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

“Or else they’ve already got girls of their own to look after,” laughed Ruth. “Why, Helen here, has a father who is very rich. But you couldn’t expect him to give up Helen and Tom and take you into his home instead, could you?”

Nita glanced at the dry-goods merchant’s daughter with more interest for a moment.

“And Heavy’s father is awfully rich, too,” said Ruth. “But he’s got Heavy to support–”

“And that’s some job,” broke in Madge, laughing. “Two such daughters as Heavy would make poor dear Papa Stone a pauper!”

“Well,” said Nita, again, “I’ve talked enough. I won’t tell you where I come from. And Nita is my name–now!”

“It is getting late,” said Ruth, mildly. “Don’t you all think it would be a good plan to go to bed? The wind’s gone down some. I guess we can sleep.”

“Good advice,” agreed Madge Steele. “The boys have been abed some time. To-morrow is another day.”

Heavy and she and Mary went off to their room. The others made ready for bed, and the runaway did not say another word to them, but turned her face to the wall and appeared, at least, to be soon asleep.

Ruth crept in beside her so as not to disturb their strange guest. She was a new type of girl to Ruth–and to the others. Her independence of speech, her rough and ready ways, and her evident lack of the influence of companionship with refined girls were marked in this Nita’s character.

Ruth wondered much what manner of home she could have come from, why she had run away from it, and what Nita really proposed doing so far from home and friends. These queries kept the girl from the Red Mill awake for a long time–added to which was the excitement of the evening, which was not calculated to induce sleep.

She would have dropped off some time after the other girls, however, had she not suddenly heard a door latch somewhere on this upper floor, and then the creep, creep, creeping of a rustling step in the hall. It continued so long that Ruth wondered if one of the girls in the other room was ill, and she softly arose and went to the door, which was ajar. And what she saw there in the hall startled her.

CHAPTER XII

BUSY IZZY IN A NEW ASPECT

The stair-well was a wide and long opening and around it ran a broad balustrade. There was no stairway to the third floor of this big bungalow, only the servants’ staircase in the rear reaching those rooms directly under the roof. So the hall on this second floor, out of which the family bedrooms opened, was an L-shaped room, with the balustrade on one hand.

And upon that balustrade Ruth Fielding beheld a tottering figure in white, plainly visible in the soft glow of the single light burning below, yet rather ghostly after all.

She might have been startled in good earnest had she not first of all recognized Isadore Phelps’ face. He was balancing himself upon the balustrade and, as she came to the door, he walked gingerly along the narrow strip of moulding toward Ruth.

“Izzy! whatever are you doing?” she hissed.

The boy never said a word to her, but kept right on, balancing himself with difficulty. He was in his pajamas, his feet bare, and–she saw it at last–his eyes tight shut.

“Oh! he’s asleep,” murmured Ruth.

And that surely was Busy Izzy’s state at that moment. Sound asleep and “tight-rope walking” on the balustrade.

Ruth knew that it would be dangerous to awaken him suddenly–especially as it might cause him to fall down the stair-well. She crept back into her room and called Helen. The two girls in their wrappers and slippers went into the hall again. There was Busy Izzy tottering along in the other direction, having turned at the wall. Once they thought he would plunge down the stairway, and Helen grabbed at Ruth with a squeal of terror.

“Sh!” whispered her chum. “Go tell Tom. Wake him up. The boys ought to tie Izzy in bed if he is in the habit of doing this.”

“My! isn’t he a sight!” giggled Helen, as she ran past the gyrating youngster, who had again turned for a third perambulation of the railing.

She whispered Tom’s name at his open door and in a minute the girls heard him bound out of bed. He was with them–sleepy-eyed and hastily wrapping his robe about him–in a moment.

“For the land’s sake!” he gasped, when he saw his friend on the balustrade. “What are you–”

“Sh!” commanded Ruth. “He’s asleep.”

Tom took in the situation at a glance. Madge Steele peered out of her door at that moment. “Who is it–Bobbins?” she asked.

“No. It’s Izzy. He’s walking in his sleep,” said Ruth.

“He’s a regular somnambulist,” exclaimed Helen.

“Never mind. Don’t call him names. He can’t help it,” said Madge.

Helen giggled again. Tom had darted back to rouse his chum. Bob Steele appeared, more tousled and more sleepy-looking than Tom.

