"Extraction," replied "the man who couldn't be mystified" with significant emphasis on the "ex".

Laughter followed this quip, the levity of which caused Hal to feel more like "loosening up".

"Well," said the latter, producing a small leather-back notebook from one of his pockets; "here is the secret of my information."

"Where did you get that?" Cub demanded.

"I found it."

"Where--not here?"

"Yes, on this island. It's a diary of my cousin, beginning with the time he was left here by a bunch of college hazers."

"Does it give any hint where he is now, Hal?" inquired Mr. Perry.

"I don't think so," replied the boy with the notebook. "I ran my eye through it hurriedly, but didn't have time to read it all. If you'll sit down and listen, I'll read it to you from the beginning."

All being agreeable to this proposition, they seated themselves on camp chairs in front of the tent and Hal began as follows:

"First, I'll begin by telling you where I found this book. I'll take you back to the spot after I've finished reading. Before I found this book, I discovered a sign, or notice, written on a piece of paper and pinned to the trunk of a tree about four feet from the ground. On that paper was written with lead pencil these words under date of last Friday:

"'I Alvin Baker, a student at Edwards College, hereby name this island Friday island, because I was marooned here alone, like Robinson Crusoe, on Friday, June 9, 1922.'"

"I'd like to make the acquaintance of that boy," said Mr. Perry warmly.

"He has both imagination and a sense of humor in the midst of adversity."

"Naturally I began to look about me for some trace of the person who had pinned the notice on the tree," Hal continued. "I was standing in an open s.p.a.ce about thirty feet in diameter. The tree on which this notice was pinned is at the edge of that s.p.a.ce. There are a few small bushes here and there in the open, but the ground there is covered with long coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. The first thing that attracted my attention, as I began to look about me was the fact that the gra.s.s was trampled down over a considerable area. I examined it carefully and while doing so found this notebook in the gra.s.s. It didn't take me long after that to reach the conclusion that Cousin Alvin had been attacked by somebody and in the struggle lost this notebook out of his pocket."

"It was probably the four ugly looking men he said were coming ash.o.r.e when he sent his last distress message to us," Cub inferred.

"I wonder why he didn't tell us the truth," Bud put in. "Why didn't he tell us he was being hazed by some college boys?"

"He explains that in his diary," Hal replied. "Now listen and I'll read the first entry."

Hal's injunction being met with quiet, eager attention, he read as follows:

"Friday, June 9, 1922. Last night while I was walking through the grove of trees near the campus of Edwards College, I was attacked and overpowered by several soph.o.m.ores, who slipped a bag over my head and carried me to a motor-boat moored a short distance away. They tried to conceal their ident.i.ty, but I recognized the voices of Jerry Kerry and Buck Hardmaster. They kept me a helpless prisoner, with arms and legs bound and eyes bandaged, in the cabin for several hours, during which I could feel the boat constantly on the move. About 3 o'clock in the morning I was carried ash.o.r.e on this island. My hands were untied, and then I could hear my captors hurrying away. I removed the bandage from my eyes and with my pocket-knife cut the rope around my ankles. It was too dark yet to see anything distinctly, so I had to wait for break of day before doing anything. An hour later I discovered near the landing place a considerable layout of supplies and equipment most of which I recognized as my own property. Then I recalled that one of my captors had thrust something into one of my pockets just before they took me ash.o.r.e and I put my hand into that pocket and drew out an envelope that I knew I had not put there. In the envelope I found a typewritten note, which read as follows:

"'Alvin Baker, you have succeeded during all of your freshman year to date in frustrating every attempt to haze you and have boasted that there was no "gang" of boys at Edwards smart enough to do the trick. We are now performing the trick in a manner that ought to convince you that such a boast is the freshest of freshman folly. We raided your room and took therefrom your radio sending and receiving outfit, and have added thereto necessary equipment for erecting an aerial. This we leave with you in order that you may summon help through the atmosphere. Meanwhile, you may comfort yourself with the distinction of being the first college freshman ever given a radio hazing. Now, put up your aerial and send out a message for help. Radio is your only hope. n.o.body ever stops at this island and it is impossible for pa.s.sing vessels to see any signal of distress you may devise. If you are too proud to admit defeat and refuse to send out a broadcast for help, you must remain here two weeks, at the end of which time you will be captured again after dark, bound and blindfolded, and taken back to the mainland and released. The ident.i.ty of the persons responsible for your defeat you will never be able to discover. Enough canned food has been left with you to keep body and soul together a week.

At the end of that time, if you have failed to effect your own rescue by radio, more canned food will be left here for you. We are leaving also a tent, a few camp utensils, matches, and fishing tackle. You must drink river water. Now prove yourself as big as your boast.'

