The Cruise of the O Moo

Lucile Tucker stirred in her berth, opened her eyes drowsily, then half-framed a thought into a whispered: "What was that?"

The next instant she sat bolt upright. She had heard it again, this time not in a dream. It was a faint rat-tat-tat, with a hollow sound to it as if beaten on the head of a barrel.

She strained her ears to catch the slightest sound but now caught only the constant lash-lash of the flag-rope as it beat the mast of the yacht, the O Moo, a sure sign of a rising storm.

She strained her eyes to peer into the darkness to the right of her; she wanted to see her two companions who should be sleeping there to make sure they were still with her. She could not see; the shutters were tightly closed and there was no moon. The place was dark; black as soot.

She stilled her breathing to listen again, but caught only the lash-lash of that flag-rope, accompanied now and then by the drumlike boom of canvas. The storm was rising. Soon it would be lashing the waves into white foam to send them crashing high above the breakwaters. She shivered. A storm aboard ship had always frightened her.

Yet now as she thought of the term, "aboard ship," she shrugged her slim shoulders. Her lips parted in a smile as she murmured:

"The cruise of the O Moo."

Suddenly her thoughts were broken in upon by the repetition of that mysterious sound of a rat-tat-tat.

"Like a yellow-hammer drumming on a hollow tree," was her unspoken comment, "only birds don't work at night. It's like--like someone driving--yes, driving tacks. Only who could it be? And anyway, why would they drive tacks into our yacht at midnight."

The thought was so absurd that she dismissed it at once. Dismissing the whole problem for the moment, she began thinking through the events which had led up to that moment.

She, with Marian Norton, her cousin--as you will remember if you chance to have read the account of their previous adventure as recorded in the book called "The Blue Envelope"--had spent the previous year on the shores of Behring Straits in Alaska and Siberia. There they had been carried through a rather amazing series of thrilling adventures which had not been without their financial advantages, especially to Marian.

Lucile's father had been, when she had left her home at Anacortes, Washington, a well-to-do salmon fisherman. She had felt no fear of lack of money for further schooling. The two girls had therefore planned to study during this present year, Lucile at a great university situated near the shore of Lake Michigan and Marion in a renowned school of art in the same city.

But fortune plays rude tricks at times. They had returned to find that Lucile's father's fortune had been dissipated by an unfortunate investment in fish-traps for catching a run of sock-eyed salmon, a salmon run which failed, and that Marian's father had grub-staked a "sure-winner" gold mine which had panned out not enough gold to pay for the miner's "mucklucks" (skin-boots).

So Marian had given up the major portion of the money paid to her by the Ethnological Society for her sketches and Lucile had abandoned all hope of receiving money from her father for a university education. They had not, however, given up their plans for further schooling.