Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point: or, Nita, the Girl Castaway

CHAPTER I
AN INITIATION

A brown dusk filled the long room, for although the windows were shrouded thickly and no lamp burned, some small ray of light percolated from without and made dimly visible the outlines of the company there gathered.

The low, quavering notes of an organ sighed through the place. There was the rustle and movement of a crowd. To the neophyte, who had been brought into the hall with eyes bandaged, it all seemed very mysterious and awe-inspiring.

Now she was set in a raised place and felt that before her was the company of masked and shrouded figures, in scarlet dominoes like those worn by the two guards who had brought her from the anteroom. The bandage was whisked from her eyes; but she could see nothing of her surroundings, nor of the company before which she stood.

“Candidate!” spoke a hollow, mysterious voice somewhere in the gloom, yet sounding so close to her ear that she started. “Candidate! you stand before the membership body of the S. B.’s. You are as yet unknown to them and they unknown to you. If you enter the secret association of the S. B.’s you must throw off and despise forever all ties of a like character. Do you agree?”

The candidate obeyed, in so far as she prodded her sharply in the ribs and a shrill voice whispered: “Say you do–gump!”

The candidate obeyed, in so far as she proclaimed that she did, at least.

“It is an oath,” went on the sepulchral voice. “Remember!”

In chorus the assembly immediately repeated, “Remember!” in solemn tones.

“Candidate!” repeated the leading voice, “you have been taught the leading object of our existence as a society. What is it?”

Without hesitation now, the candidate replied: “Helpfulness.”

“It is right. And now, what do our initials stand for?”

“Sweetbriar,” replied the shaking voice of the candidate.

“True. That is what our initials stand for to the world at large–to those who are not initiated into the mysteries of the S. B.’s. But those letters may stand for many things and it is my privilege to explain to you now that they likewise are to remind us all of two virtues that each Sweetbriar is expected to practice–to be sincere and to befriend. Remember! Sincerity–Befriend. Remember!”

Again the chorus of mysterious voices chanted: “Remember!”

“And now let the light shine upon the face of the candidate, that the Shrouded Sisterhood may know her where’er they meet her. Once! Twice! Thrice! Light!”

At the cry the ray of a spot-light flashed out of the gloom at the far end of the long room and played glaringly upon the face and figure of the candidate. She herself was more blinded by the glare than she had been by the bandage. There was a rustle and movement in the room, and the leading voice went on:

“Sisters! the novice is now revealed to us all. She has now entered into the outer circle of the Sweetbriars. Let her know us, where’er she meets us, by our rallying cry. Once! Twice! Thrice! Now!”

Instantly, and in unison, the members chanted the following “yell”:

 
“S. B.–Ah-h-h!
S. B.–Ah-h-h!
Sound our battle-cry
Near and far!
S. B.–All!
Briarwood Hall!
Sweetbriars, do or die–
This be our battle-cry–
Briarwood Hall!
That’s All!”
 

With the final word the spot-light winked out and the other lights of the hall flashed on. The assembly of hooded and shrouded figures were revealed. And Helen Cameron, half smiling and half crying, found herself standing upon the platform before her schoolmates who had already joined the secret fraternity known as “The Sweetbriars.”

Beside her, and presiding over the meeting, she found her oldest and dearest friend at Briarwood Hall–Ruth Fielding. A small megaphone stood upon the table at Ruth’s hand, and its use had precluded Helen’s recognition of her chum’s voice as the latter led in the ritual of the fraternity. Like their leader, the other Sweetbriars had thrown back their scarlet hoods, and Helen recognized almost all of the particular friends with whom she had become associated since she had come–with Ruth Fielding–the autumn before to Briarwood Hall.

The turning on of the lights was the signal for general conversation and great merriment. It was the evening of the last day but one of the school year, and discipline at Briarwood Hall was relaxed to a degree. However, the fraternity of the Sweetbriars had grown in favor with Mrs. Grace Tellingham, the preceptress of the school, and with the teachers, since its inception. Now the fifty or more girls belonging to the society (fully a quarter of the school membership) paired off to march down to the dining hall, where a special collation was spread.