"I decided to defeat those fellows, if possible, by getting away from the island without broadcasting an admission that I had been marooned by soph.o.m.ore hazers. So I pitched the tent and then constructed an aerial out of material supplied by them and began to broadcast messages of distress, saying that I had been marooned by river thieves who had stolen my boat. But soon I found that there was someone 'in the air' who was determined to defeat this purpose. It is now 11 p.m., and he seems to have been successful in his attempts to make it appear that I am a faker.

n.o.body has offered to come to my rescue."

Sat.u.r.day's entry in the diary opened as follows:

"Last night, between 2 and 3 a.m., I was awakened by a slight noise outside near the tent. I stole cautiously to the entrance and peered out. It was a bright moonlight night and in front of the tent I saw two men apparently examining the camp with much curiosity or evil intent, perhaps both. Evidently they saw me watching them, for they suddenly turned and fled. I followed them cautiously and saw them get into a power boat and motor away. I called to them, explaining my situation and offering to pay them if they would take me away from the island, but they gave me no answer. Probably they were river thieves and the boat they had was stolen."

CHAPTER XIV

More Light and More Mystery

The next two days, Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, were devoted by the island prisoner to the sending out of further calls, for help, and these calls were met by a campaign of ridicule, similar to that begun by his nemesis on the first day of his imprisonment, according to the diary read by Hal to his companions. A few listeners-in indicated a willingness to come to his rescue, in spite of the plausible ridicule from anonymous source, but when asked where he was imprisoned, ignorance on that subject frustrated all good intentions along that line until his S O S reached Cub at the latter's home on the following Monday.

"I tried to make this mysterious enemy of mine identify himself," wrote the diarist under Sat.u.r.day date; "but he professed to have a wager posted against me which bound us both to secrecy. This caught me in the solar plexus of my conscience, for I was broadcasting my appeals for help under a false ident.i.ty. Two or three amateurs looked me up under the name, call, and address that I gave and then broadcast a denunciation of me. It begins to look as if my hazers are going to win a full revenge for the way I laughed at them at college. This day's experience has convinced me that I am in bad throughout the radio atmosphere. It begins to look as if I am up against it and will have to stay here the full two weeks to which those hazing kidnappers of mine sentenced one. I wonder if they will make the term longer because I resorted to the method I have pursued thus far in order to avoid admitting that I had been hazed. Well, I have this consolation, anyway, that they have to pay for my food as long as I am here. They had to furnish me a tent also."

"Caught half a dozen fish today and named this place Friday island because of the day, or night, I was brought here and my subsequent Robinson Crusoe experiences," began the entry for Monday.

Then followed a gleeful memorandum of his apparent success in interesting Cub Perry with an account of his predicament, in spite of the efforts of his radio nemesis to prove him a trifler with the truth. Tuesday's entry closed with a notation of the announcement from Cub that the Catwhisker was about to start on a rescue trip from Oswego to the Lake of the Thousand Islands and would endeavor to find him by radio compa.s.s.

"The situation is cleared up very much," Mr. Perry remarked after Hal had finished reading the diary. "The chief problem now remaining to be solved is, what became of your cousin?"

"In other words, that's the mystery before us," said Bud, with a twinkle of fun in his eyes.

"Call it what you will," smiled Mr. Perry. "But it doesn't strike me as in the least mysterious. Evidently he was taken away from this island by the fellows who put him here."

"And what did they do with him?" was the query with which Cub supplemented his father's observation.

"That, of course, we don't know," the latter replied. "They may have taken him over to the Canadian sh.o.r.e and released him for reasons of their own."

"Then it's up to us to find out," Cub inferred.

"Surely. We've had remarkable success thus far. It would be a pity for us to meet with failure. That would spoil our story."

"Story!" exclaimed Bud. "What story?"

"Our story--the one we've been enacting thus far. Look back over our experiences in the last two days and see if you can make anything but a very fascinating yarn out of them."

"It's a radio-college story, isn't it?" Hal suggested.

"Yes," Mr. Perry agreed; "that would be one good way to put it."

"If it didn't involve my cousin in a critical situation, I'd hope the story wouldn't end yet," said Hal. "I'd like to see it run thirty or forty chapters."

"How many chapters do you figure it would make thus far?" asked the director-general of the expedition with a look of keen interest.

"Oh, about ten or fifteen," Hal replied.

"Then, to suit your taste, it ought to be only about half finished."

"Yes, but for my cousin's sake, I wish it were finished right now and Alvin were safe with us or at home."

"But wishes won't produce results nor cut off chapters," Cub philosophised.

"No, the denouement will work itself out along natural lines under natural laws," Mr. Perry predicted.