“What’s the matter with that fellow now?” he grumbled. “He’s like a flea–you never know where he’s going to be next! Ha! he’ll fall off that and break his silly neck.”

And as Busy Izzy was just then nearest his end of the hall in his strange gyrations, Bob Steele stepped forward and grabbed him, lifting him bodily off the balustrade. Busy Izzy screeched, but Tom clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Shut up! want to raise the whole neighborhood?” grunted Bobbins, dragging the lightly attired, struggling boy back into their room. “Ha! I’ll fix you after this. I’ll lash you to the bedpost every night we’re here–now mark that, young man!”

It seemed that the youngster often walked in his sleep, but the girls had not known it. Usually, at school, his roommates kept the dormitory door locked and the key hidden, so that he couldn’t get out to do himself any damage running around with his eyes shut.

The party all got to sleep again after that and there was no further disturbance before morning. They made a good deal of fun of Isadore at the breakfast table, but he took the joking philosophically. He was always playing pranks himself; but he had learned to take a joke, too.

He declared that all he dreamed during the night was that he was wrecked in an iceboat on Second Reef and that the only way for him to get ashore was to walk on a cable stretched from the wreck to the beach. He had probably been walking that cable–in his mind–when Ruth had caught him balancing on the balustrade.

The strange girl who persisted in calling herself “Nita” came down to the table in some of Heavy’s garments, which were a world too large for her. Her own had been so shrunk and stained by the sea-water that they would never be fit to put on again. Aunt Kate was very kind to her, but she looked at the runaway oddly, too. Nita had been just as uncommunicative to her as she had been to the girls in the bedroom the night before.

“If you don’t like me, or don’t like my name, I can go away,” she declared to Miss Kate, coolly. “I haven’t got to stay here, you know.”

“But where will you go? what will you do?” demanded that young lady, severely. “You say the captain of the schooner and his wife are nothing to you?”

“I should say not!” exclaimed Nita. “They were nice and kind to me, though.”

“And you can’t go away until you have something decent to wear,” added Heavy’s aunt. “That’s the first thing to ’tend to.”

And although it was a bright and beautiful morning after the gale, and there were a dozen things the girls were all eager to see, they spent the forenoon in trying to make up an outfit for Nita so that she would be presentable. The boys went off with Mr. Stone’s boatkeeper in the motor launch and Mary Cox was quite cross because the other girls would not leave Miss Kate to fix up Nita the best she could, so that they could all accompany the boys. But in the afternoon the buckboard was brought around and they drove to the lighthouse.

Nita, even in her nondescript garments, was really a pretty girl. No awkwardness of apparel could hide the fact that she had nice features and that her body was strong and lithe. She moved about with a freedom that the other girls did not possess. Even Ruth was not so athletic as the strange girl. And yet she seemed to know nothing at all about the games and the exercises which were commonplace to the girls from Briarwood Hall.

There was a patch of wind-blown, stunted trees and bushes covering several acres of the narrowing point, before the driving road along the ridge brought the visitors to Sokennet Light. While they were driving through this a man suddenly bobbed up beside the way and the driver hailed him.

“Hullo, you Crab!” he said. “Found anything ’long shore from that wreck?”

The man stood up straight and the girls thought him a very horrid-looking object. He had a great beard and his hair was dark and long.

“He’s a bad one for looks; ain’t he, Miss?” asked the driver of Ruth, who sat beside him.

“He isn’t very attractive,” she returned.

“Ha! I guess not. And Crab’s as bad as he looks, which is saying a good deal. He comes of the ‘wreckers.’ Before there was a light here, or life saving stations along this coast, there was folks lived along here that made their livin’ out of poor sailors wrecked out there on the reefs. Some said they used to toll vessels onto the rocks with false lights. Anyhow, Crab’s father, and his gran’ther, was wreckers. He’s assistant lightkeeper; but he oughtn’t to be. I don’t see how Mother Purling can get along with him.”

“She isn’t afraid of him; is she?” queried Ruth.

“She isn’t afraid of anything,” said Heavy, quickly, from the rear seat. “You wait till you see her.”

The buckboard went heavily on toward the lighthouse; but the girls saw that the man stood for a long time–as long as they were in sight, at least–staring after them.

“What do you suppose he looked at Nita so hard for?” whispered Helen in Ruth’s ear. “I thought he was going to speak to her.”

But Ruth had not noticed this, nor did the runaway girl seem to have given the man any particular attention.

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.”