Placing the flashlight carefully in the niche in the wall, Ruth picked up the top dress of the half dozen in the broken cardboard box.
It was a beautiful thing of purple, so thin and soft that it waved like a rippling sea.
“How strange!” she murmured. “Just my size.”
Before she knew what she was about, her khaki waist and knickers were off and the beautiful dress was on.
Not a moment had passed before Betty, too, was dressed in silk, a marvelous creation of flaming red.
And then, faint and from far away, there echoed down the long-abandoned corridors the sound of footsteps.
“This way!” Seizing the flashlight, with no thought of how she was garbed, Ruth leaped up and out, then on tiptoe went racing down the aisle that led away from the chamber of mysteries, and on and on into the dark.
Madly the feet of the two girls flew down a winding corridor, wildly their hearts beat, as they fled from resounding footsteps.
Now the round circle of yellow light from their electric torch guided them. And now, as Ruth suddenly realized that the light would reveal their whereabouts, the light blinked out, and, dropping to a walk, then to a slow creep, guided only by the sense of touch, they moved along between the dripping walls.
“Could anything be worse?” said Betty.
“Nothing,” Ruth came back.
She was thinking, thinking hard. Tales had been told of ancient wells dug there years ago to enable the garrison to withstand a siege. That the wells now stood uncovered down there somewhere in the depths of the earth, she knew all too well.
“If we blunder into one of those!” Her heart stopped beating.
“The dresses!” Betty whispered suddenly. “Our khakis! We left them. We must go back for them. They will have us arrested.”
“We can’t. They won’t,” said Ruth, still pushing ahead in the dark.
“Ought to turn on the light,” she told herself. “Must! It’s not safe.”
Pausing to listen, she caught the shuffling scamper of rats, the snap of bats. But louder still came the tramp—tramp of heavy feet.
In her fear and despair, she sprang forward, to go crashing against a solid wall.
Knocked half senseless, she sank to her knees. There for a moment she remained motionless. For a moment only, then she was on her feet and away. Her eyes had caught a faint glimmer of light. Far down the narrow passage to the left shone the steady light of day.
“Light!” she whispered solemnly. “Light and hope.”
One moment of mad racing and they were blinking in the sunlight.
The race was not over. Out of the passage, down a set of ancient stone steps, into the grass and bushes, skirts tight and high, they flew until they came up short and panting at the beach.
There in the calm morning were Pearl and the punt.
“You’re here!” Ruth puffed. “Thank God, you’re here!”
Next moment she stood knee deep in water, launching the punt. Then with a little gasp of hope, she swung the punt about and began rowing as if for her very life.
For a full ten minutes the three girls appeared to act a perfect scene in a moving picture. Ruth rowed furiously. Betty sat with eyes fixed on the receding shoreline. Pearl stared at Ruth and Betty with unbelieving eyes.
At the end of that time Ruth dropped her oars to mop her brow. They were now well out in the bay. Fishing boats and motor launch dotted the bay. It was day, bright and fair. No one was pursuing them. To all appearances they were as safe here as at home.
“Where did you get them?” Pearl was still staring at their silk dresses.
“Why—er—” Ruth began, with mock gravity, “that’s a marvelous place down there in the old fort. You go in dressed in cotton blouse and knickers and you come out all togged up in silk.”
“Ruth,” said Betty, “we’ll be arrested!”
“Let ’em try it!” said Ruth. “If we’d taken the whole pile they wouldn’t dare. They’re trespassers, smugglers, thieves, perhaps. It’s safe enough. But girls,” her tone grew suddenly sober, “it’s time some one in authority took a hand. This has been a perfectly glorious adventure, thrilling, mysterious and all that, but it’s gone quite far enough. Who shall we tell?”
“My little man at Witches Cove,” said Pearl. “He is a Secret Service man. Besides, he’s quite wonderful.”
