A GIRL TO THE RESCUE
On shore the gale seemed a stiff and dangerous blow. At sea, even
with a stanch deck under one's feet, the wind proved to have passed
the hurricane mark long since. The captain of the _Seamew_ felt that
the elements had conspired bitterly to assail his schooner. Before
they were a mile beyond the end of the Hollis breakwater, Tunis knew
that he had the fight of his seagoing experience on his hands.
When they were fairly out of the semi-shelter of the point behind
which Hollis lay, Tunis and his two companions realized very quickly
just what they had to contend with. They had spread a handbreadth of
mainsail, but the jib was blown out of the boltropes by one big
swoop of wind and carried down to leeward, looking like a giant's
shirt.
"Still feel that tug to sta'bbo'd," grumbled Horry. "Just like--"
"Belay that!" commanded Tunis. "I begin to believe that's bad luck,
anyway. If you hadn't got on to that tack when we first put the
schooner into commission, those Portygees wouldn't have even
remembered the _Marlin B._ And _that_ schooner thousands of miles
away from these seas!"
"I cal'late 'Rion Latham would have found something else to harp on
then," said Zebedee. "He was bound to ruin you if he could."
Quickly the gale increased instead of abating, and it was utterly
impossible for the trio to get topsails on her. She needed the pull
of upper canvas if she was to tack properly for the mouth of the
channel into Big Wreck Cove.
They fought for two hours to bring this much-desired object to pass,
hoping for a lull or a shifting of the gale which might aid them.
The yellow sands of Wreckers' Head were plainly in view all that
time. To give up the attempt and run before the gale was a folly of
which Tunis Latham had no intention of being guilty if it could
possibly be avoided. Manned as she was, the schooner might never be
worked back to a landfall if they did so.
The keen old eyes of Horace Newbegin first spied the thing which
promised hope. From his station at the wheel he shouted something
which the younger men did not catch, but his pointing arm drew their
gaze shoreward.
Coming out from the Head was an open boat. Four figures pulled at
the oars while another held the steering sweep. The daring crew was
heading the boat straight on for the pitching schooner!
"The coast guard!" the old man was now heard to shout. "God bless
them fellers!"
But Tunis knew it was not the lifeboat from the distant station. He
knew the boat, if he could not at first identify those who manned
it. It was an old lifeboat that had been stored in a shed below
John-Ed Williams' place, and these men attempting their rescue were
some of the neighbors from Wreckers' Head.
They came on steadily, the steersman standing at his post and
handling the long oar as though it was a feather's weight. His huge
figure soon identified him. It was Captain John Dunn, who, like Ira
Ball, had left the sea, and he had left his right forearm, too,
because of some accident somewhere on the other side of the globe.
But with the steel hook screwed to its stump and the good hand
remaining to him, Captain Dunn handled that steering oar with more
skill than most other men with two good hands could have done.
How the four at the oars pulled the heavy boat! Tunis sought to
identify them as well. He saw John-Ed Williams--in a place at last
where he was forced to keep up his end, though he was notably a lazy
man. Ben Brewster had the oar directly behind John-Ed.
The third figure Tunis could not identify--not at once. The man at
the bow oar was Marvin Pike, who pulled a splendid stroke. So did
that unknown oarsman. They were all bravely tugging at the heavy
oars. Tunis had faith in them.
Zebedee suddenly plunged across the pitching deck and reached the
rail where Tunis stood. Discipline--at least seagoing etiquette--had
been somewhat in abeyance aboard the _Seamew_ during the last few
hours. Zeb caught the skipper by the arm.
"See her?" he bawled into the ear of the surprised Tunis.
"What's that?"
"See her hair? It's a girl! As I'm a living sinner, it's a girl!
Pulling number three oar, Captain Latham! Did you ever?"
Clinging to a stay, the captain of the _Seamew_ flung himself far
over the rail as the schooner chanced to roll. He could look down
into the approaching lifeboat. He saw the loosened, dark locks of
the girl who was pulling at number three oar. On the very heels of
Zeb's words the captain was confident of the girl's identity.
"Sheila!"
His voice could not have reached her ear because of the rush and
roar of the wind and sea, but, as though in answer to his shout, the
girl glanced back and up, over her shoulder. For a moment Tunis got
a flash of the face he so dearly loved.
What a woman she was! She lacked no more in courage than she did in
beauty and sweetness of disposition. What other girl along all this
coast--even one born of the Cape strain--would have dared take an
oar in that lifeboat in face of such dire peril as this?
"Good Lord, Cap'n Latham!" shrieked Zeb. "That's Miss Bostwick!"
