm glad to find you! And you say you haven't any clothes? I
wonder what...." The voice paused reflectively, then resumed, "Here's
a sheet that I got to signal with in the daytime, if I had a chance.
You might wrap it around you until we find something better."

The low, liquid laugh rang out again; again there was a rustling in
the brush, and presently an arm appeared, holding a rolled-up sheet.

"All right," he called. "Throw it this way."

* * * * *

In a moment, with the sheet draped around him like a Roman toga, and
the kitten on his arm, he advanced to meet the owner of the beautiful
voice.

At the trail he met a trim, active-looking young woman, clad in
out-of-door attire and with a canvas knapsack on her back. Bareheaded,
she wore her brown hair closely shingled. Her face, Dan recognized
from the photograph he had seen five years before, though it was more
lovely than the splotched newspaper picture had hinted. Her brown eyes
were filled with laughter at his predicament and his present unusual
garb.

He bowed with mock gravity and said, "How do you do, Miss Helen
Hunter?"

Brown eyes widened in surprise. "You know me?" she asked.

"Not half so well as I hope to," he grinned.

Then, handing her the kitten, he spoke seriously. "What about this
island? The green flashes? The big machine on the mountain? The metal
thing that jumps about like a grasshopper? What's it all about? You
know anything about it?"

"Yes, I know a good deal about it," she told him soberly. "It's rather
a terrible story. And one you may not believe--no, you've seen them!
But the kitten is hungry, and you must be, too, if you swam ashore."

"Well, yes, I am." Dan admitted.

The storm clouds were drifting out to sea; the sun was beginning to
assert itself, and it now lighted up the scene with a cheerful
brightness. She slung off her pack and sat down cross-legged at the
side of the trail. Dan sat down opposite her as she opened the
knapsack and produced a can of condensed milk, one