UNDER FIRE
It was another day, another golden link in the wondrous chain that is
life. Both Ruth and Betty were some distance away from their island home,
from cottage and big summer house. Fort Skammel, with its haunting
mysteries, and Witches Cove were far away in the dreamy distance and well
nigh forgotten in the charm of rocks, sky, sea and summer fragrance that
was all about them. They had come on a little journey all their own,
these two, and for a purpose. At the present moment Ruth was seated upon
a rocky ledge completely surrounded by wild sweet peas in full bloom and
Betty was somewhere out to sea in a punt.
Green Island, the rugged bit of broken waste on which Ruth sat, is the
home of the seagulls. No one has ever lived on that island, but, as
evening falls on Casco Bay, many a seagull, weary with his day’s search
for food, may be seen winging his way across the dark waters to this, his
haven of rest.
Of all the spots near Portland Harbor, the rugged shoals off Green Island
are best for lobster fishing. Don had set a number of traps here. Having
been called to Portland, he had asked Ruth to sail the _Foolemagin_ out
to the island to lift the traps and bring in the catch.
She had asked Betty to go with her. Betty had brought clams and a cod
line. There is no better cod fishing to be had than on the shoals by
Green Island.
Betty had asked permission to fish over the shoals from Ruth’s punt.
Since the day was calm, Ruth had given consent. Such a thing is always
risky, for a sudden fog or a squall may come up at any moment. But
perhaps Ruth still held in the back of her head the city boy’s
declaration, “Life is a joke.” At any rate, Betty had gone. The weather
had continued calm and clear.
Looking out to sea, Ruth’s eye caught the gleam of Betty’s slender white
figure standing up in her punt, fishing. For a time she thought of Betty
and almost envied her. She had seen so much of the world and of life.
“Well, some people are lucky,” she told herself. “No use disliking them
for their luck.”
At that, forgetting Betty, she sank back upon a bed of fragrant wild
sweet peas, to stare dreamily at the drifting white clouds. Then, without
really intending to, she fell fast asleep.
She was startled from her sleep a half hour later by a resounding boom
that shook the rugged island to its base and set a thousand seagulls
soaring and screaming as only seagulls can.
“Target practice,” she told herself, in no great alarm. “Ten-mile guns.
Oh, listen!”
Came a loud scream as a shell passed at terrific speed through the air,
and again a deafening boom.
“Closer to the island than usual,” she told herself. “Glad I’ve lifted
the lobster traps. Guess I’ll get out.”
She was standing now, looking down at her staunch little motor boat that
gently bumped the rocky shore of a sheltering cove.
A sudden thought struck her all of a heap. She came to earth with a jolt.
“Betty!” she thought. “Betty Bronson! She doesn’t know about the guns.
She can’t. She’ll be killed, blown to bits!”
Fort McKinley is ten miles from Green Island. At certain times of the
year a target is set on a raft and a schooner detailed to drag it about.
When the target is in position near Green Island, a plane circling low
over the water warns fishing crafts away. Then the great guns of the
fort, firing projectiles weighing a thousand pounds and more, break their
long silence. Ten miles from the fort, close to the drifting target, the
huge projectile falls. It strikes the water with a loud report. It
bounces, rises once more in air and, singing its song of hate and
defiance, flies through the air to at last sink to the bottom a hundred
fathoms below. Into this target practice Betty had blundered.
“I wish I could warn her,” Ruth told herself now. “The man in the
seaplane should do it. But he probably does not see her at all. Little
dark boat against a broad expanse of dark sea. How could he? And besides,
perhaps there is no danger after all. The firing for to-day may stop any
minute. The target ship may move off in some other direction.”
The firing did not cease. The target ship did not move away.
“Ought to be getting back home.” Ruth’s gaze swept a hazy sky, then fell
to her staunch little sloop. “Going to storm. Can’t tell how bad. Hate to
spend a night out here.” But without Betty she could not go.
Turning, she made her way down the rocky slope to the spot where her boat
was moored.
