Ruth and Helen did not think of going to bed until long after Absecon
Light, off Atlantic City, was passed. They watched the long-spread
lights of the great seaside resort until they disappeared in the
distance and Ludlum Beach Light twinkled in the west.
The music of the orchestra came to their ears faintly; but above all was
the murmur and jar of the powerful machinery that drove the ship. This
had become a monotone that rather got on the girls' nerves.
"Oh, dear! let's go to bed," said Helen plaintively. "I _don't_ see why
those engines have to pound so. It sounds like the tramping of a herd of
elephants."
"Did you ever hear a herd of elephants tramping?" asked Ruth, laughing.
"No; but I can imagine how they would sound," said Helen. "At any rate,
let's go to bed."
They did not see the curly-haired boy; but as they went in to the
ladies' lavatory on their side of the deck, they came face to face with
the queer woman with whom they had already had some trouble.
She glared at the two girls so viperishly that Helen would never have
had the courage to accost her. Not so Ruth. She ignored the angry gaze
of the lady and said:
"I hope you have found your ticket, ma'am?"
"No, I haven't found it--and you know right well I haven't," declared the
short-haired woman.
"Surely, you do not believe that my friend and I took it?" Ruth said,
flushing a little, yet holding her ground. "We would have no reason for
doing such a thing, I assure you."
"Oh, I don't know what you did it for!" exclaimed the woman harshly.
"With all my experience with you and your kind I have never yet been
able to foretell what a rattlepated schoolgirl will do, or her reason
for doing it."
"I am sorry if your experience has been so unfortunate with
schoolgirls," Ruth said. "But please do not class my friend and me with
those you know--who you intimate would steal. We did not take your
ticket, ma'am."
"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Helen, under her breath.
The woman tossed her head and her pale, blue eyes seemed to emit sparks.
"You can't tell me! You can't tell me!" she declared. "I know you girls.
You've made me trouble enough, I should hope. I would believe anything
of you--_any_thing!"
"Do come away, Ruth," whispered Helen; and Ruth seeing that there was no
use talking with such a set and vindictive person, complied.
"But we don't want her going about the boat and telling people that we
stole her ticket," Ruth said, with indignation. "How will that sound?
Some persons may believe her."
"How are you going to stop her?" Helen demanded. "Muzzle her?"
"That might not be a bad plan," Ruth said, beginning to smile again.
"Oh! but she _did_ make me so angry!"
"I noticed that for once our mild Ruth quite lost her temper," Helen
said, delightedly giggling. "Did me good to hear you stand up to her."
"I wonder who she is and what sort of girls she teaches--for of course
she _is_ a teacher," said Ruth.
"In a reform school, I should think," Helen said. "Her opinion of
schoolgirls is something awful. It's worse than Miss Brokaw's."
"Do you suppose that fifteen years of teaching can make any woman hate
girls as she certainly does?" Ruth said reflectively. "There must be
something really wrong with her--"
"There's something wrong with her looks, that's sure," Helen agreed.
"She is the dowdiest thing I ever saw."
"Her way of dressing has nothing to do with it. It is the hateful temper
she shows. I am afraid that poor woman has had a very hard time with her
pupils."
"There you go!" cried Helen. "Beginning to pity her! I thought you would
not be sensible for long. Oh, Ruthie Fielding! you would find an excuse
for a man's murdering his wife and seven children."
"Yes, I suppose so," Ruth said. "Of course, he would have to be insane
to do it."
They returned to their stateroom. It was somewhat ghostly, Helen
thought, along the narrow deck now. Ruth fumbled at the lock for some
time.
"Are you sure you have the right room?" Helen whispered.
"I've got the right room, for I know the number; but I'm not sure about
the key," giggled Ruth. "Oh! here it opens."
They went in. Ruth remembered where the electric light bulb was and
snapped on the light. "There! isn't this cozy?" she asked.
"'Snug as a bug in a rug,'" quoted Helen. "Goodness! how sharp your
elbow is, dear!"
"And that was my foot you stepped on," complained Ruth.
"I believe we'll have to take turns undressing," Helen said. "One stay
outside on the deck till the other gets into bed."
"And we've got to draw lots for the upper berth. What a climb!"
