CHAPTER I

UNEXPECTED NEWS

“That’s the way to do it! Jump right into the surf and get after her, Mr. Piper!”

“Move a little faster, can’t you?”

“If he doesn’t that big wave is going to get him as sure as fate!”

“There he goes! Stop those moving picture machines, boys!”

A big wave came tumbling up the beach, rolling over and over in its foamy grip a man clad in a life guard’s bathing costume; while farther up the sands two lads, at the handles of moving picture cameras, ceased grinding away at the film, and doubled up with mirth.

Then, when the wave had spent its force, the man arose, got rid of the water in his eyes and the sand in his mouth, and exclaimed:

“I knew it! I knew something would happen if you tried one of these lighthouse dramas! I’m done! I quit here and now!”

“Oh, C. C., just one more trial!” pleaded a man who seemed to be a theatrical manager. “You can do it if you try again; I’m sure you can!”

“Never again!” cried the man, and then the two boys and the other members of the company gathered about him to use their persuasion.

“C. C. is up to his old tricks; isn’t he, Blake?” remarked one of the lads, as he looked at his moving picture machine to see how many feet of film had been registered.

“That’s what he is, Joe,” responded the other youth. “But I don’t know as I can blame him this time. Something did happen, in spite of the fact that he’s always predicting calamities that seldom come to pass.”

“Think they’ll get him to try it again?”

“Oh, yes, I guess so. Mr. Ringold and Mr. Hadley generally get what they want. There, he’s going to do it over again. I guess we’d better get back to our machines,” for the lads had joined the group about the man in bathing costume.

“Well, I’ll try that rescue scene once more,” finally announced the person who had been designated as Mr. Piper and also as C. C.

“But it does seem,” he went on, “that I always have to do all the work in these tank dramas. I’m the one that’s always falling in the water and getting my death of cold. I always have to do the rescuing. Why can’t I be rescued myself some time? Though I suppose if I jumped in, and waited for some one to get me out, they’d let me drown. Oh, why did I ever go into this miserable business, anyhow?” and while uttering these dismal words the man made a series of comical faces that sent the others into spasms of laughter.

“Oh, cheer up, Gloomy!” cried one of the young ladies of the company. “You’ll be happy yet.”

“I doubt it,” came the answer. “But go ahead!”

“All ready out there!” called Mr. Ringold, head of the Film Theatrical Company, which was making a series of dramas for moving pictures on the lower California coast, near San Diego. “All ready out there in the boat! C. C. is going to try the rescue once more.”

“And look out for the big waves, C. C.,” advised the manager. “Just swim as you always do. You’ve been in the surf before. And you’re supposed to be a life guard, you know. They can swim like fishes.”

“I’m not a fish!” declared the actor.

“Be ready, Miss Lee!” called Mr. Ringold, to a young lady, who was out some distance on the lazily rising and falling ocean, in a small boat. “Remember you’re supposed to be adrift in an open craft--you have been lost for days and days. You finally get near shore and the life guard sees you. He swims out at the peril of his life and rescues you.”

“That’s it--always at the risk of my life,” grumbled C. C. Piper, to give him his right name. “If I don’t drown, I get my death of cold!”

“Go ahead!” cried Mr. Ringold, impatiently. “Remember, Miss Lee, you’re supposed to be nearly starved. The life guard brings you in and carries you to the lighthouse. There you fall in love with the young keeper, and the life guard and he have trouble over you. But we’ll get those scenes later. All ready now, C. C. Jump in. Joe--Blake, be ready with your cameras there!”

“All right!” cried the two lads, and, as the actor once more plunged into the surf, Joe and Blake began turning the handles of the moving picture cameras.

The machines clicked and purred as the film unwound from one reel, passed behind the lens with its rapidly opening and closing shutter, and then was wound on another reel, pictures being taken at the rate of sixteen per second.

This time nothing happened. C. C. swam out to the boat containing Miss Lee, one of the younger actresses, brought her to shore, and she was carried into the lighthouse, which was near at hand.

“That’ll be all for the present, boys,” directed Mr. Ringold. “The next scenes will take place in the lighthouse, and I’ll have to arrange for some lights there, as it’s too dark to get the pictures without. I won’t need you for several hours, and then this will bring our work on the Pacific coast to a close.”

“That lets us out, Blake,” said one lad to the other. “What shall we do?”

“Go back to the boarding house and finish packing up, I guess. If we’re going to make that trip to China, to look for your sister, who is supposed to be with some missionaries there, we’ve got lots to do yet. Where is your father?”

“He went to the postoffice to see if there was any mail. He expected something from that missionary to whom he wrote for more explicit directions how to get to the station where my sister Jessie is supposed to be. He had rather indefinite ones when he started for Hong Kong, just before he was wrecked.”

“That’s so. I say, Joe! It’s going to be quite an experience for us to go to China. I’m glad you thought of taking a moving picture camera along. We will get some good films, I believe.”

“So do I, but I won’t be much interested in them until I find my sister.”

“I suppose not. Well, come on back to our shack,” and the two lads, Joe Duncan and Blake Stewart, moving picture operators, who had been engaged to “film” a series of dramas on the Pacific coast for Mr. Ringold, packed up their machines and left the beach. The theatrical company went inside the government lighthouse, which they had been permitted to use for part of the moving picture play.

