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

CHAPTER XXII
THIMBLE ISLAND

Miss Kate said of course he could use the buckboard and ponies, and it was the ranchman’s own choice that the young folks went, too. There was another wagon, and they could all crowd aboard one or the other vehicle–even Mercy Curtis went.

“I don’t believe that Crab man will show up at the light,” Ruth said to Tom and Helen. “He’s plainly made up his mind that he won’t meet Nita’s friends personally. And to think of his getting five hundred dollars so easy!” and she sighed.

For the reward Mr. Hicks had offered for news of his niece, which would lead to her apprehension and return to his guardianship, would have entirely removed from Ruth Fielding’s mind her anxiety about Briarwood. Let the Tintacker Mine, in which Uncle Jabez had invested, remain a deep and abiding mystery, if Ruth could earn that five hundred dollars.

But if Jack Crab had placed Nita in good hands and was merely awaiting an opportunity to exchange her for the reward which the runaway’s uncle had offered, then Ruth need not hope for any portion of the money. And certainly, Crab would make nothing by hiding the girl away and refusing to give her up to Mr. Hicks.

“And if I took money for telling Mr. Hicks where Nita was, why–why it would be almost like taking blood money! Nita liked me, I believe; I think she ought to be with her uncle, and I am sure he is a nice man. But it would be playing the traitor to report her to Mr. Hicks–and that’s a fact!” concluded Ruth, taking herself to task. “I could not think of earning money in such a contemptible way.”

Whether her conclusion was right, or not, it seemed right to Ruth, and she put the thought of the reward out of her mind from that instant. The ranchman had taken a liking to Ruth and when he climbed into the buckboard he beckoned the girl from the Red Mill to a seat beside him. He drove the ponies, but seemed to give those spirited little animals very little attention. Ruth knew that he must be used to handling horses beside which the ponies seemed like tame rabbits.

“Now what do you think of my Jane Ann?” was the cattleman’s question. “Ain’t she pretty cute?”

“I am not quite sure that I know what you mean by that, Mr. Hicks,” Ruth answered, demurely. “But she isn’t as smart as she ought to be, or she wouldn’t have gone off with Jack Crab.”

“Huh!” grunted the other. “Mebbe you’re right on that p’int. He didn’t have no drop on her–that’s so! But ye can’t tell what sort of a yarn he give her.”

“She would better have had nothing to say to him,” said Ruth, emphatically. “She should have confided in Miss Kate. Miss Kate and Jennie were treating her just as nicely as though she were an invited guest. Nita–or Jane, as you call her–may be smart, but she isn’t grateful in the least.”

“Oh, come now, Miss–”

“No. She isn’t grateful,” repeated Ruth. “She never even suggested going over to the life saving station and thanking Cap’n Abinadab and his men for bringing her ashore from the wreck of the Whipstitch.”

“Great cats! I been thinkin’ of that,” sighed the Westerner. “I want to see them and tell ’em what I think of ’em. I ’spect Jane Ann never thought of such a thing.”

“But I liked her, just the same,” Ruth went on, slowly. “She was bold, and brave, and I guess she wouldn’t ever do a really mean thing.”

“I reckon not, Miss!” agreed Mr. Hicks. “My Jane Ann is plumb square, she is. I can forgive her for running away from us. Mebbe thar was reason for her gittin’ sick of Silver Ranch. I–I stand ready to give her ’bout ev’rything she wants–in reason–when I git her back thar.”

“Including a piano?” asked Ruth, curiously.

“Great cats! that’s what we had our last spat about,” groaned Bill Hicks. “Jib, he’s had advantages, he has. Went to this here Carlisle Injun school ye hear so much talk about. It purty nigh ruined him, but he can break hosses. And thar he l’arned to play one o’ them pianners. We was all in to Bullhide one time–we’d been shipping steers–and we piled into the Songbird Dancehall–had the place all to ourselves, for it was daytime–and Jib sot down and fingered them keys somethin’ scand’lous. Bashful Ike–he’s my foreman–says he never believed before that a sure ’nough man like Jibbeway Pottoway could ever be so ladylike!