Helen Cameron went down arm-in-arm with the president of the S. B.’s.

“Oh, Ruthie!” the new member exclaimed, “I think it’s ever so nice–much better than the initiation of the old Upedes. I can talk about them now,” and she laughed, “because they are–as Tommy says–‘busted all to flinders.’ Haven’t held a meeting for more than a month, and the last time–whisper! this is a secret, and I guess the last remaining secret of the Upedes–there were only The Fox and I there!”

“I’m glad you’re one of us at last, Helen,” said Ruth Fielding, squeezing her chum as they went down the stairs.

“And I ought to have been an original member along with you, Ruth,” said Helen, thoughtfully. “The Up and Doing Club hadn’t half the attractiveness that your society has–”

“Don’t call it my society. We don’t want any one-girl club. That was the trouble with the Up and Doings–just as ‘too much faculty’ is the objection to the Forward Club.”

“Oh, I detest the Fussy Curls just as much as ever,” declared Helen, quickly, “although Madge Steele is president.”

“Well, we ‘Infants,’ as they called us last fall when we entered Briarwood, are in control of the S. B.’s, and we can help each other,” said Ruth, with satisfaction.

“But you talk about the Upedes being a one-girl club. I know The Fox was all-in-all in that. But you’re pretty near the whole thing in the S. B.’s, Ruthie,” and Helen laughed, slily. “Why, they say you wrote all the ritual and planned everything.”

“Never mind,” said Ruth, calmly; “we can’t have a dictator in the S. B.’s without changing the constitution. The same girl can’t be president for more than one year.”

“But you deserve to boss it all,” said her chum, warmly. “And I for one wouldn’t mind if you did.”

Helen was a very impulsive, enthusiastic girl. When she and Ruth Fielding had come to Briarwood Hall she had immediately taken up with a lively and thoughtless set of girls who had banded themselves into the Up and Doing Club, and whose leader was Mary Cox, called “The Fox,” because of her shrewdness. Ruth had not cared for this particular society and, in time, she and most of the other new pupils formed the Sweetbriar Club. Helen Cameron, loyal to her first friends at the school, had not fallen away from Mary Cox and joined the Sweetbriars until this very evening, which was, as we have seen, the evening before the final day of the school year.

Ruth Fielding took the head of the table when the girls sat down to supper and the other officers of the club sat beside her. Helen was therefore separated from her, and when the party broke up late in the evening (the curfew bell at nine o’clock was abolished for this one night) the chums started for their room in the West Dormitory at different times. Ruth went with Mercy Curtis, who was lame; outside the dining hall Helen chanced to meet Mary Cox, who had been calling on some party in the East Dormitory building.

“Hello, Cameron!” exclaimed The Fox. “So you’ve finally been roped in by the ‘Soft Babies’ have you? I thought that chum of yours–Fielding–would manage to get you hobbled and tied before vacation.”

“You can’t say I wasn’t loyal to the Upedes as long as there was any society to be loyal to,” said Helen, quickly, and with a flush.

“Oh, well; you’ll be going down to Heavy’s seashore cottage with them now, I suppose?” said The Fox, still watching Helen curiously.

“Why, of course! I intended to before,” returned the younger girl. “We all agreed about that last winter when we were at Snow Camp.”

“Oh, you did, eh?” laughed the other. “Well, if you hadn’t joined the Soft Babies you wouldn’t have been ‘axed,’ when it came time to go. This is going to be an S. B. frolic. Your nice little Ruth Fielding says she won’t go if Heavy invites any but her precious Sweetbriars to be of the party.”

“I don’t believe it, Mary Cox!” cried Helen. “I mean, that you must be misinformed. Somebody has maligned Ruth.”

“Humph! Maybe, but it doesn’t look like it. Who is going to Lighthouse Point?” demanded The Fox, carelessly. “Madge Steele, for although she is president of the Fussy Curls, she is likewise honorary member of the S. B.’s.”

“That is so,” admitted Helen.

“Heavy, herself,” pursued Mary Cox, “Belle and Lluella, who have all backslid from the Upedes, and yourself.”