Some months before, Joe and Blake, after a series of strange adventures, which I shall tell you about in brief, presently, reached San Diego with the company. Joe was on the track of his father, whom he had not seen since he was a baby. He learned that Mr. Duncan was an assistant keeper at the very lighthouse in which the little drama was now taking place.

But Mr. Duncan had left there just before Joe and his chum, Blake, arrived. It was said he had fled to escape being arrested as a wrecker of ships by means of false lights, but this was disproved, and it was learned that Mr. Duncan had set out for China to find his daughter Jessie, who had disappeared at the same time as had Joe.

But the vessel on which Mr. Duncan sailed was wrecked. He was picked up by a ship bound for San Francisco, and this craft foundered, too, in a great storm near San Diego.

It chanced that Mr. Ringold wanted moving pictures of a storm and a wreck, and while the life savers were rigging up the breeches buoy to bring ashore the unfortunates, Joe and Blake took moving pictures of the stirring scene.

The last to come ashore was the captain and Mr. Duncan, and thus Joe found his father. The latter cleared himself of the false charge, and told how he had been seeking his daughter, who was said to be a missionary’s helper in China.

Of course, Joe at once decided to give up his work for the Film Theatrical Company and accompany his parent on the quest, and Blake elected to go with his boyhood chum. But there were a few moving pictures yet to be taken to finish the work on the coast, and the boys agreed to do them for Mr. Ringold. This was what they were engaged on when the present story opens.

“I wonder what it will be like in China?” mused Joe, as he and his chum walked on.

“Oh, just like what we’ve read about, I expect. Men with pigtails, and women with fans, tea gardens, vases, dragons, and all that.”

“We ought to get some pretty good pictures, then,” went on Joe.

“That’s right,” agreed Blake.

“I can hardly wait to start,” continued his chum. “To think that I’ve found my father, when I never expected to see him again, and that I’m going to have a sister. I’ll soon have quite a family, Blake.”

“That’s what you will. Well, I wish you luck. I wonder what your sister Jessie will be like?”

“She’s about a year older than I am,” remarked Joe. “Dad said so. And he said she was very pretty when she was a baby. Poor Jessie! To think that she doesn’t know she has a father any more than I did a few months ago. Won’t she be surprised when we come walking in on her, over in China, and ask for a cup of tea?”

“I guess she will, Joe. Well, I’m going to pack up. We have only about a week more here, and then Ho! for Hong Kong!”

“That’s right. Say, I’ll need two trunks to take all the truck I’ve accumulated since we came here.”

“You’ll have to leave some of it, I reckon.”

For a time there was silence in the rooms of the two lads, broken only by the noise they made in packing their trunks. Presently Joe said:

“Seems to me Dad is a long while coming back from the postoffice,” for Mr. Duncan had taken up his residence with his son in the big theatrical boarding house on the beach.

“It’s quite a walk into town,” observed Blake.

“I’ll tell you what let’s do,” suggested his chum.

“What?”

“Let’s walk in and meet him. Then I’ll know sooner just where my sister is. I want to write to her.”

“All right, I’m with you; come on,” and the two, leaving their packing half finished, started for San Diego, which was some miles from the little fishing settlement of Chester, where most of the films had been made.

“That looks like him coming,” observed Blake, some time afterward, when he and his chum had walked on for a considerable distance toward the town. “It walks like him, anyhow.”

“Yes, that’s Dad,” observed Joe. “Say, do you know he’s just like I pictured him in my mind, after we met Uncle Bill, the time he rescued us from those Moqui Indians. Dad is just as I thought he’d be; a bit younger, perhaps, but otherwise the same.”

“That’s good. It’s nice not to be disappointed. But he seems to have a letter, Joe.”

“That’s right; he has. I hope it’s from Jessie, though that can hardly be, as Dad only wrote to the missionary headquarters in New York to find out her exact location in China. But he sure has something,” and Joe looked closely at the man who was approaching, holding in his hand a bit of paper.

At that moment Mr. Duncan looked up and saw his son and the latter’s chum. But he did not quicken his pace, though Joe broke into a run.

“Hello, Dad!” he cried. “Any news?”

“Yes--there--there’s some news, Joe,” was the answer.

“That’s rather odd,” mused Blake. “He doesn’t speak as if it was good news. I wonder if anything could have happened?”

The same thought must have come to Joe, for he hesitated a moment, and then, hastening on, was soon at his father’s side.

“What’s the matter, Dad?” he exclaimed. “Is anything wrong? Isn’t Jessie in China? Is she--is she dead?”

“No, Joe, not dead, as far as I can make out, but I have unexpected news just the same--news I don’t like!” and he looked at the letter in his hand.

“What is it, Dad? Tell me!” urged his son. “Has anything happened to Jessie? Isn’t she in China?”

“No, Joe, she isn’t.”

“Where is she?”

“Why, this letter from the missionary society says she changed her mind at the last minute, and instead of going to China went to the interior of Africa.”

“To Africa!” cried Joe.

“Yes, into the jungle; and Joe,” went on Mr. Duncan, with a tremor in his voice, “it’s in a locality where the natives are said to be none too friendly. Poor Jessie! My poor little girl!” and Mr. Duncan turned his face away.