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THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
Or
The Waif From the Sea
BY
MARGARET PENROSE
The GOLDSMITH Publishing Co.
Cleveland Ohio
Made in U.S.A.
Copyright, 1913, by
Cupples & Leon Company
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. A FLASH OF FIRE 1
II. THE STRANGE WOMAN 13
III. A STRANGE STORY 29
IV. ON THE ROAD 41
V. A FLOCK OF SHEEP 52
VI. JACK IS LOST 59
VII. WORRIES 68
VIII. THE GIRL 75
IX. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 85
X. REUNITED 90
XI. THE GIRLS RETALIATE 97
XII. AT THE COVE 106
XIII. THE LIGHTHOUSE MAID 113
XIV. SETTLING DOWN 122
XV. LAUNCHING THE "PET" 130
XVI. SUSPICIONS STRENGTHENED 138
XVII. THE LIGHT KEEPER'S STORY 145
XVIII. BELLE SWIMS 154
XIX. GATHERING CLOUDS 158
XX. THE STORM 166
XXI. THE WRECK 172
XXII. THE RESCUE 179
XXIII. THE FLOATING SPARS 187
XXIV. SAFE ASHORE 194
XXV. A SURPRISE 199
XXVI. THE STORY OF NANCY FORD 206
XXVII. A BOLD ATTEMPT 216
XXVIII. A STRANGE MESSAGE 224
XXIX. AT THE SHARK'S TOOTH 231
XXX. HAPPY DAYS 237
THE MOTOR GIRLS
ON THE COAST
CHAPTER I
A FLASH OF FIRE
Filled was the room with boys and girls--yes, literally filled; for they
moved about so from chair to chair, from divan to sofa, from one side of
the apartment to the other, now and then changing corners after the manner
of the old-fashioned game of "puss," that what they lacked in numbers
they more than made up in activity. It was a veritable moving picture
of healthful, happy young persons. And the talk----!
Questions and answers flew back and forth like tennis balls in a set of
doubles. Repartee mingled with delicate sarcasm, and new, and almost
indefinable shades of meaning were given to old and trite expressions.
"You can depend upon it, Sis!" drawled Jack Kimball as he stretched out
his foot to see how far he could reach on the Persian rug without falling
off his chair; "you can depend upon it that Belle will shy at the last
moment. She's afraid of water, the plain, common or garden variety of
water. And when it comes to ripples, to say nothing of waves, she----"
"Cora, can't you make him behave?" demanded the plump Belle in question.
"Belle's too--er--too--tired to get up and do it herself," scoffed Ed
Foster. "May I oblige you, Belle, and tweak his nose for him?"
"Come and try it!" challenged Jack.
"Let Walter do it," advised Bess, who, the very opposite type of her
sister Belle, tall and willowy--aesthetic in a word--walked to another
divan over which she proceeded to "drape herself," as Cora expressed it.
"Well, let's hear what Jack has to say," proposed Walter Pennington,
bringing his head of crisp brown hair a little closer to the chestnut
one of Bess. "He has made a statement, and it is now--will you permit
me to say it--it is now strictly up to him to prove it. Say on, rash
youth, and let us hear why it is that Belle will shy at the water."
"It's a riddle, perhaps," suggested Eline Carleton, a visitor from
Chicago. "I love to guess riddles! Say it again, Jack, do!"
"Why is a raindrop----" began Norton Randolf, a newcomer in Chelton. "The
answer is----"
"That you can bring water to a horse, even if you can't make him stand
still without hitching," interrupted Walter. "Go on, Jack!"
"I don't see much use in going on, if you fellows--and I beg your
collective pardons--the ladies also--are to interrupt me all the while."
"That's so--let's play the game fair," suggested Eline. "Is it a riddle,
Jack? Belle is afraid of the water because--let me see--because it can't
spoil her complexion no matter whether it's salt or fresh--is that it?"
and she glanced over at the slightly pouting Belle, whose rosy complexion
was often the envy of less happily endowed girls.
"I'm not afraid of the water!" declared Belle. "I don't see why he says
so, anyhow. It--it isn't--kind."
"Forgive me, Belle!" and Jack "slumped" from his chair to his knees
before the offended one. "I do beg your pardon, but you know that ever
since we proposed this auto trip to Sandy Point Cove you've hung back on
some pretext or other. You've even tried to get us to consent to a land
trip. But, in the language of the immortal Mr. Shakespeare, there is
nothing doing. We are going to the coast."
