It was not a large hotel, and altogether it could not have housed more than fifty guests. But in the dusk, as the girls from Merredith had ridden over in the carriage, they could see that there were several attractive cottages on the island. There was a deal of life about the caravansary.
Now there was just time for Ruth Fielding and her friends to take a peep in the mirror before running down at the sound of the dinner gong to take the places Mrs. Holloway had pointed out to them in the dining room.
The other guests came trooping in from the porches and from their rooms—most of the matrons and young girls already in their party frocks, like the girls from Merredith. Mrs. Holloway found an opportunity to introduce the trio of friends to several people, while Nettie Parsons was already known to many of the matrons present.
The affair was to begin early. Indeed, the girls heard the fiddles tuning up before dinner was ended.
“Oh! hear that fiddle. Doesn’t it make your feet fairly itch?” cried Nettie. Nettie, like most Southern girls, loved dancing.
There were some Virginia reels and some square dances, and all, old and young, joined in these. The reels were a general romp, it was true; but the fun and frolic were of the most harmless character.
The master of ceremonies called out the changes in a resonant voice and all—old and young—danced the square dance with hearty enjoyment. The girls from the North had never seen quite such a party as this; but they enjoyed it hugely. They were not allowed to be without partners for any dance; and the boys introduced to Ruth and Helen were nice and polite and—most of them—danced well.
“Learning to dance seems to be more common among Southern boys than up North,” Helen said. “Even Tom says he hates dancing. And it’s sometimes hard to get good partners at the school dances at Briarwood.”
“I think we have our boys down here better trained,” said Nettie, smiling.
The girls heard, as the time passed, several people expressing their wonder that certain guests from the mainland had not arrived. The dancing floor, which occupied more than half the lower floor of the hotel, was by no means crowded, although every white person on the island was in attendance—either dancing or looking on.
At the back, the gallery was crowded with blacks, their shining faces thrust in at the windows to watch the white folk. In fact, the whole population of Holloway Island was at the hotel.
The last few guests who had arrived from the cottages came under umbrellas as it had begun to rain again. When the fiddles stopped they could hear the drumming of the rain on the porch roofs.
“I’m glad we aren’t obliged to go home to-night,” said Nettie, with a little shiver, as she stood with her friends near a porch window during an intermission. “Hear that rain pouring down!”
“And how do you suppose the bridges are?” asked Helen.
“There! I reckon that’s why those folks from the other shore didn’t get here,” Nettie said. “I shouldn’t wonder if the planks of the old bridge had floated away.”
“Whoo!” Helen cried. “How are we going to get home?”
“By boat, maybe,” laughed Ruth. “Don’t worry. To-morrow is another day.”
And just as she said this the hotel was jarred suddenly, throughout its every beam and girder! The fiddles had just started again. They stopped. For a moment not a sound broke the startled silence in the ballroom.
Then the building shook again. There was an unmistakable thumping at the up-river end of the building. The thumping was repeated.
“Something’s broken loose!” exclaimed Helen.
“Let’s see what it means!” exclaimed Ruth, and she darted out of the long window.
Her chum and Nettie followed her. But when they found themselves splashing through water which had risen over the porch flooring, almost ankle deep, Nettie squealed and ran back. Helen followed Ruth to the upper end of the porch. The oil lamps burning there revealed a sight that both amazed and terrified the girls from the North.
The river had risen over its banks. It surged about the front of the hotel, but had not surrounded it, for the land at the back was higher.
In the semi-darkness, however, the girls saw a large object looming above the porch roof, and it again struck against the hotel. It was a light cottage that had been raised from its foundation and swept by the current against the larger building.
Again it crashed into the corner of the hotel. The roof of the porch was wrecked at this corner by the heavy blow. Windows crashed and servants began to scream. Ruth clutched Helen and drew her back against the wall as the chimney-bricks of the drifting cottage fell through the broken roof of the veranda.
There was a doorway near at hand—the floor of the house being one step higher than the porch which was now flooded. Ruth was just about to drag her chum into this doorway when a figure plunged out of it—a thin, graceless figure in a rain-garment of some kind—and little else, as it proved.
“Oh! oh! oh!” screamed the stranger as she spattered into the water in her slippered feet. “I am killed! I am drowned!”
Helen began actually to giggle. It did not seem so tragic to her that the hotel on the island should become suddenly surrounded by water, or be battered by drifting buildings which the flood had uprooted. The surprise and fright the woman expressed as she halted on the porch, was calculated to arouse one’s laughter.
“Oh, oh, oh!” said the woman, more feebly.
“Come right back into the house—do!” cried Ruth. “You won’t get wet there.”
“But the house is falling down!” gasped the woman, and as she turned the lamplight from the hall revealed her features, and Helen uttered a stifled cry.
She recognized the woman’s face. So did Ruth, and amazement possessed both the girls. There was no mistaking the features of the irritable, nervous teacher from New England, Miss Miggs!
“Do come into the house, Miss Miggs,” urged Ruth. “It isn’t going to fall yet.”
“How do you know?” snapped the school teacher, as obstinate as ever.
The cottage that had been battering the corner of the porch was now torn away by the river and swept on, down the current. There sounded a great hullabaloo from the ballroom. Although the river had not yet risen as high as the dancing floor, the frightened revelers saw that the flood was fairly upon them. At the back the darkies added their cries to the screams of the hysterical guests.
Another drifting object struck and jarred the hotel. Miss Miggs repeated her scream of fear, and darted into the hall with the same impetuosity with which she had darted out.