“All right, then. Witches Cove it is,” said Ruth, gripping her oars once more. “We’ll hug the right shore. That way, anyone that’s watching can’t tell for sure where we’re going.”
In spite of this precaution some one knew whither they were headed, and no good came of it.
The little man of Witches Cove had an uncanny way of anticipating the arrival of visitors to his rugged shores. They found him seated on a great boulder with his feet dangling perilously near the water.
“Well, now!” he exclaimed. “Here we are all dressed up for a party. Two sisters and Cinderella. I suppose I am to fit out our little sister with a silver slipper.”
His round, good humored face grew suddenly sober as Ruth told their reason for coming. He interrupted her but once. Then he cautioned her to lower her voice.
“You have truly made a marvelous discovery,” he said when she had finished. “I’ve been looking for some such thing. It comes a little sooner than I expected. Three of my men will be on the afternoon boat from Boston. As soon as they are here we will formulate plans for action. In the meantime I shall have an eye on the old fort. They cannot remove a schooner load of silks from under my nose, I assure you.
“As for you,” his gaze swept the circle of three eager faces, “this, I take it, is going to be a splendid day for fishing. And when you fish,” his smile broadened, “you keep very still. In other words, mum it is. You must not breathe a word to another soul.”
“We won’t,” they said in unison.
So the day was well begun. But it was not ended, not by a good deal.
The three girls did not go fishing, at least not at once. They did accept the little man’s counsel in regard to the earlier happenings of the morning. Not one word regarding them passed their lips.
They did wish to go fishing, later in the day, but in the meantime there was work to be done. Summer folks must have their clam chowder. To Ruth and Pearl fell the lot of digging the clams. All forenoon, under the boiling sun, ankle deep in mud and sand, they dug and clawed away with their clam forks until three great baskets were heaped high with blue-black clams. Then they hurried home to dinner.
By mid-afternoon they were ready for a well-deserved lark.
Betty joined them at the pier. Ruth had drawn theFlyawayalongside, had put on board their lines, bait and lunch, and was preparing to cast off the line when her eyes fell upon a woebegone and drooping little figure on the dock.
“It—it—Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “It’s the little girl I saved from the surf up at Monhegan.”
“Hey, there!” she called. “I thought you’d gone back to Monhegan.”
“No.” The girl’s head shook slowly.
“Mother got afraid when we sailed away down here in that boat you fixed up. She thought Monhegan was too wild and dangerous. But it isn’t!” Her spirit flared up like a torch. “It’s just glorious. It’s dreadfully dull down here. We—” she looked at the boy at her side, and Ruth saw that it was her brother, “we’re going to do something terrible pretty soon!”
“Oh, please don’t,” said Ruth. “I say! We’re going fishing. Want to go along?”
The girl looked up at the boy. “Go ahead.” He pushed her toward theFlyaway.
Ruth recognized this as a generous act. She wanted to ask him to come, too, but it had been agreed that this was to be a girls’ party.
It was Don who saved the day for her. He was on theFoolemagin, busy mending a lobster trap.
“Going round the island in a little while to lift some traps,” he said, looking at the boy. “Care to go along?”
“Be glad to.” The boy turned and helped his sister aboard theFlyaway. Ruth cast off the line. The sail went up. She swung about. Then they went skimming down the bay.
Pearl and the little city girl went forward to lie upon the prow and watch the water gliding by. Ruth and Betty remained at the wheel.
“Betty,” said Ruth, quite suddenly, “is life a joke?”
“Is life a joke?” Betty gave her a quick look as she suspected her of playing a trick upon her. “No,” she said slowly when she realized that her friend was in earnest, “life is not a joke. Life is beautiful, wonderful. How could anything that is all this be a joke? Why? What made you ask?”
As the boat glided smoothly over the water, Ruth told her why; told her of the city boy’s laugh and of his remark about life. She told, too, of the figured taffeta dress, the alligator shoes and the gay hat.