“But you’ve been invited,” said Helen, quickly.

“Not much. I tell you, if you and Belle and Lluella had not joined her S. B.’s you wouldn’t have been numbered among Heavy’s house party. Don’t fool yourself on that score,” and with another unpleasant laugh, the older girl walked on and left Helen in a much perturbed state of mind.

CHAPTER II
THE FOX AT WORK

Ruth Fielding, after the death of her parents, when she was quite a young girl, had come from Darrowtown to live with her mother’s uncle at the Red Mill, on the Lumano River near Cheslow, as was related in the first volume of this series, entitled, “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; Or, Jasper Parloe’s Secret.” Ruth had found Uncle Jabez very hard to get along with at first, for he was a miser, and his kinder nature seemed to have been crusted over by years of hoarding and selfishness.

But through a happy turn of circumstances Ruth was enabled to get at the heart of her crotchety uncle, and when Ruth’s very dear friend, Helen Cameron, planned to go to boarding school, Uncle Jabez was won over to sending Ruth with her. The fun and work of that first half at school are related in the second volume of the series, entitled “Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall; Or, Solving the Campus Mystery.”

In the third volume of the series, “Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp; Or, Lost in the Backwoods,” Ruth and some of her school friends spend a part of the mid-winter vacation at Mr. Cameron’s hunting lodge in the Big Woods, where they enjoy many winter sports and have adventures galore.

Ruth and Helen occupied a “duo” room on the second floor of the West Dormitory; but when Mercy Curtis, the lame girl, had come to Briarwood in the middle of the first term, the chums had taken her in with them, the occupants of that particular study being known thereafter among the girls of Briarwood as the Triumvirate.

Helen, when deserted by The Fox, who, from that first day at Briarwood Hall, had shown herself to be jealous of Ruth Fielding, for some reason, went slowly up to her room and found Ruth and Mercy there before her. There was likewise a stout, doll-faced, jolly girl with them, known to the other girls as “Heavy,” but rightly owning the name of Jennie Stone.

“Here she is now!” cried this latter, on Helen’s appearance. “‘The candidate will now advance and say her a-b-abs!’ You looked scared to death when they shot you with the lime-light. I was chewing a caramel when they initiated me, and I swallowed it whole, and pretty near choked, when the spot-light was turned on.”

Mercy, who was a very sharp girl indeed, was looking at Helen slily. She saw that something had occasioned their friend annoyance.

“What’s happened to you since we came from the supper, Helen?” she asked.

“Indigestion!” gasped Heavy. “I’ve some pepsin tablets in my room. Want one, Nell?”

“No. I am all right,” declared Helen.

“Well, we were just waiting for you to come in,” the stout girl said. “Maybe we’ll all be so busy to-morrow that we won’t have time to talk about it. So we must plan for the Lighthouse Point campaign now.”

“Oh!” said Helen, slowly. “So you can make up your party now?”

“Of course! Why, we really made it up last winter; didn’t we?” laughed Heavy.

“But we didn’t know whether we could go or not then,” Ruth Fielding said.

“You didn’t know whether I could go, I suppose you mean?” suggested Helen.

“Why–not particularly,” responded Ruth, in some wonder at her chum’s tone. “I supposed you and Tom would go. Your father so seldom refuses you anything.”

“Oh!”

“I didn’t know how Uncle Jabez would look at it,” pursued Ruth. “But I wrote him a while ago and told him you and Mercy were going to accept Jennie’s invite, and he said I could go to Lighthouse Point, too.”

“Oh!” said Helen again. “You didn’t wait until I joined the S. B.’s, then, to decide whether you would accept Heavy’s invitation, or not?”

“Of course not!”

“How ridiculous!” cried Heavy.

“Well, it’s to be a Sweetbriar frolic; isn’t it, Heavy?” asked Helen, calmly.

“No. Madge and Bob Steele are going. And your brother Tom,” chuckled the stout girl. “And perhaps that Isadore Phelps. You wouldn’t call Busy Izzy a Sweetbriar; would you?”

“I don’t mean the boys,” returned Helen, with some coolness.

