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 ashore. 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 shore 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 nobody 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 ashore 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.