“Wal! My Jane Ann was jest enchanted by that thar pianner–yes, Miss! She was jest enchanted. And she didn’t give me no peace from then on. Said she wanted one o’ the critters at the ranch so Jib could give her lessons. And I jest thought it was foolishness–and it cost money–oh, well! I see now I was a pretty mean old hunks–”

“That’s what I heard her call you once,” chuckled Ruth. “At least, I know now that she was speaking of you, sir.”

“She hit me off right,” sighed Mr. Hicks. “I hadn’t never been used to spending money. But, laws, child! I got enough. I been some waked up since I come East. Folks spend money here, that’s a fact.”

They found Mother Purling’s door opened at the foot of the lighthouse shaft, and the flutter of an apron on the balcony told them that the old lady had climbed to the lantern.

“She doesn’t often do that,” said Heavy. “Crab does all the cleaning and polishing up there.”

“He’s left her without any help, then,” Ruth suggested. “That’s what it means.”

And truly, that is what it did mean, as they found out when Ruth, the Cameron twins, and the Westerner climbed the spiral staircase to the gallery outside the lantern.

“Yes; that Crab ain’t been here this morning,” Mother Purling admitted when Ruth explained that there was reason for Mr. Hicks wishing to see him. “He told me he was mebbe going off for a few days. ‘Then you send me a substitute, Jack Crab,’ I told him; but he only laughed and said he wasn’t going to send a feller here to work into his job. He is handy, I allow. But I’m too old to be left all stark alone at this light. I’m going to have another man when Jack’s month is out, just as sure as eggs is eggs!”

Mr. Hicks was just as polite to the old lady as he had been to Miss Kate; and he quickly explained his visit to the lighthouse, and showed her the two letters that Crab had written.

“Well, ain’t that the beatenest?” she cried. “Jack Crab is just as mean as they make ’em, I always did allow. But this is the capsheaf of all his didoes. And you say he run off with the little girl the other night in Mr. Stone’s catboat? I dunno where he could have taken her. And that day he’d been traipsing off fishing with you folks on the motor launch; hadn’t he? He’s been leavin’ me to do his work too much. This settles it. Me and Jack Crab parts company at the end of this month!”

“But what is Mr. Hicks to do about his niece, Mother Purling?” cried Ruth. “Will he pay the five hundred dollars to you–?”

“I just guess he won’t!” cried the old lady, vigorously. “I ain’t goin’ to be collector for Crab in none of his risky dealin’s–no, ma’am!”

“Then he says he won’t give Nita up,” exclaimed Tom.

“Can’t help it. I’m a government employe. I can’t afford to be mixed up in no such didoes.”

“Now, I say, Missus!” exclaimed the cattleman, “this is shore too bad! Ye might know somethin’ about whar I kin find this yere reptile by the name of Crab–though I reckon a crab is a inseck, not a reptile,” and the ranchman grinned ruefully.

The young folks could scarcely control their laughter at this, and the idea that a crustacean might be an insect was never forgotten by the Cameron twins and Ruth Fielding.

“I dunno where he is,” said Mother Purling, shortly. “I can’t keep track of the shiftless critter. Ha’f the time when he oughter be here he’s out fishing in the dory, yonder–or over to Thimble Island.”

“Which is Thimble Island?” asked Tom, quickly.

“Just yon,” said the lighthouse keeper, pointing to a cone-shaped rock–perhaps an imaginative person would call it thimble-shaped–lying not far off shore. The lumber schooner had gone on the reef not far from it.

“Ain’t no likelihood of his being over thar now, Missus?” asked Mr. Hicks, quickly.

“An’ ye could purty nigh throw a stone to it!” scoffed the old woman. “Not likely. B’sides, I dunno as there’s a landin’ on the island ’ceptin’ at low tide. I reckon if he’s hidin’, Jack Crab is farther away than the Thimble. But I don’t know nothin’ about him. And I can’t accept no money for him–that’s all there is to that.”

And really, that did seem to be all there was to it. Even such a go-ahead sort of a person as Mr. Hicks seemed balked by the lighthouse keeper’s attitude. There seemed nothing further to do here.

Ruth was rather interested in what Mother Purling had said about Thimble Island, and she lingered to look at the conical rock, with the sea foaming about it, when the others started down the stairway. Tom came back for her.

“What are you dreaming about, Ruthie?” he demanded, nudging her.

“I was wondering, Tommy,” she said, “just why Jack Crab went so often to the Thimble, as she says he does. I’d like to see that island nearer to; wouldn’t you?”

