The next day quite unexpectedly the captain got a call and at once sent for the doctor and said: 

“I’ve had word at last.  From our owners.  From Mr. Smith himself.  He has just heard from us, and is going to send out a vessel to get us away from here.  It seems that one of our smaller vessels, a steamer, has been captured by some smugglers working around Cuba, Porto Rico and the neighborhood, who are using it in their trade.  Some of the men got away, and took the news to Havana.  The name of the vessel is a good deal like our own, and Smith thought that we had been taken at first, and began a lot of investigating.  Then he got our messages, which had been held up by some one else, thinking they were fakes, or some boys’ play.  These young wireless operators make a lot of trouble now and then.”

“Well, as long as we know that help is being sent to us we can feel relieved,” said the doctor.  “That is something, at any rate, but——­”

“But you don’t think that it will do any good, Doctor?”

“Well, if you cannot get out how is any one else going to get in?” the doctor asked, as if merely seeking for information, and not being especially interested in the matter.

“There’s something in that, sir,” replied Captain Storms musingly, “but we’ll see how it turns out when they get here.  At any rate we are not forgotten altogether, and that is something.”

The boys were told about the message, and were greatly interested, Jesse W. saying to Jack: 

“Now I’ll have a chance to speak to father about you, Jack, and to tell him what you have done for me.  He has always been interested in you, and now he will be all the more so.”

“Never mind doing too much for me, J.W., or you will spoil me altogether,” laughed Jack, who, nevertheless, felt grateful to the younger boy for his interest.  “We Hilltop boys should help each other, and so I don’t deserve any extra credit for simply doing what is expected of me.  It is only the big brother idea which is gaining ground every day, and is a good thing both for the little brothers and the big ones.”

That night as Jack Sheldon lay asleep in his berth in the cabin set off for the Hilltop boys, he was suddenly awakened by a bright light flashing in his face, there being a porthole opposite.

“That’s odd!” he murmured, as he sat up and looked around.  “Where does that light come from?  Or did I only imagine it?”

At that moment the light flashed in his face again, and he got out of his berth and went over to the porthole, looking out to see where the light could have come from, there being only water on that side.

The yacht had changed her position, and was now in sight of the outer bay, and having changed the direction of her head on account of the tide, the boy could now look out upon the bay, which he had not been able to do at the time he went to bed.

He saw the flash again, and in a moment realized that some one out there, probably beyond the reefs, was using a regular code of signals, a thing he had himself done with his pocket electric light.