6 &y~ _ o»,o „ ROBERT u ~ y:Si:g jaw BEIWBT '/ PM^M nimmTm BY RAY mraa '—*»»_<'/ cs—v'^" c<±f*YAJCHT /9o» rr A.c.M c -CLU*>c; t* Go. - •v' 112 -A ■ » * CHAPTER I. Wave-Tossed and Castaway. | UK beginning was at Cape Town, when Blake and Winthrope boarded the ■teamer a3 fellow passengers with Lady Bayrose and her party. This was a week after Winthrope had arrived on the tramp steamer from India, and her ladyship had ex plained to Miss Leslie that it was aa well for her not to be too hasty in accepting his atteutions. To be sure, h© wa3 an Englishman, his dress and manners were irreproachable, and he was In the prime of ripened youth. Yet Lady Bayrose was too conscien tious a chaperon to be fully satisfied with her countryman's bare assertion "that he was engaged on a diplomatic mission requiring reticence regarding bis Identity. She did not see why this should prevent him from confiding In her. j Notwithstanding this, Winthrope came aboard ship virtually as a mem ber of her ladyship's party. He was ■o quick, so thoughtful of her comfort, and paid so much more attention to her than to Miss Leslie, that her lady ship had decided to tolerate him, even before Blake became a factor in the situation. From the moment he crossed the Gangway the American engineer en tered upon a daily routine of drinking and gambling, varied only by attempts to strike up an off-hand acquaintance with Miss Leslie. This was Win thrope's opportunity, and his clever frustration of what Lady Bayrose termed "that low bounder's impu dence" served to install him in the good graces of her ladyship as well as In the favor of the American heiress. Such, at least, was what Winthrope Intimated to the persistent engineer with a superciliousness of tone and manner that would have slung even a British lackey to resentment. To Blake it was supremely galling. He could not rejoin in kind, and the slightest attempt at physical retort would have meant irons and confine ment. It was a British ship. Behind Winthrope was Lady Bayrose; behind her ladyship, as a matter of course, was all the despotic authority of the captain. In the circumstances, it was not surprising that the American drank heavier after each successive goading. Meantime the ship, having touched at Port Natal, steamed on up the east coast, into the Mozambique chan nel. On the day of the cyclone, Blake had withdrawn into his stateroom with a number of bottles, and throughout that fearful afternoon was blissfully unconscious of ilie danger. Even when the steamer went on the reef, he was only partially roused by the shock. He took a long pull from a quart flask of whisky, placed the flask with great care in his hip pocket, and lurched out through the open door way. There he reeled headlong against the mate, who had rushed below with three of the crew to bring up Miss Leslie. The mate cursed him vir ulently. and in the same breath or dered two of the men to fetch him up *n deck. The sea was breaking over the steamer in torrents; but between Waves Blake was dragged across to the side and flung over into the bot tom of the one remaining boat. He served as a cushion to break the fall of Miss Leslie, who was tossed in after him. At the same time, Win thrope, frantic with fear, scrambled Into the bows and cut loose. One of the sailors leaped, but fell short and went down within arm's length of Miss Leslie. She and Winthrope saw the steam er slip from the reef and sink back Into deep water, carrying down in the Torte* the mate and the few remain ing sailors. After that all was chaos to them. They were driven ashore be fore the terrific gusts of the cyclone, blinded by the stinging spoondrift to all elße but the hell of breakers and coral reefs in whose midst they swirled so dizzily. And through it all Blake lay huddled on the bottom boards gurgling blithely of spicy zephyrs and swaying hammocks. There came the seemingly final mo ment when the boat went spinning stern over prow. Half-sobered. Blake opened his eyes and Btared solemnly about him. He (was given little time to take his bear ings. A smother of broken surf came seething up from one of the great breakers, to roll him over and scrape him a little farther up the muddy shore. There the flood deposited him for a moment, until it could gather force to sweep back and drag him down again toward the roaring sea that had cast him up. Blake objected—not to the danger of being drowned, but to interference with his repose. He had reached the obstinate stage. He grunted a protest. Again