“We ought to have somebody that knows something to look after her.  Molly, we must get Grandma here.  I believe I’ll try to jump myself, but I suppose I’d just sprain my ankle and lie there in the storm till I was all washed away.  What can we do?”

“We could holler, but nobody could hear us, it’s raining so hard.  The thunder and lightning aren’t so bad now, but the rain and wind are fearful.”

Molly was flying about the room, peeping out at one window after another, and then flying back to look at Stella, who still lay unconscious.

“If we only had a megaphone,” said Marjorie, “though I don’t believe we could scream loud enough through that even, to make Carter hear.  What do people do when they’re shipwrecked?”

“They send up rockets,” said Molly, wisely.

“We haven’t any rockets; but, oh, Molly! we have some firecrackers.  They’ve been here ever since Fourth of July; those big cannon crackers, you know!  Do you suppose we could fire off some of those, and Carter would hear them?”

“The very thing!  But how can we fire them in this awful rain?  It would put them right out.”

“We must do it!  It’s our only chance!”

Carefully putting a pillow under Stella’s head, they left her lying on the floor, while they ran for the firecrackers.

Sure enough they were big ones, and there were plenty of them.  It would be difficult to fire them in the rain, but, as Marjorie said, it must be done.  Keeping them carefully in a covered box, the girls went out on the little veranda, closing the door behind them.  A wooden box, turned up on its side, formed sufficient protection from the rain to get a cracker lighted, and Marjorie bravely held it until it was almost ready to explode, and then flung it out into the storm.  It went off, but to the anxious girls the noise seemed muffled by the rain.

They tried another and another, but with little hope that Carter would hear them.

“Let’s put them all in a tin pan,” said Marjorie, “and put the box on top of them to keep them dry, and then set them all off at once.”

“All right,” said Molly, “but I’m afraid Carter will think it’s thunder.”

However, it seemed the best plan, and after lighting the end of the twisted string, the girls ran into the house and shut the door.

Such a racket as followed!  The crackers went off all at once.  The box flew off, and the tin pan tumbled down, and the little veranda was a sight to behold!

It sounded like Fourth of July, but to the two girls, watching from the window, there was no effect of celebration.

But their desperate plan succeeded.  Carter heard the racket, and did not mistake it for thunder; but, strangely enough, realized at once what it was.

“It’s them crazy children in their tree-house,” he exclaimed; “but what the mischief do they be settin’ off firecrackers for, in the pouring rain?  Howsomever I’ll just go and see what’s up, for like as not they’ve burned their fingers, if so be that they haven’t put their eyes out.”