“It sure was a good catch,” the boy told himself as he thought of it now. “Never had a better.”
“But that Tomingo,” he thought again. “Why did he tell me about it, me, a stranger and an American?”
That, indeed, was a question worthy of consideration. The conflict between native born and foreign born fishermen all along the Maine coast has for many long years been a hard-fought and bitter one. At times floats have been cut and traps set adrift and sharp battles fought with fists and clubbed oars. It seemed inconceivable, now that he thought of it, that any foreigner should have told him of this rich fishing ground.
“It is true,” he told himself, “that Tomingo’s boat is smaller and less seaworthy than mine. I wouldn’t want to come this far in it myself. But some of his friends and fellow countrymen have far better boats than mine. Why should they not fish that shoal?”
He could not answer this question. “There’s a trick in it somewhere, I’ll be bound, and I’ll find it soon enough without doubt. Meanwhile there is business at hand.”
And, indeed, there was. The frowning rocks of Black Head, Burnt Head and Skull Rock loomed squarely before him. He had been told enough to know that this was the back of the island, that he must round the point to the left, circle half about the island and enter from the other side.
“Going to be a hard pull,” he said, setting his teeth hard, “but if the old engine stays with me I’ll make it.”
The memory of that next hour will remain with the boy as long as the stars shine down upon him and the sun brightens his mornings.
The wind, the fog, the storm, the falling night. Above the roar of the sea a long-drawn voice, hoarse and insistent, never ending, the voice of Manana, the great fog horn that, driven by great engines, watched over night and day, warned of rocky shoals and disaster.
With that voice sounding in his ears, with damp spray cutting sharply across his face, with his light craft like a frightened rabbit leaping from wave to wave, he steered clear of Black Head, White Head and Skull Rock, to round the point and come swinging round toward the narrow entrance where he would find safe haven or a grave.
He was heading for what he believed to be the channel when a light creeping slowly across the sky caught and held his attention. It was growing dark now, difficult to see ten yards before him. He needed to get in at once. For all this, the mysterious light intrigued him. Beginning at the right, it moved slowly over a narrow arc against the black sky. Pausing for the merest fraction of a second, it appeared to retrace its way over an invisible celestial way.
“What can it be?” For a moment he was bewildered. Then, like a flash it came to him. He was looking at the crest of the great rock that lay before Monhegan. On Monhegan a powerful light was set. As it played backward and forward it tinged the crest of Manana, as the rock was called, with a faint halo of glory.
“What a boon to the sailor!” he thought. “What real heroes are those who live on this bleak island winter and summer! What—”
His thoughts broke straight off. Before him he had caught an appalling sound, the rush of surf beating upon a rocky shoal.
Reflected from Manana, a single gleam of light gave him further warning. The shoals were just before him. The waves there were breaking mountain high. Turning his boat squarely about, he set his engine to doing its best and trusted himself to the trough of a wave. Instantly there came a drenching crash of cold black water.
He clung desperately to his course. Any moment the engine, deluged by a greater sea, might go dead. Then would come the end.
“But there’s no other way.” He set his teeth hard.
Once more he caught the moving gleam across the sky. That gleam saved him. He held to a course perpendicular to its line of motion as long as he dared. Then, swinging through a quarter circle he shot straight ahead. Five minutes later, drenched to the skin, panting from excitement and well nigh exhausted, but now quite safe, he ran his boat alongside a punt where a yellow light gleamed.
“Hello!” said a voice. A lantern held high revealed a boyish face. “Pretty lucky you got in. Nasty night. Some blow!” said the boy.
“Wouldn’t have made it,” said Don, “only I caught the gleam on the crest of Manana. It guided me in.”
“Tie up,” invited the boy. “I’ll take you ashore in my punt.”
“What you got there?” he asked in a surprised tone as the light of his lantern fell upon the crate.
“Lobsters,” said Don.
“Lobsters?” The boy let out a whistle of surprise. “Where’d you get ’em?”