the flood seethed up the shore, and rolled him away from the dangar. This was too much! He 6et his jaw. Sleeping the Sleep of the Just and the Drunkard. turned over, and staggered to his feet. Instantly one of the terrific wind-blasts struck liis broad back and sent him spinning for yards. He brought up in a shallow pool, beside a hummock. Under the lee of the knoll lay Win thrope and Miss Leslie. Though con scious, both were draggled and bruised and beaten to exhaustion. They were together because they had come ashore together. When the boat cap sized, Miss Leslie had been flung against the Englishman, and they had held fast to each other with the des perate clutch of drowning persons. Neither of them ever recalled how they gained the shelter of the hum mock. Blake, sitting waist-deep in the pool, blinked at them benignly with his pale blue eyes, nnd produced the quart flask, still a third full of whisky. "I sliay, fren's," he observed, "ha' one on me. Won' cos' you shent— notta re' shent!" "You fuddled lout!" shouted Win thrope. "Come out of that pool." "VVassama'er pool? Pool's allri'!" The Englishman squinted through the driving scud at the intoxicated man with an anxious frown. In all probability he felt no commiseration for the American; but it was no light matter to be flung up barehanded on the most unhealthful and savage stretch of the Mozambique co>st, and Blake might be able to help them out of their predicament. To leave him in the pool was thereforo not to be thought of. So soon as he had drained his bottle, he would lie down, and that would be the end of him. As any attempt to move him forcibly was out of the question, the situation demanded that Winthrope justify his intimations of diplomatic training. After consid ering the problem for several minutes, he met it in a way that proved he was at least not lacking in shrewdness and tact. "See here, Blake," he called. In an other lull between the shrieking gusts, "the lady Is fatigued. You're too much of a gentleman to ask her to come over there." It required some moments for this to penetrate Blake's fuddled brain. After a futile attempt to gain his feet, he crawled out of the pool on all fours, and, with tears in his eyes, pressed his flask upon Miss Leslie. She shrank away from him. shuddering, and drew herself up-hi a huddle of flaccid limbs and limp garments. Winthrope, how ever, not only accepted the flask, but come near to draining it. Blake squinted at the diminished contents, hesitated, and cast a glance of maudlin gallantry at Miss Leslie. She lay coiled, closer than before, In a draggled heap. Her posture sug gested sleep. Blake stared at her, the flask extended waveringly before him. Then he brought it to his lips, and drained out the last drop. "Time turn in,"he mumbled, and sprawled full length in the brackish ooze. Immediately he fell Into a drunken stupor. Winthrope, invigorated by the liquor, rose to his knees, and peered around It was impossible to face the scud and spoondrift from the furious sea; but to leeward he caught a glimpse of a marsh flooded with salt water, ita CAMERON COUNTY PRESS, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1909. reedy vegetation beaten flat by the storm. He himself was beaten down by a terrific gust. Panting and trembling, he waited for the wind to lull, in hope that he might obtain a clearer view of his surroundings. Be fore he again dared riso to his feet, darkness swept down with tropical suddenness and blurred out everything. The effect of the whisky soon passed, and Winthrope huddled be tween his companions, drenched and exhausted. Though ho could hear Miss Leslie moaning, he was too miserable himself to inquire whether he could do anything for her. Presently he became aware that the wind was falling. The center of the cyclone had passed before the ship struck, and they were now In the out ermost circle of the vast whirlwind. With the consciousness of this change for the better, Winthrope's fear-racked nerves relaxed and he fell into a heavy sleep. CHAPTER 11. Worse Than Wilderness. WAIL from Miss Leslie roused the Englishman out of a dream In which Le had been swimming for life across a sea of boiling oil. He sat up and gazed about him, half-dazed. The cyclone had been followed by a dead calm, and the sun, already well above the hori zon, was blazing upon them over the glassy surfaces of the dying swells with fierce heat. Winthrope felt about for his hat. It had been blown off when, at the stri king of the steamer, he had rushed up on deck. As he remembered, he straightened, and looked at his com panions. Blake lay snoring where he had first outstretched himself, sleeping the sleep of the just—and of the drunkard. The girl, however, was already awake. