“No, no. ’Tain’t worth anything,” said the skipper, unhooking the heavy and ugly-looking fish.
They joked Jessie about the worthless flat-fish, but she laughed, too. Baiting again, she threw in, and just at that moment there was a heavy splash from the other side of the yacht.
“Somebody else has got a strike,” cried Amy. “Who is it?”
Nobody answered. There seemed to be nobody excited over a bite. The two lawyers were forward. Darry and Burd were aft. Jessie suddenly dropped her line and shot across the deck to the other rail.
“Oh, Amy!” she shrieked. “Where is little Hen?”
“You don’t mean she’s gone overboard?” gasped her chum, excitedly, and she came running in the wake of Jessie.
Henrietta’s fish line was attached to a cleat on the yacht’s rail. She had been standing on a coil of rope so as to be high enough to look over into the sea. The fear that clamped itself upon Jessie Norwood’s mind was that the little girl had dived headlong over the rail.
“Oh, Henrietta!” she cried. “She—she’s gone! She’s gone overboard, Amy.”
Her chum was quite as fearful as Jessie was, but she tried to soothe her chum.
“It can’t be, Jess! She—she wouldn’t do that! She just wouldn’t!”