“On a shoal, little way out.” Don hadn’t meant to tell that. He hadn’t liked the sound of that whistle. He spoke before he thought.
“You’d better watch out,” said the other boy. Then without allowing time for further remarks, “All set? Hop in then. I got to go ashore. The gang will be looking for me.”
As the young stranger rowed the two girls and Don ashore, Don wondered over his strange warning.
“You better look out!” What could he have meant? He wanted to ask. Natural reserve held him back.
Only once during the short journey was the silence broken. They were passing a boat covered with canvas and sunk to the gunwale.
“What’s that for?” Don asked.
“Lobster pond. Keep lobsters there.”
“Why do they keep them?”
“There are a hundred or more of us summer folks out here,” the other boy explained. “We like a lobster salad now and then. They keep them for us. Mighty decent of them to bother. A fine lot, these fishermen. Real sports.”
Don thought it strange that lobsters should be kept when there was a steady market for them and they were to be caught out here with comparative ease. However, he asked no further questions.
“Thanks for the lift.” He stood looking up at the few lights that gleamed through the fog. “Suppose I’ll have to stay here all night.”
“Suppose so. I’d take you to our cottage, but it’s small. We’re full up. Couldn’t crowd one more in an end. There’s a summer hotel up yonder.”
“Summer hotel. Four dollars up. Society folks.” Don looked down at his sodden garments. “No, thanks. Where do the fisherfolk live? I’m one of them.”
“Why——” The boy appeared surprised. “Captain Field lives just down there beyond the wharf. But you wouldn’t go there?”
“Wouldn’t? Why not?” Something in the other boy’s tone angered Donald.
“You ought to know.” The boy’s tone was sharp. He turned to go.
“But I don’t.”
“Then you’re dumb. That’s all I have to say for you. You’re breaking into the closed season on lobsters. You couldn’t do anything worse.”
“The closed season!” Don’s eyes opened wide. “You’re crazy. There’s no closed season on lobsters, not in the State of Maine.”
“On Monhegan there is, and believe me it’s tight closed. Try it out and see.”
“But that would have to be a law. No one owns the shoals.”
“Guess if you lived on this rocky island winter and summer, heat, cold, supplies, no supplies, if you took it all as it came, you’d feel that you owned the shoals. That’s the way the folks here feel. They want time to fish for cod and take summer parties about, so they haul up their traps and call June to November a closed season.
“Listen!” The other boy’s tone was kindly now. “You seem a decent sort. I don’t know what got you out here. But you go back. Take your traps with you. When people live in a place like this they’ve got a right to make a few laws. Know those Italian fishermen over at the Bay?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes, one of them. Tomingo.”
“Tomingo. That’s his name. He’s their leader. They tried trapping on the Monhegan shoals. Know what happened? Someone cut their floats. Never found their traps, nor the lobsters in ’em. Goodnight. Wish you luck.” The boy disappeared into the fog.
So that was it! And that was why Tomingo was so willing to direct him to rich lobster fields! Don sat limply down upon a rock. The two girls stood staring at him in silence.
“He wanted to keep us off any ground he might wish to trap on, and wanted to repay a debt to these Monheganites,” he said to his companions.
For five minutes he sat there enshrouded in fog, buried in thought.
“Closed season!” he exploded at last. “What nonsense! Who ever heard of such a thing? Of course, we won’t pay any attention to it. And if they cut my floats I’ll have them in jail for it. There are laws enough against that.”
With this resolve firmly fixed in his mind, but with an uneasy feeling lurking there as well, he thought once more of supper and a bed for the night.
“We’ll go to this Captain Field’s place,” he said to the girls. “I’ll tell him I am a fisherman from Peak’s Island. That’s true. I’ll get an early start in the morning. He need never know about my catch of lobsters.”
With this settled in his mind he led the way round the bank, across the wharf and up the grass grown path that led to the dimly gleaming light that shone from Captain Field’s window.
