“Might not be so good,” said Ruth. “That ladder wasn’t left there accidentally. Someone’s been here.”
“Tell you what!” she added suddenly. “While you are drying out I’ll play I’m the ship’s watch, and pace the deck.”
“You don’t think——”
“Don’t think anything,” said Ruth as she disappeared through the door. “It isn’t safe to take too many chances, that’s all.”
Ruth had not been on deck three minutes before, lost to all sense of impending danger, she walked the deck, captain of this great sailing craft.
Few girls are more generously endowed with imagination than are the fisher-folk’s daughters of the coast of Maine. None are more loyal to their state and their seaboard.
As this girl now paced the deck in the dark, she saw herself in slicker and high boots with a megaphone at her lips shouting commands to nimble seamen who swarmed aloft. Sails fluttered and snapped, chains rattled, rigging creaked as they swept adown the boundless sea.
But now the scene was changed. No longer was she aboard a great shipping boat, but an ancient man-o’-war. An enemy’s sloop threatened her harbor. With bold daring she set the prow of her ancient craft to seaward ready to do battle with the approaching foe.
Once more, her craft, half fancied, half real, is a cutter, chasing smugglers and pirates.
Pirates! How her blood raced at the thought. There had been pirates in those half-forgotten days, real, dark-faced pirates with cutlasses in their teeth and pistols at their belts. Not an island on the bay but has its story of buried treasure. And as for smugglers’ coves, there was one not a mile from the girl’s home.