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, while the tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. "My—ah—dear Miss Genevieve, what is the matter?" exclaimed Win thrope. "Matter? Do you ask, when we are here on this wretched coast, and may not get away for weeks? Oh, I did so count on the London season this year! Lady Bayrose promised that I should be among those presented." "Well, I —ah —fancy, Lady Bayrose will do no more presenting—unless it may be to the heavenly choir, you know." "Why, what do you mean, Mr. Winthrope? You tolfi me that she and the maids had been putin the largest boat —" "My dear Miss Genevieve, you must remember that I am a diplomat. It was all quite sufficiently harrowing, I assure you. They were, indeed, put into the largest boat — Beastly mud dle! — While they waited for the mate to fetch you, the boat was crushed alongside, and all in it drowned." "Drowned! —drowned! Oh, dear Lady Bayrose! And she'd traveled so much —oh, oh, it is horrible! Why j did she persuade me to visit the Cape? ; It was only to be with her—And then for us to start off for India, when w« might have sailed straight to England! Oh, it is horrible! horrible! And my maid, and all —It cannot be possible!" "Pray, do not excite yourself, my dear Miss Genevieve. Their troubles are all over. Er—Gawd has taken them to Him, you know." "Hut the pity of it! To be drowned —so far from home!" "Ah, if that's all you're worrying about! —I must say I'd like to know how we'll get a snack for breakfast. I'm hungry as a—er —groom." "Eating! How can you think of eating, Mr. Winthrope—and all the others drowned? This sun is becom ing dreadfully hot. It 13 unbearable! Can you not put up some kind of an awning?" "Well, now, I must say, I was never much of a hand at such things, and really I can't imagine what one could rig up. There might have been a bit of sail in the boat, but one can't see a sign of it. I fancy It was smashed." Miss Leslie ventured a glance at Blake. Though still lying as he had sprawled in his drunkenness, there was a comforting suggestion of power in his broad shoulders and square jaw. "Is he still—in that condition?" "Must have slept it off by this time, and there's no more in the flask," an swered Winthrope. Reaching over with his foot, he pushed against Blake's back. "Huh! All right," grunted the sleeper, and sat up, as had Winthrope, half dazed. Then he stared around him, and rose to his feet. "Well, what in hell! Say, this is damn cheerful!" "I fancy we are in a nasty fix. But I say, my man, there is a woman pres ent, and your language, you know —" Blake turned and fixed the English man with a cold stare., "Look here, you bloomln* lud," he said, "there's just one thing you're going to understand, right here and now. I'm not your man, and we're not going to have any of that kind of blat ter. Any fool can see we're in a tight hole, and we're like to keep com pany for a while—probably long as we last." "What—ah—may I ask, do you mean by that?" Blake laughed harshly, and pointed from the reef-strewn sea to the vast stretches of desolate marsh. Far In land, across miles of brackish lagoons and reedy mud-flats, could be seen groups of scrubby, lialf-leafless trees; ten or twelve miles to the southward a rocky headland jutted out into the water; otherwise there was nothing In sight but sea and swamp. If It could not properly be termed a sea-view, it was at least a very wet landscape. "Fine prospect," remarked Blake, dryly. "We'll be in luck if the fever don't get the last of us inside a month; and as for you two, you'd have as much show of lasting a month as a toad with a rattlesnake, if it wasn't for Tom Blake —that's my name—Tom Blake—and as long as this shindy lasts, you're welcome to call me Tom or Blake, whichever suits. But un derstand, we're not going to have any more of your bloody, bloomln' English condescension. Aboard ship you had the drop on me, and could pile on dog till the cows came home. Here I'm Blake and you're Win thrope." "Believe me, Mr. Blake, I quite ap preciace it* —ah—eituation. And now, I fancy that, instead of wasting time—" "It's about time you Introduced me to the lady," interrupted Blake, and he stared at them half defiantly, yet with a twinkle