"Start on a trip so soon!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "Where does he want to go, and will he be well enough to travel?"

"He says he will. And as to where he wants to go, that is a strange story."

"Oh, tell us about it!" begged Bert.

"We're going to hear Cousin Jasper's secret at last!" cried Nan.

"Is it a real story, with 'once upon a time' in it?" Freddie questioned.

"And has it got a fire engine in it?" he added.

"Well, no, not exactly a fire engine, though it has a boat engine in the story. And I can make it start with 'once upon a time,' if you want me to."

"Please do," begged Flossie. "And has it got any fairies in it?"

"No, not exactly any fairies," her father said; "though we may find some when we get to the island."

"Oh, are we going on an island?" exclaimed Bert.

"There!" cried his father, "I've started at the wrong end. I had better begin at the beginning. And that will be to tell you how I found Cousin Jasper.

"He has been quite ill, and is better now. Part of the time he was out of his head with fever, even after he wrote to me, and for a time the doctor feared he would not get well. But now he is all right, except for being weak, and he told me a queer story.

"Once upon a time," went on Mr. Bobbsey, telling the tale as his littler children liked to hear it, "Cousin Jasper and a young friend of his, a boy about fifteen years old, set out to take a long trip in a motor boat. That is it had an engine in it that ran by gasolene as does an automobile. Cousin Jasper is very fond of sailing the deep, blue sea, and he took this boy along with him to help. They were to sail about for a week, visiting the different islands off the coast of Florida.

"Well, everything went all right the first few days. In their big motor boat Cousin Jasper and this boy, who was named Jack Nelson, sailed about, living on their boat, cooking their meals, and now and then landing at the little islands, or keys, as they are called.

"They were having a good time when one day a big storm came up. They could not manage their boat and they were blown a long way out to sea and then cast up on the sh.o.r.e of a small island.

"Cousin Jasper was hurt and so was the boy, but they managed to get out of the water and up on land. They found a sort of cave in which they could get out of the storm, and they stayed on the island for some time."

"For years?" asked Bert, who, with the other Bobbsey twins, was much interested in Cousin Jasper's strange story. "That was just like Robinson Crusoe!" Bert went on. "Why didn't they stay there always?"

"They did not have enough to eat," said Mr. Bobbsey, "and it was too lonesome for them there. They were the only people on the island, as far as they knew. So they made a smudge of smoke, and on a pole they put up some pieces of canvas that had washed ash.o.r.e from their motor boat. They hoped these signals would be seen by some ship or small boat that might come to take them off."

"Did they get rescued?" asked Bert.

Mr. Bobbsey was about to answer when the telephone, which was in the room, gave a loud ring.

"Some one for us!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey.

CHAPTER XI

THE MOTOR BOAT

Mr. Bobbsey arose to answer the telephone, which big hotels put in the rooms of their guests nowadays instead of sending a bellboy to knock and say that the traveler is wanted.

"I wonder who wants us?" murmured Mr. Bobbsey.

The children looked disappointed that the telling of the story had to be stopped.

"h.e.l.lo!" said their father into the telephone.

Then he listened, and seemed quite surprised at what he heard.

"Yes, I'll be down in a little while," he went on. "Tell him to wait."

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Was that Cousin Jasper?"

"Oh, no indeed!" her husband answered. "Though he is much better he is not quite well enough to leave the hospital yet and come to see us. This was an old sea captain talking from the main office of the hotel downstairs."

"Is he going to take us for a trip on the ocean?" asked Bert eagerly.

"Well, that's what he wants to do, or, rather, he wants me to see about a big motor boat in which to take a trip. Cousin Jasper sent him to me.

But let me finish what I was saying about the island, and then I'll tell you about the sea captain."

Mr. Bobbsey hung up the telephone receiver and took his seat between Flossie and Freddie where he had been resting in an easy chair, telling the story.

"Cousin Jasper," went on Mr. Bobbsey, "was quite ill on the island, and so was Jack Nelson. Just how long they stayed there, waiting for a boat to come and take them off, they do not know--at least, Cousin Jasper does not know."

"Doesn't that boy--Jack Nelson--know?" asked Bert.

"No, for he wasn't taken off the island," said Mr. Bobbsey. "And that is the strange part of Cousin Jasper's story. He, himself, after a hard time on the island, must have fallen asleep, in a fever probably. When he awakened he was on board a small steamer, being brought back to St.

Augustine. He hardly knew what happened to him, until he found himself in the hospital.

"There he slowly got better until he was well enough to write and ask me to come to see him. He wanted me to do something that no one else would do."

"And what is that?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

"He wants me to get a big motor boat, and go with him to this island and get that boy, Jack Nelson."

"Is that boy still on the island?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "Why how long ago was this?"

"About three weeks," her husband answered. "Cousin Jasper does not know whether or not the boy is still there, but he is afraid he is. You see when the boat came to rescue Mr. Dent, as my cousin is called at the hospital, they did not take off with him his boy friend. The sailors of the rescue ship said they saw Cousin Jasper's canvas flag fluttering from a pole stuck up in the beach, and that brought them to the island.

They found Cousin Jasper, unconscious, in a little cave-like shelter near sh.o.r.e, and took him away with them."

"Didn't they see the boy?" asked Nan.

"No, he was not in sight, the sailors afterward told Mr. Dent. They did not look for any one else, not knowing that two had been shipwrecked on the island. They thought there was only one, and so Cousin Jasper alone was saved.

"When he grew better, and the fever left him, he tried to get some one to start out in a boat to go to the island and save that boy. But no one would go."

"Why not?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

"Because they thought Cousin Jasper was still out of his mind from fever. They said the sailors from the rescue ship had seen no one else, and if there had been a boy on the island such a person would have been near Mr. Dent. But no one was seen on the island, and so they thought it was all a dream of Cousin Jasper's."