A half hour later, with thoughts of the forbidden lobsters crowded far back in the hidden recesses of their minds, the trio found themselves doing full justice to great steaming bowls of clam chowder topped by a wedge of native blueberry pie.
All this time and for a long while after, Don talked of sails and fishing, nets, harpoons, and long sea journeys with his smiling, lean-faced and fit appearing host. Captain Field, though still a young man, had earned his papers well, for he had sailed the Atlantic in every type of craft and had once shipped as a harpooner on a swordfishing boat outfitted in Portland harbor.
As they talked Don’s eyes roved from corner to corner of the cabin. Everything within was scrupulously clean, but painfully plain, much of it hand hewn with rough and ready tools.
As if reading his thoughts, the young Captain smiled as he said:
“There’s not a lot of money to be had on Monhegan. The ground’s too rough for farming or cattle. We fish in summer and trap lobsters in winter. But we must have an eye on the purse strings every day of the year.”
As he said this a curly-haired girl of eight and a brown-faced boy of six came to kneel by their mother’s knee to say their goodnight prayers.
As he bowed his head with them, something very like a stab ran through Don’s heart and a voice seemed to whisper:
“You are a thief. You are robbing these little ones and their honest parents of their bread. They endure all the hardships of the year. You come to reap a golden harvest from their lobster fields while their backs are turned.”
He retired soon after. The bed they gave him was a good one. He was tired, yet he did not sleep. For a full hour he thrashed about. Then a sudden resolve put him to rest.
As is the way with persons endowed with particularly splendid physique, Ruth, in the broad rope bed beside her cousin, fell asleep at once. She had wrestled long that day with trap lines. The struggle to reach shore had been fatiguing. Her sleep was sweet and dreamless.
Not so with Pearl. Her mind ever filled with fancy, was now overflowing. She was now on Monhegan, the island of her dreams. She recalled as if they were told yesterday the tales she had heard told of this island by her seafaring uncle before she was old enough to go to school.
“Oh, Uncle,” she had cried. “Take me there! Take me to Monhegan!”
“Some day, child,” he had promised.
Alas, poor man, he had not lived to fulfill his promise. Like many another brave fisherman, he had lost his life on the dreary banks of Newfoundland.
“Dear Uncle,” she whispered as her throat tightened, “now I am here. Here! And I know you must be glad.”
The storm was still on. She could hear the distant beat of waves on Black Head, Burnt Head and Skull Rock. The great fog horn still sent out its message from Manana.
“Hoo-who-ee-Whoo-oo!” Sometimes rising, sometimes falling, it seemed a measureless human voice shouting in the night. The sound of it was haunting.
Rising and wrapping a blanket about her, the girl went to the low window sill, to drop upon the floor and sit there staring into the night.
There was little enough to see. The night was black. But across the crest of that great rock, the spot of light played incessantly.
“Fifteen miles out to sea,” she thought. “Seems strange. One does not feel that this house rested on land. It is more as if this were a ship’s cabin, the lighthouse our search light, the fog horn our signal, and we sail on and on into the night. We——”
She was awakened from this dream by an unfamiliar sound, thundering that was not waves beating a shore, that might have been the roar of the distant battle front.
A moment passed, and then she knew.
“A seaplane,” she thought suddenly. “And on such a night! Why, that can mean only one thing, a trans-Atlantic flyer!”
How her heart leaped at the thought! She recalled with a tremor the day she got news of “Lindy’s marvelous achievement.”
Such flyers had become fairly common now. Yet she had never seen one in his flight.
“If he comes near enough,” she said to herself, straining her eyes in a vain attempt to pierce the inky blackness of the night.
Then a new thought striking her all of a heap set her shuddering. “What if he does not realize he is near Monhegan? If he is flying low, he will crash.”
Involuntarily a little prayer went up for the lone navigator of the night air.
Nor was the prayer unheeded. As she looked a dark spot appeared over Manana. Then the plane came into full view. As if set to the task, the light from the island beacon followed the aviator in his flight. Ten seconds he was in full view. Then he was gone, passed on into the night.