Suddenly Mercy Curtis, her head on one side and her thin little face twisted into a most knowing grimace, interrupted. “I know what this means!” she exclaimed.

“What do you mean, Goody Two-Sticks?” demanded Ruth, kindly.

“Our Helen has a grouch.”

“Nonsense!” muttered Helen, flushing again.

“I thought something didn’t fit her when she came in,” said Heavy, calmly. “But I thought it was indigestion.”

“What is the matter, Helen?” asked Ruth Fielding in wonder.

“‘Fee, fi, fo fum! I see the negro run!’–into the woodpile!” ejaculated the lame girl, in her biting way. “I know what is the matter with Queen Helen of Troy. She’s been with The Fox.”

Ruth and Heavy stared at Mercy in surprise; but Helen turned her head aside.

“That’s the answer!” chuckled the shrewd little creature. “I saw them walk off together after supper. And The Fox has been trying to make trouble–same as usual.”

“Mary Cox! Why, that’s impossible,” said Heavy, good-naturedly. “She wouldn’t say anything to make Helen feel bad.”

Mercy darted an accusing fore-finger at Helen, and still kept her eyes screwed up. “I dare you to tell! I dare you to tell!” she cried in a singsong voice.

Helen had to laugh at last.

“Well, Mary Cox said you had decided to have none but Sweetbriars at the cottage on the beach, Heavy.”

“Lot she knows about it,” grunted the stout girl.

“Why, Heavy asked her to go; didn’t she?” cried Ruth.

“Well, that was last Winter. I didn’t press her,” admitted the stout girl.

“But she’s your roommate, like Belle and Lluella,” said Ruth, in some heat. “Of course you’ve got to ask her.”

“Don’t you do it. She’s a spoil-sport,” declared Mercy Curtis, in her sharp way. “The Fox will keep us all in hot water.”

“Do be still, Mercy!” cried Ruth. “This is Heavy’s own affair. And Mary Cox has been her roommate ever since she’s been at Briarwood.”

“I don’t know that Belle and Lluella can go with us,” said the stout girl, slowly. “The fright they got up in the woods last Winter scared their mothers. I guess they think I’m too reckless. Sort of wild, you know,” and the stout girl’s smile broadened.

“But you intended inviting Mary Cox?” demanded Ruth, steadily.

“Yes. I said something about it to her. But she wouldn’t give me a decided answer then.”

“Ask her again.”

“Don’t you do it!” exclaimed Mercy, sharply.

“I mean it, Jennie,” Ruth said.

“I can’t please both of you,” said the good-natured stout girl.

“Please me. Mercy doesn’t mean what she says. If Mary Cox thinks that I am opposed to your having her at Lighthouse Point, I shall be offended if you do not immediately insist upon her being one of the party.”

“And that’ll suit The Fox right down to the ground,” exclaimed Mercy. “That is what she was fishing for when she got at Helen to-night.”

“Did I say she said anything about Lighthouse Point?” quickly responded Helen.

“You didn’t have to,” rejoined Mercy, sharply. “We knew.”

“At least,” Ruth said to Heavy, quietly, yet with decision, “you will ask your old friend to go?”

“Why–if you don’t mind.”

“There seems to have been some truth in Mary’s supposition, then,” Ruth said, sadly. “She thinks I intended to keep her out of a good time. I never thought of such a thing. If Mary Cox does not accept your invitation, Heavy, I shall be greatly disappointed. Indeed, I shall be tempted to decline to go to the shore with you. Now, remember that, Jennie Stone.”

“Oh, shucks! you’re making too much fuss about it,” said the stout girl, rising lazily, and speaking in her usual drawling manner. “Of course I’ll have her–if she’ll go. Father’s bungalow is big enough, goodness knows. And we’ll have lots of fun there.”

She went her leisurely way to the door. Had she been brisker of movement, when she turned the knob she would have found Mary Cox with her ear at the keyhole, drinking in all that had been said in the room of the triumvirate. But The Fox was as swift of foot as she was shrewd and sly of mind. She was out of sight and hearing when Jennie Stone came out into the corridor.

