Whipping out his knife David cut the cords that bound Madge and raising her to her feet, placed one arm protectingly around her. Her captor had also risen and stood glowering at David without offering to attack him.

The boy's rage was so terrifying that even this hardened lawbreaker quailed before it.

"We didn't mean any harm," mumbled the old woman. "You know us, boy. You know we wouldn't hurt the young lady. You won't say you saw us, will you?"

But ignoring her question David turned to help Madge back to her friends.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MOTOR BOAT DISASTER

It was Miss Betsey Taylor who had first discovered Madge's absence. Just before daylight she awakened with the feeling that some one had stolen into her stateroom, for she was dreaming of her lost money. Miss Betsey sat straight up in bed and looked about her small cabin. There was no one to be seen.

"Miss Betsey," called Miss Jenny Ann from the berth above, "what is the matter?" Nor would Miss Jones go back to sleep until she had explored the houseboat thoroughly.

As she stole into the next cabin where the girls slept she noticed that Madge was not in her bed. She must have heard the same noise that had disturbed Miss Betsey, and gone to investigate the cause. But Miss Jenny Ann could not ascertain the cause of the noise nor did she find Madge on the decks. She aroused Phil and they sought for her together. Then Eleanor and Lillian joined them, and Miss Betsey, a prey to curiosity, came forth to find out what all the commotion was about.

It took a very brief s.p.a.ce of time to examine the entire houseboat. The girls held the lanterns and scurried about, calling "Madge!" It seemed incredible that she did not answer.

Tom was the first of the boys on the motor launch to be disturbed by the unusual sounds from the "Merry Maid." His first thought was fire. With a cry to the other boys on the "Sea Gull" he rushed to the houseboat. But the appearance of the five young men, who had come to join in the search for the lost Madge, merely added to the confusion. They tumbled over one another, and as they were half asleep, most of them did not know what or whom they were looking for.

"Come on, Brewster," commanded Tom Curtis, "it is absurd to think that Miss Morton can be anywhere near and not have heard us. It may be she became restless and went for a little walk on the sh.o.r.e; let us look there."

David and Tom crept along the river bank, their eyes turned to the ground. They detected Madge's footprints leading away from the launch and then returning to the houseboat. The revelation only added to the mystery.

There was one thought in the minds of the seekers. Could Madge have walked in her sleep and fallen over into the water? The river was shallow along the bank, but she might have been borne by the current out into the stream. It did not seem a very probable idea. But then, no one had any possible explanation to offer for the little captain's vanishing into the night like this. No one had yet seen that the rowboat, too, was missing.

It was an hour after the first alarm, and daylight was beginning to dawn, when Phyllis Alden heard a noise from Miss Betsey's stateroom. She went in, to find the old lady seated on her trunk wringing her hands.

She had been awake so long that she was tired and querulous. Her corkscrew curls were carefully arranged and she was fully dressed. Her head was bobbing with indignation. "I am perfectly willing to confess that I am worried about that child," she announced to Phyllis. "But I knew, as soon as I set my eyes upon her, that wherever Madge Morton went there was sure to be some kind of excitement. It may not be her fault, but----" Miss Betsey paused dramatically. "And your father, Phyllis Alden, was a great goose, and I an even greater one, to trust myself on this ridiculous houseboat excursion. A rest cure! Good for my nerves to be among young people!" Miss Betsey fairly snorted. "I shall be a happy woman when I am safe in my own home again!"

Phyllis hurried into the galley and came back with a gla.s.s of milk for the exhausted old lady. "Come, take a walk around the boat with me, Miss Betsey," she invited comfortingly. "We can't do anything more to find Madge until the morning comes."

Phil was always a consolation to persons in trouble, she was so quiet and steadfast. She wrapped Miss Betsey in a light woolen shawl and together they walked up and down the little houseboat deck. Phyllis kept her eyes fixed on the sh.o.r.e. Madge had surely gone out for a walk and something had detained her. Her loyal friend would not confess even to herself the uneasiness she really felt.

Miss Betsey and Phil stood for a quiet minute in the stern of the "Merry Maid," watching the morning break in a splendor of yellow and rose across the eastern sky. Not far away Miss Jenny Ann was talking to several of the boys, with her arms about Eleanor and Lillian.

Miss Betsey Taylor glanced down at the mirroring gold and rose of the water under her feet.

"My gracious, sakes alive, it has gone!" she exclaimed, pointing a trembling finger toward the river.

"What has gone, Miss Betsey?" inquired Phil. "Don't tell us that anything else besides Madge has vanished."