"Of course I'm coming, too," said Belle. "Stop it, Jack!" she commanded,
drawing her plump hand away from his brown palm. "Behave yourself! Only,"
she went on, as the others ceased laughing, "only sometimes the ocean
seems so--so----"
"Oceany," supplied Walter.
"Now Jack--and you other boys also," said Cora in firm tones, "really
it isn't fair. Belle is nervous about water, just as the rest of us are
about some other particular bugbear, but she is also reasonable, and she
has even promised to learn to swim."
Cora brushed from the mahogany centre table a few morsels of withered
lilac petals, for, in spite of the most careful dusting and setting to
rights of the room, those blooms had a persistent way of dropping off.
"Belle swim!" cried Jack, rising to his feet, since his advances had
been repulsed, "why she would have to be done up in a barrel of life
preservers, and then she'd insist on being anchored to shore by a ship's
cable. Belle swim!"
"Indeed!" retorted his sister, "you'll soon find that the more nervous a
girl is, the more persistent she is to learn to swim. She realizes the
necessity of not losing her head in the water."
"If she lost her head she wouldn't swim very far," put in Ed with gentle
sarcasm.
"Put him out!" ordered Walter. "But say, when are we going to get down to
the horrible details, and make some definite plans? This sort of a tea
party suits me all right--don't mistake me," he hastened to add, with a
glance at Cora, "but if we are going, let's--go!"
"That's what I say," came from Belle. "You won't find me holding back,"
and she crossed the room to look out of the parlor window across the
Kimball lawn.
"My! That's a stunning dress!" exclaimed Jack. "Fish-line color, isn't it?"
"He's trying to make amends. Don't you believe him," echoed Walter.
"Fish-line color!" mocked Cora. "Oh, Jack, you are hopeless! That's the
newest shade of pearl."
"Well, I almost hit it," defended Jack. "Pearls are related to fishes,
and fish lines are----"
"Oh, get a map!" groaned Ed. "Do you always have to make diagrams of your
jokes that way, old man?"
"Let's go outside," proposed Cora. "I'm sure it's getting stuffy in
here----"
"Well, I like that!" cried Belle. "After she asked us to come, she calls
us stuffy! Cora Kimball!"
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way at all," protested the young hostess.
"But it is close and sultry. I shouldn't wonder but what we'd have a
thunder-shower."
"Don't say that!" pleaded Jack, in what Walter termed his theatrical
voice. "A shower means water, and Belle and water----"
"Stop it!" commanded the pestered one. "Do come out," and she linked her
arm in that of Cora. "Maybe we can talk sense if we get in the open."
The young people drifted from the room, out on the broad porch and thence
down under the cedars that lined the path. It was late afternoon, and
though the sky was clouding over, there shot through the masses now and
then a shaft of sun that fell on the walk between the tree branches,
bringing into relief the figures that "crunched" their way along the
gravel, talking rapidly the while.
"Looks like a rare old reunion," spoke Jack. "I guess we'll do something
worth while after all."
"Don't distress yourself too much, old man," warned Ed. "You might get a
sun-stroke, you know."
"That's the time you beat him to it," chuckled Walter. "Do they do this
sort of thing out your way?" and he addressed pretty Eline.
She blushed a charming pink under her coat of tan--a real biscuit brown,
it had been voted by her admirers. She reminded them of a little red
squirrel, for she had rather that same timid appearance, and she nearly
always dressed in tan or brown, to match her complexion.
"Sometimes," she murmured.
"Chicago----" began Jack in rather judicial tones.
"You let Chicago alone!" advised Walter. "I'm looking after Eline. I won't
let them hurt you," and he moved closer to her. She seemed to shrink,
whereat the others laughed.
They walked about for a little while, strolling out to the Kimball
garage--a rebuilt stable, where three fine machines now stood, two of them
having brought the visitors. Then when they had acquired the necessary
breath of air, they went back into the house.
Eline matched herself up to a Chippendale chair, while Belle, always fond
of plenty of room, found it on a divan. Bess had secured one of those
Roman chairs curved up at both ends, seemingly intended to prevent anyone
from sitting anywhere but in the exact center. She assumed a graceful
pose--everything Bess did had that attribute.
"My! it is certainly getting warmer!" complained Walter. "Maybe we should
have stayed out."
"We can talk better in here," was Cora's opinion. "We'll need all the
breeze that we can get on high gear if this keeps up," said Ed, with a
sigh.
"Oh, but the dust!" exclaimed Bess. "I know I'll simply choke, and----"
"Chew gum!" broke in Cora. "That absorbs the dust."