CHAPTER III
ON LAKE OSAGO

The final day of the school year was always a gala occasion at Briarwood Hall. Although Ruth Fielding and her chum, Helen Cameron, had finished only their first year, they both had important places in the exercises of graduation. Ruth sang in the special chorus, while Helen played the violin in the school orchestra. Twenty-four girls were in the graduating class. Briarwood Hall prepared for Wellesley, or any of the other female colleges, and when Mrs. Grace Tellingham, the preceptress, graduated a girl with a certificate it meant that the young lady was well grounded in all the branches that Briarwood taught.

The campus was crowded with friends of the graduating class, and of the Seniors in particular. It was a very gay scene, for the June day was perfect and the company were brightly dressed. The girls, however, including the graduating class, were dressed in white only. Mrs. Tellingham had established that custom some years before, and the different classes were distinguished only by the color of their ribbons.

Helen Cameron’s twin brother, Tom, and Madge Steele’s brother, Bob, attended the Seven Oaks Military Academy, not many miles from Briarwood. Their graduation exercises and “Breaking Up,” as the boys called it, were one day later than the same exercises at Briarwood. So the girls did not start for home until the morning of the latter day.

Old Dolliver, the stage driver, brought his lumbering stage to the end of the Cedar Walk at nine o’clock, to which point Tony Foyle, the man-of-all-work, had wheeled the girls’ baggage. Ruth, and Helen, and Mercy Curtis had bidden their room good-bye and then made the round of the teachers before this hour. They gathered here to await the stage with Jennie Stone, Madge and Mary Cox. The latter had agreed to be one of the party at Lighthouse Point and was going home with Heavy to remain during the ensuing week, before the seashore party should be made up.

The seven girls comfortably filled the stage, with their hand luggage, while the trunks and suitcases in the boot and roped upon the roof made the Ark seem top-heavy. There was a crowd of belated pupils, and those who lived in the neighborhood, to see them off, and the coach finally rolled away to the famous tune of “Uncle Noah, He Built an Ark,” wherein Madge Steele put her head out of the window and “lined out” a new verse to the assembled “well-wishers”:

 
“And they didn’t know where they were at,
  One wide river to cross!
Till the Sweetbriars showed ’em that!
  One wide river to cross!
    One wide river!
    One wide river of Jordan–
    One wide river!
    One wide river to cross!”
 

For although Madge Steele was now president of the Forward Club, a much older school fraternity than the Sweetbriars, she was, like Mrs. Tellingham, and Miss Picolet, the French teacher, and others of the faculty, an honorary member of the society started by Ruth Fielding. The Sweetbriars, less than one school year old, was fast becoming the most popular organization at Briarwood Hall.

Mary Cox did not join in the singing, nor did she have a word to say to Ruth during the ride to the Seven Oaks station. Tom and Bob, with lively, inquisitive, harum-scarum Isadore Phelps–“Busy Izzy,” as his mates called him–were at the station to meet the party from Briarwood Hall. Tom was a dark-skinned, handsome lad, while Bob was big, and flaxen-haired, and bashful. Madge, his sister, called him “Sonny” and made believe he was at the pinafore stage of growth instead of being almost six feet tall and big in proportion.

“Here’s the dear little fellow!” she cried, jumping lightly out to be hugged by the big fellow. “Let Sister see how he’s grown since New Year’s. Why, we’d hardly have known our Bobbins; would we, Ruthie? Let me fix your tie–it’s under your ear, of course. Now, that’s a neat little boy. You can shake hands with Ruthie, and Helen, and Mary, and Jennie, and Mercy Curtis–and help Uncle Noah get off the trunks.”

The three boys, being all of the freshman class at Seven Oaks, had less interest in the final exercises of the term at the Academy than the girls had had at Briarwood; therefore the whole party took a train that brought them to the landing at Portageton, on Osago Lake, before noon. From that point the steamer Lanawaxa would transport them the length of the lake to another railroad over which the young folks must travel to reach Cheslow.

At this time of year the great lake was a beautiful sight. Several lines of steamers plied upon it; the summer resorts on the many islands which dotted it, and upon the shores of the mainland, were gay with flags and banners; the sail up the lake promised to be a most delightful one.

