The Argosy, Vol. XXV, No. 1 — page 183: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE BUNKEL MYSTERY. 183 to trust himself alone in the tender. He must remain on the island for the present ; but he would return to Montoban as soon as the weather would permit. ; Of course a force from the town would come to the assistance of the boys as soon as the situation was made known there. This was all the arrange- ment that could be made. Until this could be done it would not be prudent to allow the robbers to know that a visitor had been to the island. Phin had proposed that Andy should work around the island in the tender, and cross the strait on the west side. Dolph, however, was sure that it was even rougher in the narrow passage than in the wide one, for it was more exposed to the action of a northeast wind. The only thing they could do was to wait ; and to boys this is the hardest thing in the world todo. The prisoners returned to the cave, leaving Andy standing on the shelf of rock. The engineer’s son was quite as eager to do something at once as his late companions had been. But the weather was decidedly bad. It had been cloudy since nine o’clock in the morning, and the sky was blacker and more threatening than it had been when Andy arrived. It looked like a storm, and the wind was continually increasing. The waves broke against the rocky shores of the island, for the wind had a sweep ef two miles, and the rollers were heavy for a small lake. Andy felt as though his wheels had been blocked, for he could do nothing, in spite of his good intentions. He wondered if Mr. Singerlay, when he was told that he had been left on the island with nothing but the frail tender, would not send the Dragon back for him. The magnate must see that it was impossible to return in the little craft when the wind was blowing a stiff. gale. But Mr. Singerlay was not likely to think of the boys’ peril ; at this time he had enough to keep his mind busy. . But Andy was sure his father would think of him when night came, and ‘he did not return. At the worst, he was satisfied he could stand it till the next morning, though it was not pleasant to think of spending the night out of doors on the island, in a storm from the northeast. He had heard the tender bumping against the rocks in the water cave where he had put it. He was afraid it would be injured by the commotion of the waves, and he decided to go down and look out for it. Possibly he could find a shelter during the storm under the rocks. He had visited the place many times before, and he knew, or thought he knew, all about it. The rocks, as at Castle Hills and the Bay of Islands near them, seemed to have been shaken up by some convulsion of nature at an earlier period. If they had been rent and split up by an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, they would have been left very much as visitors found them. They were pierced in every direction with crevices, apertures, and clefts of all shapes and sizes. There were half a dozen of these holes on the east shore of Bunkel Island. The one which Andy had chosen, on account of the shelf which afforded a good chance to land on the island, was an opening in the form of a shelter ° tent. He had been in it several times, but he had never had any desire to EComichbooks Oo