Her hand was on the painter when again, closer, more terrifying, there
came a Zss-Spt-Boom.
Dropping the painter, she turned and walked hurriedly back up the hill.
With strained attention her eyes sought that small white figure. It was
nowhere to be seen.
“Gone!” Vast relief was expressed in her tone. “Thought she’d see how
unsafe it was.”
Just to make assurance doubly sure, she took up her field glasses and
swept the black waters.
One moment of silent attention and she dropped the glasses as if they
were hot.
The sight that met her gaze as her eager eyes behind strong field glasses
sought out the lone fisherman, set her heart beating madly. A shell,
striking some distance back of the little boat, then bouncing in air
again, appeared to pass over the city girl’s head.
It was then, for the first time that Betty awoke to her peril. This
awakening was like the sudden ending of a dream. The very abruptness of
it was her undoing. She had just succeeded in hooking a great fish.
Perhaps it was a thirty-pound cod, a ray or a sunfish. She will never
know, for, having brought it half way up from the depths, she was shaken
to the very core of her being by this terrific boom and nerve wracking
scream.
She threw herself backward, tangled with the cod line, set the boat
tilting, tried in vain to recover her balance and without knowing how it
had all happened, suddenly found herself free of the cod line but
submerged in cold salt water and clinging frantically to the bottom of
her overturned punt.
Ruth, standing on the hill, saw all this. She saw more; that the girl was
still within the danger zone and that the target schooner was moving in a
direction that momentarily increased her peril.
“I must go to her,” she told herself with a little gasp of fear. “There
is no other way.”
With one short word of prayer for strength, the fishergirl of the Maine
coast dashed down the slope, jumped into her sloop, threw over the wheel,
then went pop-popping straight away toward the imperiled girl and her
overturned punt. Straight on into the path of the raging terror that was
intended for enemies in time of war she went, without one thought of
turning back.
“One thing,” she thought more calmly, “is in my favor. My boat is white.
The seaplane scout may see me. He can signal them to stop firing.”
Boom! Zing! Boom! the terror sounded again.
Her heart skipped a beat. Perspiration stood out on her nose. She felt
deathly cold all over. Yet a firm and steady hand steered the motor boat
straight on its course.
Of a sudden from over her head there came the thunder of motors. For ten
seconds it was deafening. Then, quite as suddenly as it had started, it
ceased.
Ruth’s heart stood still. “What now?” she thought. The pop-popping of her
own tiny motor seemed but the discharge of a toy pistol.
She was soon enough to know what was next. Glancing up, she dodged and
barely escaped leaping into the sea. The great seaplane seemed about to
fall upon her.
The plane, of course, was not as close as it had seemed. It was so close
that, as the motor suddenly ceased its throbbing, she caught the singing
of struts as the plane went zooming on through the air. She did not hear
distinctly the words that were shouted down to her, but she did catch the
import of their meaning. It was a warning that she was in great danger
and must get out of those waters at once. As an answer she could only
shout back that a girl in an overturned punt was in far greater danger
than she. She pointed in the direction of Betty and the punt. This
pointing must have accomplished more than all her screams, for certainly
her last words were lost in the sudden thunder of motors.
The plane was up and off again. Had he understood? Would he flash a
signal that meant, “Cease firing?” She dared hope so.
Ten seconds later she realized how brave the sea scout had been. A
glancing shell passed through the air at the very spot where, a few
seconds before, his plane had been.
“If there is another shot?” she thought. She dared not think further.
But now, once again her eyes were upon the punt and Betty. Already she
was alongside.
“Here! Give me your hand!” she said in words that came short and quick.
Betty obeyed. She dropped with a thump in the bottom of the boat. Then,
with all speed, they were away.
Not until they were safe on Green Island did they realize that the sea
scout had flashed a message and firing had ceased.
“Well,” Ruth sighed as they dropped in the sun among the wild sweet peas,
“we—we’re safe.”
“Are we?” Betty’s face still showed signs of terror.
“Yes. They never shoot at the island. But you’ve got to get out of those
clothes,” Ruth added quickly.
