The other girls came in a few moments later. For an hour they sat in a corner, drinking hot chocolate and telling of their night's adventures.

Then they prepared themselves for the night's rest.

For a long time after the others had retired, Florence sat in a huge upholstered chair, lights out, staring into the dark. She was thinking over the experiences of the past few weeks, trying to put them together in a geometric whole, just as an artist arranges the parts of a stained gla.s.s window.

"There's Lucile's experience in the old Spanish Mission," she mused, "and my own in the museum. Then there's Mark Pence's visit to the old scow and the circular stairway. Then there's the blue candlestick. It's rare, mysterious and valuable. Why? The police are interested in it. Why? Then there's the police-sergeant's visit, and Lucile's experience on the ice, and the two policemen visiting the old scow, and there's that man on the bridge to-night, the two with the sled and the one sitting on the ice.

It's all mysterious, so it ought all to fit together somehow."

For a long time she sat wrapped in deep thought. Then she started suddenly.

"Blue!" she whispered. "The face Lucile saw in the Mission was blue, illuminated and blue. In the story the old seaman told me the face of the G.o.d of the Negontisks was illuminated and blue. The candlestick I found was blue. What should be more natural than that a blue jade candlestick should be made in which to set a candle with which to illumine the blue G.o.d? Blue jade is valuable. A ring or stickpin set with a small piece of it is costly. That makes the candlestick both costly and valuable. All that," she sighed, "seems to hang together."

Again she sat for a time in deep thought.

"Only," she breathed at last, "who ever heard of a tribe of Negontisks in America, let alone here in Chicago? Try to imagine a hundred or more near-savages, with no money and no means of transportation but their native skin-boats, traveling eight thousand miles over land and sea and ending up in Chicago. It can't be imagined. It simply isn't done. So there goes my carefully arranged puzzle all to smash."

Throwing off her dressing-gown, she climbed into her berth, listening to the flag-rope lashing the mast for an instant, then fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER X THE REAL CRUISE BEGINS

Next morning Florence was skating down the lagoon, deep in thoughts of the mysterious events of the past few days. So deeply engrossing were these thoughts that she did not see what lay before her. Suddenly her skate struck some solid obstacle. She tripped, then went sprawling. Her loosened skate shot off in another direction.

"That's queer," she murmured as she sat up rubbing her knees.

Glancing back over the way she had come, she saw nothing more than a circular raised spot which had formed when water had sprung up through a hole in the ice.

"That's strange," she mused, and rising, she hopped and glided back to the spot.

"Someone must have cut a hole in the ice," she reflected, "though what they'd do it for is more than I can see. We youngsters used to do that to get a drink when we were skating on a little prairie pond, a long way from nowhere. But here the ice is fourteen inches thick and there's a drink of water to be had for the asking up at the skate house."

As she glanced down at the spot, another strange circ.u.mstance surprised her. "What makes that spot look so much bluer than the other ice?" she asked herself.

As she examined it more closely she saw that this patch of blue had a very definite outline, but rough and jagged, like the edges of a piece of cloth haggled by a child who is just learning to use a pair of scissors.

Having recaptured her fugitive skate, she clamped it to her foot and was about to go on her way when another startling fact arrested her.

"Why, that," she thought, "is just about where that man was sitting last night; the one Marian and I saw who had apparently dropped in from nowhere."

So struck with the discovery was she that she skated over to the edge of the ice where the sled drawn by the two strangers had left the snow.

There she took good notice of the direction in which the sled had been going when it came upon the ice.

Turning about, she skated backward with her eyes on the track made by the sled runners. She was endeavoring to retrace the sled over the ice where no tracks were visible, in an effort to prove that the sled had arrived at the point on the ice where the hole had been cut when it turned and struck off at another angle.

So successful was she in this that she all but fell over the rise in the ice a second time.

"That's that," she murmured. "Now for something else."

Skating rapidly to the end of the lagoon nearest the dry dock she circulated about until she discovered the spot at which the sled had left the ice.

Again guiding herself by the course taken by the sled, she skated backward and in a short time found herself once more beside the spot in the ice where the hole had been cut.

"That proves something," she told herself, "but just how much I can't tell. But I'll leave that to study out to-night. Must hurry on or I'll be late to my lecture."

"That sled track went toward the dry dock," she told herself a few moments later. "To-night when I go home I'll try to trace it out and see where it went."

Lucile was home early that day. Marian had not gone to school at all. She had stayed on the beach making sketches of the ice-jam on the lake front.

"I'll be going out again to-night," she told Lucile. "Wind's shifted.

It's offsh.o.r.e now and rising. There are certain effects of lights and shadows which you get on the rim of a body of fresh water which you don't in the sea ice. Sea ice is white, dull white, like snow. Fresh water ice is blue; blue as the sky sometimes. I want to catch it before it blows out again. But what brings you home so early, Lucile?"

"Cut my lecture. Headache," she explained, pressing her temples. "Nothing much though. And, Marian," she exclaimed suddenly, "what do you think?

That story!"

"Did he take it?"

"The editor of the Literary Monthly? No, better than that."

"Could anything be better than that?"

"Lots of things."

"What _is_ better?"

"Listen," declaimed Lucile, striking a mock dramatic att.i.tude. "He said, the literary editor did, that it was too good for his _poor little publication_! Fancy! 'His poor little publication!' My story too good! My story! A freshman's story!" She burst into sudden laughter, but stopped abruptly and sat down pressing her temples and groaning: "My poor head!"

"You never can tell about it--about stories," said Marian. "Heads either.

You'll have to go to bed early to-night and get a good night's sleep.

There's been entirely too much excitement on board these last few nights."

"He said," Lucile went on, "that the Literary Monthly didn't pay for stories. Of course I knew that. And he said that he thought I could sell my story; that he thought it was good enough for that. The technique was not quite perfect. There was too much explanation at the beginning and the climax was short, but the theme and plot were unusual. He thought that would put it over. He knew exactly the place to send it--'Seaside Tales,' a new magazine just started by a very successful editor. He knows him personally. He gave me a letter of introduction to him and I mailed the story to him right away. So you see," she smiled folding her arms, "I am to be an auth.o.r.ess, a--a second George Eliot, if you please!"

"But Seaside Tales is published right down town. Why did you mail it?"

"Do you think," said Lucile in real consternation, "that I would dare beard that lion of an editor in his den? The editor of a real magazine that pays genuine money for stories? Why I--I'd die of fright. Besides, one does not do it. Really one doesn't."

"What was your story about?" asked Marian suddenly.

"Why, I--I wasn't going to tell, but I guess I will. It was about three girls living on a yacht in a dry dock. And, one night in a storm the yacht broke loose on the dry dock and went out into the water. Then it drifted out to sea. Then, of course, they had to get back to land. Wasn't that dramatic?"

"Yes, very!" smiled Marian. "Goodness! I hope it never happens to the O Moo! Just think! Not one of us even knows how to start the engine."

"I mean to have Dr. Holmes show me the very next time he and Mrs. Holmes come down."

"He'll think you're crazy."

"Maybe he will. But you never can tell."