OFF BLACK HEAD
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.
“Not you!” The old man seized him and pinned him to the rock. “If someone
is to undo the harm done by your recklessness it must be another.” The
aged inventor paused, out of breath.
That other was Ruth. No one knew that better than she. The time had come
when she must battle with death for the life of another.
“Go! Go for a boat!” she shouted to the boy and the man. Her voice
carried above the roar of the surf. With that she leaped square into the
arms of a gigantic wave to be carried away by it toward the spot where
the white speck, which had a moment before been a joyous twelve-year-old
girl, struggled more feebly and ever more feebly against the forces that
strove to drag her down.
The battle that followed will always remain a part of Monhegan’s colorful
history.
Two thoughts stuck in Ruth’s mind as, throwing the foam from her face,
she struck for the place where the white spot had last been. She must get
a firm grip on the girl; then she must go out, out, OUT. Nothing else
could save them. By a great good fortune this was a moment of comparative
calm. But such calms are deceiving. Ruth was not to be deceived. The
ocean was a cat playing with a mouse. At any moment it might be raging
again. To attempt a landing on the rocks, to allow one’s self to be cast
high against Black Head’s pitiless wall was to meet death at a single
blow.
“I must go out, out, OUT. There is life,” she told herself over and over.
But first the girl. A low wave lifted her. Riding its crest, she caught a
glimpse of that slight figure. But now she was gone, perhaps forever.
But no; there she was closer now, still battling feebly against the blind
forces dragging her down.
With almost superhuman strength the fisher girl leaped against the waves.
Now she had covered half the distance, now two-thirds, and now she
reached the child. As if to torment her, a wave snatched her away. She
disappeared.
“Gone!” she murmured.
But no, there she was, closer now. Her hand shot out. She grasped a shred
of white. It gave way. A second stroke, and she had her.
Gripping her firmly with one hand, she swam with the other. Swimming now
with all her might, she made her way out until the sea grew wild again.
Nothing could be done now but keep heads above the foam and spray. One,
two, three waves, each one higher than the last, carried them toward the
terrible wall of stone. Now they were five yards back, now eight, now
ten. With an agonizing cry, the girl saw the rocks loom above them.
But now, just in the nick of time, as if a hand had been laid upon the
water and a mighty voice had whispered, “Peace! Be still!” the waves
receded.
Ruth, looking into the younger girl’s eyes, read understanding there.
“Can you cling to my blouse? I can swim better.”
The girl’s answer was a grip at the collar that could not be broken.
The next moment a fearful onrush found them farther out, safer. But
Ruth’s strength was waning. There was no haven here. A boat was their
only hope.
Hardly had she thought this than a dark prow cut a wave a hundred yards
beyond them. Above the prow was a sea-tanned face.
“Captain Field!” She shouted aloud with joy. Captain Field is the
youngest, bravest of all the Atlantic seaboard.
“Now we will be saved,” she said, huskily. The girl’s grip on her jacket
tightened.
The rescue of two girls by a small fishing schooner tossed by such a sea
was no easy task. More than once it seemed the boat would be swamped and
all lost. Three times the waves snatched them away as they were upon the
point of being drawn aboard. But in the end, steady nerves, strong
muscles and brave hearts won. Dripping, exhausted, but triumphant, Ruth
and the one she had saved were lifted over the gunwale. At once the
staunch little motor boat began its journey to a safe harbor, and all the
comforts of home.