When she had finished, little Betty, who was so young, yet who had seen so much of life, of its joys and sorrows, its struggles, pains and triumphs, sat with half-closed eyes, thinking.
“Do you know what life is?” she said at last. “Life is a struggle, a glorious, terrible battle. You begin it when you begin life. You end it when you breathe your last breath. To hope, to dream, to struggle on,” her slight figure grew suddenly tense, “to fall and rise again. To see a star, a gleam of hope, to battle toward it, to be beaten back, defeated, to turn again to hope and dream and win, only to see a fairer light, a lovelier vision farther on the way, then to hope and dream again. That—” she ended, throwing her arms wide, “that is life, a beautiful, glorious thing! No! No! It can’t be a joke! It can’t be!”
“But Ruth,” she said presently, “what have your new dress and shoes and hat to do with life being a joke?”
“Well,” the flicker of a smile played about the big girl’s face, “I thought if life were a joke, then one might as well have what she wants. I’ve always wanted those things, so I—I got them.”
“They spell happiness to you?”
“I—I suppose so.”
“Then you had a right to them. Everyone has a right to happiness. Did you ever think of that? Every man, woman and little child has a right to happiness bought at a fair price. And the price of a new dress, shoes and a hat is not too much. There now!” Betty ended, “I’ve done a lot of preaching. Here’s Witches Cove. Give me a nice fat clam and a big hook. I feel lucky to-day.” With a laugh she began unwinding her line.
The dull gray of evening hung over a calm sea. From out the west came threats of sudden storm that, sweeping in with the speed of thought, might at any moment turn twilight into darkest night.
The two boys, Don and the city boy, Lester Hilton, had just completed the laborious task of dragging a heavy dory up a rock-strewn beach. Don had left some lobster traps here. He had come ashore to pick them up.
Shading his eyes, Don gazed out to sea. Some object out there caught his eye.
“It can’t be a barrel,” he said in a puzzled drawl. “It’s too big. Can’t be a sailboat, nor a motorboat, nor a punt, unless it is adrift. No one is staying out while such clouds are threatening.”
Climbing to a higher level, he paused to look again, and at once there came over his face a look of deep concern.
“It can’t be,” he muttered. “How could it happen on a calm sea?” Closing his eyes for a moment to secure a clearer vision, he stood there erect, motionless.
Then, with the suddenness of one who has received a terrible revelation, he exclaimed:
“It’s Pearl and Ruth and your sister in theFlyaway. Their mast is gone. They are powerless. In five minutes it will be dark. Soon the sea will be white with foam. They are out there, your sister and mine, out there! Just think!”
Lester did think. One instant his mind sped, the next his hand was on the dory.
“Yes,” said Don, “but you must go alone.”
“Alone?” The younger boy stood appalled.
“The dory will ride almost any storm. You must reach them, take them off the schooner and bring them round the island to the lee side.”
All the time he talked Don was helping to shove the dory off. “You can’t possibly reach them before the storm and complete darkness come. Both of us couldn’t, not half way.
“I will guide you. I’ll find you a light so strong you’ll see all the way.”
The younger boy stared as if he thought his companion mad.
“In the center of the island,” Don spoke rapidly, “there is a powerful searchlight, a government light for use only in time of war or a great emergency. You have no idea of its power, hundreds of thousands of candle power. The keeper is away, but I know how to swing it into place, to put on the power, to direct its rays. Go! Quickly!” He gave the dory a stout shove, then went racing up the bank.
The impossible sometimes happens. That a thirty-foot sailing vessel, as staunch a craft as ever sailed the rock-ribbed sea, with a mast twice the required thickness, should be drifting helpless with mast and sail cast off and lost from sight, should lie helpless in a calm sea while a storm came tearing in from off the land was, in time of peace, you might say, impossible. Yet all this was just what was happening. TheFlyawaywas hopelessly adrift. What was more, Pearl Bracket, the golden-haired, freckle-faced girl of Peak’s Island, and Ruth with her city friends, twelve-year-old Jessie Hilton and Betty, were aboard. How could all this happen in one calm afternoon?