"It makes me awfully dizzy to look down from high places," giggled
Helen. "I don't believe I'd dare to climb into that upper berth."
"Now, Miss Cameron!" cried Ruth, with mock sternness. "We'll settle this
thing at once. No cheating. Here are two matches----"
"Matches! Where did you get matches?"
"Out of my bag. In this tiny box. I have never traveled without matches
since the time we girls were lost in the snow up in the woods that time.
Remember?"
"I should say I do remember our adventures at Snow Camp," sighed Helen.
"But I never would have remembered to carry matches, just the same."
"Now, I break the head off this one. Do you see? One is now shorter than
the other. I put them together--_so_. Now I hide them in my hand. You
pull one, Helen. If you pull the longer one you get the lower berth."
"I get something else, too, don't I?" said Helen.
"What?"
"The match!" laughed the other girl. "There! Oh, dear me! it's the short
one."
"Oh, that's too bad, dear," cried Ruth, at once sympathetic. "If you
really dread getting into the upper berth----"
"Be still, you foolish thing!" cried Helen, hugging her. "If we were
going to the guillotine and I drew first place, you'd offer to have your
dear little neck chopped first. I know you."
The next moment Helen began on something else. "Oh, me! oh, my! what a
pair of little geese we are, Ruthie."
"What about?" demanded her chum.
"Why! see this button in the wall? And we were scrambling all over the
place for the electric light bulb. Can't we punch it on?" and she tried
the button tentatively.
"Now you've done it!" groaned Ruth.
"Done what?" demanded Helen in alarm. "I guess that hasn't anything to
do with the electric lights. Is it the fire alarm?"
"No. But it costs money every time you punch that button. You are as
silly as poor, little, flaxen-haired Amy Gregg was when she came to
Briarwood Hall and did not know how to manipulate the electric light
buttons."
"But what have I _done_?" demanded Helen. "Why will it cost me money?"
Ruth calmly reached down the ice-water pitcher from its rack. "You'll
know in a minute," she said. "There! hear it?"
A faint tinkling approached. It came along the deck outside and Helen
pushed back the blind a little way to look out. Immediately a soft,
drawling voice spoke.
"D'jew ring fo' ice-water, missy? I got it right yere."
Ruth already had found a dime and she thrust it out with the pitcher. It
was their own particular "colored gemmen," as Helen gigglingly called
him. She dodged back out of sight, for she had removed her shirtwaist.
He filled the pitcher and went tinkling away along the deck with a
pleasant, "I 'ank ye, missy. Goo' night."
"I declare!" cried Helen. "He's one of the genii or a bottle imp. He
appears just when you want him, performs his work, and silently
disappears."
"That man will be rich before we get to Old Point Comfort," sighed Ruth,
who was of a frugal disposition.
They closed the blind again, and a little later the lamp on the deck
outside was extinguished. The girls had said their prayers, and now
Helen, with much hilarity, "shinnied up" to the berth above, kicking her
night slippers off as she plunged into it.
"Good-bye--if I don't see you again," she said plaintively. "You may have
to call the fire department with their ladders, to get me down."
Ruth snapped off the light, and then registered her getting into bed by
a bump on her head against the lower edge of the upper berth.
"Oh, my, Helen! You have the best of it after all. Oh, how that hurt!"
"M-m-m-m!" from Helen. So quickly was she asleep!
But Ruth could not go immediately to Dreamland. There had been too much
of an exciting nature happening.
She lay and thought of Curly Smith, and of the disguised boy, and of the
obnoxious school teacher who had accused her and Helen of robbing her.
The odor of Tom's roses finally became so oppressive that she got up to
open the blind again for more air. She again struck her head. It was
impossible to remember that berth edge every time she got up and down.
As she stepped lightly upon the floor in her bare feet she heard a
stealthy footstep outside. It brought Ruth to an immediate halt, her
hand stretched out toward the blind. Through the interstices of the
blind she could see that the white moonlight flooded the deck.
Stealthily she drew back the blind and peered out.
The person on the deck had halted almost opposite the window. Ruth knew
now that the steamer must be well across the Five Fathom Bank, with the
Delaware Lightship behind them and the Fenwick Lightship not far ahead.