In silence she helped Betty out of her sodden garments. After rubbing and
chafing her limbs until the pink of health came to them, she wrapped her
in her own storm coat and told her to lie there in the sun while she
wrung her clothes out and spread them on the rocks to dry.
“You—your punt!” Betty said at last with a choke in her voice that came
near to a sob.
“They’re firing again now,” said Ruth. “We may be able to get it and tow
it in later. Can’t now. But didn’t you hear the guns?” she asked.
“The guns? Why, yes, I guess I did. Must have—as in a dream. They’re
always booming away over at the fort. And I was having such wonderful
luck! Lots of cod, one ten-pounder. And a polluk long as I am. Just
hooked one so big I couldn’t land him when that terrible thing happened!
But Ruth—do you truly think we can save your punt?”
“Might. I hope so. Current is strong. That will carry it away. Hope they
stop soon.”
“I hope so,” said Betty dreamily. The shock, the bright sunshine, the
drug-like scent of wild sweet peas were getting the better of her. Soon,
with head pillowed on her arm, she was fast asleep.
As she slept Ruth thought of many things, of the seagulls soaring
overhead, of her lost punt, of the booming, bursting shells, of the old
ship _Black Gull_ and of the strange secret room in the depths of old
Fort Skammel.
The firing ceased without her knowing it. Betty awoke and struggled into
her wind-blown, sundried garments. Still she sat staring dreamily at the
sea.
Then a sudden burst of sound broke in upon her day dreams.
“The plane,” she said, springing to her feet. “It’s coming close.”
“See!” said Betty. “He’s not flying. He’s scooting along on the surface
of the water. He’s towing something. Oh, good!” She leaped into the air
to do a wild dance.
“It’s your punt! It’s not lost! He found it! He’s bringing it in!”
This was all quite gloriously true. Very soon the seaplane came to a halt
before the island. The aviator unbuckled himself; then walked back along
the fusilage to drop into the punt and begin rowing shoreward.
As he came close Ruth saw that he was a young army officer with a clean,
frank face.
“You’re lucky,” he said to Betty. “Lucky to have such a brave friend. You
might have been killed.”
Betty’s arm stole round Ruth’s waist. Ruth’s face took on an unusual rosy
tint.
“I’ve brought back your punt,” he said in apparent embarrassment. “It’s
rather a long swim back to my plane.”
“I—I’ll row you out,” said Ruth, springing forward.
“I hoped you might.”
As the young officer sat in the stern and Ruth rowed him out to sea he
noted with apparent pleasure the play of the splendid muscles in her
brown arms.
“Some seaman,” he complimented her.
Again Ruth flushed.
As they swung in beside the seaplane the girl’s eyes took in every detail
of the plane.
“Never saw one so close before,” she said.
“Want to take a ride?”
“Not now.”
“Sometime?”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you know,” she said as he stood up in the punt, “a friend of mine, my
cousin, saw a plane pass Monhegan in the dead of night. Trans-Atlantic
plane, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. Only none have crossed for a long time. Say!” he said, sitting down
again. “What sort of a plane was it?”
“Large, sea-colored plane. No name. No insignia. No mark of any kind.”
“That’s queer. Listen!” He put a hand on her arm. “Keep that dark. You
may have made an important discovery. Men are coming to this country that
we don’t want here. Things have happened. There’s more than one way to
get into America these days.”
“Strange,” he mused, “you can’t make a great discovery, invent some new
thing, do a daring deed, but those who are selfish, heartless, who wish
to kill, destroy, tear down, take possession of it! But I must go. Hope I
see you again soon.”
“Thanks for bringing back the punt,” Ruth said.
“Don’t mention it.”
He sprang upon the fusilage. Ruth rowed away. Motors thundered. The plane
glided away, rose, then speedily became a speck in the sky.
Ruth bumped the rocky shore with a crash that nearly overturned the punt.
She was thinking of many things.
They did not go to old Fort Skammel that evening. It was late when they
got back to their island and Betty’s nerves were pretty well shaken up by
the happenings of the day.