"Not very heavy wire for an aerial," he remarked, "but heavy enough.

We'll have a perpendicular aerial, which is better than horizontal, and it'll hang pretty high. All that's in our favor."

When the balloons had risen to a height which allowed the aerial, to which was attached a heavier insulated wire, to float free, he gave the cord to the engineer and began busying himself at putting together what appeared to be a small windmill with curved, bra.s.s fans.

"A windmill," he explained, "is the surest method of obtaining a little power. Always a little breeze floating round. Enough to turn a wheel.

This one is connected direct with a small generator. Gives power enough for a radiophone. Might use batteries but they might go dead on you.

Windmill and generator is as good after ten years as ten days.

"There you are," he heaved a sigh of relief, as he struck the transmitter which he had taken from his apparently inexhaustible "bag of tricks."

"Unless I miss my guess, we have a perfectly good radiophone outfit of fair power. All the rest of it is stowed down there in the bottom. We should be heard distinctly at from a hundred to five hundred miles. In the future," he smiled, "every lifeboat and raft will be equipped with one of these handy little radiophone outfits, which are really not very expensive."

Then, with all eyes fixed upon him, he began to converse with the unseen and unknown, who, sailing somewhere on that vast sweep of water, were, they hoped, to become their rescuers.

In perfectly natural tones he spoke of their catastrophe and their present predicament. He gave their approximate location and the names of their party. This after an interval of two minutes, he repeated.

Then, suddenly his lips parted in a smile. The others watched him with strained attention. After a minute had elapsed, he said with apparent satisfaction:

"We'll await your arrival with unmixed pleasure.

"The Steamship Torrence," he explained, "in crossing the Atlantic was driven two hundred miles off her course. She is now only about seventy-five miles from us. Being a fast boat, she should reach us in three or four hours.

"And now," he said with a smile, "since we have no checker-board on deck and are entirely deprived of musical instruments of any kind, perhaps you would like to hear me tell why I was sure the mysterious island which has caused us so much grief, did not exist."

"By the way," he said turning to Vincent, "do you chance to have the original of that old map with you?"

The boy pointed to his aviator's sodden leather coat. Although he had gained much strength from the warm blankets, he had found himself unable to speak of the tragedy which had befallen his companion on the _Stormy Petrel_. Now as he saw Curlie draw the water-soaked map from the pocket of his coat, a look of horror overspread his face and he muttered hoa.r.s.ely:

"Throw it into the sea. It brings nothing but bad luck."

"No, no," said Curlie, "we won't do that."

"Then you must keep it," the other boy exclaimed. "I don't want ever to see it again. Alfred made me a present of it just before we hopped off."

"All right," said Curlie, "but you are parting with a thing of some value."

"Value!" exclaimed Vincent. Then he sat staring at Curlie in silence as much as to say: "You too must have been bitten by the gold-bug." But that Curlie had not been bitten by that dangerous and poisonous insect will be proved, I think, by the pages which follow.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE STORY OF THE MAP

"You see," said Curlie, tapping the soggy bit of vellum which he held in his hand, "the trouble with this map is, not that it is not genuine, but that it's too old. This map," he paused for emphasis, "this map was made in fourteen hundred and forty-six."

Gladys Ardmore gasped. Her brother stared in astonishment.

"It's a fact!" declared Curlie emphatically.

"You see," he went on, "the day I was in the library with Miss Gladys I saw an exact reproduction of this map in a large volume. At the same time I read a description of it and a brief account of its history. It seems it was lost sight of about a century ago. There were copies, but the original was gone.

"I concluded at once that the map had somehow come into the hands of Alfred Brightwood. Since I was convinced that this was the truth, and since I had read the writing about the gold discovered on the mysterious island charted there, I decided that it would be wise to find out whether or not it were possible that this strange story might be true. I found my answer in a bound volume of Scottish Geographic Magazines in a series of articles ent.i.tled 'The So-Called Mythical Islands of the Atlantic.'

"It seems that there is fairly good proof that a number of vessels landed on the North American continent before Columbus did. Driven out of their course or lured on by hopes of gold and adventure, these ships from time to time discovered and rediscovered lands to the west of Ireland. They thought of the land as islands and gave them names. The island of Brazil was one of them. If you were to consult this map I have here you would find the island of Brazil indicated by a circle which is nearly as large as Ireland, yet if you were to cruise all over the waters in the vicinity of this supposed island you would find only the restless old ocean.

"What's the answer then?" he smiled. "Just this: These ancient sea rovers didn't have any accurate way of telling where they were at a given time on the sea, so they had to guess at it. Carried on by winds and currents, they often traveled much farther than they thought. They landed on the continent of North America and thought it an island. When they came back to Europe they tried to locate the land they had discovered on a map, and missed it by only a thousand miles or so.

"Our ancient friend who wrote of his experiences on the back of this map had doubtless been carried to some point in Central or South America, for there was, even in those days, plenty of gold to be found in those regions."

"So you see," he turned to Vincent with a smile, "you went five hundred miles out to sea for the purpose of rediscovering America. Not much chance of success. Anyway that's what I thought, and that is why I dashed off on a wild race in the _Kittlewake_. And that's why we're here."

Silence followed the ending of Curlie's narrative. There seemed to be nothing more to say.

So they sat there staring at the sea for a long time.

The silence was at last broken by the skipper's announcement:

"Smoke on the larboard bow."

It was true. Their relief was at hand.

Almost immediately afterward Curlie received a second rea.s.suring message from the captain of the liner. A short time after that he had the pleasure of escorting the dripping daughter of a millionaire up the gangway.

The next day as they were moving in toward the dock, Vincent Ardmore approached Curlie.

"My sister," there was a strange smile on his lips, "says you set out on this trip for the purpose of having me arrested?"

"I did."

"Well--" the other boy choked up and could not continue.

"The law, punishment, prisons and all that, as I understand it," said Curlie thoughtfully, "have but one purpose: to teach people what other folks' rights are and to encourage them in respecting them. It's my business to see that there is fair play in the air."

He paused and looked away at the sea. When he resumed there was a suspicious huskiness in his voice. "Seems to me that as far as you are concerned, nature has punished you about enough. You ought to know by this time what interfering with the radio wave lengths belonging to sea traffic might mean to shipwrecked men; and--well--Oh, what's the use!"

he broke off abruptly. "I'm a chicken-hearted fool. You're out on parole and must report to your sister every week. She's--she's what I'd call a brick!"

Turning hastily he walked away.

Almost before he knew it, he all but ran over Gladys Ardmore, coming to meet him.

"Oh, Mister--Mister--" she hesitated.

"Just plain Curlie," he smiled.

"You--you're coming to see me when you get home? Won't you?"