It had all come about so suddenly that even the four girls shuddering there on the mastless schooner could scarcely believe it had happened at all. They had sailed to Witches Cove. Having dropped anchor within the shadows of the overhanging rocks, they had tried their hand at fishing.
It had been a curious afternoon, not exactly cloudy, yet not exactly clear. A haze, a lazy mist, drifted here and there. Never did Witches Cove seem so spooky as now. Once as Pearl looked up from her fishing she saw a film of gray rise in the darkest corner of the pool. As if fashioned by an invisible hand it took the form of a witch with high hat and hooked nose. She was even riding a broom.
Pearl touched Ruth’s arm and pointed. Ruth saw and shuddered.
“Gray Witch is riding to-day,” she said. “Something is sure to happen.” In this she was not wrong.
The fishing was unusually good. Soon the deck of theFlyawaywas alive with flapping fish. In the excitement the Gray Witch and all else was forgotten.
Then had come the supreme moment. Jessie had hooked a twelve-pound rock cod. The cod had showed fight. Before she could draw him in he had fouled the line among the kelp. So securely was he hooked that even then he could not escape. So, with three girls tugging at one line and the fish at the other, the red kelp went swinging and swaying back and forth at the bottom of the pool.
It was just at the moment when the kelp seemed about to lose its hold on the rock and to come floating to the top with the magnificent fish in its wake, that Pearl, chancing to look away, dropped the line to spring back in an attitude of fear.
She found herself looking into a pair of dark eyes. Instinct told her to whom those eyes belonged. “The face-in-the-fire,” her mind registered.
“The—the bombers!” she had whispered to Ruth.
Like a flash all that the little man of Witches Cove had told her passed through her mind. He, the man of the rocky island, was a Secret Service man in the employ of his government. He had been stationed there to trace and if possible capture two men who had been stealing high explosives from the Army and Navy store houses. These men were supposed to belong to a band that was opposed to all organized society. Several disastrous explosions had been laid to their door.
“If you can assist me in capturing them,” the Secret Service man had said, “you will not alone perform a great service to your country, but may save many lives as well.”
And here were the very men! Pearl could not doubt it. She shot one wild glance toward the cabin on the rocks. No one was in sight. Little hope for aid.
“No use,” she said aloud as she recognized the second man. It was one of the men who had stolen Ruth’s punt and loaded it with dynamite. A cold shudder ran up her spine.
“Not a bit of use in the world,” the man went on in a cold voice. “We got you. We’ll teach you to meddle!”
At that, to her great terror, he produced a long whip such as was once used by cruel slave owners. Cracking this about their ankles, he ordered them down into theFlyaway’scabin. Once they were down, he closed the door behind them.
For a whole hour, feeling the gentle roll of the boat, knowing they were going somewhere but having no notion what the destination might be, they cowered in great fear. Finding courage only by praying to the great Father of all, they waited they knew not what.
At the end of that time they caught the sound of the strokes of an axe. This was followed by a sickening splash.
“The mast is gone!” Pearl thought to herself. “Will they sink our boat and leave us to drown?”
The two men had evidently planned for them a more cruel fate. Having cut away the mast and taken the oars, they set the motor boat in which they had reached the schooner going once more, and left theFlyawayand her crew to drift helpless in the storm.
“Be broken up on the rocks!” Pearl’s eyes were dry, but in her heart was a solid weight of sorrow.
* * * * * * * *
Don was racing up a rocky trail while Lester was tugging with all his might at the long oars, driving the heavy dory farther and farther out into the face of the oncoming storm.
Then, like the dropping of a purple curtain on a stage, came wind, rain and deep darkness.
