The creaking stopped in a minute, and Ruth heard a faint splash. The voices had ceased.
“What can it mean?” thought the anxious girl. She could remain idle there behind the boathouse no longer. She crept forth upon the dock to reconnoiter. There seemed to be nobody there.
And then, suddenly, she saw that the catboat belonging to Mr. Stone’s little fleet–the “Jennie S.” it was called, named for Heavy herself–was some distance from her moorings.
The breeze was very light; but the sail was raised and had filled, and the catboat was drifting quite rapidly out beyond the end of the dock. It was so dark in the cockpit that Ruth could not distinguish whether there were one or two figures aboard, or who they were; but she realized that somebody was off on a midnight cruise.
“And without saying a word about it!” gasped Ruth. “Could it be, after all, one of the boys and Nita? Are they doing this just for the fun of it?”
Yet the heavy voice she had heard did not sound like that of either of the three boys at the bungalow. Not even Bob Steele, when his unfortunate voice was pitched in its very lowest key, could rumble like this voice.
The girl of the Red Mill was both troubled and frightened. Suppose Nita and her companion should be wrecked in the catboat? She did not believe that the runaway girl knew anything about working a sailboat. And who was her companion on this midnight escapade? Was he one of the longshoremen?
Suddenly she thought of Jack Crab. But Crab was supposed to be at the lighthouse at this hour; wasn’t he? She could not remember what she had heard about the lighthouse keeper’s assistant.
Nor could Ruth decide at once whether to go back to the house and give the alarm, or not. Had she known where Phineas, the boatkeeper, lodged, she would certainly have tried to awaken him. He ought to be told that one of the boats was being used–and, of course, without permission.
The sail of the catboat drifted out of sight while she stood there undecided. She could not pursue the Jennie S. Had she known where Phineas was, they might have gone after the catboat in the Miraflame; but otherwise Ruth saw no possibility of tracking the two people who had borrowed the Jennie S.