CHAPTER IV.
PROFESSOR GRIGG AND MR. TUBBS

“So it is. What on earth can it be doing out here? Wait a jiffy, I’ll go below and get the glasses.”

Joe, now fully recovered, dived into the after cabin and soon reappeared with a pair of powerful binoculars.

Nat focused them on the distant object, which, by this time, was visible, even to the naked eye, and reported it to be a small boat, painted white, and looking like a ship’s dinghy, or small lifeboat.

Excitement ran high on board the Nomad when Nat proclaimed that he was almost certain he had seen an arm wave from the small craft.

“I couldn’t be quite sure, though,” he admitted. “Here, Joe, you take a look.”

The chubby-faced Joe now bent the glasses on the object of their scrutiny.

He gazed intently for a minute, and then uttered a shout.

“By ginger, Nat, you’re right!” he exclaimed. “There is someone on board. There must be something the matter with them, though, for they seem to be collapsed in a kind of bundle on the thwarts.”

“We must make all speed to their aid,” said Nat, signaling for more power. “Poor fellows, if they have been adrift in all that flare-up, they must be about dead.”

“I should say so,” agreed Joe.

As they neared the boat, Nat began blowing long blasts on the electric whistle, to let the occupants know that aid was at hand. In response, a figure upreared itself in the drifting craft, waved feebly once or twice, and then subsided in a limp-looking heap.

“I reckon we’re only just about in time,” said Nat grimly, coaxing another knot out of the Nomad.

As they drew alongside the boat, they saw that not one but two persons occupied it. The one who had signaled them from a distance proved to be a short, stocky little man, with a crop of brilliant red hair and a pair of twinkling blue eyes. The merry flash in those optics had not been dulled, even by the terrible ordeal through which, it was apparent, he and his companion had passed.

“Hullo, shipmates! Glad to see you!” he chirruped, grinning up at the boys on the bridge with a look of intense good humor.

His white duck clothes were scorched, and his rubicund hair, on close inspection, proved to be singed, but nothing appeared capable of downing his amiability.

His companion was of a different character entirely. He was dressed in duck trousers and black alpaca coat. White canvas shoes adorned his extremely large feet. But it was his face that attracted the boys’ attention. It was large, round and learned looking, with a thin-lipped mouth cutting the lower part of it like a gash. Above this, a huge, bony nose protruded, across which was perched a pair of big, horn-rimmed spectacles. A crop of sparse gray locks crowned his high forehead and was scattered sparingly over his large, but well-shaped head, which was bare.

“God bless my soul, George Washington Tubbs, but I’ve lost my hat again!” he exclaimed to his companion, as the Nomad drew alongside.

“We’d have lost more than that, I fancy, if it hadn’t been for this here craft,” observed George Washington Tubbs, with a wink at the boys. “We’d have been a pair of buckwheat cakes, well browned, professor, when they found us.”

“I wish I could find my hat,” muttered the spectacled individual in a contemplative tone, peering about under the seats.

“It was blown off when the island busted up,” rejoined Mr. Tubbs. “But we’re keeping these gentlemen waiting. I presume,” he went on, addressing the boys, “that it is your intention to rescue us?”

Nat could hardly keep from laughing. His first impression was that they had encountered a pair of harmless lunatics. But something in the manner of both men precluded this idea almost as soon as it was formed.

“Won’t you come aboard?” he said politely.

It seemed as inadequate a remark as Stanley’s famous one to Livingston in the wilds of Africa; but, for the life of him, Nat couldn’t have found other words.

“Thanks; yes, we will,” responded Mr. Tubbs, with decisive briskness. “Oh, by the way! Don’t move! Don’t stir! Just as you are, till I tell you!”

Nat’s suspicions of lunacy began to revive.

Mr. Tubbs bent swiftly, and picked up what looked like a large camera from the bottom of the boat. Only it was unlike any camera the boys had ever seen. It was a varnished wooden box, with a big handle at the side. Mr. Tubbs gravely set it up on its tripod and began turning the handle rapidly.

“Now, you can move about! Let’s get action now!” he shouted, waving his free hand.

“This will be a dandy film!” he continued, addressing the world at large. “Gallant rescue of Professor Thaddeus Grigg and an obscure individual named Tubbs, following the disappearance of the volcanic isles.”