“Why!” the girl exclaimed, catching her breath, “How—how strange!”
The thing she had seenwasstrange. A broad-winged seaplane with a wide fusilage that might have been a cabin for carrying three or four passengers, had passed. The strange part of it all was that it was painted the dull gray-green of a cloudy sea, and carried not one single insignia of any nation.
“The Flying Dutchman of the air,” she thought as a thrill ran up her spine.
For a long time she sat there staring at the darkness of night that had swallowed up the mysterious ship of the air.
At last, with a shudder, for the night air of Monhegan is chill even in summer, she rose to creep beneath the blankets beside her sleeping companion.
She was about to drift away to the land of dreams, when she thought of Captain O’Connor and what he had told her of smugglers along the Maine coast.
“Can it be?” she thought. “But no! One would not risk his life crossing the ocean in a seaplane just to smuggle in a few hundred dollars’ worth of lace or silk or whatever it might be. ’Twouldn’t be worth the cost.
“But men,” she thought quite suddenly. “He said something about smuggling men into the country. It might be——”
Her eyes were drooping. The day had been long. The salt sea air lay heavy upon her. She fell asleep.
It was a little dark when Don arose. The girls were still asleep. Somewhat to his surprise, as he reached the beach he found the boy of the previous night there before him.
“Sleep here?” he asked good-naturedly.
“Nope.” There was something in Don’s look that made this boy like him. “Going so soon? Want me to take you out?”
“Thanks. Yes.”
“Where is Captain Field’s lobster pond?” Don asked as the punt bumped the side of his boat.
“That green one.” The boy opened his eyes wide. “Why?”
“Nothing. Give me a lift, will you?” Don was tugging at the crate of lobsters in the bottom of his motor boat.
“There!” he sighed as the crate dropped into the punt. “Just row me over to the Field lobster pond, will you?”
Once there, to the boy’s astonishment, Don loosed the lacings of the canvas on Field’s lobster pond, then one at a time he took the lobsters from his crate and dropped them into the pond.
“He buy them from you?” The younger boy was incredulous.
“No.”
“You quitting?”
Don nodded.
“I like you for that.” The other boy put out a hand. For a second Don gripped it. Then, together they rowed back to the motor boat.
The sea was calm now. Twirling the wheel to his motor, Don went pop-popping away to his lobster traps. Having lifted these, he piled them high on the deck, then turned his prow once more toward Monhegan. His lobster fishing days on Monhegan shoals were at an end. But he was not going to leave Monhegan, not just yet. The wild charm of the place had got him. Strange and startling things were yet to greet him there.
Despite the fog that lay low over the water, the sea was choppy. The fisherman who rode in the improvised crow’s nest in the forward rigging of the fishing sloop rose ten feet in air to fall, then to rise and fall again. There was a tossing, whirling motion that would have made most girls deathly sick. Not so this one; for the fisherman who stood there ever gripping the harpoon, with alert eyes watching, ever watching the narrow circle of fogbound ocean, was Ruth.
Swordfish had been reported off Monhegan; in fact Captain Field had brought in a modest-sized one only the day before.
Although Don and the two girls had decided that lobster trapping on the Monhegan shoals was unfair to those daring souls who made their home on these wave-beaten shores, they were spending a few days on the island.
“May never be here again,” Don had said. “From all I can see, it’s not quite like anything on earth.
“I’m going to Booth Bay on the mail tug. The sea has calmed down quite a bit. If you girls want to have a try at something, deep sea cod, horse mackerel, or even swordfish, why there’s the sloop. Safe enough as long’s you keep in sound of the fog horn or sight of the island. Go ahead.”
Because swordfishing is quite the most thrilling type of fishing on all the coast, and because these huge battlers of the deep bring a marvelous price when caught, Ruth had elected to go swordfishing. And here they were.
