later named it, was gloriously fought.

“To think,” Florence exclaimed, as she watched one band of weary smoke-choked fighters fall back only to be replaced by fresh shock troops, “to think that those boys are willing to risk and endure so much to save us and our boat! What does it matter now if we never make a dollar from this summer’s work?”

There were times in that hour of fire fighting when the battle seemed lost; when tall spruce trees, caught in the flames, blazed toward the sky; when the heat burned the faces of the fighters and tar oozed up from the Wanderer’s deck.

Three times Rufus went below to set the motors roaring in the hope that some small tide had lifted the ship off the rocks, but his efforts were in vain. The Wanderer stuck fast.

Meanwhile, with fresh wet cloths to protect their faces from the blistering heat, some of the camp boys were swinging axes, clearing a broad fire lane, while others had dug a deep trench and were filling it with water to defeat the creeping flames.

“They—they’ll make it,” Florence breathed. “The wind is falling.”

A moment later she, too, was obliged to hold a damp cloth before her eyes. A sudden fierce gust had thrown a shower of sparks on the deck of their boat.

“Quick!” Dave shouted. “Buckets and mops! We must wet down the deck.”

Five minutes later they were breathing more easily. The fire had reached the last tree standing before the lane that had been cut to stop the flames.

“But will it stop there,” the girl questioned anxiously, “or will it jump the gap? If it does, we’re lost.”

Slowly but surely, as if by a miracle, the flames died down. With a shout of victory on their lips, a troop of workers sprang at the charred tree trunks which still stood flaming and threatening at any moment to fall across the gap. With sparks falling all about them, with smoking garments and parched faces, the boys hacked and pushed until the last fiery pillar lay flat upon the earth, its burning tinder extinguished. Only then did all join in a hoarse shout of triumph, Dave sounding the boat siren to heighten the note of rejoicing.

“Just think,” there was a suggestion of tears in Florence’s eyes, “Grandfather’s boat is worth fifteen thousand dollars, and we might have lost it!”

“It might have been blown to splinters of wood and a mass of twisted steel,” Dave agreed. “We should be thankful.”

“We’ll go ashore and hold a jubilee,” Florence exclaimed.

This, for two reasons, they did not do. Half the would-be celebrators were at once dispatched to a point where the fire still threatened to outflank them, and at the same time a slim, powerful motor-boat, Patrol Boat No. 1, rounded the point.

“Yo-ho there!” cried the skipper. “What are you lying here for?”

“Been helping a little,” Dave replied modestly. “Now we’re on the rocks.”

“On hard?” the skipper asked.

“Not very.”

“Good! We’ll have you off in a twinkle. Stand by to take a rope.”

The rope was thrown and attached to the Wanderer’s stern. The motors of the patrol boat roared, and the grounded craft moved slowly backward off the rocks.

“Ahoy there!” Dave shouted joyously. “We’ll be all right now. Thanks a lot.”

The Wanderer had lost a little paint from her bottom, that was all, and as the boat’s prow headed for Chippewa Harbor, Florence sat down for a breathing spell before going below to prepare the evening meal. The look on her face was a sober one.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” she said aloud.

“But we have to live only today,” Dave said as he appeared on deck.

“Only today,” she smiled up at him, “and that—why that’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

Fifteen minutes later when Dave emerged from a little wireless cabin he had arranged on the afterdeck, he held two slips of paper in his hand. “Important messages,” he announced. There was a hint of mystery in his voice. He held out a paper on which she read: “Your passengers have been taken to Rock Harbor. Signed: Ve and Vi.”

This was from Vivian and Violet Carlson, daughters of a fisherman. It meant that the Wanderer could proceed at once to Rock Harbor, unload freight, swing around to Tobin’s Harbor and Belle Isle, then head back to the mainland.

“If only,” Florence thought. What question was in her mind? Perhaps she could not have told. She was for the moment oppressed by a feeling of impending catastrophy.

The second message, picked up by chance, was strange. “Important message,” it began. “To all lodgekeepers and to all captains of ships touching at Isle Royale: Be on the lookout for red-and-black boat powered by heavy outboard motor. Tall gray-haired man and girl of sixteen on board. They are believed to have left Port Arthur for Isle Royale two days ago. Nothing has been heard from them. Be on the lookout. Important. Be on the lookout.”

“From Port Arthur. Forty miles of Lake Superior,” Dave said thoughtfully. “Weather’s been pretty good. They should have made it. We’ll be on the lookout.”

An hour later Florence dropped down upon a box of life preservers to watch the stars come out. Far off, dim, indistinct, but suggesting all manner of strange mysteries, could be seen the rocky, all-but-uninhabited shores of Isle Royale. Here there might be a fisherman’s cabin and there an abandoned lighthouse; there the shack of a recluse who mended boats; and there, nestling along the shores of a snug little harbor, the cottages of a small lodge.

“Not three hundred people on the entire end of the island,” she said, as Dave passed.

“And not many coming,” said Dave. “Just think! They told us there would be thousands. And they never said,” he went on, “that the Iroquois, three times the length of our poor, little bouncing tub, would be coming here three times a week. We’re stuck all right.”

“Yes, and yet—” Florence sighed. “Well, it’s one grand vacation.”

“What about the fire at Siskowit?” Cottagers, fishermen, lodge people and their guests swarmed the dock at Rock Harbor on the arrival of the Wanderer.

“We licked it,” Dave reassured them.

“Yes, you did,” exclaimed a skeptical old-timer. “You don’t lick a fire on this island in that short time.”

“That’s right,” said another. “It creeps along on the ground.”

“Yes, and under the ground,” added a third. “All our soil is of vegetable origin. Dry as it is here, everything but the rocks burn. I’ve seen holes burned four feet deep.”

“Four feet!” Dave stared.

“No kiddin’,” the man insisted. “Question is, what’s going to be done about it? This island is a national park. Are a pack of boys going to be allowed to burn it up?”

“I take it,” said Dave soberly, “that you are referring to the camp boys at Siskowit.”

“Exactly,” said the man.

“Then,” said Dave, still speaking slowly, “all I’ve got to say is that, in a time like this, little talk and much thinking should be the order of the day. Captain Frey says his boys didn’t set the fire. I believe him. I—”

“Then what—”

“One thing more,” Dave broke in, “we’ve just seen those boys put up a fight to save their camp and our boat that would have done credit to seasoned fire fighters.”

Dave stood six feet in his stockings. He had a sharp, penetrating eye. There was that