In good-natured acquiescence to Mr. Tubbs’ orders, the boys began bustling about. Ding-dong Bell, who had come on deck when he got the signal to stop his engines, was particularly active.

“Now, then, professor,” admonished Mr. Tubbs, “up with you.”

“Without my hat?” moaned the professor; but he nevertheless clambered over the side of the Nomad, the boys helping him, while Mr. Tubbs kept up a running fire of directions.

“Keep in the picture, please. Look around now, professor. Fine! Good! Great!”

These last exclamations came like a series of pistol shots, and seemingly proclaimed that the speaker was well satisfied with the pictures he had made. The professor being on board, Mr. Tubbs followed him, the boys helping him up with his machine, and with a box which, so he informed them, contained extra films.

Professor Grigg, as the red-headed, moving-picture man had called him, was too much exhausted to remain on deck, but retired to the cabin escorted by Ding-dong. As he went he was still murmuring lamentations over his hat.

“It’s his weakness,” explained Mr. Tubbs, who seemed to be in no wise the worse for his experience, “he’s lost ten hats since we left ’Frisco in the Tropic Bird.”

The name instantly recalled to Nat an item he had read in the papers some months before, concerning the setting forth on a mysterious expedition of Professor Grigg of the Smithsonian Institute and one George Washington Tubbs, a moving-picture photographer of some fame. The object of the expedition had been kept a secret, and the newspapermen could elicit no information concerning it. It had been rumored, however, that its purpose was to record the volcanic phenomena of the South Pacific.

“Is – is that the Professor Grigg?” asked Nat, in rather an awestruck tone.

“It is,” responded Mr. Tubbs, “and this is the Mr. Tubbs. I’ve taken moving pictures of the Russo-Japanese war, of the coronation, of the Delhi Durbar, of the fleet on battle practice, of – of everything, in fact. I’ve been up in balloons, down in submarines, sat on the cowcatchers of locomotives, in the seats of racing automobiles, hung by my eyebrows from the steel work of new skyscrapers; but I’ll be jiggered if this isn’t the first time I ever took a moving picture of an island being swallowed up alive – oh, just like you’d swallow an oyster.”

“Then the island was swallowed?” asked Joe, with wide-open eyes.

“Swallowed? I should say so. And with a dose of boiling water, too. But I got my pictures! I got my pictures!” concluded Mr. Tubbs triumphantly.

“But where’s your schooner? How did you come to be drifting about in an open boat?” inquired Nat.

“Ah, as Mr. Kipling says, ‘that’s another story,’” said Mr. Tubbs. “I guess I’ll have to leave that part of it to the professor. But – hullo, here he comes now. I guess he’s feeling better already. Possibly he’ll tell you the story for himself.”

“I shall be very glad to,” said the professor, who, after partaking of some stimulants from the Nomad’s medicine chest, already felt, as he said, “much revived.”

“You see in us, young men,” he continued, “the sole members of the volcanic phenomena expedition of the Smithsonian Institute and the British Royal Geographical Society, who adhered to the duty before them. Would you care to hear how we came to be adrift as you found us?”

“Would we?” came in concert from the boys.

“Then I – ” began the professor, and then broke off and felt his bare head. “Can – can any one lend me a hat?” he asked.

CHAPTER V.
TROUBLE WITH A HAT

He was speedily furnished with a peaked yachting cap belonging to Nat. It sat oddly, almost comically, on his large head, but none of the boys was inclined to laugh at the professor just then. They were far too interested in hearing what the eccentric man had to tell about the voyage of the Tropic Bird.

“We sailed from San Francisco, as you no doubt know from the papers,” said the professor, “without the object of our mission being divulged. There is no harm in telling it now.

“It had been ascertained that a certain phase of the sun spots would be reached on this present day. As you are perhaps aware, it has long been a theory of scientific men that there was some intimate relation between that phenomenon and the volcanic disturbances and earthquakes that occur in these seas from time to time.”

“I think that we learned something like that in physics,” said Nat, nodding.

“In physic?” chuckled Joe, but was frowned down.

The professor went on:

“It was my duty, assigned to me by the Smithsonian Institute and the British Royal Geographical Society, working in concert, to investigate such a disturbance and make elaborate reports thereon. At my suggestion, it was also decided to engage a moving-picture operator to take photos of the whole scene, which must prove of inestimable benefit to scientific knowledge. The Tropic Bird was chartered to convey the expedition, and Mr. Tubbs was placed under contract to take the pictorial record of the scene, if we were fortunate enough to encounter one.

