THE CASTAWAYS
"Judy--" shrieked Tommy, and suddenly the answer came in a choking cry
of joy.
"I can touch bottom, Tommy, I thought I was sinking, but it isn't over
our heads at all. We must be near shore."
Tommy put his feet down gingerly. He had hated to think of the untold
fathoms beneath him--depths which in his imagination were strewn with
shipwrecks and the bones of lost mariners.
So when his feet came in contact with good firm sand, he giggled
hysterically.
"Gee, but it feels good," he said. "Are you all right, Judy?"
But Judy had waded in and dropped exhausted on the beach.
"I don't know," she said, feebly, "I guess so."
"Where are we?" asked Tommy, splashing his way to her side.
He surveyed the land around them. In the moonlight it showed nothing
but wide beach and back of that stiff rustling sea-grass and mounds of
sand like the graves of sailors dead and gone. Not a house was in
sight--not a sign of life.
"I don't know where we are," Judy raised her head for a second, then
dropped it back, "but we are safe, Tommy Tolliver, and that's something
to be thankful for.
"I knew the sea wouldn't hurt me," she went on--a little wildly,
perhaps, which was excusable after the danger she had escaped. "I knew
it wouldn't hurt me."
"Oh, the sea," whined Tommy, disgustedly, "this isn't the ocean, and if
just an old bay can act like this, why, I say give me land. No more
water for me, thank you. I am going home and plow--yes, I am, I am
going to plow, Judy Jameson, and take care of the cows--and--and weed
the garden," naming the thing he hated most as a climax, "and when I
get to thinking things are hard, I will remember this night--when I was
a shipwrecked mariner."
In imagination he was revelling in the story he would tell at home. Of
the adventures that he would relate to the eager ears of the youth of
Fairfax. "Yes, indeed, I will remember the time when I was a
shipwrecked mariner," he said with gusto, "and lived on a desert
island."
"Oh, Tommy," in spite of faintness and hunger and exhaustion, Judy
laughed. "Oh, Tommy, you funny boy--this isn't a desert island."
"How do you know it isn't?" asked Tommy, stubbornly.
"There aren't any desert islands in the bay."
"I'll bet this is one."
"I hope not."
"Why?"
"We haven't anything to eat."
"Oh, well, we will find things in the morning."
"Where?"
"On the trees. Fruit and things."
"But there aren't any trees."
"Oh, well, oysters then."
"How will you get them--"
"And fish," ignoring difficulties.
"We haven't any lines or hooks."
"And things from the wreck."
"The boat tipped over," said Judy, with a little sobbing sigh for the
capsized "Princess," "and anyhow there was nothing left to eat but some
lemons and a box of crackers."
"Don't be so discouraging," grumbled Tommy, "you know people always
find something."
They sat in silence for a time, and then Judy said:
"I hope they are not worrying at home."
"Gee--they will be scared, when they wake up in the morning and find
you gone," said Tommy, consolingly.
"I left a note for Anne in the library, telling her where I had
gone--but I thought I would get back before she found it," said
Judy--"poor little Anne."
"I think it is poor Tommy and poor Judy," said the cause of all the
trouble.
"But we deserve it and Anne doesn't. And that's the difference," said
Judy, wisely.
"Aw--don't preach."
"Couldn't if I tried," and Judy clasped her hands around her knees and
gazed out on the dark waters, and again there was a long silence.
"Well, what are we going to do?" demanded Tommy as the night wind blew
cold against his wet garments and made him shiver.
"Do?"
"Yes. We can't sit like this all night."
"Guess we shall have to."
Another silence.
"Gee, I'm hungry."
"So am I."
"But there isn't anything to eat."
"No."
Silence again.
"Gee--I'm sleepy."
"Find some place out of the wind and go to sleep. I'll watch."
"All night?"
"Perhaps. You go to sleep, Tommy."
"Won't you be lonesome?"
Judy smiled wearily. "No," she said, "you go to sleep, Tommy."
And Tommy went.
But it was not until the cold light of dawn touched the face of the
waters, that the sentinel-like figure on the beach relaxed from its
strained position, and then the dark head dropped, and with a sigh Judy
stretched her slender body on the hard sand, and she, too, slept.