Page:Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point.djvu/199

Rh before he gave you up," grunted Tom. "Nice mess of things you made by running off from us."

"Oh, I'll go back with Uncle Bill—I will, indeed," said the girl. "I've been so lonely and scared out here. Seems to me every time the tide rose, I'd be drowned in that cave. The sea's horrid, I think! I never want to see it again."

"Well," Tom observed, "I guess you won't have to worry about Crab any more. Get aboard the catboat. We'll slip ashore mighty easy now, and let him whistle for you—or the money. Mr. Hicks won't have to pay for getting you back."

"I expect he's awful mad at me," sighed Jane Ann, alias Nita.

"I know that he is awfully anxious to get you back again, my dear," said Ruth. "He is altogether too good a man for you to run away from."

"Don't you suppose I know that, Miss?" snapped the girl from the ranch.

They embarked in the catboat and Tom showed his seamanship to good advantage when he got the Jennie S. out of that dock without rubbing her paint. But the wind was very light and they had to run down with it past the island and then beat up between the Thimble and the lighthouse, toward the entrance to Sokennet Harbor.

Indeed, the breeze fell so at times that the