And it would have been so–delightful for the whole party–had it not been for a single member. The Fox could not get over her unfriendly feeling, although Ruth Fielding gave her no cause at all. Ruth tried to talk to Mary, at first; but finding the older girl determined to be unpleasant, she let her alone.

On the boat the three boys gathered camp-chairs for the party up forward, and their pocket money went for candy and other goodies with which to treat their sisters and the latter’s friends. There were not many people aboard the Lanawaxa on this trip and the young folks going home from school had the forward upper deck to themselves. There was a stiff breeze blowing that drove the other passengers into the inclosed cabins.

But the girls and their escorts were in high spirits. As Madge Steele declared, “they had slipped the scholastic collar for ten long weeks.”

“And if we can’t find a plenty of fun in that time it’s our own fault,” observed Heavy–having some trouble with her articulation because of the candy in her mouth. “Thanks be to goodness! no rising bell–no curfew–no getting anywhere at any particular time. Oh, I’m just going to lie in the sand all day, when we get to the Point–”

“And have your meals brought to you, Heavy?” queried Ruth, slily.

“Never you mind about the meals, Miss. Mammy Laura’s going down with us to cook, and if there’s one thing Mammy Laura loves to do, it’s to cook messes for me–and bring them to me. She’s always been afraid that my health was delicate and that I needed more nourishing food than the rest of the family. Such custards! Um! um!”

“Do go down and see if there is anything left on the lunch counter, boys,” begged Helen, anxiously. “Otherwise we won’t get Heavy home alive.”

“I am a little bit hungry, having had no dinner,” admitted the stout girl, reflectively.

The boys went off, laughing. “She’s so feeble!” cried Mary Cox, pinching the stout girl. “We never should travel with her alone. There ought to be a trained nurse and a physician along. I’m worried to death about her–”

“Ouch! stop your pinching!” commanded Jennie, and rose up rather suddenly, for her, to give chase to her tormentor.

The Fox was as quick as a cat, and Heavy was lubberly in her movements. The lighter girl, laughing shrilly, ran forward and vaulted over the low rail that separated the awning-covered upper deck from the unrailed roof of the lower deck forward.

“You’d better come back from there!” Ruth cried, instantly. “It’s wet and slippery.”

The Fox turned on her instantly, her face flushed and her eyes snapping.

“Mind your business, Miss!” she cried, stamping her foot. “I can look out–”

Her foot slipped. Heavy thoughtlessly laughed. None of them really thought of danger save Ruth. But Mary Cox lost her foothold, slid toward the edge of the sloping deck, and the next instant, as the Lanawaxa plunged a little sideways (for the sharp breeze had raised quite a little sea) The Fox shot over the brink of the deck and, with a scream, disappeared feet-first into the lake.

It all happened so quickly that nobody but the group of girls on the forward deck had seen the accident. And Madge, Heavy and Helen were all helpless–so frightened that they could only cry out.

“She can’t swim!” gasped Helen. “She’ll be drowned.”

“The paddle-wheel will hit her!” added Madge.

“Oh! where are those useless boys?” demanded the stout girl. “They’re never around when they could be of use.”

But Ruth said never a word. The emergency appealed to her quite as seriously as it did to her friends. But she knew that if Mary Cox was to be saved they must act at once.

She flung off her cap and light outside coat. She wore only canvas shoes, and easily kicked them off and ran, in her stocking-feet, toward the paddle-box. Onto this she climbed by the short ladder and sprang out upon its top just as The Fox came up after her plunge.

By great good fortune the imperiled girl had been carried beyond the paddles. But the Lanawaxa was steaming swiftly past the girl in the water. Ruth knew very well that Mary Cox could not swim. She was one of the few girls at Briarwood who had been unable to learn that accomplishment, under the school instructor, in the gymnasium pool. Whereas Ruth herself had taken to the art “like a duck to water.”

Mary’s face appeared but for a moment above the surface. Ruth saw it, pale and despairing; then a wave washed over it and the girl disappeared for a second time.