"Couldn't we chew chocolates as well?" asked Belle. "I would rather
swallow half the dust of the roads from here to Sandy Point Cove and
have my throat macadamized, than chew gum."
"We'll allow you to make yours chocolate," conceded Jack, "though
chocolates do not allow space for----"
"Gab," put in Norton Randolf, who seldom said anything really nice to
the girls. Yet he always managed to interest them with his drawl and
indifference. "We ought to get out something that would stop the talk
when we get to a close turn," he proceeded. "I'm always afraid some one
will release the emergency brake on a down grade, with a rude remark."
"He's real bright!" chuckled Ed. "I don't think!"
"Now, please, let's get down to business," suggested Cora, crisply. "The
time passes so quickly, and we have a lot of matters to arrange. Bess, I
put an extra wrench in your tool-box. I remembered your ability in losing
those handy little articles."
"Thanks," drawled Bess. "But why stop at a wrench? Why not duplicate
all the fixings? What I don't lose Belle does. But then," and she turned
mocking, pleading eyes on Jack, "your brother is such a dear for fixing
us up. I guess the _Flyaway_ will be there at the finish."
"Is it very far where you are going--to Sandy Point Cove?" asked Eline.
"Oh, yes," answered Walter, "it's miles and miles, and then more miles.
But we are all going, little girl, so don't worry," and he struck a
stiffly-heroic attitude to show his valor.
"It is a good thing you have a livery-stable-sized garage," remarked Ed
to Cora. "It holds all the cars very nicely."
"Yes, there isn't another in Chelton, except the public ones, so well
arranged," added Walter. "But we might have waited until morning to bring
the machines here."
"No, I thought it was best to have them here the night before we were
to start," explained Cora, who was to assume the leadership of the
prospective trip. "Some of us might have been tempted to go out on a
little spin this evening, and an accident might have occurred that would
delay us."
"Did the _Petrel_ get off safely?" inquired Ed.
"Yes," replied Jack. "It's in a regular motor boat crate that the man said
would stand the journey. I saw it put in the freight car myself, and well
braced. It will be there waiting for us when we get to the Cove."
"I hope it runs," murmured Walter.
"Don't be a pessimist--or is it an optimist? I never can tell which from
what," spoke Belle. "I mean don't be one who's always looking on the dark
side. Look for the silver lining of the clouds."
"Say, it's clouding up all right," declared Jack, as he glanced from the
window.
A distant rumble was heard at that moment.
"That's thunder!" exclaimed Belle, "and we have no umbrellas." She glanced
at her sister and Eline.
"Better have it rain to-night than to-morrow, when we want to start," said
Cora, philosophically.
"Sit by me, Belle," pleaded Jack. "I won't let the bad thunder hurt you."
"We'll all sit by each other!" proposed Walter.
This was a signal for a general change of places, each boy pretending to
protect a girl.
"Now don't let's get off the track," went on Cora, when quiet had been
restored. "Are you all sure that you want to go directly to the Cove,
and don't care for a little side trip before reaching there? Of course
it's going to be fine at the shore, and there's enough variety so that
each one can find something she or he likes--rocks, ocean, sandy beach,
a lighthouse----"
"Where they do light housekeeping?" asked Ed, softly.
"Please don't," Cora begged.
"Any nice girls down there?" asked Jack, making eyes at Eline.
They all started as a particularly loud clap of thunder followed a vivid
flash of lightning, and the wind rose suddenly, moaning through the trees.
"I don't believe it will amount to much," was Walter's opinion. "Probably
only a wind storm."
"But I guess I'd better put down the windows on the West side," remarked
Cora. "I'll be back in a moment----"
As she spoke there came a dash of rain against the side of the house, and
another flash of lightning was followed by a vibrating peal.
Cora screamed.
"Oh, what is it?" demanded Bess, nervously. Jack clasped her hand.
"Look!" cried Cora. "The garage--it's on fire. I just saw a flash of
flame! Our autos will be burned!"
"We've got to get 'em out!" declared Jack. "Come on, fellows!"
He made a dash for the door. Ed leaped through the low, open window.
Walter followed Jack. The girls stood uncertain what to do.
"The lightning struck it!" gasped Eline.
"We must help to get out the autos!" cried Cora. "We must help the boys
to fight the fire!"
"Telephone in an alarm!" suggested Bess.
"The autos first! The cars first! We must get them out!" Cora cried as
she hurried out of the door, the three other girls trailing after. "If
we get the cars out the barn can go!"