“We cruised about for some time, awaiting the exact condition of the sun spots which would indicate that a phenomenon of the kind I was in search of was about to be demonstrated. Some days ago my observations showed me that the desired condition was at hand. As fortune would have it, on that very day we sighted these islands – or rather those islands, for they have completely vanished as I predicted they would.

“We landed, and found the islands to be of distinctly volcanic origin, and, seemingly, of recent formation. At any rate, they are not charted.”

Nat nodded.

“Of course there was no trace of habitation. But a few creepers and shrubs of rapid growth had taken root in the clefts of the lava-like rock, of which the islands were composed. I saw at once that it was here, if anywhere, that a seismic disturbance would result, in all probability, providing the conditions were favorable. That night, on our return to the ship, the captain of it waited on me.

“After much beating about the bush, he informed me that his crew was aware of my belief that the islands would be the center of a volcanic disturbance, and that they refused to remain in the vicinity. He denied being alarmed himself, however. I succeeded in calming the crew’s fears, and we remained at anchor off the islands for some days. At last, signs of the storm which broke to-day began to make themselves manifest on my instruments. I realized that the great moment was at hand.

“I warned Mr. Tubbs, here – a most valuable assistant – to be ready at any moment. I was confident that with the breaking of the storm the islands would vanish. But nothing was said to the crew. Quite early to-day Mr. Tubbs and I embarked in that small boat and lay off the islands. I was certain that the storm would be magnetic in character, and would break with great fury.”

“However did your boat live through it?” asked Nat.

“She is fitted with air chambers, and specially built to weather any storm,” was the reply. “But to resume: The cowardly captain, when he saw the storm coming up, sounded a signal for us to return on board. When we did not, he hoisted sail and made off, leaving us to our fate. The storm broke, and there was a spectacle of appalling magnificence. Mr. Tubbs behaved with the greatest heroism throughout.”

Here Mr. Tubbs blushed as red as his own hair, and waved a deprecatory hand.

“I guess it was watching you kept me from feeling scared,” he declared, addressing the professor; “but anyhow, I got my pictures.”

“We have some faint idea of what the storm was,” put in Nat; “but can you explain something to us?” and he described to the professor the manner in which the Nomad had been drawn toward the volcanic islands.

“Pure magnetism,” declared the scientist, “a common feature of such storms.”

“But our craft is of wood,” declared Nat.

“Yes, but your engines, being metallic, of course, overcame that resistance. You are fortunate, indeed, not to have been drawn down when the islands vanished. It was a terrific sight.”

Nat explained that during that period they were all unconscious and then went on to tell of the experiences through which they had passed.

“Oh, why wasn’t I on board your craft?” moaned Mr. Tubbs, as he concluded. “What a picture that chasm would have made! It’s the opportunity of a lifetime gone.”

The boys could hardly keep from smiling over his enthusiasm; but Nat struck in with:

“It’s an opportunity I don’t want to encounter again,” an opinion with which everybody but Mr. Tubbs – even the professor – concurred.

“And now,” said the man of science suddenly, “I don’t wish to alarm you, young men, but it is possible that there may be some reflex action exerted by this storm. In other words, there may be a mild recurrence of it. In my opinion we had better get as far away from this spot as possible.”

The others agreed with him. Ding-dong dived below to his engines. Nat took his station on the bridge.

“By the way, what about the boat?” asked Nat suddenly, referring to the craft from which they had rescued the scientist and his assistant.

“Unless you want it, we will let it drift,” said the professor. “It is too large for you to hoist conveniently, and it would impede your speed if you towed it.”

And so it was arranged to leave the boat behind, but Mr. Tubbs took a series of pictures of it as the Nomad sped away. The professor also waved the craft, in which they had weathered so much, a farewell. But, when doing so, in some manner the peak of his borrowed cap slipped from between his fingers. The headpiece went whirling overboard, and fell into the sea with a splash.

“God bless my soul, I’ve lost my hat!” he exclaimed for the second time that day, as the catastrophe happened.

“He’ll use up every hat on board. You see if he don’t,” confided Mr. Tubbs to Nat, while the professor gazed fondly at the spot where the cap had vanished.