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Updated: May 2, 2025
"Wonder what they are up to? That boat passed our island yesterday evening and the crowd in her then acted to me as though they were drunk." "I should think Why!" exclaimed Ruth suddenly breaking off in what she was first going to say, "one of those men is a Chinaman." "So he is," agreed Chessleigh Copley. "And that little fat man see him? Why, Chess! it looks like "
The tones were first high, then low, never guttural, and possessed a certain sibilant quality. Whether the words spoken were English or not, was likewise a mystery. Ruth and Chessleigh stood first in one place, then in another, in that circle about the big beech tree. The young man had gone all around the tattered trunk and found no opening.
"Who knocked him out?" demanded Bilby. The burly Chinaman was the one he addressed, who answered in a form of English: "Allee same me. I get um, Mist' Blibly." "For mercy's sake!" whined Bilby, wringing his fat hands. "These people aren't police. They are some of the summer visitors. Now we are in a mess!" "Allee same look-see," growled the Chinaman. He kicked Chessleigh, and not gently.
This was a tall, pink-cheeked, well set-up youth looking as though, like Tom, he had seen military service, and with an abundance of light hair above his broad brow. At school Chessleigh Copley had been nicknamed "Lasses" because of that crop of hair.
"Our Ruth was wounded in France and has been in danger on many occasions, as we all know. Never has she more gracefully escaped disaster, nor been aided by a more chivalrous cavalier. Drink! Drink to Ruth Fielding and to Chessleigh Copley! They are two very lucky people, for that ceiling might have cracked their crowns." They drank the toast most of them with much laughter.
However the wind might sit and whatever may have been her secret opinion of Ruth Fielding's interest in Chessleigh Copley, Helen suddenly became mute regarding that young man. But, after a moment, she was not at all mute upon the subject of the King of the Pipes and what might be going on on the island where they believed the queer old man had his headquarters.
"I shall get over that all right," returned Chess quietly. But when they were out of the passage and on the open shore Helen insisted upon fussing around Chessleigh, bathing the lump on his head, and otherwise "mothering" him in a way that secretly delighted Ruth. Tom looked at his sister in some amazement. "What do you know about that?" he whispered to Ruth.
Tom and his party in the other motor-boat had not appeared, nor had the Gem come back from the town of Chippewa Bay with Mr. Hammond. Why should not Ruth and Chessleigh spy about among the islands for a time? It was not now moonlight; and there was some haze which gave a smouldering effect to the stars peering through it.
The sing-song sounds for such they seemed to be went on and on, meaningless for the two listeners, who could not distinguish a single word. "Think that's your King of the Pipes?" asked Chessleigh finally. "I don't know. If it is, there must be something more the matter with him than Willie says there is. He sounds crazy that is the way it sounds to me."
The leading Chinaman glared into Ruth's frightened face and his thin lips curled back from his yellow teeth in a snarl like that of a rabid dog. His very look was enough to turn the girl cold. She trembled, still striving to drag the half-senseless Chessleigh back.
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