“We’ll borrow the catboat and sail out to it. I can handle the Jennie S. I bet Helen would like to go,” said Tom, at once.

“Oh, I don’t suppose that Crab man is there. It’s just a barren rock,” said Ruth. “But I would like to see the Thimble.”

“And you shall,” promised Tom.

But neither of them suspected to what strange result that promise tended.

CHAPTER XXIII
MAROONED

It was after luncheon before the three friends got away from the Stone bungalow in the catboat. Tom owned a catrigged boat himself on the Lumano river, and Helen and Ruth, of course, were not afraid to trust themselves to his management of the Jennie S.

The party was pretty well broken up that day, anyway. Mercy and Miss Kate remained at home and the others found amusement in different directions. Nobody asked to go in the Jennie S., for which Ruth was rather glad.

Mr. Hicks had gone over to Sokennet with the avowed intention of interviewing every soul in the town for news of Jack Crab. Somebody, surely, must know where the assistant lighthouse keeper was, and the Westerner was not a man to be put off by any ordinary evasion.

“My Jane Ann may be hiding over thar amongst them fishermen,” he declared to Ruth before he went away. “He couldn’t have sailed far with her that night, if he was back in ’twixt two and three hours. No, sir-ree!”

And that was the thought in Ruth’s mind. Unless Crab had sailed out and put Nita aboard a New York, or Boston, bound steamer, it seemed impossible that the girl could have gotten very far from Lighthouse Point.

“Shall we take one of the rowboats in tow, Ruth?” queried Tom, before they left the Stone dock.

“No, no!” returned the girl of the Red Mill, hastily. “We couldn’t land on that island, anyway.”

“Only at low tide,” rejoined Tom. “But it will be about low when we get outside the point.”

“You don’t really suspect that Crab and Nita are out there, Ruth?” whispered Helen, in her chum’s ear.

“It’s a crazy idea; isn’t it?” laughed Ruth. Yet she was serious again in a moment. “I thought, when Mother Purling spoke of his going there so much, that maybe he had a reason–a particular reason.”

“Phineas told me that Jack Crab was the best pilot on this coast,” remarked Tom. “He knows every channel, and shoal, and reef from Westhampton to Cape o’ Winds. If there was a landing at Thimble Island, and any secret place upon it, Jack Crab would be likely to know of it.”

“Can you sail us around the Thimble?” asked Ruth. “That’s all we want.”

“I asked Phin before we started. The sea is clear for half a mile and more all around the Thimble. We can circle it, all right, if the wind holds this way.”

“That’s all I expect you to do, Tommy,” responded Ruth, quickly.

But they all three eyed the conical-shaped rock very sharply as the Jennie S. drew nearer. They ran between the lighthouse and the Thimble. The tide, in falling, left the green and slime-covered ledges bare.

“A boat could get into bad quarters there, and easily enough,” said Tom, as they ran past.

But when he tacked and the catboat swung her head seaward, they began to observe the far side of the Thimble. It was almost circular, and probably all of a thousand yards in circumference. The waves now ran up the exposed ledges, hissing and gurgling among the cavities, and sometimes throwing up spume-like geysers between the boulders.

“A bad rock for any vessel to stub her toe against trying to make Sokennet Harbor,” quoth Tom Cameron. “They say that the wreckers used to have a false beacon here in the old times. They used to bring a sheep out here and tie a lantern to its neck. Then, at low tide, they’d drive the poor sheep over the rocks and the bobbing up and down of the lantern would look like a riding light on some boat at anchor. Then the lost vessel would dare run in for an anchorage, too, and she’d be wrecked. Jack Crab’s grandfather was hanged for it. So Phineas told me.”

“How awful!” gasped Helen.

But Ruth suddenly seized her hand, exclaiming: “See there! what is it fluttering on the rock? Look, Tom!”

At the moment the boy could not do so, as he had his hands full with the tiller and sheet, and his eyes were engaged as well. When he turned to look again at the Thimble, what had startled Ruth had disappeared.

“There was something white fluttering against the rock. It was down there, either below high-water mark, or just above. I can’t imagine what it was.”

“A seabird, perhaps,” suggested Helen.

“Then where did it go to so suddenly? I did not see it fly away,” Ruth returned.

