“That was only a monkey wrench,” answered Charlie, laughing.
And Billie was moved with admiration and respect for the slow-speaking, quiet boy, who had twice in so short a time outwitted two very dangerous and experienced adventurers.
It was a splendid ride in the darkness. The fresh salt air swept their faces and set their blood to tingling with a new enjoyment. They had just been through a most dangerous and exciting experience, these young people, and Nancy and Mary were not ashamed to admit that they at least had been very much frightened. But people who have lived always by the sea are used to looking danger calmly in the face.
Half a mile beyond the quiet little harbor of West Haven a lighthouse stood on a small, rocky promontory, and from the shore on a calm day could be seen rows of sharp-pointed rocks thrust out of the water like great black teeth waiting to devour any chance ship which might be blown against them. In bad weather the water about the Black Reefs, as they were called, was lashed and churned into fury and sometimes after a great storm groups of people might be seen hurrying up the cliff path to the life-saving station, while out in the ocean, stuck fast to the teeth of the Black Reefs was a pretty three-masted schooner, perhaps, or a stained and scarred old freight ship, looking very small and helpless in its terrible plight.
Billie, herself, was the only person in the motor car who had not seen a shipwreck on the Black Reefs. She had never even seen one of the September storms when the sea rolled itself into mountainous waves and dashed against the cliffs of West Haven.
As they neared the town, Billie slowed down the motor and turned to speak to her new friends.
“I can’t even try to thank all of you for what you have done for me, but I want to tell you that I think you are the bravest, nicest boys and girls in the whole world, and it was just to be with you that I came back to West Haven to go to school. I was very unhappy to-day because I was afraid that Nancy and Mary and Elinor had forgotten me and the splendid times we had together one summer when I was a little girl——”
“Oh, Billie, we hadn’t forgotten you,” broke in Nancy. “We thought when you joined Belle Rogers’ crowd that you——”
“But I didn’t join them,” Billie interrupted, laughing. “They kidnapped me and never let me out of their sight the whole time. I had almost made up my mind to write to papa to let me go to boarding school, after all. I wanted to know some real girls. I have never had a chance before, you know, and when I talked it over with papa, we decided that all of you were the nicest real girls we had ever known, and I just thought I would spend the winter with Cousin Helen and meet you again, while papa was in Russia.”
The three girls blushed with pleasure at this gratifying compliment.