“Who are you girls?” she demanded, peering at Ruth and Helen closely, for she did not wear her spectacles. “Haven’t I seen you before? I declare! you’re the girls who stole my ticket—the idea!”
At the moment—and in time to hear this accusation—Mrs. Holloway appeared from down the hall. “Oh, Martha!” she cried. “Are you out of your bed?”
She gave the two girls from the North a sharp look as she spoke to the teacher; but this was no time for an explanation of Miss Miggs’ remark. The school teacher immediately opened a volley of complaints:
“Well, I must say, Cousin Lydia, if I were you I’d build my house on some secure foundation. And calling it a hotel, too! My mercy me! the whole thing will be down like a house of cards in ten minutes, and we shall be drowned.”
“Oh, no, Cousin Martha,” said the Southern woman. “We shall be all right. The river will not rise much higher, and it will never tear the hotel from its base. It is too large.”
“Look at these other houses floating away, Lydia Holloway!” screamed Miss Miggs.
“But they are only the huts from along shore——”
Her statement was interrupted by a terrific shock the hotel suffered as a good-sized cottage—one of the nearest of the summer colony—smashed against the hotel, rebounded, and drifted away down stream.
The two women and the two girls were flung together in a clinging group for half a minute. Then Miss Martha Miggs tore herself away. “Let go of me, you impudent young minxes!” she cried. “Are you trying to rob me again?”
“Oh! the horrid thing!” gasped Helen; but Ruth kept her lips closed.
She knew anything they could say would make a bad matter worse. Already the hotel proprietor’s wife was looking at them very doubtfully.
It had stopped raining, but the damp wind swept into the open door and chilled the girls in their thin frocks. Mrs. Holloway saw this and remembered that she had to answer to Mrs. Parsons for her guests’ well being.
“Come back into this room,” she commanded, and led Miss Miggs first by the arm into an unlighted parlor. The windows looked up the river, and as the quartette reached the middle of the room, the unhappy school teacher emitted another shriek and pointed out of the nearest unshaded window.
“What is the matter with you now, Martha Miggs?” demanded Mrs. Holloway, in some exasperation. “If I had known you were in such an hysterical, nervous state, I would not have invited you down here—and sent your ticket and all—I assure you. I never saw such a person for startling one.”
“And lots of good the ticket did—with these girls stealing it from me,” snapped Miss Miggs. “But look at that house next to yours. There! see it heave? And there’s a lighted lamp in that room.”
Everybody saw the peril which the school teacher had observed. A lamp stood on the center table in the parlor of the house next. This house was set on a lower foundation than the hotel and the rising river, surging about it, had begun to loosen it.
Even as they looked, the house tipped perceptibly, and the lighted lamp fell from the table to the floor.
The burning oil was scattered about the room. Although everything was saturated with rain outside, the interior of the cottage began to burn furiously and the conflagration would soon endanger the hotel itself.
Helen broke down and began to cry. Ruth put her arm about her chum and tried to soothe her. Some of the men came charging into the room, thinking by the sudden flare of the conflagration, that this end of the hotel was already on fire.
“Oh, dear! Goodness, me!” shrieked the school teacher, taking thought of her dishabille, and she turned at once and fled upstairs. Mrs. Holloway quietly fainted in an adjacent, comfortable chair. The men went out on the porch to see if they could reach the burning cottage; but the water was too deep and too swift between the two structures.
Ruth carefully attended the woman who had fainted. What had become of Miss Miggs she did not know. Mrs. Holloway regained consciousness very suddenly. She looked up at Ruth, recognized her, and shrank away from the girl of the Red Mill.
“Don’t—don’t,” she gasped. “I’m all right.”
Mrs. Holloway’s hand went to the bosom of her gown, she fumbled there a minute, and then brought forth her purse. The feel of the money in it seemed to reassure her; but Ruth knew what the gesture meant. What she had heard her cousin say had impressed the hotel keeper’s wife strongly.
Hearing the school teacher accuse the two Northern girls of stealing from her, Mrs. Holloway considered herself unsafe in Ruth’s hands.
“Oh, come away,” urged Helen, who had likewise observed the woman’s action. “These people make me ill. I wish we were back North again among our own kind.”
“Hush!” warned Ruth. But in secret she felt justified in making the same wish as her chum.
As the night shut down and the rain began again, the party at Holloway’s had paid no attention to the rising flood. But on the other side of the river the increasing depth of the water was narrowly watched.
“It’s the biggest rise she’s showed since Adam was a small boy!” Mr. Jimson declared. “Looks like she’d make a clean sweep of some of these bottomland farms below yere. Mr. Lomaine’s goin’ t’ lose cash-dollars befo’ she’s through kickin’ up her heels—yo’ take it from me!”
Mr. Jimson’s audience consisted of his immediate family—a wife, lank like himself, and six white-haired, lank children, like six human steps, from the little toddler, hanging to the table-cloth and so getting his balance, to a lank girl of fifteen or thereabouts. In addition, there was Curly Smith.
Curly had been taken right into the Jimson family when he had first come along on a flatboat, the crew of which had treated him so badly that he had left it and applied at the cotton warehouse for work. He worked every day beyond his strength, if the truth were told, and for very poor pay; but he was glad of decent housing.
The world had never used a runaway worse than it had used Curly. All the way down the river from Pee Dee—where his money had run out, and his transportation, too—the boy had been knocked about. And farther north, as Ruth Fielding and Helen knew, Curly Smith’s path had not been strewn with roses.