The testing of Lester Hilton, the reckless and daring city boy who believed that life was a joke, was at hand. He now stood face to face with triple peril—night, the sea and the storm. He had no compass. There was no light to guide him. There was now only to wait and hope. This was hardest of all.
With unfaltering footsteps Don hastened on into the dark until just before him a long low bulk loomed. This was the power house. In this house was the hoisting machine and the powerful dynamos that lifted the great searchlight. To break a window, to crawl through, to touch a lever setting a dynamo purring, to switch on a light, to throw a second lever, was but the work of a moment.
Then again, he was outside. A little up the hill, like a gigantic black ghost, some object was rearing itself upward. This was a frame on which the powerful searchlight rested. When not in use it lay prone. It must now be raised to an upright position. Powerful machinery was doing this.
It was still leaning at a rakish angle when the boy sprang up the ladder. By the time it snapped into position he was in the small cabin above. Here again he threw on an incandescent lamp. One moment of suspense and a great light flashed far out over the sea.
“Ah!” he breathed.
With skillful hand he began spraying the sea with light as a gardener sprays a lawn. Here, there, everywhere the light traveled. Once, for ten seconds his eyes were fixed upon a small gasoline boat ploughing its way through the tossing waves. Then that spot went dark. As yet his search was unrewarded.
But now, as the light swung closer in, it fell upon a boy in a large dory. He was battling the storm to keep his dory afloat.
“Lester.” Don’s heart swelled.
Swift as the flight of a gull, the light shot outward until it fell upon a mastless boat wallowing in the trough of a wave. There it came to rest.
How the young city boy, little accustomed to the sea, pulling for the spot marked by that light, battled his way forward until at last, drenched, hands blistered, well nigh senseless with fatigue, he overhauled the crippled boat, and how after that three girls and a boy fought the storm and won will remain one of the tales to be told round island cottage fires on stormy nights.
One incident of that night will always remain burned on Don’s brain. As he held his light steadily in its place, there struck his ears a deafening crash that was not thunder, and instantly the sky was illumined by a glare that was not lightning. When, a half hour later, he was free to search the sea for the floundering motor boat which his light had first picked up, it had disappeared.
As Don at last threw off the powerful searchlight and descended the steel stairway that led to the ground, two problems stood out in his mind. He had broken all rules in using the searchlight. There had been strict rules about that. No civilian was to touch it.
“Well,” he told himself, “they may send me to jail if they must. I’d do it again for my sister and for them.”
The other question that puzzled him was one regarding that explosion at sea. Since he knew nothing of the afternoon’s happenings at Witches Cove and their aftermath at sea, he could make little of it.
As for the four girls, they had, it seemed to Ruth at least, lived a lifetime in a few hours. In one short afternoon they had experienced peace, hope, joy, near triumph, fear, disaster and all but death. What more could there be to life?
The little city girl had behaved wonderfully. She had sat wide eyed, calm and silent through it all.
The city boy puzzled Ruth most of all. Battling the waves like a veteran seaman, he reached them alone in the heavy dory. Then, without a word, he put his shoulder to an oar and began helping them to beat their way back to land.
“And he thinks life is a joke,” Ruth told herself. Then in a flash it came to her. This boy once thought that life was a joke. He did not really believe it; was not living as if life were a joke.
“He’ll forget all he thinks,” she told herself, “and become a wonderful man. I am glad.”
When they had circled a rocky point and come to the lea, they drove their boat on a narrow beach. There they built a roaring fire and sat down to dry their clothes. There Don joined them.
“How did you lose your mast? What was that explosion?” he demanded excitedly.
It was Ruth who told of the afternoon’s events. In the telling she was obliged to add much about old Fort Skammel and the bombing smugglers that he had not known before.
“But did you hear that explosion at sea?” he asked as she ended.
“Yes,” said Ruth, “and I have my ideas. Looks to me as if we had seen the last of those two men.”
“You think their motor boat blew up?”