Tunis straightened up, squared his shoulders, and looked at Zebedee
proudly. He wanted Zeb to know--he wanted the whole world to know,
if he could spread the news abroad--that the girl pulling number
three oar was the girl he loved, and was going to marry!
* * * * *
An hour later the _Seamew_, her topsails drawing full and her lower
canvas properly handled, drove on like the bird she was through the
channel into the cove, trailing the old lifeboat behind her. The
skipper had taken the wheel himself, but that "tug to sta'bbo'd" did
not disturb his equanimity as it sometimes did Horry's.
Sheila, muffled in oilskins and sea boots, but with her wet hair
flowing over her shoulders, stood beside the skipper. No matter how
satisfied and confident Tunis might appear, the girl was still in an
uncertain state of mind.
"And so," she said to him anxiously, "I do not know what to tell
them. Cap'n Ira seemed so poorly and so unhappy. And he says Aunt
Prue is almost ill.
"But it was Cap'n Ira who told me what to do when we saw the
_Seamew_ in danger; how to get the men together and how to launch
the boat! Oh, it was wonderful! He was not too overcome to be
practical and realize your need, Tunis."
"Trust Cap'n Ira," agreed the young man. "And what other girl could
have done what you did, Sheila? Hear what Cap'n John Dunn says? You
ought to be a sailor's daughter. _I_ can tell him you are going to
be a sailor's wife."
"No, no! Oh, Tunis! It can't--"
"No 'can't' in the dictionary," interrupted the captain of the
_Seamew_. "You and I are going to have one big talk, Sheila, after I
take you up home."
"Up home?" she repeated.
"You are going back to Cap'n Ira's. You know you are. That other
girl has beat it for Boston, you say, and there's not a living
reason why you shouldn't return to the Balls. Besides, they need
you. I could see that with half an eye when I went away the other
morning. The old man hobbling around the barn trying to catch an old
hen was a sight to make the angels weep."
"Poor, poor Cap'n Ira!" she murmured.
"And poor Aunt Prudence--and poor _me_!" exclaimed Tunis. "What do
you think is going to happen to me? If you go away, I shall have to
sell all I own in the world and follow you."
"Tunis!" she cried, almost in fear. "You wouldn't."
"I certainly would. I am going to have you, one way or another.
Nobody else shall get you, Sheila. And you can't go far enough or
fast enough to lose me."
"Don't!" she said faintly. "You cannot be in earnest. Do you know
what it means if you and I have any association whatsoever? Oh! I
thought this was all over--that you would not tear open the wound--"
"I don't mean to hurt you, Sheila," he said softly. But he was
smiling. "I have got something to tell you that will, I believe, put
an entirely different complexion on your affairs."
"What--what can you mean?" she burst out. "Oh, tell me!"
"I'll tell you a little of it now. Just enough to keep you from
thinking I am crazy. The rest I will not tell you save in the Balls'
sitting room before Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue."
"Tunis!" she murmured with clasped hands.
"Yesterday I spent two hours in the manager's office of Hoskin &
Marl's. They have been looking for you for more than six months.
Naturally, there was no record of you after you left that--that
school when your time was out. They didn't seem to guess you'd have
got work in that Seller's place."
"What do you mean? What did they want me for?" gasped the girl.
"Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in
charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your
pardon. He cried, that manager did. He broke down and cried like a
baby--especially after I had told him a few things that had happened
to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn't found
such good friends in Cap'n Ira and Prudence. That's right. He was
all broke up."
The girl stood before him, straight as a reed. She rocked with the
pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were
glued to the planks. She could not have fallen!
"They--they know--"
"They know they sent to jail the wrong girl. The woman that stole
the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote 'em all about it
from the sanitarium where the firm sent her. They are sending you
papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the
pawnbroker and the store detective, and--and a lot of other folks.
Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated."
She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face,
although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him.
"Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we
were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning
to lie to these dear, good people down here--and everybody; while we
were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone
back there to the store and found all this out. And--and I would
never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done."
"Huh! Yes. I cal'late that's so, Sheila," he said. "But how about
me? Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name
had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you?
Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that
thought. There is for me, at any rate."
She flashed him a look then that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham's
very soul. His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden.
She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct
words to Cap'n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis.
But that prevarication, at least, had been for no purpose of self
gain.
And so Sheila looked at her lover for just that passing moment with
all the passion which filled her heart for him. Had Tunis not been
steering the _Seamew_ through a pretty tortuous channel at just that
moment there is no knowing what he would have done--spurred by
Sheila's look!