There was some fog, but as long as the hoarseWhoo-whooo-ooof the fog horn on Manana sounded in their ears, they were safe. That sound would guide them back.
Dressed as she was in faded knickers and a ragged lumberjack, with a boy’s cap pulled down tight over her unruly locks, one might easily have taken this stalwart girl of the Maine coast for a boy, or, at the distance, even for a man.
“Guess we won’t see any to-day,” she shouted back to Pearl at the wheel.
“Thickening up,” Pearl replied.
“May burn off later.”
“May.”
“We might drop anchor and try for cod,” said Ruth. “There are lines and bait in the forward cabin. We——”
She broke short off to stare away to the right. The next second she gripped her harpoon more securely as she uttered a command almost in a whisper.
The capable hands of her sixteen-year-old cousin gave the wheel a turn. The boat bore away to the right. The look on Pearl’s face became animated. She knew what the command meant. A great fish of one sort or another had broken water.
“Probably a horse mackerel,” she told herself. “Might be a swordfish, though. If it is—if she gets him! Oh, boy!”
The two girls had not been harpooning often, so this little adventure was a real treat. Even a horse mackerel would be worth something.
“But a swordfish,” Pearl told herself with a real thrill, “one of them may be worth a hundred dollars. And oh, boy! think of the thrill of the chase!”
The big girl in the crow’s nest was not dreaming. With blue eyes intent, with the color in her cheek heightened with excitement, she was studying an object that, now lifting on the crest of a wave, showed black against the skyline and now, with scarcely a perceptible motion, disappeared beneath the sea.
“Never saw a fish behave like that,” she told herself. “Acts like a log—almost—not quite. A log does not go under unless a wave hits it. This thing does. Shaped like a swordfish. But whoever heard of a swordfish acting that way?”
Once more she turned her head to broadcast an order in a tone that was all but a whisper.
“It is a swordfish,” she whispered back, ten seconds later. “I saw his sword. He’s a monster!”
A swordfish! Her mind was in a whirl. Suppose they got him! A hundred dollars. What did it not mean to those fisherfolk! A new suit for her father, a dress for herself, a new stove for the kitchen and perhaps a new punt. They needed a new one badly.
“A swordfish! It is! It is!” Her heart pounded furiously against her ribs as the boat came closer, ever closer to that languid black monster that now rising, now sinking, seemed half asleep.
A moment passed. Pearl caught the black gleam before her, and her eyes shone as her tense muscles gripped the wheel. Pearl was standing up now. Breathlessly she waited.
As for the girl in the crow’s nest, for the first time in her life she was experiencing “buck fever.” Little wonder. Never before had she cast for a swordfish, yet here before her a monster cut the waves. His five-foot sword dripped with foam as he rolled lazily over and sank.
“Gone!” The tense muscles that had frozen her hands to the harpoon relaxed.
A minute passed. And then——
“There! There he is!” came in a tense whisper from the stern.
Towering above the sea, her bronze face alight, the girl in the crow’s nest lifted an arm. With skill and precision she poised her harpoon, then let fly.
“Got him!” came from the stern.
Something splashed into the water. An empty keg sealed up tight and fastened securely to the harpoon rope, had been thrown overboard. It would mark the progress of the struggling fish.
But, strangely enough, the great fish did not struggle overmuch. After a few wallowing flounders in an unavailing attempt to break away from the harpoon line, he went down in a swirl of foam. A moment later he rose to the top and swam heavily away.
Pearl knew what to do. She followed the fish.
“Acts awful queer,” was the big girl’s comment. A cold dread was gripping her heart. What if this fish was sick?
“People don’t eat sick fish,” she told herself. “He’d be a dead loss.”
No food from the sea is more highly prized than is the steak of a swordfish. None brings a higher price in the market. But if the fish was not sound, then all their work went for nothing.
What was this? Some strange object was moving across the surface of the water. Now on the crest of a wave, it plunged into the trough, then, like some living thing, climbed the next wave.
