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

“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.

CHAPTER XVI

RUTH’S SECRET

“What has happened?”

“Where’s Ruth?”

“Mary Cox! why don’t you answer?”

The Fox for once in her career was stunned. She could only shake her head and wring her hands. Helen was the first of the other girls to suspect the trouble, and she cried:

“Ruth’s overboard! That’s the reason Tom has gone in. Oh, oh! why don’t they come up again?”

And almost immediately all the others saw the importance of that question. Ruth Fielding had been down fully a minute and a half now, and Tom had not come up once for air.

Nita had set off running around the head of the inlet, and Crab shuffled along in her wake. The strange girl ran like a goat over the rocks.

Phineas, who had been aboard the motor boat and busy with his famous culinary operations, now came lumbering up to the spot. He listened to a chorused explanation of the situation–tragic indeed in its appearance. Phineas looked up and down the rocky path, and across the inlet, and seemed to swiftly take a marine “observation.” Then he snorted.

“They’re all right!” he exclaimed.

“What?” shrieked Helen.

“All right?” repeated Heavy. “Why, Phineas–”

She broke off with a startled gurgle. Phineas turned quickly, too, and looked over the high boulder. There appeared the head of Ruth Fielding and, in a moment, the head of Tom Cameron beside it.

“You both was swept through the tunnel into the pool behind, sir,” said Phineas, wagging his head.

“Oh, I was never so scared in my life,” murmured Ruth, clambering down to the path, the water running from her clothing in little streams.

“Me, too!” grunted Tom, panting. “The tide sets in through that hole awfully strong.”

“I might have told you about it,” grunted Phineas; “but I didn’t suppose airy one of ye was going for to jump into the sea right here.”

“We didn’t–intentionally,” declared Ruth.

“How ever did it happen, Ruthie?” demanded Heavy.

There was a moment’s silence. Tom grew red in the face, but he kept his gaze turned from Mary Cox. Ruth answered calmly enough:

“It was my own fault. Mary was just coming along to pass me. I had a bite. Between trying to let her by and ‘tending my fish,’ I fell in–and now I have lost fish, line, and all.”

“Be thankful you did not lose your life, Miss Fielding,” said Aunt Kate. “Come right down to the boat and get those wet things off. You, too, Tom.”

At that moment Nita came to the spot. “Is she safe? Is she safe?” she cried.

“Don’t I look so?” returned Ruth, laughing gaily. “And here’s the fish I did catch. I mustn’t lose him.”