Therefore, if for no other reason, the boy who had run away to escape arrest, would have remained with Mr. Jimson. The latter’s rough good nature seemed the friendliest thing Curly had ever known; but he was scared when he recognized Ruth and Helen and knew that they were the “little Miss Yanks” of whom he had heard the cotton warehouse boss speak.
Here were two girls who knew him—knew him well when he was at home—right in the very part of Dixie in which unwise Curly Smith had taken refuge. Curly had no idea while coming down on the New Union Line boat to Norfolk, that Ruth and Helen were aboard; nor had he recognized Helen when he went to her rescue at the City Park zoo when the stag had so startled her.
In the first place, he did not know that any of the Briarwood Hall girls who had made their home with his grandmother for a few weeks in the spring, had any intention of coming down to the Land of Cotton for a part of their summer vacation.
It was a distinct shock to Curly when he brought the half-drowned cat ashore that afternoon, to see Ruth and Helen as the guests of Nettie Parsons. He did not know that the girls recognized him; but he was quite sure they would see him if he continued to linger in the vicinity.
Therefore, Curly’s mind was more taken up with plans for getting away from Mr. Jimson than it was with the boss’ remarks about the rising river. Not until some time after supper one of the children ran in with the announcement that there was a “big fire acrosst the river” was the boy shaken out of his secret ponderings.
“That’s got t’ be the hotel, I’ll be whip-sawed if ’taint!” declared Mr. Jimson, starting out into the now drizzling rain without his hat.
Curly followed, because the rest of the family showed interest; but he really did not care. What was a burning hotel to him? Then he heard Mrs. Jimson say:
“Ye don’t mean that’s Holloway’s, Jimson?”
“That’s what she be.”
“And the bridge is down by this time.”
“Sho’s yo’ bawn, Almiry. An’ boats swep’ away, too.”
“An’ like enough the water’s clean up over that islan’. My land, Jimson! that’ll be dretful. Them folks is all caught like rats in a trap. Treed by the river—an’ the hotel afire.”
“It looks like the up-river end of the hotel,” said her husband.
“My land! what’ll Mrs. Parsons say? If anything happens to her niece an’ them other gals——”
“I’ll be whip-sawed! them little Miss Yanks is right there, ain’t they?”
At that, Curly Smith woke up. “Say!” he cried. “Are Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron at that hotel that’s afire?”
“Huh?” demanded Jimson. “Them little Miss Yanks?”
“Yes.”
“If they stuck to Miss Nettie, they are,” agreed the warehouse boss. “And Jeffreys said he left ’em there, when he come back jest ‘fo’ supper.”
“Those girls in that burning building?” repeated Curly. “Say, Mr. Jimson! you aren’t going to stand here and do nothing about it, are you?”
“Wal! what d’ye reckon we kin do?” asked the man, scratching his head in a puzzled way. “There’s more’n we-uns over there to rescue the ladies.”
“And the river up all around them? And no boats?” demanded Curly.
“Sho’! I never thought of that,” admitted the man. “Here’s this old bateau yere——”
“Can you and me row it?” asked Curly, sharply.
“Great grief! No!” exclaimed Jimson. “Not in a thousand years!”
“Can’t we get some of the colored men to help?”
“I reckon we could. The hotel’s more’n a mile below yere on the other side and we might strike off across the river slantin’ and hit the island,” Jimson said slowly.
“Le’s try it, then!” cried the excited boy. “I’ll run stir up the negroes—shall I?”
“Better let me do that,” said Jimson, with more firmness. “Almiry! gimme my hat. If we kin do anything to help ’em——”
“Oh, Paw! look at them flames!” cried one of the children.
The fire seemed to shoot up suddenly in a pillar of flame and smoke. It had burst through the upper floor of the cottage and was now writhing out the chimney; but from this side of the river it still seemed to be the hotel itself that was ablaze.
Curly had forgotten his idea of running away—for the present, at least. He remembered what a “good sport” (as he expressed it) Ruth Fielding was, and how she and her chum might be in danger across there at Holloways.
If the hotel burned, where would the people go who were in it? With the river rising momentarily, and threatening every small structure along its banks with destruction, and no boats at hand, surely the situation of the people in the hotel must be serious.
Curly went down to the edge of the water and found the big bateau. There were huge sweeps for it, and four could be used to propel the craft, while a fifth was needed to steer with.
The boy got these out and arranged everything for the start. When Jimson came back with four lusty negroes—all hands from the warehouse and gin-house—Curly was impatiently waiting for them. The fire across the river had assumed greater proportions.
“That ain’t the hotel, boss,” said one of the negroes, with assurance.
“What is it, then?” demanded Jimson.
“It’s got t’ be the cottage dishyer side ob the hotel. But, fo’ goodness’ sake! de hotel’s gwine t’ burn, too.”
“And all them folkses in hit!” groaned another.
“Shut up and come on!” commanded Jimson. “We’ll git acrosst and see what’s what.”
“If we kin git acrosst,” grumbled another of the men. “Looks mighty spasmdous t’ me. Dat watah’s sho’ high.”
But Curly was casting off the mooring, and in a moment the big, clumsy boat swung out into the current.
As soon as they were sure Mrs. Holloway had quite recovered from her fainting spell, Ruth Fielding and Helen wished to get as far away from the fire as possible.
There was nothing they could do, of course, to help put out the blaze. Nor did it seem possible for the men who had come from the ballroom to do anything towards extinguishing the fire. The flames were spreading madly through the interior of the cottage; but they had not as yet burst through the walls or the roof.