“But it can’t be alive,” she told herself. “It’s only a mass of cloth and twisted stick. Something tailing behind.”
For a moment she stared at this extraordinary phenomenon, an inanimate object moving like a living thing across the water. Then of a sudden she realized that this curious object was following the swordfish.
Like a flash it came over her, and her heart sank. This was a marker, just as her floating barrel was. Someone had caught the fish before her.
“It’s some of those city folks who make their summer home on Monhegan,” she told herself. “Been fishing with a kite. That’s the remains of their kite gliding along down there. They got a fish and have been playing him, tiring him out. That’s why he’s so sort of dead. Oh! Gee!” She rested her head on her arm and wanted to cry.
Angling for swordfish with a kite is a sport indulged in by expert fishermen all along the Atlantic coast. A live herring or other fish of its size is attached to a hook on a line hanging from a kite. The kite is then sailed from a boat over the water in such a manner that the live bait, now beneath the water, now above it, moves along over the surface like a small flying fish. The quarry, seeing this tempting prize, strikes it, then the fight begins. The task of the sportsman is to tire the great fish out. Of course, if the slender line is broken the prize is lost. The battle sometimes lasts for hours.
It was no sad face that Ruth presented to the yellow oilskin-clad city boy and girl whose motor boat, theSpeed King, soon hove into view. She wasn’t sorry she had spoiled their game. She was glad. She felt that they had no right to make play out of what was work to her and had been to her ancestors for generations.
“What did you do that for?” The city boy in the prow of the boat lifted a clouded and angry face to Ruth. To do him full justice, he had taken her for a boy.
“Do what?” Ruth asked belligerently.
“Harpoon our fish.”
“How’d I know it was your fish?”
“Had a line on him.”
“Couldn’t see your line.”
“He was about done for. We’d have had him in another half hour. We’ve been after him for five hours.” The boy held up hands that were cut and bleeding from handling the line. “It’s our first one, too.”
“Well,” said Ruth, and her tone was cold, “since you claim the fish, take him. He won’t give you much trouble now. All I want is my line and keg. That ought to satisfy you.”
Ruth knew that it wouldn’t satisfy. She knew all about this sportsman’s ideas of catches. She had murdered their prize. That’s the way they would look at it. If they didn’t take the fish with such and such tackle, so heavy a line and pole, just such a reel, they had nothing to boast of. She had spoiled their game. But she didn’t care. They had spoiled hers, too, and it was more than just a silly game, it was bread and butter, a new stove, some new clothes, a——
The boy began to speak again. His words burned with anger. “That don’t satisfy us, you know it don’t, you meat hunter you——”
The young girl with very bright eyes that rode beside him, tugging at his arm, stopped the angry flood. She whispered in his ear. Ruth heard, and her face flushed.
What she had said was, “Don’t. It’s a girl.”
This made her more angry than ever, but she controlled her emotions and said no more.
A moment later theSpeed Kingturned about and left the circle of fog-ridden sea to Ruth and Pearl and to the great fish that had ceased to struggle.
“Well,” said Ruth, rising wearily from her place fifteen minutes later, “since they don’t seem to want the fish, guess we’d better take him home. He’s worth a lot of money, and we need it.”
There was no spirit in her voice. There was no spring in her usually buoyant self as she did the work of dispatching the fish, taking the keg and lashing the prize for a tow to port. She had won what she wanted, but now she had it she was sure she was not going to enjoy it, not even the new dress.
Late that evening she delivered the prize to Captain Field, who promised to carry it to market for her. She wasn’t going to get a great deal of joy out of the money, but one could not quite throw it away.
“It’s tough luck,” Don said as she told him the story that evening. “I suppose those city people must have their sport, but it’s a little hard to understand why one person’s sport should interfere with another’s business.”
In the meantime, notwithstanding the fact that Ruth and Pearl were on far away Monhegan, the old Fort Skammel mystery was not entirely neglected, nor was the sleepy old fortress allowed to bask unmolested in the sun.