The catboat sailed slowly past the seaward side of the Thimble. There were fifty places in which a person might hide upon the rock–plenty of broken boulders and cracks in the base of the conical eminence that formed the peculiarly shaped island.

The three watched the rugged shore very sharply as the catboat beat up the wind–the girls especially giving the Thimble their attention. A hundred pair of eyes might have watched them from the island, as far as they knew. But certainly neither Ruth nor Helen saw anything to feed their suspicion.

“What shall we do now?” demanded Tom. “Where do you girls want to go?”

“I don’t care,” Helen said.

“Seen all you want to of that deserted island, Ruthie?”

“Do you mind running back again, Tom?” Ruth asked. “I haven’t any reason for asking it–no good reason, I mean.”

“Pshaw! if we waited for a reason for everything we did, some things would never be done,” returned Tom, philosophically.

“There isn’t a thing there,” declared Helen. “But I don’t care in the least where you sail us, Tom.”

“Only not to Davy Jones’ Locker, Tommy,” laughed Ruth.

“I’ll run out a way, and then come back with the wind and cross in front of the island again,” said Tom, and he performed this feat in a very seamanlike manner.

“I declare! there’s a landing we didn’t see sailing from the other direction,” cried Helen. “See it–between those two ledges?”

“A regular dock; but you couldn’t land there at high tide, or when there was any sea on,” returned her brother.

“That’s the place!” exclaimed Ruth. “See that white thing fluttering again? That’s no seagull.”

“Ruth is right,” gasped Helen. “Oh, Tom! There’s something fluttering there–a handkerchief, is it?”

“Sing out! as loud as ever you can!” commanded the boy, eagerly. “Hail the rock.”

They all three raised their voices. There was no answer. But Tom was pointing the boat’s nose directly for the opening between the sharp ledges.

“If there is nobody on the Thimble now, there has been somebody there recently,” he declared. “I’m going to drop the sail and run in there. Stand by with the oars to fend off, girls. We don’t want to scratch the catboat more than we can help.”

His sister and Ruth sprang to obey him. Each with an oar stood at either rail and the big sail came down on the run. But the Jennie S. had headway sufficient to bring her straight into the opening between the ledges.

Tom ran forward, seized the rope in the bow, and leaped ashore, carrying the coil of the painter with him. Helen and Ruth succeeded in stopping the boat’s headway with the oars, and the craft lay gently rocking in the natural dock, without having scraped her paint an atom.

“A fine landing!” exclaimed Tom, taking a turn or two with the rope about a knob of rock.

“Yes, indeed,” returned Ruth. She gave a look around. “My, what a lonely spot!”

“It is lonely,” the youth answered. “Kind of a Robinson Crusoe place,” and he gave a short laugh.

“Listen!” cried Ruth, and held up her hand as a warning.

“What did you hear, Ruth?”

“I thought I heard somebody talking, or calling.”

“You did?” Tom listened intently. “I don’t hear anything.” He listened again. “Yes, I do! Where did it come from?”

“I think it came from yonder,” and the girl from the Red Mill pointed to a big, round rock ahead of them.

“Maybe it did, Ruth. We’ll–yes, you are right!” exclaimed the boy.

As he spoke there was a scraping sound ahead of them and suddenly a tousled black head popped, up over the top of the boulder from which fluttered the bit of white linen that had first attracted Ruth’s attention.

“Gracious goodness!” gasped Helen.

“It’s Nita!” cried Ruth.

“Oh, oh!” shrilled the lost girl, flying out of concealment and meeting Ruth as she leaped ashore. “Is it really you? Have you come for me? I–I thought I’d have to stay here alone forever. I’d given up all hope of any boat seeing me, or my signal. I–I’m ’most dead of fear, Ruth Fielding! Do, do take me back to land with you.”

The Western girl was clearly panic-stricken. The boldness and independence she had formerly exhibited were entirely gone. Being marooned on this barren islet had pretty well sapped the courage of Miss Jane Ann Hicks.

CHAPTER XXIV
PLUCKY MOTHER PURLING

Tom Cameron audibly chuckled; but he made believe to be busy with the painter of the catboat and so did not look at the Western girl. The harum-scarum, independent, “rough and ready” runaway was actually on the verge of tears. But–really–it was not surprising.

“How long have you been out here on this rock?” demanded Helen, in horror.