The cottage had not been torn from its foundation, although it had been sadly shaken. If it fell it might not endanger the hotel, for it was plain that what little cant had been given to the burning house was away from the larger building, not toward it.
Ruth and Helen had wet their feet already; but they did not care to slop through the puddle on the porch again, so made their way to the ballroom through the main part of the house. There was less noise among the frightened women and girls now than before; but they were huddled into groups, some crying with fear of they did not know what!
“Oh! is the house tumbling down?” asked one frightened woman of Ruth. “Must we drown?”
“Not unless we want to, I am sure, madam,” said the girl of the Red Mill, cheerfully.
“But isn’t the house afire?” cried another.
“It isn’t this house, but another, that is burning,” the Northern girl said, with continued placidity.
“Oh, Ruth! there’s Nettie!” exclaimed Helen, and drew her away.
In a corner was Nettie Parsons, crouched upon a stool, and the girls expected to find her in tears. But the little serving maid, Norma, had run to her and was now kneeling on the floor with her face hidden in Nettie’s lap.
“The po’ foolish creature,” sighed Nettie, when the chums reached her, a soothing hand upon the shaking black girl’s head. “She is just about out of her head, she’s so scared. I tell her that the Good Lo’d won’t let harm come to us; but she just can’t help bein’ scared.”
Nettie’s drawl made Helen laugh. But Ruth was proud of her. The Southern girl had forgotten to be afraid herself while she comforted her little servant.
There was nothing one could do but speak a comforting word now and then. Ruth was glad that Helen took the matter so cheerfully. For, really, as the girl of the Red Mill saw it, there was not yet any reason for being particularly worried.
“In time of peace prepare for war, however,” she said to the other girls. “We may have to leave the hotel in a hurry. Let us go upstairs to the rooms we were to occupy, and pack our bags again, and bring them down here with us. Then if they say we must leave, we shall be ready.”
“But how can we leave?” demanded Helen. “By boat?”
“Maybe. Goodness! if we only had a boat we could get back across the river and walk to the Big House.”
“Oh! I wish we were there now,” murmured Nettie.
“I wish you had your wish!” exclaimed Helen. “But we’ll do as Ruth says. Maybe we’ll get a chance to leave the place.”
For Helen had been quite as much disturbed by the appearance of Miss Miggs as Ruth had been. She, too, saw that the woman’s accusation had made an impression upon the mind of her cousin, Mrs. Holloway.
“I hope we get out before there is trouble over that horrid woman’s ticket. Who would have expected to meet her here?” said Helen to her chum.
“No more than we expected to meet Curly at Merredith,” Ruth returned.
They went upstairs, Norma, the little maid, keeping close to them. Helen declared the negress was so scared that she was gray in the face.
They heard a group of men talking on the stairs. They were discussing the pros and cons of the situation. Nobody seemed to have any idea as to what should be done. A more helpless lot of people Ruth Fielding thought she had never seen before.
But after all, the girls from the North did not understand the situation exactly. There was nothing one could do to stop the rising flood. There were no means of transporting the people from the island to the higher land across the narrow creek. And all around the hotel, save at the back, the water was shoulder deep.
The rough current and the floating debris made venturing into the water a dangerous thing, as well. The fire next door could not be put out; so there seemed nothing to do but to wait for what might happen.
This policy of waiting for what might turn up did not suit Ruth Fielding, of course. But there was nothing she could do just then to change matters for the better. The suggestion she had made about packing the bags was more to give her friends something to do, and so take their minds off the peril they were in, than aught else.
There were other people on the second floor, and as the girls went into their rooms they heard somebody talking loudly at the other end of the hall. At the moment they paid no attention to this excited female voice.
Ruth set the example of immediately returning her few possessions to her bag and preparing to leave the room at once. Her chum was ready almost as soon; but they had to help Nettie and the maid. The former did not know what to do, and the frightened Norma was perfectly useless.
“I declare! I won’t take this useless child with me anywhere again,” said Nettie. “Goodness me!” she continued, pettishly, to the shaking maid, “have you stolen the silver spoons that your conscience troubles you so?”
But nothing could make Norma look upon the situation less seriously. When the girls came out of the door into the hall, bags in hand, Ruth was first. Immediately the high, querulous voice broke upon their ears again, and now the girls from the North recognized it.
“There! they’ve been in one of your rooms!” cried the sharp voice of Miss Miggs. “You’d better go and search ’em and see what they’ve stolen now.”
“Hush, Martha!” exclaimed Mrs. Holloway.
Ruth turned with flaming cheeks and angry eyes. Her temper at last had got the better of her discretion.
“I believe you are the meanest woman whom I ever saw!” she exclaimed, much to Helen’s delight. “Don’t you dare say Helen and I touched your railroad ticket. I—I wish there were some means of punishing you for accusing us the way you do. I don’t blame your scholars for treating you meanly—if they did. I don’t see how you could expect them to do otherwise. Nobody could love such a person as you are, I do believe.”
“Three rousing cheers!” gasped Helen under her breath, while Nettie Parsons looked on in open-mouthed amazement.
“There! you hear how the minx dares talk to me,” cried Miss Miggs, appealing to the ladies about her.
Besides Mrs. Holloway, there were three or four others. Miss Miggs was dressed now and looked more presentable than she had when endeavoring to escape from the hotel in her raincoat and slippers.
“I—I don’t understand it at all,” confessed the hotel proprietor’s wife. “Surely, my cousin would not accuse these girls without some reason. She is from the North, too, and must understand them better than we do.”
No comment could have been more disastrous to the peace of mind of Ruth and Helen. The latter uttered a cry of anger and Ruth could scarcely keep back the tears.