With her two newly made pals away, Betty Bronson, who had lived for a long time on the banks of the romantic Chicago River, and who had but recently been taken up by a wealthy benefactress, found life hanging heavy on her hands. The ladies in the big summer cottage on the hill, which was her present home, drank quantities of tea, played numberless games of bridge, and gossiped as ladies will. All of which interested Betty not at all.
Fishing off the dock was not exciting. She tried for cunners off the rocks at the back of the island and was promptly and efficiently drenched from head to toe by an insolent wave.
After three days of this sort of thing she was prepared for any wild and desperate adventure. Hiring a punt from Joe Trott, she rowed across the bay to the old fort.
The day was bright and the bay calm. The grass by the old fort was as motionless and silent as were the massive stones which made up the walls of the fort.
“Peaceful,” she thought. “What could be more so? Like the schoolhouse by the road, the old fort is a ragged beggar sunning.”
No sooner had she gripped a flashlight and crept through a narrow square where once a massive cannon had protruded, than all this was changed. As if to make reality doubly real, the sun for a moment passed under a cloud, and the great silent circular chamber, which had once known the cannons’ roar, became dark at midday.
“Boo!” she shuddered and was tempted to turn back. Just in time she thought of tea and bridge. She went on.
“Ruth said it was down these stairs at the right,” she told herself, stepping resolutely down the ancient stone stairway. “Down a long passage, around a curve, through a small square dungeon-like place, then along a narrow passageway. Ooo-oo! That seems a long way.”
She was thinking of the face Ruth had seen in the fire. Just why she expected that face to remain there, like an oil painting on the floor, she probably could not have told. Perhaps she did not expect it. That she did expect to meet with some adventure, make some discovery, or experience a thrill was quite certain.
“I wish Ruth were here,” she told herself. “It’s really her mystery; but I’ll save it for her.”
At that she disappeared down the narrow passageway that led to the dim unknown.
Had she known just what was happening to Ruth at that moment she would have been surprised and startled. Ruth was experiencing adventure all her own.
On that day, still wondering and brooding over her curious experience with the swordfish and trying without much success to get the consent of her mind to enjoy the swordfish money gotten in such a strange manner, Ruth had gone for a walk to the back of the island.
Once there, fish and money were driven from her mind, for the view from the crest of Black Head, a bold headland towering two hundred feet above the sea, was glorious beyond compare. The day was clear. There was no storm, yet great breakers, racing in from the sea, sent out long, low rushes of sound as they broke against the impregnable black barrier.
As her keenly appreciative eyes took in the long line of fast racing gray-green surf, they suddenly fell upon a sight that made her blood run cold.
“What a terrible chance! How—how foolish!” she exclaimed as, springing from her rocky seat, she went racing back over the island.
Having arrived at the head of a rugged trail that led downward, she came to a sudden pause.
This, in view of the fact that she honestly believed that the boy and girl on the rocks by the rushing surf were in grave danger, might seem strange. Strange or not, she walked deliberately now. Dropping here, clinging there to drop again, she had made her way half the distance to them when she paused again to at last take a seat there in the sun.
The path from there on was steep but straight. She could reach the ones below in less than a moment’s time. But she would not, at least not yet.
“What’s the use?” she told herself a little bitterly. “Wouldn’t be so bad if one didn’t really like them. But I do.”
It was a rather strange situation. The boy and girl who were endangering their lives by playing in the high rolling surf were the very ones who had followed the swordfish the day before.
With her eyes on the shining surf and the two dancing figures before her, she gave herself over to reflection.
The boy and girl below were tempting death. There was no question about it. They were playing in the surf at an exceedingly dangerous moment. True, there was no wind, no storm upon the sea. But there had been a storm somewhere. That was evident. It might have happened on the faraway coast of Florida. No matter, the seas that had risen then had journeyed northward. Now they were reaching higher and higher on the sloping rock where the boy and girl played.