in his eyes. Miss Leslie flushed. Winthrope swore softly, and bit his lip. Aboard ship, backed by Lady Bayrose and the captain, he had goaded the American at pleasure. Now, however, the sit uation was reversed. Both title and authority had been swept away by the storm, and he was left to shift for himself against the man who had every reason to hate him for his over bearing insolence. Worse still, both ho and Miss Leslie were now depen dent upon the American, in all prob ability for life itself. It was a bitter pill and hard to swallow. Blake was not slow to observe the Englishman's hesitancy. He grinned. "Every dog has his day, and I guess this is mine," he said. "Take your time, if it come 3 hard. I can imagine it's a pretty stiff dose for your ludshlp. But why in—why in frozen hades an American lady should object to an In troduction to a countryman who's go ing to do his level best to save her pretty little self frosa the hyenas— well, it beats me." Winthrope flushed redder than tho girl. "Miss Leslie, Mr. Blake," he mur mured, hoping to put an end to the situation. But yet Blake persisted. He bowed, openly exultant. "You see, miss," he said, "I know the correct thing quite as much as your swells. I knew all along you were Jenny Leslie. Iran a survey for your dear papa when he was manipulating the Q. T. railroad, and he did me «nrt of my pay." (TO BU CONTINUBD4 BIG PROFITS OF THE INTENSIVE GARDEN Skilled Culturist Will Secure SI,OOO Out of One Acre o( Land in One Year if Conditions Are Favorable. What is the real worth of a gar den? Many people incline to gar dening—they l'eel they would love the outdoor life, and not inind the work too much If they could be sure of a de cent, comfortable living in return, writes Moray Bliss in Youth's Com panion. We hear grumbling enough from gardeners, who are proverbial grumblers, that help is scarce, sea sons poor, prices low, and, in short, that gardening does not pay. The market seedsmen smile when you ask if one can make a thousand dollars a year if one knows how to garden. There are many men mak ing that sum. If we would live by gardening, we must study the ways of gardening. It was a shrewd old English farmer who used to say to his sons: "Put the horse to, and let us drive round and see what other people are after." The French market-gardeners about Paris are the most skillful growers In the world—except the Chinese—and the average garden of an acre or two "tilled to the eyebrows," as they say, shows the following returns, given by our consuls and business men inter ested in the matter: "There are, of course, exceptions, where the total income from one acre is $6,000 a year, but as a usual thing the gardens yield but $1,500 to an acre, and the average annual profit of the gardener is not over $1,000." How many ministers and college professors and teachers and small shopkeepers, artists and literary folk In the Shelter of the Fortifications of Paris. are there making a healthy living and putting SI,OOO a year in the bank be sides? The common Fench gardener makes this by intensive gardening. True, he begins with certain advantages. For generations before him his family have been gardeners, and the instinct for the best methods runs in the blood. Within a ten-mile circuit of Paris are 2,000 market-gardens, mod els of care and culture, and some of which iiave been held by the same family for 200 years. These gar dens are not large; the largest is said to be not over four acres, com mon gardens are not over two acres, and not the smallest profits are taken from plats of a quarter-acre, tilled with the finest care. We need not invest in expensive Seed Frames. greenhouses of glass in steel framing, as some of our American growers now do. The clever Frenchman finds his cheap board frame, with old win dow-sash sufficient, and instead of thick straw mats at eight cents apiece, he uses reed mats at sixpence each, which last four years or more. The reeds grow in most of our marshes, and mat-making is a very simple and profitable trade. For hand-lights, we may take the substitute used in the gardens of Bel- MUCH DAMAGE BY TWIG GIRDLER Younx Trees More Susceptible to Injury Than tho Older Ones- Insects Hard to Find. The twig girdler is a beetle belong ing to the family of long horned beetles. It is a little over one-half inch in length. The ground color is a brownish gray with yellow dots and a broad characteristic band of gray across the wing covers. It is the adult female beetle which does the