“Perhaps we had better look out for our possessions,” said one of the other ladies, doubtfully.
“Yes. They did just come out of one of these rooms,” said another.
“Oh! these are the rooms they were to occupy,” cried Mrs. Holloway, all in a flutter. “I—I do not think they would do anything——”
“Say!” gasped Nettie, at last finding voice. “I want to know what yo’-all mean? Yo’ can’t be speaking of my friends?”
“Who is this girl, I’d like to know!” exclaimed Miss Miggs. “One just like them, no doubt.”
“Oh, Martha! Mrs. Parsons’ niece,” gasped Mrs. Holloway. “Mrs. Parsons will never forgive me.”
“Gracious heavens!” gasped one of the other women. “You don’t mean to say that these are the girls from Merredith?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Holloway. “Of course, nobody believes that Miss Parsons would do any such thing; but these other girls are probably merely school acquaintances——”
“I should like to know,” said Nettie, with sudden firmness, “just what you mean—all of you? What have Ruth and Helen done?”
“They stole my railroad ticket on the boat coming down from New York,” declared Miss Martha Miggs.
“That is not so!” said Nettie, quickly. “Under no circumstances would I believe it. It is impossible.”
“Do you say that my cousin does not tell the truth?” asked Mrs. Holloway, stiffly, while Miss Miggs herself could only stammer angry words.
“Absolutely,” declared Nettie, her naturally pale cheeks glowing. “I am amazed at you, Mrs. Holloway. I know Aunt Rachel will be offended.”
“But my own cousin tells me so, and——”
“I do not care who tells you such a ridiculous story,” Nettie interrupted, and Ruth and Helen were surprised to see how dignified and assertive their usually timid friend could be when she was really aroused.
“Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron are above such things. They are, besides, guests at Merredith, and we were put in your care, Mrs. Holloway, and when you insult them you insult my aunt. Oh! if Aunt Rachel were only here, she could talk to you,” concluded Nettie, shaking all over she was so angry. “And she would, too!”
Mrs. Rachel Parsons’ name was one “to conjure with,” as the saying goes. Ruth and Helen had marked that fact before. Not alone in the vicinity of Merredith plantation, but in the cities and towns through which the visitors had come in reaching the cotton farm, they had observed how impressive her name seemed.
Several of the ladies who had been listening avidly to Miss Miggs’ declaration that she had been robbed, now hastened to disclaim any intention of offending Mrs. Parsons’ niece and her friends.
But the angry Nettie was not so easily pacified. She was actually in tears, it was true, but, as Helen said, “as brave as a little lioness!” In the cause of her school friends she could well hold her own with these scandal-mongers.
“I am surprised that anybody knowing my aunt should believe for a moment such a ridiculous tale as this woman utters,” Nettie said, flashing an indignant glance about the group.
“It is self-evident that if Aunt Rachel invites anybody to her home, that the person’s character is above reproach. That is all I can say. But I know very well that she will say something far more serious when she hears of this.
“Come, Ruthie and Helen. Let us go downstairs. I am sorry I cannot take you immediately home. But be sure that, once we are away from Holloway’s, we shall never come here again.”
“Oh, Miss Nettie!” gasped the hotel keeper’s wife. “I did not mean——”
“You will have to discuss that point with Aunt Rachel,” said Nettie, firmly, yet still wiping her eyes. “I only know that I will take Ruthie and Helen nowhere again to be insulted. As for that woman,” she flashed, as a Parthian shot at Miss Miggs, “I think she must be crazy!”
The girls descended the stairs. At the foot Nettie put her arms about Ruth’s neck and then about Helen’s, and kissed them both. She was not naturally given to such displays of affection; but she was greatly moved.
“Oh, my dears!” she cried. “I would not have had this happen for anything! It is terrible that you should be so insulted—and among our own people. Aunt Rachel will be perfectly wild!”
“Don’t tell her, then,” urged Ruth, quickly. “That woman will not be allowed to say anything more, it is likely; so let it blow over.”
“It cannot blow over. Not only did she insult you, and her cousin allowed her to do so, but their attitude insulted Aunt Rachel. Why! there is not a person in this hotel the equal of Aunt Rachel. The Merrediths are the best known family in the whole county. How Mrs. Holloway dared——”
“There, there!” said Ruth, soothingly. “Let it go. Neither Helen nor I are killed.”
“But your reputations might well be,” Nettie said quickly.
“Nobody knows us much here——”
“But they know Aunt Rachel. And I assure you they will hear about this matter in a way they won’t like. The Holloways especially. She’d better send that crazy woman packing back to the North.”
At that moment a shout arose from the front veranda. The girls, followed by Norma screaming in renewed fright, ran to the door. The water was still over the flooring of the veranda, but it had not advanced into the house.
The group of excited men on the porch were pointing off into the river. Out there it was very dark; but there was a light moving on the face of the troubled waters.
“A boat is coming!” explained somebody to the girls. “That’s a lantern in it. A boat from across the river.”
“Oh, no; a steamboat would not venture to-night—if at all. And there is none near by. It’s a bateau of some kind.”
“Bet it’s the old bateau from the cotton warehouse across there,” said another of the men. “Jimson is trying to reach us.”
“And what can he do when he gets here?” asked a third. “That burning house is bound to fall this way. Then we’ll have to fight fire for sure!”
“Well, Holloway has a bucket brigade all ready,” said the first speaker. “With all this water around, it’s too bad if we can’t put a fire out.”