“They think the ocean is a plaything!” Ruth said almost bitterly. Having lived her life in a fisherman’s cabin by the sea, she knew the ocean was no plaything. Twice in her short life she had looked into eyes that saw nothing, on arms that would never move again, lifeless forms given up by the sea.
As she watched, in spite of her dislike for sports that tempted providence, she found herself fascinated by the wild, nymph-like daring of the twelve-year-old girl who in a single cotton garment drenched with salt spray, hatless and bare of feet, sprang far out after the receding waves to turn and rush back as the surf came thundering in.
Now as she watched, the spray hid her. She sprang to her feet.
“There! There! She’s gone!”
But, no, the spray cleared and the girl, drenched, chilled but triumphant, threw up her arms and laughed.
“Who can help but like them, these rich men’s children!” she exclaimed. “They are frank and fearless. They never quarrel. They are generous to a fault. And yet—” she paused for a moment to reflect, “they don’t seem to have any notion of the value of life. They have never been taught to be afraid.”
Not taught to be afraid. That was it. Too much fear was destructive; too little fear quite as bad.
Receding, the sea appeared to give up its attempt to snatch the daring ones to its breast. Ruth’s eyes and thoughts drifted away from the boy and girl on the rocks. She joyed in the beauty and power of nature revealed in that long line of thundering surf. Nowhere in all her life had she seen such surf as came beating in at the back of Monhegan.
Great men have felt the charm of it in all ages. Captain John Smith once tarried to raise a garden there. Governor Bradford of Plymouth Plantation was once there. And, at this very moment, Ruth caught a glimpse of a shock of white hair which belonged to one of the greatest inventors of modern times.
“Suppose he is sitting there watching the surf and trying to estimate the amount of power that is being wasted,” she thought with a smile.
But there was the surf again. Booming in louder than before it sent spray forty feet high on Black Head’s impregnable stronghold. There, too, were the daring ones, the boy and the wildly dancing girl.
“There! There!” she whispered tensely once more. “She is gone. The waves have her.”
Once more she was mistaken. With a scream of triumph the child emerged from the spray.
“Wish I had never seen them,” she mumbled angrily.
The death of a human being, particularly a child with all the bright glories of life before her, is something to give pause to every other human being in the world.
It did seem an unkind act of Providence that had thrust these two young people who knew so little of fear and of the sea into the presence of one who had experienced so much of the ocean’s wild terrors.
She had seen this boy and girl twice before. There had been the painful swordfishing episode. Then once, as she had guided her motor boat into the tiny harbor at Monhegan, a cry had struck her ear. She had taken it for a cry of distress. Surf had been rushing in masses of gray foam over the shoals before Monhegan. There had been something of a fog. Having caught the outlines of a green punt there in the foam, she had exclaimed:
“They have lost their oars. Their boat will be smashed on the rocks!”
With infinite pains, in danger every moment of losing her motor boat, she had worked her way close, then had shouted to them.
To her great disgust, she had seen the boy turn and laugh. Once again they were using the ocean as a plaything. Having thrown an anchor attached to a long painter among the rocks, they were riding the surf in their shallow punt.
A strange providence had saved them.
“But now they are at it again,” she told herself. “I’ll leave this island. I won’t be their keeper. I—”
She broke off, to stand for ten seconds, staring. A piercing scream had struck her ear. No cry of joy, this. As she looked she saw the boy alone on the slanting rock. On the crest of a wave she caught a fleck of white that was not foam.
“The girl! She’s out there! She’s swimming. She—”
Like a flash she shot down the rocky path. At the same instant an old man, his gray hairs flying, sprang down the other bank of the rocky run.
The old man reached the spot before her.
“No! No! Not you!” she panted. She knew that no white-haired patriarch could brave that angry swirl of foam and live.
The aged inventor knew this quite well. He knew something more. He had measured the boy’s strength and prowess and found it wanting.
“Not you either,” he panted as the suddenly panic-stricken and heart-broken city boy prepared to leap to the rescue.