“I think they had explosives on board and that the jarring of the waves set them off.”
“Hm!” said Don. “That might be true.”
Early next morning Don tuned up theFoolemaginand went in search of theFlyaway. He found her piled up on the beautiful broad beach on Long Island. Save for a bump here and there and the loss of her mast, she was quite unharmed.
In a half hour’s time he had her pulled off and in tow.
“Get her in shipshape by noon,” he told Pearl over a belated breakfast. “Uncle Joe has a mast he took from an old boat. I’ll put it in and you can give her a tryout.”
It was during this tryout of theFlyawaythat the three girls bumped square into the last great adventure of the season.
They had just circled the last pleasure yacht anchored before the island and were squared away for a trip down the bay, when their attention was attracted by a small motor boat apparently stranded in mid-channel.
“The ferry will run them down if they don’t watch out,” said Ruth, reaching for their ancient brass field glass.
“It—well, now what?” She dropped the glass to stare at the boat with the naked eye. “It’s your little friend the Secret Service man from Witches Cove,” she told Pearl. “There are three men with him and they seem no end excited. One is trying frantically to get the engine going. The other three are waving wildly at us. Head her in that way. Give her all the sail.”
Pearl swung about. In an incredibly short time they were within hailing distance.
“That boat can sail some, can’t she?” the little man shouted.
“She can,” said Ruth through cupped hands.
“Come alongside and take us on board. They’re getting away.” The Secret Service man swung his arm down the bay, where through the light fog a second motor boat was just passing behind the island.
“Who’s getting away?” Ruth asked in some astonishment as they came close up.
“The bombers—the smugglers—the—the wild rascals, whoever they may be, you know as well as I.” The man was in a great state of perspiration. “They just left old Fort Skammel.”
The three girls stared as if they had seen a ghost.
“They can’t have,” said Ruth as soon as she found her voice. “They’re dead, blown into a thousand pieces by their own dynamite.”
“Strange,” puffed the little man as he scrambled aboard theFlyaway, followed by his three companions.
“Let her drift,” he said as he saw Ruth eyeing the stalled motor boat. “Someone will pick her up. There’s important matters afoot. What’s one motor boat more or less?”
“Dead! Blown to pieces!” he exclaimed as soon as he had taken three deep breaths. “Show us you are sailors, and we’ll prove to you that they are neither dead nor blown to pieces. I saw that wild looking fellow with the tangled black hair and shining eyes, saw him plainly.”
“The man of the face-in-the-fire,” Ruth said to Pearl, as she set theFlyawayto skimming up the bay. “The very one. Must be. What do you know about that!”
Not one of the three knew what about it, so they were silent until they too had rounded the island and saw the fleeing boat, a low, dark affair of moderate speed, popping along dead ahead.
“Well, will we overhaul them?” the little man asked anxiously.
“Will if the wind holds. May drop any time,” said Ruth. “Little fog. May burn off. May thicken. Can’t tell.” With a boy’s cap jammed tight over her head, she stood there swaying with the boat and giving her every inch of sail she’d carry.
“It’s to be a race,” she told herself, “a race between theFlyawayand that motor boat.” There was something altogether unusual about the whole affair. If these were the men, if indeed they had escaped the storm and the explosion, as indeed they appeared to have done, then theFlyaway, which they had attempted to destroy along with the three of them, was hunting down the very ones who had meant to destroy her.
“Good oldFlyaway!” she whispered. “Do your best!”
“We’ll catch them,” she told herself a short time later. “And then?” She dared not think what might follow. These were desperate men. If caught, they would serve long terms in prison. They would not surrender without a battle.
It was strange the thoughts that passed through her mind as they sped along. Now she was thinking of that secret room in old Fort Skammel. How was it heated? Were the silks still there? If the men were captured, what then? The silks would be confiscated by the customs office.
“There’s some sort of law that gives the finder a share,” she told herself. “We found them right enough.” She thrilled at the thought of owning a room half filled with silk dresses and bolts of silk cloth.
