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

“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.