me," she stammered. "If you need me, you'll find me there."

Feeling her way along the rail, she disappeared into the darkness.

At almost the same moment there came the bellowing sound of a voice that
could be heard above the roar of the storm:

"Curlie! Curlie! Come here! Something coming in. Can't make it out!"

It was Joe Marion. Stumbling aft, now banging his feet down hard and now
treading on empty air, Curlie made his way to the radiophone cabin.

CHAPTER XVII

A BLINDING FLASH OF LIGHT

"It's an S. O. S.," screamed Joe at the top of his voice, as Curlie came
hurrying up. "They sent that much in code and I got it all right. Then
they tried to tell me their troubles and all I got was a mumble and
grumble mixed with static, which meant nothing at all to me. Repeated it
three times. Very little space in between. Should have called you, I
guess, but there really wasn't time; besides I kept thinking I'd start
getting what he sent."

"Where'd it come from?" Curlie asked as he snapped the receiver over his
head.

"Straight out of the storm. Fifty or sixty miles northeast."

Curlie groaned. "That's what I get for being impatient. Ought to have
stayed right here. It's those boys all right and we've missed them; may
never pick them up again."

For a time there was silence in the wireless cabin, such a silence as
one experiences in the midst of a rising storm. The flap of ropes, the
creak of yard-arms, the rush of waves which were already washing the
deck, the chug-chug-chug of the prow of the brave little craft as she
leaped from wave-crest to wave-crest; all this made such music as an
orchestra might, had every man musician of them gone mad. And this was
the "silence" Curlie did not for a long time break.

"Well!" he shouted at last, "that settles one thing. I was right. They
did go in search of that mythical island."

"You can't be sure," said Joe. "Might have been a fishing boat led off
her course by a chase after a whale. You never can tell."

"No, that's right," Curlie agreed.

"What makes you so sure the island on that map is mythical?" asked Joe.

"Doesn't sound reasonable."

"Lots of things don't. Take the radiophone; it wouldn't have sounded
reasonable a few years ago. Lot of new things wouldn't. A new island is
discovered somewhere about every year. Why not around here?"

"Anyway, I don't believe it," shouted Curlie.

Yet, after all, as he thought of it now he found himself hoping ag