A moment later she was talking with the little Secret Service man, joining him in an effort to unravel the tangled web of mysteries that had been woven about them.
She spoke first of the ancient wood carrying schooner, of its dark foreign skipper and the bales of cloth in the hold. The little man seemed astonished.
“There,” he said, “I think you are entirely wrong. Did you ever happen to look at that skipper’s hands?”
Ruth had not.
“They’re hard as pine knots and the muscles of his arms are like wooden beams. You don’t get a man like that for smuggling or stealing. They love physical labor too much and the contentment that comes with it.”
He agreed with her when she said that the smugglers had a hand in the destruction ofBlack Gull. That the cache in the old fort was theirs, neither of them doubted.
When Ruth spoke of the dark seaplane Pearl had seen off Monhegan on that stormy night, he seemed greatly surprised and excited.
“Are we doing the best we can?” he asked suddenly, wrinkling his brow and looking up at the sail.
“Our level best,” said Ruth. “And if the wind holds it is good enough. See, we have gained half the distance already.”
It was true. They had now come so close to the fleeing craft that they were able to make out moving figures on her.
Lifting the glass, Ruth studied the sea and the power boat for a moment. Then, quite suddenly she dropped the glass. She had looked straight into that dark visage, the face-in-the-fire.
“How can one explain it?” she said, as a shudder ran through her stout frame.
“Explain what?” the little man asked.
Ruth told him of their harrowing experience of the previous day and of the tremendous explosion at sea.
“There is no explanation at present,” he said quietly. “There may never be any. We who spend our lives delving into hidden mysteries know that half of them are never solved.”
In spite of the realization that they were off on a perilous mission, Ruth felt a comforting warmth take possession of her. Only yesterday, with every hope apparently gone, she had been drifting on a sailless, mastless boat out to sea in the face of a storm. Now, with that same boat, she was treading on the heels of those who had willed her death. The end of all the summer’s excitement and mystery was near.
But what was this? A thin film of smoke rose from the power boat ahead. Ten seconds had not passed before this had become a veritable pillar of black towering toward the sky. “Their boat is on fire!” she cried.
“Smoke screen,” said the little man, still calm. “There! There! See? They are taking to their dory! We’ll get them now.”
“But what is that a little way over there to the right, close to that little rocky island?”
All eyes followed the direction she had indicated. Then as one, they exclaimed:
“A seaplane! A seaplane! The dark, trans-Atlantic plane! We have lost them!”
That the men should escape now seemed inevitable. The seaplane was moving rapidly across the water. Soon she would be upon the dory from the smoking schooner. A hasty scramble aboard her, and they would rise to speed away at such a pace as no sailboat ever knew.
Ruth was ready to sit down and cry. She had risked so much. She had experienced such terrible things. She had hoped and hoped again. Truly she had come to know what life was. And now—
But again a surprise leaped at them from the air. The thunder of an airplane motor, not that of the dark seaplane, but another, struck their ears. As it doubled and redoubled in volume Ruth thought of the young air scout who had assisted her in saving Betty’s life off Green Island, and a great surge of hope welled up within her.
The scene that followed will remain in the memories of the three girls as long as life shall last. The sea, a thin fog, a great dark plane rising slowly like a black swan from the water, a small American pursuit plane appearing on the distant horizon.
“Is it our young aviator?” Ruth asked herself, gripping at her breast to still her heart’s wild beating. “Will he be in time?”
Higher and higher rose the giant plane. Nearer and nearer came its little pursuer.
When she had risen to a height of a thousand feet, the dark marauder began thundering away.
But of a sudden, a white gleam appeared above her. The little silver plane was possessed of great speed. The black giant, laden with hundreds of gallons of gasoline for a long journey, was slow in picking up. The tiny pursuer was upon her. The fight was on.
