Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point: or, Nita, the Girl Castaway

CHAPTER XIII
CRAB PROVES TO BE OF THE HARDSHELL VARIETY

They came to the lighthouse. There was only a tiny, whitewashed cottage at the foot of the tall shaft. It seemed a long way to the brass-trimmed and glistening lantern at the top. Ruth wondered how the gaunt old woman who came to the door to welcome them could ever climb those many, many stairs to the narrow gallery at the top of the shaft. She certainly could not suffer as Aunt Alvirah did with her back and bones.

Sokennet Light was just a steady, bright light, sending its gleam far seaward. There was no mechanism for turning, such as marks the revolving lights in so many lighthouses. The simplicity of everything about Sokennet Light was what probably led the department officials to allow Mother Purling to remain after her husband died in harness.

“Jack Crab has done his cleaning and gone about his business,” said Mother Purling, to the girls. “Ye may all climb up to the lantern if ye wish; but touch nothing.”

Beside the shaft of the light was a huge fog bell. That was rung by clockwork. Mother Purling showed Ruth and her companions how it worked before the girls started up the stairs. Mercy remained in the little house with the good old woman, for she never could have hobbled up those spiral stairs.

“It’s too bad about that girl,” said Nita, brusquely, to Ruth. “Has she always been lame?”

Ruth warmed toward the runaway immediately when she found that Nita was touched by Mercy Curtis’ affliction. She told Nita how the lame girl had once been much worse off than she was now, and all about her being operated on by the great physician.

“She’s so much better off now than she was!” cried Ruth. “And so much happier!”

“But she’s a great nuisance to have along,” snapped Mary Cox, immediately behind them. “She had better stayed at home, I should think.”

Ruth flushed angrily, but before she could speak, Nita said, looking coolly at The Fox:

“You’re a might snappy, snarly sort of a girl; ain’t you? And you think you are dreadfully smart. But somebody told you that. It ain’t so. I’ve seen a whole lot smarter than you. You wouldn’t last long among the boys where I come from.”

“Thank you!” replied Mary, her head in the air. “I wouldn’t care to be liked by the boys. It isn’t ladylike to think of the boys all the time–”

“These are grown men, I mean,” said Nita, coolly. “The punchers that work for–well, just cow punchers. You call them cowboys. They know what’s good and fine, jest as well as Eastern folks. And a girl that talks like you do about a cripple wouldn’t go far with them.”

“I suppose your friend, the half-Indian, is a critic of deportment,” said The Fox, with a laugh.

“Well, Jib wouldn’t say anything mean about a cripple,” said Nita, in her slow way, and The Fox seemed to have no reply.

But this little by-play drew Ruth Fielding closer to the queer girl who had selected her “hifaluting” name because it was the name of a girl in a paper-covered novel.

Nita had lived out of doors, that was plain. Ruth believed, from what the runaway had said, that she came from the plains of the great West. She had lived on a ranch. Perhaps her folks owned a ranch, and they might even now be searching the land over for their daughter. The thought made the girl from the Red Mill very serious, and she determined to try and gain Nita’s confidence and influence her, if she could, to tell the truth about herself and to go back to her home. She knew that she could get Mr. Cameron to advance Nita’s fare to the West, if the girl would return.

But up on the gallery in front of the shining lantern of the lighthouse there was no chance to talk seriously to the runaway. Heavy had to sit down when she reached this place, and she declared that she puffed like a steam engine. Then, when she had recovered her breath, she pointed out the places of interest to be seen from the tower–the smoke of Westhampton to the north; Fuller’s Island, with its white sands and gleaming green lawns and clumps of wind-blown trees; the long strip of winding coast southward, like a ribbon laid down for the sea to wash, and far, far to the east, over the tumbling waves, still boisterous with the swell of last night’s storm, the white riding sail of the lightship on No Man’s Shoal.

They came down after an hour, wind-blown, the taste of salt on their lips, and delighted with the view. They found the ugly, hairy man sitting on the doorstep, listening with a scowl and a grin to Mercy’s sharp speeches.

“I don’t know what brought you back here to the light, Jack Crab, at this time of day,” said Mother Purling. “You ain’t wanted.”

“I likes to see comp’ny, too, I do,” growled the man.

“Well, these girls ain’t your company,” returned the old woman. “Now! get up and be off. Get out of the way.”

Crab rose, surlily enough, but his sharp eyes sought Nita. He looked her all over, as though she were some strange object that he had never seen before.

“So you air the gal they brought ashore off the lumber schooner last night?” he asked her.

