There seemed nobody to answer him; they did not know what he meant. The boy shot through the water like a fish. Coming near the rock, he rose up with a sudden muscular effort, then dived deep. The green water closed over him and, when Helen and the others reached the spot where Mary Cox stood, wringing her hands and moaning, Tom had disappeared as utterly as Ruth herself.
CHAPTER XVI
RUTH’S SECRET
“What has happened?”
“Where’s Ruth?”
“Mary Cox! why don’t you answer?”
The Fox for once in her career was stunned. She could only shake her head and wring her hands. Helen was the first of the other girls to suspect the trouble, and she cried:
“Ruth’s overboard! That’s the reason Tom has gone in. Oh, oh! why don’t they come up again?”
And almost immediately all the others saw the importance of that question. Ruth Fielding had been down fully a minute and a half now, and Tom had not come up once for air.
Nita had set off running around the head of the inlet, and Crab shuffled along in her wake. The strange girl ran like a goat over the rocks.