“It’s like a catbird attacking a crow,” Ruth told herself. “What will the end be?”
With a daring that set the girl’s blood racing, the young aviator swooped down upon his broad winged opponent.
“He—he’ll crash into them,” she thought in sudden terror, “He—he has!”
“No! No!” said Betty who, all unconscious of her actions, was dancing wildly about the deck. “There! There he is! He’s come out from behind.”
Again the little plane rose. Again, he came down, this time to the right and all but upon a broad wing of the Devil Bird.
Then came a short, sharp, insistent sound that was not made by motors.
“They—they’re shooting,” said Ruth as a fresh terror seized her. “We must get closer. They may bring him down.”
Gripping a rope, she sent her sail upward, then prepared to glide ahead at full speed.
But now, matters took a fresh turn. So close did the young aviator dive in that the great black plane was set wobbling. It was with the utmost difficulty that she righted herself.
Hardly had this been accomplished when the little plane, with all the ferocity of a bird robbed of her young, was upon her again.
“He’ll be killed!” screamed Betty, now fairly beside herself. “There! There he goes!”
But the little plane did not drop. It wobbled and twisted, turned half a flip-flop, righted itself and was at the dark antagonist once more.
Again the pop-pop-pop-pop of shots.
This time, however, it broke short off as the black plane, after an instant of seeming to hang motionless in air, suddenly went into a tail spin.
“There! There!” Betty closed her eyes.
When she opened them the black plane was gone.
“Where—where—” she stammered.
“Gone to the bottom,” said Ruth solemnly. “We’ll get over there at once. They may rise. It—it’s terrible to think—”
“Poor fellows,” said the little man. “They will never come up. The plane, with her heavy motors and her loaded tanks, took them straight to the bottom. They deserved little enough. They were the enemies of law and order and all government. Since men must live as neighbors, laws of conduct cannot be avoided. They were blind to all this. They saw wrongs in every land; men rich and living extravagantly who deserved to live on hard bread and wear rags, other men living in poverty, and they said, ‘We must destroy.’
“Nothing was ever gained by destruction. Wrongs must be righted by laws, and by instilling into the hearts of all men a feeling of brotherly kindness. Those who will destroy will in the end bring destruction upon themselves.”
The little pursuit plane had come to rest on the sea. For a half hour both plane and sail boat cruised the waters there, but no sign of the missing plane rose from the depths.
When the little plane at last drew in close Ruth saw, with a sudden tremor at her heart, that the young aviator of that other day by Green Island was in the forward cockpit.
“Sorry to spoil your game,” he said, standing up. “But he was about to get away. And that wouldn’t do. Done enough damage already.”
“Quite enough,” said the little man. “We owe you a vote of thanks. You were lucky to escape. There was shooting.”
“They did all the shooting,” said the young man. “I was only trying to force them down for you.”
“Well,” said the little man, “you did that with a vengeance. And now,” he said briskly, “we better get back to old Fort Skammel. These young ladies tell me that there’s a secret cache of silks there. I have no doubt there are papers of great importance there too.”
“Like to ride back with me?” said the young aviator, looking at Ruth. “I—I promised you a trip, you know.”
“Yes,” said Ruth, climbing into the plane.
“We’ll get over to the fort and keep guard there until you arrive,” said the aviator, waving them goodbye as Ruth’s last strap was safely buckled into place.
It was a strange world that Ruth looked down upon as she sped along—her own little world seen from above. Islands, homes, ships, all floated like miniature affairs of paper beneath her. Then, much too soon, they were skimming the bay for a landing.
All was serene and dreamy about old Fort Skammel as the two, Ruth and her pilot, came ashore there. Dragon flies darted here and there. Spider webs drifted by.
“The calm of a Sabbath afternoon,” said the young pilot. “How good it is to be alive!”
“Life,” Ruth replied, blinking at the sun and struggling to reassemble her scattered thoughts, “could not be sweeter.”