To the west was the wide entrance to Delaware Bay, and the land was now
as far away from them as it would be at any time during the trip.
She peered out quietly. There stood the curly-haired boy again, leaning
on the rail, and looking wistfully off to the distant shore.
Was it Henry Smith? Was he the boy who had come aboard the boat in
girl's clothes? And if so, what would he do when the boat docked at Old
Point Comfort and the detectives appeared? They would probably have a
good description of the boy wanted, and could pick him out of the crowd
going ashore.
Ruth was almost tempted to speak to the boy--to whisper to him. Had she
been sure it was Curly she would have done so, for she knew him so well.
But, as before, his face was turned away from her.
He moved on, and Ruth softly slid back the blind and stole to bed again,
for the third time bumping her head. "My! if this keeps on, I'll be all
lumps and hollows like an outline map of the Rocky Mountains," she
whimpered, and then cuddled down under the sheet and lay looking out of
the open window.
The sea air blew softly in and cooled her flushed cheeks. The odor of
the roses was not so oppressive, and after a time she dropped to sleep.
When she awoke it was because of the change in the temperature some time
before dawn. The moon was gone; but there was a faint light upon the
water.
Helen moved in the berth above. "Hullo, up there!" whispered Ruth.
"Hullo, down there!" was the quick reply. "What ever made me wake up so
early?"
"Because you want to get up early," replied Ruth, this time sliding out
of her berth so adroitly that she did _not_ bump her head.
Helen came tumbling down, skinning her elbow and landing with a thump on
the floor. "Gracious to goodness--and all hands around!" she ejaculated.
"Talk about sleeping on a shelf in a Pullman car! Why, that's 'Home
Sweet Home' to _this_. I came near to breaking my neck."
"Come on! scramble into your clothes," said Ruth, already at the wash
basin.
Helen peered out. "Why--oh, my!" she said, shivering and holding the lacy
neck of her gown about her. "It's da-ark yet. It must be midnight."
"It is ten minutes to four o'clock," said Ruth promptly. She had studied
the route and knew it exactly. "That is Chincoteague Island Light
yonder. That's where those cunning little ponies that Madge Steele's
father had at Sunrise Farm came from."
"Wha-at?" yawned Helen. "Did they come from the light?"
"No, goosy! from the island. They are bred there."
Ten minutes later the chums were out on the open deck. They raced
forward to see if they could see the sun. His face was still below the
sea, but a flush along the edge of the horizon announced his coming.
"Oh, see yonder!" cried Helen. "See the shore! How near! And the long
line of beaches. What's that white line outside the yellow sand?"
"The surf," Ruth said. "And that must be Hog Island Light. How faint it
is. The sun is putting it out."
"It's a long way ahead."
"Yes. We won't pass that till almost six o'clock. Oh, Helen! there comes
the sun."
"What's that?" asked Helen, suddenly seizing her chum's wrist. "Did you
hear it?"
"That splash? The men are washing decks."
"It is a man overboard!" murmured Helen.
"More likely a big fish jumping," said the practical Ruth.
The girls hung over the rail, looking shoreward, and tried in the
uncertain light to see if there was any object floating on the water. If
Helen expected to see a black spot like the head of a swimmer, she was
disappointed.
But she did see--and so did Ruth--a lazy fishing smack drifting by on the
tide. They could almost have thrown a stone aboard of her.
There seemed to be a little excitement aboard the smack. Men ran to and
fro and leaned over the rail. Then the girls thought they saw the
smackmen spear something, or possibly somebody, with a boathook and haul
their prize aboard.
"I believe somebody did fall overboard from this steamer, and those
fishermen have picked him up," Helen declared.
The girls watched the sunrise and the shore line for another hour or
more and then went in to breakfast. When they came back to the open deck
the steamer was flying past the coast of the lower Peninsula, and Cape
Charles Lightship courtesied to her on the swells.
Far, far in the distance they saw the staff of the Cape Henry Light. The
steamer soon turned her prow to pass between these two points of land,
known to seamen as the Capes of Virginia, which mark the entrance to
Chesapeake Bay.
Their fair trip down the coast from New York was almost ended and the
chums began to pick up their things in the stateroom and repack their
bags.