She was a black-haired girl of fourteen or thereabout, well built and strong. The captain"s wife was too anxious about the crew to pay much attention to the waif, and Ruth and her friends bore Nita, the castaway, off to the station, where it was warm.
The boys remained to see the last of the crew--Captain Kirby himself--brought ash.o.r.e. And none too soon was this accomplished, for within the half hour the schooner had broken in two. Its wreckage and the lumber with which it had been loaded so covered the sea between the reef and the sh.o.r.e that the waves were beaten down, and had it been completely calm an active man could have traveled dry-shod over the flotsam to the reef.
Meanwhile Nita had been brought to her senses. But there was nothing at the station for the girl from the wreck to put on while her own clothing was dried, and it was Heavy who came forward with a very sensible suggestion.
"Let"s take her home with us. Plenty of things there. Wrap her up good and warm and we"ll take her on the buckboard. We can all crowd on--all but the boys."
The boys had not seen enough yet, anyway, and were not ready to go; but the girls were eager to return to the bungalow--especially when they could take the castaway with them.
"And there we"ll get her to tell us all about it," whispered Helen to Ruth. "My! she must have an interesting story to tell."
CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAY
There was only the cook in the station and n.o.body to stop the girls from taking Nita away. She had recovered her senses, but scarcely appreciated as yet where she was; nor did she seem to care what became of her.
Heavy called the man who had driven them over, and in ten minutes after she was ash.o.r.e the castaway was on the buckboard with her new friends and the ponies were bearing them all at a spanking pace toward the Stone bungalow on Lighthouse Point.
The fact that this strange girl had been no relation of the wife of the schooner"s captain, and that Mrs. Kirby seemed, indeed, to know very little about her, mystified the stout girl and her friends exceedingly.
They whispered a good deal among themselves about the castaway; but she sat between Ruth and Helen and they said little to her during the ride.
She had been wrapped in a thick blanket at the station and was not likely to take cold; but Miss Kate and old Mammy Laura bustled about a good deal when Nita was brought into the bungalow; and very shortly she was tucked into one of the beds on the second floor--in the very room in which Ruth and Helen and Mercy were to sleep--and Miss Kate had insisted upon her swallowing a bowl of hot tea.
Nita seemed to be a very self-controlled girl. She didn"t weep, now that the excitement was past, as most girls would have done. But at first she was very silent, and watched her entertainers with snapping black eyes and--Ruth thought--in rather a sly, sharp way. She seemed to be studying each and every one of the girls--and Miss Kate and Mammy Laura as well.
The boys came home after a time and announced that every soul aboard the _Whipst.i.tch_ was safe and sound in the life saving station. And the captain"s wife had sent over word that she and her husband would go back to Portland the next afternoon. If the girl they had picked up there on the dock wished to return, she must be ready to go with them.
"What, go back to that town?" cried the castaway when Ruth told her this, sitting right up in bed. "Why, that"s the _last_ place!"
"Then you don"t belong in Portland?" asked Ruth.
"I should hope not!"
"Nor in Maine?" asked Madge, for the other girls were grouped about the room. They were all anxious to hear the castaway"s story.
The girl was silent for a moment, her lips very tightly pressed together.
Finally she said, with her sly look:
"I guess I ain"t obliged to tell you that; am I?"
"Witness does not wish to incriminate herself," snapped Mercy, her eyes dancing.
"Well, I don"t know that I"m bound to tell you girls everything I know," said the strange girl, coolly.
"Right-oh!" cried Heavy, cordially. "You"re visiting me. I don"t know as it is anybody"s business how you came to go aboard the _Whipst.i.tch_----"
"Oh, I don"t mind telling you that," said the girl, eagerly. "I was hungry."
"Hungry!" chorused her listeners, and Heavy said: "Fancy being hungry, and having to go aboard a ship to get a meal!"
"That was it exactly," said Nita, bluntly. "But Mrs. Kirby was real good to me. And the schooner was going to New York and that"s where I wanted to go."
"Because your folks live there?" shot in The Fox.
"No, they don"t, Miss Smartie!" snapped back the castaway. "You don"t catch me so easy. I wasn"t born yesterday, Miss! My folks don"t live in New York. Maybe I haven"t any folks. I came from clear way out West, anyway--so now! I thought "way down East must be the finest place in the world. But it isn"t."
"Did you run away to come East?" asked Ruth, quietly.
"Well--I came here, anyway. And I don"t much like it, I can tell you."
"Ah-ha!" cried Mercy Curtis, chuckling to herself. "I know. She thought Yankee Land was just flowing in milk and honey. Listen! here"s what she said to herself before she ran away from home:
"I wish I"d lived away Down East, Where codfish salt the sea, And where the folks have apple sa.s.s And punkin pie fer tea!"
"That"s the "Western Girl"s Lament,"" pursued Mercy. "So you found "way down East nothing like what you thought it was?"
The castaway scowled at the sharp-tongued lame girl for a moment. Then she nodded. "It"s the folks," she said. "You"re all so afraid of a stranger. Do I look like I"d _bite_?"
"Maybe not ordinarily," said Helen, laughing softly. "But you do not look very pleasant just now."
"Well, people haven"t been nice to me," grumbled the Western girl. "I thought there were lots of rich men in the East, and that a girl could make friends "most anywhere, and get into nice families----"
"To _work?_" asked Ruth, curiously.
"No, no! You know, you read a lot about rich folks taking up girls and doing everything for them--dressing them fine, and sending them to fancy schools, and all that."
"I never read of any such thing in my life!" declared Mary c.o.x. "I guess you"ve been reading funny books."
"Huh!" sniffed the castaway, who was evidently a runaway and was not made sorry for her escapade even by being wrecked at sea. "Huh! I like a story with some life in it, I do! Jib Pottoway had some dandy paper-covered novels in his locker and he let me read "em----"
"Who under the sun is Jib Pottoway?" gasped Helen. "That isn"t a real name; is it?"
"It"s ugly enough to be real; isn"t it?" retorted the strange girl, chuckling. "Yep. That"s Jib"s real name. "Jibbeway Pottoway"--that"s the whole of it."
"Oh, oh!" cried Heavy, with her hand to her face. "It makes my jaw ache to even try to say it."
"What is he?" asked Madge, curiously.
"Injun," returned the Western girl, laconically. "Or, part Injun. He comes from "way up Canada way. His folks had Jibbeway blood."
"But _who_ is he?" queried Ruth, curiously.
"Why, he"s a puncher that works for----Well, he"s a cow puncher.
That"s "nuff. It don"t matter where he works," added the girl, gruffly.