“Ever since I left the bungalow.”

“Why didn’t you wave your signal from the top of the rock, so that it could be seen on the point?” asked Ruth, wonderingly.

“There’s no way to get to the top of the rock–or around to the other side of it, either,” declared the runaway. “Look at these clothes! They are nearly torn off. And see my hands!”

“Oh, you poor, poor thing!” exclaimed Helen, seeing how the castaway’s hands were torn.

“I tried it. I’ve shouted myself hoarse. No boat paid any attention to me. They were all too far away, I suppose.”

“And did that awful man, Crab, bring you here?” cried Ruth.

“Yes. It was dark when he landed and showed me this cave in the rock. There was food and water. Why, I’ve got plenty to eat and drink even now. But nobody has been here–”

“Didn’t he come back?” queried Tom, at last taking part in the conversation.

“He rowed out here once. I told him I’d sink his boat with a rock if he tried to land. I was afraid of him,” declared the girl.

“But why did you come here with him that night?” demanded Ruth.

“’Cause I was foolish. I didn’t know he was so bad then. I thought he’d really help me. He told me Jennie’s aunt had written to my uncle–”

“Old Bill Hicks,” remarked Tom, chuckling.

“Yes. I’m Jane Hicks. I’m not Nita,” said the girl, gulping down something like a sob.

“We read all about you in the paper,” said Helen, soothingly. “Don’t you mind.”

“And your uncle’s come, and he’s just as anxious to see you as he can be,” declared Ruth.

“So they did send for him?” cried Jane Ann.

“No. Crab wrote a letter to Silver Ranch himself. He got you out here so as to be sure to collect five hundred dollars from your uncle before he gave you up,” grunted Tom. “Nice mess of things you made by running off from us.”

“Oh, I’ll go back with Uncle Bill–I will, indeed,” said the girl. “I’ve been so lonely and scared out here. Seems to me every time the tide rose, I’d be drowned in that cave. The sea’s horrid, I think! I never want to see it again.”

“Well,” Tom observed, “I guess you won’t have to worry about Crab any more. Get aboard the catboat. We’ll slip ashore mighty easy now, and let him whistle for you–or the money. Mr. Hicks won’t have to pay for getting you back.”

“I expect he’s awful mad at me,” sighed Jane Ann, alias Nita.

“I know that he is awfully anxious to get you back again, my dear,” said Ruth. “He is altogether too good a man for you to run away from.”

“Don’t you suppose I know that, Miss?” snapped the girl from the ranch.

They embarked in the catboat and Tom showed his seamanship to good advantage when he got the Jennie S. out of that dock without rubbing her paint. But the wind was very light and they had to run down with it past the island and then beat up between the Thimble and the lighthouse, toward the entrance to Sokennet Harbor.

Indeed, the breeze fell so at times that the catboat made no headway. In one of these calms Helen sighted a rowboat some distance away, but pulling toward them from among the little chain of islands beyond the reef on which the lumber schooner had been wrecked.

“Here’s a fisherman coming,” she said. “Do you suppose he’d take us ashore in his boat, Tom? We could walk home from the light. It’s growing late and Miss Kate will be worried.”

“Why, Sis, I can scull this old tub to the landing below the lighthouse yonder. We don’t need to borrow a boat. Then Phineas can come around in the Miraflame to-morrow morning and tow the catboat home.”

But Jane Ann had leaped up at once to eye the coming rowboat–and not with favor.

“That looks like the boat that Crab came out to the Thimble in,” she exclaimed. “Why! it is him.”

“Jack Crab!” exclaimed Helen, in terror. “He’s after you, then.”

“Well he won’t get her,” declared Tom, boldly.

“What can we do against that man?” demanded Ruth, anxiously. “I’m afraid of him myself. Let’s try to get ashore.”

“Yes, before he catches us,” begged Helen. “Do, Tom!”

There was no hope of the wind helping them, and the man in the rowboat was pulling strongly for the becalmed Jennie S. Tom instantly dropped her sail and seized one of the oars. He could scull pretty well, and he forced the heavy boat through the quiet sea directly for the lighthouse landing.

The three girls were really much disturbed; Crab pulled his lighter boat much faster than Tom could drive the Jennie S. and it was a question if he would not overtake her before she reached the landing.