The fire was illuminating all the vicinity now, for the flames had burst through the roof. The whole of one end of the cottage was in a blaze, and the wall of the hotel nearest to it was blistering in the heat.
The hotel proprietor stood there with his helpers watching the blaze. But the girls watched the approaching boat, its situation revealed by the bobbing lantern.
“If that is Mr. Jimson,” said Helen, “I hope he can take us back across the river.”
“And he shall if it’s safe,” Nettie said, with confidence. “But my! the water’s rough.”
“Oh, Miss Nettie! Miss Nettie!” groaned Norma. “Yo’ ain’ gwine t’ vencha on dat awful ribber, is yo’?”
“Why not, you ridiculous creature?” demanded her mistress. “If you are afraid to stay here, and afraid to go in the boat, what will you do?”
“Wait till it dries up!” wailed the darkey maid. “Den we kin walk home, dry-shod—ya-as’m!”
“Wait for the river to dry up, and all?” chuckled Helen.
“That’s what she wants,” said Nettie. “I never saw such a foolish girl.”
The bobbing lantern came nearer. Just as it reached the edge of the submerged island, there arose a shout from the men aboard of her. Then sounded a mighty crash.
“Hol’ on, boys! hol’ on!” arose the voice of Mr. Jimson. “Don’t lose yo’ grip! Pull!”
But the negroes could not pull the water-logged boat. She had struck a snag which ripped a hole in her bottom, and had been rammed by a log at the same time. The bateau was a wreck in a few seconds.
The six members of the crew, including the boss and Curly Smith, leaped overboard as the bateau sank. They had brought the boat so far, after a terrific fight with the current, only to sink her not twenty yards from the front steps of the hotel!
“Throw us a line—or a life-buoy!” yelled Jimson. “This yere river is tearin’ at us like a pack o’ wolves. Ain’t yo’ folks up there got no heart?”
One of the negroes uttered a wild yell and went whirling away down stream, clinging to a timber that floated by. Two others managed to climb into the low branches of a tree.
But Jimson, the fourth negro, and Curly Smith struck out for the hotel. After all, Curly was the best swimmer. Jimson would have been carried past the end of the hotel and down the current, had not the Northern boy caught him by the collar of his shirt and dragged him to the steps.
There he left the panting boss and plunged in again to bring the negro to the surface. This fellow could not swim much, and was badly frightened. The instant he felt Curly grab him, he turned to wind his arms about the boy.
The lights burning on the hotel porch showed all this to the girls. Ruth and Helen, already wet half-way to their knees, had ventured out on the porch again in their excitement. Ruth screamed when she saw the danger Curly was in.
The boy had helped save Mr. Jimson; but the negro and he were being swept right past the hotel porch. They must both sink and be drowned if somebody did not help them—and no man was at hand.
“Take my hand, Helen!” commanded Ruth. “Maybe I can reach them. Scream for help—do!” and she leaned out from the end of the veranda, while her chum clung tightly to her left wrist.
The boy and the negro came near. The water eddied about the porch-end and held them in its grasp for a moment.
It was then that Ruth stooped lower and secured a grip upon the black man’s sleeve. She held on grimly while her chum shrieked for help. Jimson came staggering along to their aid.
“Hold on t’ him, Miss Ruth!” he cried. “We’ll git him!”
But if it had depended upon the spent warehouse boss to rescue the boy and his burden, they would never have been saved. Two of the men at the other end of the porch finally heard Helen and Nettie and came to help.
“Haul that negro in,” said one, laughing. “Is he worth saving, Jimson?”
“I ‘spect so,” gasped the boss of the cotton warehouse. “But I know well that that white boy is. My old woman sho’ wouldn’t ha’ seen me ag’in if it hadn’t been fo’ Curly. I was jes’ about all in.”
So was Curly, as the girls could see. When the boy was dragged out upon the porch floor, and lay on his back in the shallow water, he could neither move nor speak. The men tried to raise him to his feet, but his left leg doubled under him.
It was Ruth who discovered what was the matter. “Bring him inside. Lay him on a couch. Don’t you see that the poor boy has broken his leg?” she demanded.
The fire was now at its height, and many of the men were fighting the flames as they leaped across from the burning cottage. Therefore, not many had been called to the help of the refugees from the wrecked bateau.
“I’ll be whip-sawed!” complained Jimson. “Foolin’ with their blamed old bonfire, they might ha’ let me an’ my negroes drown. This yere little Yankee boy is wuth the whole bilin’ of ’em.”
They carried Curly, who was quite unconscious now, into the house. On a couch in the office Ruth fixed a pillow, and straightened out his injured leg.
“Isn’t there a doctor? Somebody who knows something about setting the leg?” she demanded. “If it can only be set now, while he is unconscious, he will be saved just so much extra pain.”
“Let me find somebody!” cried Nettie, who knew almost everybody in the hotel party.
She ran out upon the veranda, forgetting her slippers and silk hose for the moment, and soon came back with one of the men who had been helping to throw water against the side of the building.
“This is Dr. Coombs. I know he can help you, Ruth—and he will.”
“Boy with broken leg, heh?” said the gentleman, briefly. “Is that all the damage?” and he began to examine the unconscious Curly. “Now, you’re a cool-headed young lady,” he said to Ruth; “you and Jimson can give me a hand. Send the others out of the room. We’re going to be mighty busy here for a few minutes.”
He saw that Ruth was calm and quick. He had her get water and bandages. Mr. Jimson whittled out splints as directed. The doctor was really a veterinary surgeon, but when the setting of the broken limb was accomplished, Curly might have thanked Dr. Coombs for a very neat and workmanlike piece of work. But poor Curly remained unconscious for some time thereafter.