"But it has," Miss Betsey Taylor insisted. "Where is that little rowboat that you girls call the 'Water Witch,' that is always. .h.i.tched to the stern of this houseboat? I saw it last night just before I went to bed.

Wherever that child has gone the boat has gone with her."

Everyone crowded around Miss Betsey and Phyllis. Tom and David returned from their search on the sh.o.r.e. "I am sure I don't know what it all means," declared Miss Jenny Ann in distracted tones.

"Don't worry so, Miss Jenny Ann," protested Phil. "It only means that runaway Madge went out for a row by herself on the river last night after we went to bed." And Phil's voice was not so a.s.sured. "Something must have happened to keep her from getting back home. We shall just have to look along the river until we find her."

Tom was already aboard his motor launch. It took only a few moments to get his engine ready for service. "Come on, Sears and Robinson," he cried, "you can help me by being on the lookout for Miss Morton while I run the boat. I'll go from one end of the Rappahannock to the other unless I find her sooner."

"Let me go with you, Tom, please do," pleaded Eleanor, looking very wan and white in the morning light. "It's too dreadful to wait here on the houseboat with nothing to do."

Tom nodded his consent. He was too busy to waste time in conversation.

So Harry Sears helped Lillian and Eleanor to the cabin of the "Sea Gull."

Tom put on full speed, heading his launch up the river. He had been the captain of his own boat for several years. To-day he was unusually excited. The speed limit of his boat was eight knots an hour. Tom tested his motor engine to the extent of its power as he dashed up the river, the water churning and foaming under him.

Eleanor, Lillian, Harry and George looked vainly up and down the sh.o.r.e for a sign of Madge. Tom was going so fast they could see nothing.

"Do, please, go a little slower, Tom," begged Eleanor. "We shall never find Madge at the rate you are traveling."

It was morning on the river. The river craft were moving up and down.

Steamboats carrying freight and heavy barges loaded with coal made it necessary for Tom to steer carefully.

The "Sea Gull" slowed down. Every now and then Tom would put in alongside another boat to inquire if a girl in a rowboat had been seen.

No one gave any news of Madge.

After gliding up the Rappahannock for ten miles, and finding no trace of the lost girl, Tom decided she must have rowed down stream instead of up. So the "Sea Gull" turned and went down the river.

The launch's engine was not in the best of humors. It may not have liked being roused so early in the morning, and David Brewster was not by to tend it under Tom's careful directions. Every now and then the gasoline engine would emit a strange, whirring noise. Harry Sears, who was watching the engine, heard it lose a beat in its regular rhythmical throb. "See here, Tom," he called suddenly, "something is wrong with this machinery. I can't tell what it is."

Harry had spoken just in time. The motor launch stopped stock still in the middle of the river. Tom flew to his beloved engine. "Don't worry,"

he urged cheerfully, "I'll have her started again in a few seconds."

Tom kept doing mysterious things to the disgruntled engine. The two boys and Lillian watched him in fascinated silence. Eleanor was not interested. They were only a few miles from the houseboat, and she wondered if Madge could possibly have returned home.

Eleanor stepped out of the little cabin of the launch toward the fore part of the boat. Drifting down toward them, directly ahead and in their straight course, was a line of great coal barges, three or four of them joined together, with a colored man seated on a pile of coal, idly smoking and paying little heed to where his barges were going. It was the place of the smaller boats to get out of his way. The barges could only float with the current.

But the "Sea Gull" was stock still and there was no way to move her.

"Tom!" Eleanor cried quietly, although her face was as white as her white gown, "if we don't get out of the way those coal barges will sink us in a few minutes. You will have to hurry to save the 'Sea Gull'."

Tom sprang up from his work at the engine. Eleanor was right. Yet his motor engine was hopelessly crippled. He could not make it move.

"Get to work with the paddle, Robinson, and paddle for the sh.o.r.e for dear life," he commanded, seizing the other oar himself. Tom was a magnificently built fellow, with broad shoulders and muscles as hard as iron. He never worked harder in his life than he did for the next few minutes. The girls and Harry Sears watched Tom and George Robinson in anxious silence. The coal barges were creeping so near that the "Sea Gull" was in the shadow they cast.

The two boys had to turn the launch half way around with their paddles before her nose pointed to the land. The man on the coal barge was shouting hoa.r.s.e commands when the side of the first barge pa.s.sed within six inches of the stern of Tom's launch.

Tom wiped the perspiration from his face. "I think I had better take the girls to land," he decided. "Then we can find out what is best to be done."

"Your automobile boat's busted, ain't it?" inquired a friendly voice as the entire party, except Tom, piled out of the launch to the land.

A colored boy of about eighteen was standing on the river bank grinning at them. He held a piece of juicy watermelon in his hand.