“He sees me,” said Jane Hicks, excitedly. “He’ll get hold of me if he can. And maybe he’ll hurt you folks.”

“He’s got to catch us first,” grunted Tom, straining at the oar.

“We’re going to beat him, Tommy!” cried Helen, encouragingly. “Don’t give up!”

Once Crab looked around and bawled some threat to them over his shoulder. But they did not reply. His voice inspired Tom with renewed strength–or seemed to. The boy strained at his single oar, and the Jennie S. moved landward at a good, stiff pace.

“Stand ready with the painter, Ruth!” called Tom, at last. “We must fasten the boat before we run.”

“And where will we run to?” demanded Helen.

“To the light, of course,” returned her chum.

“Give me the hitch-rein!” cried Jane Ann Hicks, snatching the coil of line from Ruth’s hand, and the next moment she leaped from the deck of the catboat to the wharf.

The distance was seven or eight feet, but she cleared it and landed on the stringpiece. She threw the line around one of the piles and made a knot with a dexterity that would have surprised her companions at another time.

But there was no opportunity then for Tom, Helen and Ruth to stop to notice it. All three got ashore the moment the catboat bumped, and they left her where she was and followed the flying Western girl up the wharf and over the stretches of sand towards the lightkeeper’s cottage.

Before their feet were off the planks of the wharf Jack Crab’s boat collided with the Jennie S. and the man scrambled upon her deck, and across it to the wharf. He left his own dory to go ashore if it would, and set out to catch the girl who–he considered–was worth five hundred dollars to him.

But Jane Ann and her friends whisked into the little white house at the foot of the light shaft, and slammed the door before Crab reached it.

“For the Land of Goshen!” cried the old lady, who was sitting knitting in her tiny sitting-room. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“It’s Crab! It’s Jack Crab!” cried Helen, almost in hysterics. “He’s after us!”

Tom had bolted the door. Now Crab thundered upon it, with both feet and fists.

“Let me in!” he roared from outside. “Mother Purling! you let me git that gal!”

“What does this mean?” repeated the lighthouse keeper, sternly. “Ain’t this the gal that big man was after this morning?” she demanded, pointing at Jane Ann.

“Yes, Mrs. Purling–it is Jane Hicks. And this dreadful Crab man has kept her out on the Thimble all this time–alone!” cried Ruth. “Think of it! Now he has chased us in here–”

“I’ll fix that Jack Crab,” declared the plucky old woman, advancing toward the door. “Hi, you, Jack! go away from there.”

“You open this door, Mother Purling, if you knows what’s best for you,” commanded the sailor.

“You better git away from that door, if you knows what’s best for you, Jack Crab!” retorted the old woman. “I don’t fear ye.”

“I see that man here this morning. Did he leave aught for me?” cried Crab, after a moment. “If he left the five hundred dollars he promised to give for the gal, he can have her. Give me the money, and I’ll go my ways.”

“I ain’t no go-between for a scoundrel such as you, Jack Crab,” declared the lighthouse keeper. “There’s no money here for ye.”

“Then I’ll have the gal if I tear the lighthouse down for it–stone by stone!” roared the fellow.

“And it’s your kind that always blows before they breeches,” declared Mother Purling, referring to the habit of the whale, which spouts before it upends and dives out of sight. “Go away!”

“I won’t go away!”

“Yes, ye will, an’ quick, too!”

“Old woman, ye don’t know me!” stormed the unreasonable man. “I want that money, an’ I’m bound to have it–one way or th’ other!”

“You’ll get nuthin’, Jack Crab, but a broken head if ye keep on in this fashion,” returned the woman of the lighthouse, her honest wrath growing greater every moment.

“We’ll see about that!” howled the man. “Are ye goin’ to let me in or not?”

“No, I tell ye! Go away!”

“Then I’ll bust my way in, see ef I don’t!”

At that the fellow threw himself against the door, and the screws of one hinge began to tear out of the woodwork. Mother Purling saw it, and motioned the frightened girls and Tom toward the stairway which led to the gallery around the lantern.

“Go up yon!” she commanded. “Shut and lock that door on ye. He’ll not durst set foot on government property, and that’s what the light is. Go up.”

She shooed them all into the stairway and slammed the door. There she stood with her back against it, while, at the next blow, Jack Crab forced the outer door of her cottage inward and fell sprawling across its wreck into the room.