The flames were under control and the danger of the hotel’s catching fire was past before the boy opened his eyes. He opened them to see Ruth sitting at the foot of the couch on which he lay.
“Old Scratch!” exclaimed Curly, “don’t tell Gran, Ruth Fielding. If you do, she’ll give me whatever for busting my leg. Ooo! don’t it hurt.”
He had forgotten for the moment that he had ever left Lumberton, and Ruth soothed him as best she could.
The bustle and confusion around the hotel had somewhat subsided. The regular guests had retired to their rooms, for it was past midnight now. The water was creeping higher and higher, and now began to run in over the floor of the lower story.
By Ruth’s advice, Helen and Nettie had gone up to their rooms. They had allowed Mrs. Holloway to put two young ladies in one of the beds there, for the hotel keeper had to house many more than the usual number of people.
Ruth alone stayed with Mr. Jimson to watch Curly. And when the water began to rise she insisted that the couch be lifted upon the shoulders of four powerful negroes, and carried upstairs.
One of the men who transferred the boy to the wide hall above, was the darkey whom Curly had saved from drowning. That negro was so grateful that he camped upon the stairs for the rest of the night, to be within call of Ruth or Mr. Jimson if anything was needed that he could do for “dat li’le w’ite boy.”
Mrs. Holloway found a screen to put at the foot of the couch, and thus made a shelter for the boy and his nurse. But Ruth knew that many of the ladies before they went to bed came and peeped at her, and whispered about her together in the open hall.
She wondered what they really thought of her and Helen. The positive Miss Miggs had undoubtedly made an impression on their minds when she accused Ruth and Helen of stealing.
“What they really think of us, we can’t tell,” Ruth told herself. “It is awful to be so far from home and friends, and have no way of proving that one is of good character. Here is poor Curly. What is going to become of him? His grandmother hasn’t answered my letters, and perhaps she won’t have anything to do with him after all. What will become of him while he lies helpless? He can’t have earned much money in these few days over at the warehouse, for they don’t pay much.”
Ruth Fielding’s sympathetic nature often caused her to bear burdens that were imaginary—to a degree. But it was not her own trouble that worried her now. It was that of the boy with the broken leg.
He was a stranger in a strange land, and with practically nobody to care how he got along. He had played a heroic part in the rescue of Mr. Jimson and the negro workman; but Ruth doubted greatly if either of the rescued men could do much for poor Curly.
Jimson was a poor man with a large family; the negro was, of course, less able to do anything for the white boy than the boss of the warehouse.
These thoughts troubled Ruth’s mind, sleeping and waking, all night. She refused to leave Curly; but she dozed a good deal of the time in the comfortable chair that the negro had brought her from the parlor downstairs.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Holloway came to speak to her, or to see how Curly was, all night long. Yet Ruth knew that both were working hard, with the negroes in their employ, to make all their guests comfortable.
Back of the hotel on slightly higher ground were the kitchens and quarters. To these rooms the stores were removed and breakfast was begun for all before six o’clock.
By that time the clouds had broken and the sun shone. But the river roared past the hotel at express speed. Jimson said he had never seen it so high, or so furious.
“There’s a big reservoir above yere, up the creek; I reckon it’s done busted its banks, or has overflowed, or something,” the boss of the warehouse said. “Never was so much water in this yere river at one time since Adam was a boy, I tell yo’.”
The girls came for Ruth before breakfast, and made her lie down for a nap. The two strange girls who had been put in their rooms were still in bed, and Ruth was not disturbed until the negroes began coming upstairs with trays of breakfast for the different rooms.
There was great hilarity then. There was no use in trying to serve the guests downstairs, for the dining room had a foot of water washing through one end of it, and the rear was several inches deep in a muddy overflow.
The two girls who had slept with them awoke when Ruth did, and all five of the girls, with Norma to wait upon them, made a merry breakfast. Ruth ran back then to see how Curly was being served. She found the boy alone, and nobody had thought to bring him any food save the grateful negro laborer.
“That coon’s all right,” said Curly, with satisfaction. “He got me half a fried chicken and some corn pone and sweet potatoes, and I’m feeling fine. All but my leg. Old Scratch! but that hurts like a good feller, Ruth Fielding.”
“Dear me!” said Ruth. “Don’t speak of the poor man as a ’coon.’ That’s an animal with four legs—and they eat them down here.”
“And he wouldn’t be good eating, I know,” chuckled Curly. “But he’s a good feller. Say, Ruthie! how did you and Helen Cameron come ’way down here?”
“How did you come here?” returned Ruth, smiling at him.
“Why—on the boat and on a train—several trains, until I got to Pee Dee. And then a flatboat. Old Scratch! but I’ve had an awful time, Ruth.”
“You ran away, of course,” said the girl, just as though she knew nothing about the trouble Curly had had in Lumberton.
“Yep. I did. So would you.”
“Why would I?”
“’Cause of what they said about me. Why, Ruth Fielding!” and he started to sit up in bed, but lay down quickly with a groan. “Oh! how that leg aches.”
“Keep still then, Curly,” she said. “And tell me the truth. Why did you run away?”
“Because they said I helped rob the railroad station.”
“But if you didn’t do it, couldn’t you risk being exonerated in court?”
“Say! they never called you, ‘that Smith boy’; did they?”
“Of course not,” admitted Ruth.