“Yes, I am,” she returned, flatly.

“You ain’t got no folks around here; hev ye?” he continued.

“No, I haven’t.”

“What’s your name?”

“Puddin’ Tame!” retorted Mercy, breaking in, in her shrill way. “And she lives in the lane, and her number’s cucumber! There now! do you know all you want to know, Hardshell?”

Crab growled something under his breath and went off in a hangdog way.

“That’s a bad man,” said Mercy, with confidence. “And he’s much interested in you, Miss Nita Anonymous. Do you know why?”

“I’m sure I don’t,” replied Nita, laughing quite as sharply as before, but helping the lame girl to the buckboard with kindliness.

“You look out for him, then,” said Mercy, warningly. “He’s a hardshell crab, all right. And either he thinks he knows you, or he’s got something in his mind that don’t mean good to you.”

But only Ruth heard this. The others were bidding Mother Purling good-bye.

CHAPTER XIV
THE TRAGIC INCIDENT IN A FISHING EXCURSION

The boys had returned when the party drove back to the bungalow from the lighthouse. A lighthouse might be interesting, and it was fine to see twenty-odd miles to the No Man’s Shoal, and Mother Purling might be a dear– but the girls hadn’t done anything, and the boys had. They had fished for halibut and had caught a sixty-five-pound one. Bobbins had got it on his hook; but it took all three of them, with the boatkeeper’s advice, to get the big, flapping fish over the side.

They had part of that fish for supper. Heavy was enraptured, and the other girls had a saltwater appetite that made them enjoy the fish, too. It was decided to try for blackfish off the rocks beyond Sokennet the next morning.

“We’ll go over in the Miraflame”–(that was the name of the motor boat)–“and we’ll take somebody with us to help Phineas,” Heavy declared. Phineas was the boatman who had charge of Mr. Stone’s little fleet. “Phin is a great cook and he’ll get us up a regular fish dinner–”

“Oh, dear, Jennie Stone! how can you?” broke in Helen, with her hands clasped.

“How can I what, Miss?” demanded the stout girl, scenting trouble.

“How can you, when we are eating such a perfect dinner as this, be contemplating any other future occasion when we possibly shall be hungry?”

The others laughed, but Heavy looked at her school friends with growing contempt. “You talk–you talk,” she stammered, “well! you don’t talk English–that I’m sure of! And you needn’t put it all on me. You all eat with good appetites. And you’d better thank me, not quarrel with me. If I didn’t think of getting nice things to eat, you’d miss a lot, now I tell you. You don’t know how I went out in Mammy Laura’s kitchen this very morning, before most of you had your hair out of curl-papers, and just slaved to plan the meals for to-day.”

“Hear! hear!” chorused the boys, drumming with their knife handles on the table. “We’re for Jennie! She’s all right.”

“See!” flashed in Mercy, with a gesture. “Miss Stone has won the masculine portion of the community by the only unerring way–the only straight path to the heart of a boy is through his stomach.”

“I guess we can all thank Jennie,” said Ruth, laughing quietly, “for her attention to our appetites. But I fear if she had expected to fast herself to-day she’d still be abed!”

They were all lively at dinner, and they spent a lively evening, towards the end of which Bob Steele gravely went out of doors and brought in an old boat anchor, or kedge, weighing so many pounds that even he could scarcely carry it upstairs to the bed chamber which he shared with Tom and Isadore.

“What are you going to do with that thing, Bobby Steele?” demanded his sister.

“Going to anchor Busy Izzy to it with a rope. I bet he won’t walk far in his sleep to-night,” declared Bobbins.

With the fishing trip in their minds, all were astir early the next morning. Miss Kate had agreed to go with them, for Mercy believed that she could stand the trip, as the sea was again calm. She could remain in the cabin of the motor boat while the others were fishing off the rocks for tautog and rock-bass. The boys all had poles; but the girls said they would be content to cast their lines from the rock and hope for nibbles from the elusive blackfish.

The Miraflame was a roomy craft and well furnished. When they started at nine o’clock the party numbered eleven, besides the boatman and his assistant. To the surprise of Ruth–and it was remarked in whispers by the other girls, too–Phineas, the boatkeeper, had chosen Jack Crab to assist him in the management of the motor boat.

“Jack doesn’t have to be at the light till dark. The old lady gets along all right alone,” explained Phineas. “And it ain’t many of these longshoremen who know how to handle a motor. Jack’s used to machinery.”

He seemed to feel that it was necessary to excuse himself for hiring the hairy man. But Heavy only said:

“Well, as long as he behaves himself I don’t care. But I didn’t suppose you liked the fellow, Phin.”

“I don’t. It was Hobson’s choice, Miss,” returned the sailor.

Phineas, the girls found, was a very pleasant and entertaining man. And he knew all about fishing. He had supplied the bait for tautog, and the girls and boys of the party, all having lived inland, learned many things that they hadn’t known before.

“Look at this!” cried Madge Steele, the first to discover a miracle. “He says this bait for tautog is scallops! Now, that quivering, jelly-like body is never a scallop. Why, a scallop is a firm, white lump–”

“It’s a mussel,” said Heavy, laughing.

“It’s only the ‘eye’ of the scallop you eat, Miss,” explained Phineas.

“Now I know just as much as I did before,” declared Madge. “So I eat a scallop’s eye, do I? We had them for breakfast this very morning–with bacon.”

“So you did, Miss. I raked ’em up myself yesterday afternoon,” explained Phineas. “You eat the ‘eye,’ but these are the bodies, and they are the reg’lar natural food of the tautog, or blackfish.”

“The edible part of the scallop is that muscle which adheres to the shell–just like the muscle that holds the clam to its shell,” said Heavy, who, having spent several summers at the shore, was better informed than her friends.

Phineas showed the girls how to bait their hooks with the soft bodies of the scallop, warning them to cover the point of the hooks well, and to pull quickly if they felt the least nibble.

“The tautog is a small-mouthed fish–smaller, even, than the bass the boys are going to cast for. So, when he touches the hook at all, you want to grab him.”

“Does it hurt the fish to be caught?” asked Helen, curiously.

Phineas grinned. “I never axed ’em, ma’am,” he said.

The Miraflame carried them swiftly down the cove, or harbor, of Sokennet and out past the light. The sea was comparatively calm, but the surf roared against the rocks which hedged in the sand dunes north of the harbor’s mouth. It was in this direction that Phineas steered the launch, and for ten miles the craft spun along at a pace that delighted the whole party.

“We’re just skimming the water!” cried Tom Cameron. “Oh, Nell! I’m going to coax father till he buys one for us to use on the Lumano.”

“I’ll help tease,” agreed his twin, her eyes sparkling.

Nita, the runaway, looked from brother to sister with sudden interest. “Does your father give you everything you ask him for?” she demanded.

“Not much!” cried Tom. “But dear old dad is pretty easy with us and–Mrs. Murchiston says–gives in to us too much.”

“But, does he buy you such things as boats–right out–for you just to play with?”

“Why, of course!” cried Tom.

“And I couldn’t even have a piano,” muttered Nita, turning away with a shrug. “I told him he was a mean old hunks!”

“Whom did you say that to?” asked Ruth, quietly.

“Never you mind!” returned Nita, angrily. “But that’s what he is.”

Ruth treasured these observations of the runaway. She was piecing them together, and although as yet it was a very patched bit of work, she was slowly getting a better idea of who Nita was and her home surroundings.

Finally the Miraflame ran in between a sheltering arm of rock and the mainland. The sea was very still in here, the heave and surge of the water only murmuring among the rocks. There was an old fishing dock at which the motor boat was moored. Then everybody went ashore and Phineas and Jack Crab pointed out the best fishing places along the rocks.

These were very rugged ledges, and the water sucked in among them, and hissed, and chuckled, and made all sorts of gurgling sounds while the tide rose. There were small caves and little coves and all manner of odd hiding places in the rocks.

But the girls and boys were too much interested in the proposed fishing to bother about anything else just then. Phineas placed Ruth on the side of a round-topped boulder, where she stood on a very narrow ledge, with a deep green pool at her feet. She was hidden from the other fishers–even from the boys, who clambered around to the tiny cape that sheltered the basin into which the motor boat had been run, and from the point of which they expected to cast for bass.

“Now, Miss,” said the boatkeeper, “down at the bottom of this still pool Mr. Tautog is feeding on the rocks. Drop your baited hook down gently to him. And if he nibbles, pull sharply at first, and then, with a stead, hand-over-hand motion, draw him in.”

Ruth was quite excited; but once she saw Nita and the man, Crab, walking farther along the rocks, and Ruth wondered that the fellow was so attentive to the runaway. But this was merely a passing thought. Her mind returned to the line she watched.

She pulled it up after a long while; the hook was bare. Either Mr. Tautog had been very, very careful when he nibbled the bait, or the said bait had slipped off. It was not easy to make the jelly-like body of the scallop remain on the hook. But Ruth was as anxious to catch a fish as the other girls, and she had watched Phineas with sharp and eager eyes when he baited the hook.

Ruth dropped it over the edge of the rock again after a minute. It sank down, down, down–Was that a nibble? She felt the faintest sort of a jerk on the line. Surely something was at the bait!

Again the jerk. Ruth returned the compliment by giving the line a prompt tug. Instantly she knew that she had hooked him!

“Oh! oh! oh!” she gasped, in a rising scale of delight and excitement.

She pulled in on the line. The fish was heavy, and he tried to pull his way, too. The blackfish is not much of a fighter, but he can sag back and do his obstinate best to remain in the water when the fisher is determined to get him out.

This fellow weighed two pounds and a half and was well hooked. Ruth, her cheeks glowing, her eyes dancing, hauled in, and in, and in–There he came out of the water, a plump, glistening body, that flapped and floundered in the air, and on the ledge at her feet. She desired mightily to cry out; but Phineas had warned them all to be still while they fished. Their voices might scare all the fish away.

She unhooked it beautifully, seizing it firmly in the gills. Phineas had shown her where to lay any she might catch in a little cradle in the rock behind her. It was a damp little hollow, and Mr. Tautog could not flop out into the sea again.

Oh! it was fun to bait the hook once more with trembling fingers, and heave the weighted line over the edge of the narrow ledge on which she stood. There might be another–perhaps even a bigger one–waiting down there to seize upon the bait.

And just then Mary Cox, her hair tousled and a distressfully discontented expression on her face, came around the corner of the big boulder.

“Oh! Hullo!” she said, discourteously. “You here?”

“Sh!” whispered Ruth, intent on the line and the pool of green water.

“What’s the matter with you?” snapped The Fox. “Don’t say you’ve got a bite! I’m sick of hearing them say it over there–”

“I’ve caught one,” said Ruth, with pride, pointing to the glistening tautog lying on the rock.

“Oh! Of course, ’twould be you who got it,” snarled Mary. “I bet he gave you the best place.”

“Please keep still!” begged Ruth. “I believe I’ve got another bite.”

“Have a dozen for all I care,” returned Mary. “I want to get past you.”

“Wait! I feel a nibble–”

But Mary pushed rudely by. She took the inside of the path, of course. The ledge was very narrow, and Ruth was stooping over the deep pool, breathlessly watching the line.

With a half-stifled scream Ruth fell forward, flinging out both hands. Mary clutched at her–she did try to save her. But she was not quick enough. Ruth dropped like a plummet and the green water closed over her with scarcely a splash.

Mary did not cry out. She was speechless with fear, and stood with clasped hands, motionless, upon the path.

“She can swim! she can swim!” was the thought that shuttled back and forth in The Fox’s brain.

But moment after moment passed and Ruth did not come to the surface. The pool was as calm as before, save for the vanishing rings that broke against the surrounding rocks. Mary held her breath. She began to feel as though it were a dream, and that her school companion had not really fallen into the pool. It must be an hallucination, for Ruth did not come to the surface again!

CHAPTER XV
TOM CAMERON TO THE RESCUE

The three boys were on the other side of the narrow inlet where the Miraflame lay. Phineas had told them that bass were more likely to be found upon the ocean side; therefore they were completely out of sight.

The last Tom, Bob and Isadora saw of the girls, the fishermen were placing them along the rocky path, and Mercy was lying in a deck chair on the deck of the launch, fluttering a handkerchief at them as they went around the end of the reef.

“I bet they don’t get a fish,” giggled Isadore. “And even Miss Kate’s got a line! What do girls know about fishing?”

“If there’s any tautog over there, I bet Helen and Ruth get ’em. They’re all right in any game,” declared the loyal Tom.

“Madge will squeal and want somebody to take the fish off her hook, if she does catch one,” grinned Bob. “She puts on lots of airs because she’s the oldest; but she’s a regular ‘scare-cat,’ after all.”

“Helen and Ruth are good fellows,” returned Tom, with emphasis. “They’re quite as good fun as the ordinary boy–of course, not you, Bobbins, or Busy Izzy here; but they are all right.”

“What do you think of that Nita girl?” asked Busy Izzy, suddenly.

“I believe there’s something to her,” declared Bob, with conviction. “She ain’t afraid of a living thing, I bet!”

“There is something queer about her,” Tom added, thoughtfully. “Have you noticed how that Crab fellow looks at her?”

“I see he hangs about her a good bit,” said Isadore, quickly. “Why, do you suppose?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” returned Tom Cameron.

They were now where Phineas had told them bass might be caught, and gave their attention to their tackle. All three boys had fished for perch, pike, and other gamey fresh-water fish; but this was their first casting with a rod into salt water.

“A true disciple of Izaak Walton should be dumb,” declared Tom, warningly eyeing Isadore.

“Isn’t he allowed any leeway at all–not even when he lands a fish?” demanded the irrepressible.

“Not above a whisper,” grunted Bob Steele, trying to bait his hook with his thumb instead of the bait provided by Phineas. “Jingo!”

“Old Bobbins has got the first bite,” chuckled Tom, under his breath, as he made his cast.

The reel whirred and the hook fell with a light splash into a little eddy where the water seemed to swirl about a sunken rock.

“You won’t catch anything there,” said Isadore.

“I’ll gag you if you don’t shut up,” promised Tom.

Suddenly his line straightened out. The hook seemed to be sucked right down into a hole between the rocks, and the reel began to whir. It stopped and Tom tried it.

“Pshaw! that ain’t a bite,” whispered Isadore.

At Tom’s first attempt to reel in, the fish that had seized his hook started–for Spain! At least, it shot seaward, and the boy knew that Spain was about the nearest dry land if the fish kept on in that direction.

“A strike!” Tom gasped and let his reel sing for a moment or two. Then, when the drag of the line began to tell on the bass, he carefully wound in some of it. The fish turned and finally ran toward the rocks once more. Then Tom wound up as fast as he could, trying to keep the line taut.

“He’ll tangle you all up, Tommy,” declared Bob, unable, like Isadore, to keep entirely still.

Tom was flushed and excited, but said never a word. He played the big bass with coolness after all, and finally tired it out, keeping it clear of the tangles of weed down under the rock, and drew it forth–a plump, flopping, gasping victim.

Bob and Isadore were then eager to do as well and began whipping the water about the rocks with more energy than skill. Tom, delighted with his first kill, ran over the rocks with the fish to show it to the girls. As he surmounted the ridge of the rocky cape he suddenly saw Nita, the runaway, and Jack Crab, in a little cove right below him. The girl and the fisherman had come around to this side of the inlet, away from Phineas and the other girls.

They did not see Tom behind and above them. Nita was not fishing, and Crab had unfolded a paper and was showing it to her. At this distance the paper seemed like a page torn from some newspaper, and there were illustrations as well as reading text upon the sheet which Crab held before the strange girl’s eyes.

“There it is!” Tom heard the lighthouse keeper’s assistant say, in an exultant tone. “You know what I could get if I wanted to show this to the right parties. Now, what d’ye think of it, Sissy?”

What Nita thought, or what she said, Tom did not hear. Indeed, scarcely had the two come into his line of vision, and he heard these words, when something much farther away–across the inlet, in fact–caught the boy’s attention.

He could see his sister and some of the other girls fishing from the rocky path; but directly opposite where he stood was Ruth. He saw Mary Cox meet and speak with her, the slight struggle of the two girls for position on the narrow ledge, and Ruth’s plunge into the water.

“Oh, by George!” shouted Tom, as Ruth went under, and he dropped the flopping bass and went down the rocks at a pace which endangered both life and limb. His shout startled Nita and Jack Crab. But they had not seen Ruth fall, nor did they understand Tom’s great excitement.

The inlet was scarcely more than a hundred yards across; but it was a long way around to the spot where Ruth had fallen, or been pushed, from the rock. Tom never thought of going the long way to the place. He tore off his coat, kicked off his canvas shoes, and, reaching the edge of the water, dived in head first without a word of explanation to the man and girl beside him.

He dived slantingly, and swam under water for a long way. When he came up he was a quarter of the distance across the inlet. He shook the water from his eyes, threw himself breast high out of the sea, and shouted:

“Has she come up? I don’t see her!”

Nobody but Mary Cox knew what he meant. Helen and the other girls were screaming because they had seen Tom fling himself into the sea but they had not seen Ruth fall in.

Nor did Mary Cox find voice enough to tell them when they ran along the ledge to try and see what Tom was swimming for. The Fox stood with glaring eyes, trying to see into the deep pool. But the pool remain unruffled and Ruth did not rise to the surface.

“Has she come up?” again shouted Tom, rising as high as he could in the water, and swimming with an overhand stroke.

There seemed nobody to answer him; they did not know what he meant. The boy shot through the water like a fish. Coming near the rock, he rose up with a sudden muscular effort, then dived deep. The green water closed over him and, when Helen and the others reached the spot where Mary Cox stood, wringing her hands and moaning, Tom had disappeared as utterly as Ruth herself.