"Don't you dare say so!" cried Belle. "Please look around my room, and leave the light burning. I know I'll never sleep a wink."

Jack tossed out the centipede he had killed, and then looked among the waste paper for more, standing with his bare foot raised, and with ready slipper, for the bite of this insect, which grows to a large size in Porto Rico, is anything but pleasant, though it is said never to cause death, except perhaps in the case of some person whose blood is very much impoverished.

Both Bess and Belle insisted on their lights being left aglow, though Jack made a careful search and could discover no more of the unpleasant visitors. How Belle had heard the one in her room, if it really had been that which she said made the noise, was a mystery, but the creature might have rattled paper as it did in the room of Bess.

"Call me if you want anything more, Sis," said Jack to his sister, as he started back to his own apartment. And then, as he was about to close, Cora's door Jack looked fixedly at a place on the floor near her bureau, and with a muttered exclamation hurried toward it.

"Oh! what is it?" his sister begged, alarmed at the look on his face.

"Another one--trying to hide," he murmured.

Off came his slipper again and there followed a resounding whack on the floor.

"Got that one, too!" Jack announced, and then, as Coral made brave by the declaration of the death, came closer, she uttered a cry.

"Jack Kimball!" she gasped, accusingly, "you've broken my best barrette," and she picked up from the floor the shattered fragments of a dark celluloid hair comb, which had fallen from the bureau.

"Barrette," murmured Jack, in dazed tones.

"Yes--a sort of side comb, only it goes in the back."

"Well, it looked just like a centipede trying to hide under the bureau," Jack defended himself. "Is it much damaged?"

"Damaged? It's utterly ruined," sighed Cora. "Never mind, Jack, you meant all right," and she smiled at her brother.

"Oh, dear! I don't believe I'm going to like it here, even if the waters are such a heavenly blue."

"What was it--another?" demanded Belle.

"It was my barrette, my dear," laughed Cora.

"Come, young folks! You must quiet down," came the voice of Cora's mother from the next room. "What's all the excitement about?"

"Just--insects," said Jack, with a chuckle. "We are hunting the deadly barretted side comb!"

"You'll have to get me another," said Cora, as she bade Jack good-night.

There was no further disturbance, and the hotel clerk said, next morning, that the presence of one or two scorpions, or centipedes, could be accounted for from the fact that the rooms occupied by our friends had not recently been used. He promised to see to it that all undesirable visitors were hunted out during the day.

For a week or more, life in San Juan was an experience of delight for the motor girls. They visited points of interest in and about the city, taking Inez with them. Of course Jack and Walter also went, and the change was doing the former a world of good.

The mysterious "fat man," as Jack insisted on calling Senor Ramo, had not come ash.o.r.e at San Juan, going on with the steamer. His destination was another of the many West Indian islands.

As yet, Mr. Robinson had had no chance to communicate with, or make arrangements for rescuing the father of Inez. But he was making careful plans to do this, and now, being on the ground, he could confirm some information difficult to get at in New York.

The motor girls, and their party, soon accustomed themselves to the changed conditions. They learned to eat as the Porto Ricans do--little meat making eggs take the place, and they never knew before what a variety of ways eggs could e served.

The weather was growing more pleasant each day, and with the gradual pa.s.sing of the hurricane season, they were allowed to take longer trips in one of the many motor boats with which the harbor abounded.

Sometimes they spent whole days on the water, their dusky captain keeping a sharp watch out for hurricanes. These can be detected some hours off, and a run made for safety. Some of the whirling storms are very dangerous, and others merely squalls.

It was when they had been in San Juan about a month, and Mr. Robinson had promised, in the next few days, to take some measures regarding the liberation of Senor Ralcanto, that something occurred which changed the whole aspect of the visit of the motor girls to waters blue.

Mr. Robinson found that he would have to go on business to a coffee plantation near Ba.s.se Terre, on the French island of Guadeloupe, and as he had heard there were also rare orchids to be obtained them, he wanted to stay a few days after his trade matters had been attended to.

"But I did want to start for Sea Horse Island, and begin my plan to liberate your father," he said to Inez.

"It can wait, Senor,"' she said, softly. "A few days more will not make much of ze difference, as long as he is to be rescued anyhow. I would not have you disappointed in ze orchids."

"Then I'll go when we come back," said Mr. Robinson. "I'll go to Guadeloupe, and take my wife and Mrs. Kimball with me. I want them to see the place."

"And leave us here alone?" asked Bess.

"Certainly, why not? You are in good hands at the hotel, especially as the boys are with you. And Inez is as good as a guide and European courier made into one."

The weather, which had been fine on the evening when Mr. Robinson and the two ladies went aboard the steamer, underwent a sudden change before morning, and when Cora and her chums awoke in the hotel, and looked out, they found raging a storm that, in its fury, was little short of a hurricane.

"Oh, Jack!" his sister exclaimed, as she listened to the roar of the wind and the sharp swish of the rain, "I'm so afraid!"

"What about? This hotel is a good one."

"I know. But mamma on that ship--they're out at sea now, and--"

She did not finish.

"That's so," spoke Jack, and a troubled look came over his face.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HURRICANE

How the wind howled, and how the rain beat down! Outside the window of Cora's room, the gutters were flush, and running over with seething water. In the street below there was a river, along which bedraggled pedestrians forded their way, envying the patient donkeys drawing the market venders' carts.

At times the wind rose to a fury that rattled the cas.e.m.e.nts, and fairly shook the solid structure of the hotel. Then Cora, who, with Jack, had come up from the breakfast room, clung to her brother, and a look of fear came into her eyes. Nor were Jack's altogether calm.

"What a storm!" murmured the girl.

The door, leading into the next room, opened, and Bess came out.

"Oh, Cora!" she gasped, putting the last touches to her hair, which she had arranged in a new Spanish way she had seen, and then, tiring of it, had gone to her room to put it back in its accustomed form.

"Isn't this just awful!"

"Terrible, I say!" came from Belle, who now entered from her apartment.