“Then you don’t know what you’re talking about. I had no more chance of being exonerated in any court around Lumberton than I had of flying to the moon! Everybody was down on me—including Gran.”
“Well, hadn’t they some reason?” asked Ruth, gravely.
“Mebbe they had. Mebbe they had,” cried Henry Smith. “But they ought to’ve known I wouldn’t steal.”
“You didn’t help those tramps, then?”
“There you go!” sniffed the boy. “You’re just as bad as the rest of ’em.”
“I’m asking you for information,” said Ruth, coolly. “I want to hear you say whether you did or not. I read about it in the paper.”
“Old Scratch! did they have it in the paper?” queried Curly, with wonder.
“Yes. And your grandmother is dreadfully disgraced——”
“No she isn’t,” snapped Curly. “She only thinks she is. I never done it.”
“Well,” said Ruth, with a sigh, “I’m glad to hear you say that, although it’s very bad grammar.”
“Hang grammar!” cried the excited Curly. “I never stole a cent’s worth in my life. And they all know it. But if they’d got me up before Judge Necker I’d got a hundred years in jail, I guess. He hates me.”
“Why?”
Curly looked away. “Well, I played a trick on him. More’n one, I guess. He gets so mad, it’s fun.”
“Your idea of fun has brought you to a pretty hard bed, I guess, Curly,” was Ruth Fielding’s comment.
Helen Cameron was very proud of Curly. She was, in the first place, deeply grateful for what the boy had done for her the time the stag frightened her so badly in the City Park at Norfolk. Then, it seemed to her, that he had shown a deal of pluck in getting so far from home as this Southern land, and keeping clear of the police, as well.
“You must admit, Ruth, that he is awfully smart,” she repeated again and again to her chum.
“I don’t see it—much,” returned Ruth Fielding. “I don’t see how he got away down here on the little money he says he had at the start. He bought the frock and hat and shoes he wore with his own money, and paid his fare on the boat. But that took all he had, and he had to get work in Norfolk. He worked a week for a contractor there. That’s when he saved you from the deer, my dear!”
“Oh, indeed? And didn’t he earn enough to pay his way down here? He says he rode in the cars.”
“I’ll ask him about that,” said Ruth, musingly.
But she forgot to do so just then. In fact there was another problem in both the girls’ minds: What would become of Curly when the water subsided and he would have to be taken away from the hotel?
“Nettie says there is a hospital in Georgetown. But it is a private institution. Curly will be laid up a long while with that leg. It is a compound fracture and it will have to be kept in splints for weeks. The doctor says it ought to be in a cast. I wish he were in the hospital.”
“I suppose he would be better off,” said Helen, in agreement. “But isn’t it awful that his grandmother won’t take him back?”
“I don’t understand it at all,” sighed Ruth. “I didn’t think she was really so hard-hearted.”
The marooned guests of the hotel and the servants were quite comfortable in their quarters; but the women and girls did not care to descend to the lower floor of the big house. The men waded around the porches; and two men who owned cottages on the island which had not been swept away by the flood, used a storm-door for a raft and paddled themselves over to inspect their property. Their families were much better off with the Holloways at the hotel, however.
There had been landings and boats along the shore of the island; but not a craft was now left. The river had risen so swiftly the evening before, while the dancing was in full blast, that there had been no opportunity to save any such property.
Every small structure on the island had been swept down the current; and only half a dozen of the cottages were left standing. These structures, too, might go at any time, it was prophesied.
Jimson and his negroes could not get back across the river, and not a craft of any description came in sight.
The two negroes who had climbed into the tree at the edge of the island, were rescued by the aid of the storm-door raft; and as Jimson said, in his rough way, they only added to the number of mouths to feed, for they were of no aid in any way.
The hotel keeper chanced to have a good supply of flour, meal, sugar and the other staples on hand; and they had been removed to dry storage before the flood reached its height. There was likewise a well supplied meat-house behind the hotel.
Naturally the ladies and girls, marooned on the upper floor of the hotel, were bound to become more closely associated as the hours of waiting passed. The two girls who roomed with Nettie and her party, learned that Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron were very nice girls indeed. They did not have to take Nettie’s word for it.
Perhaps they influenced public opinion in favor of the Northern girls as much as anything did. Miss Miggs was Northern herself, and not much liked. Her spitefulness did not compare well with Ruth’s practical kindness to the boy with the broken leg.
Before night public opinion had really turned in favor of the visitors from the North. But Ruth and Helen kept very much to themselves, and Nettie was so angry with Mrs. Holloway that she would scarcely speak to that repentant woman.
“I don’t want anything to do with her,” she said to Ruth. “If Aunt Rachel had been here last night I don’t know what she would have done when that woman seemed to side with that crazy school teacher.”
“You could scarcely blame her. Miss Miggs is Mrs. Holloway’s cousin.”
“Of course I can blame her,” cried Nettie. “And I do.”
“Well, I think it was pretty mean, myself,” said Helen. “But I didn’t suppose you would hold rancor so long, Nettie Sobersides! Come on! cheer up; the worst is yet to come.”
“The worst will certainly come to these people at this hotel,” threatened the Southern girl. “Aunt Rachel will have the last word. You are her guests and a Merredith or a Parsons never forgives an insult to a guest.”
“Goodness!” cried Ruth, trying to laugh away Nettie’s resentment. “It is fortunate you are not a man, Nettie. You would, I suppose, challenge somebody to a duel over this.”
“There have been duels for less in this county, I can assure you,” said Nettie, without smiling.
“How bloodthirsty!” laughed Ruth. “But let’s think about something pleasanter. