Hardly had she thought this than a dark prow cut a wave a hundred yards beyond them. Above the prow was a sea-tanned face.
“Captain Field!” She shouted aloud with joy. Captain Field is the youngest, bravest of all the Atlantic seaboard.
“Now we will be saved,” she said, huskily. The girl’s grip on her jacket tightened.
The rescue of two girls by a small fishing schooner tossed by such a sea was no easy task. More than once it seemed the boat would be swamped and all lost. Three times the waves snatched them away as they were upon the point of being drawn aboard. But in the end, steady nerves, strong muscles and brave hearts won. Dripping, exhausted, but triumphant, Ruth and the one she had saved were lifted over the gunwale. At once the staunch little motor boat began its journey to a safe harbor, and all the comforts of home.
CHAPTER X
THE TILTING FLOOR
That evening Ruth sat before a tiny open grate in her room at Field’s cabin. She was alone; wanted to be. The summer folks were giving a concert up at the big hotel. Pearl and Don had gone. She had wanted to sit and think.
She had been angry for hours. “I’ll leave Monhegan in the morning,” she told herself, rising to stamp back and forth across the narrow room. “If Don isn’t ready to go, I’ll take the tug to Booth Harbor and go down by steamer. I won’t stay here, not another day!”
She slumped down in her chair again to stare moodily at the fire. What had angered her? This she herself could not very clearly have told. Perhaps it was because they had tried to make a heroine of her. She hadn’t meant to be a heroine, wouldn’t be made one. The whole population of the island, a hundred and fifty or more, had flocked down to the dock when Captain Field brought her and the rescued girl in.
There had been shouts of “What a wonder! A miracle girl!”
An artist had wanted her to pose for a portrait. “So romantically rugged,” he had said as he gripped her arm with fingers that were soft.