girdling. Beginning in Aug ust and continuing through the early fall, she proceeds with her uninvited task of pruning trees. After selecting a twig suitable for her endeavors, she begins making punctures, usually one puncture at the base of each branchlet or young bud, and deposits an oval whitish egg. She then re treats vO a point between the most glum, Germany and Holland This simple hand-light is a frame of wil low covered with glazed muslin, undei which the plant grows as finely as un der glass. Better, in some respects for the cotton Is not so good a con ductor of heat as glass. In place of the immense quantities of stable dressing which the Paris gardener uses by the hundreds of tons to the acre, it is common now to use hot-water pipes running through the garden beds of rich soil. Good au thority says that 50 tons of coke will heat an acre of glass-houses the year round. Begin small, as all experts advise, with a quarter-acre, or even 2,500 feet. You can buy a lot of that size for five dollars on warm garden soil near a railway station, three hours from Boston, and learn that money is to be made by gardening at home as well as in Paris. Probably the best profit in Amer ican gardens is to be made from to matoes under high culture. That means fresh tomatoes eight months of the year, and 30 pounds at least from each vine, of large, smooth fruit, red, pink or yellow, with as much variety of flavor as there is apples. To accomplish this the seedlings are transplanted four or five times, to make them stocky and throw their force into fruiting. They are trained on trellises to catch the full sun, and when sunshine is scarce in seasons of fog and rain, it is hinted that the electric light is turned on the green houses with ripening effect. The field of experiment witii gardens is wide—as are their profits. Eden lies in every garden rightly grown. And there are few places in this country where gardening is not only possible, but profitable. A well informed grower told me that the most money was likely to be made from market-gardens near the small er cities and towns, not in the great cities, which draw on the gardens of the world for supplies. If too far for markets, there is good work to be done raising seed in out of-the-way places where plants will not mix. I do not know how long growers will have to pay five dollars for a hundred seed of certain choice plants, but well-grown seed, clean from weeds, will always command its price, for busy gardeners cannot both er to grow their own seed. Women and children can earn pin-money in this way from the smallest plot of soil. My own first garden, six feet by ten, when I was 12 years old, was plant ed chiefly to Indian corn, tended as if it were a pot plant, watered with house slop, and hoed every week. The huge amber ears it bore were instant ly begged by my father for seed, as better than anything he could get. An English laborer cultivated a quar ter-acre with spade and fork, raising 15 bushels of wheat, which is the average of our wheat crop per acre. It gave enough flour for him and his wife for a year; but if he had only known enough to raise it for seed-wheat, without much more pains, he could have sold his crop for a hundred dol lars. You can, if you have no better chance, raise seed from plants in pots on the top ef a bay window in town, and so learn the work of tend ing and enriching them for seed. In deed, there is a good deal of garden ing to be learned within the scope of one six-inch flower pot. proximal egg and the origin of the twig and proceeds to girdle the branch, cutting through the bark and the cambium in the characteristic manner. This girdling causes the twig to die, thus offering food for the young larvae. The twig is soon broken off by the wind or some other cause and fails to the ground, where decay sets in and the larvae have ideal condi tions for growth and development. The larvae does not complete its growth in the fall, but after feeding for a time it hibernates, completing its growth and transformation to an adult beetle the following season. The adult beetles, because of their dull colors and general habits, are very hard to find or catch. The beetle dies in the fall, and therefore we must fight this insect in the egg and larvae stages. The method re lom mended is to gather and bury all fall en twigs and the girdled twigs not yet fallen. This destroys the eggs and larvae that would develop into next season's brood.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers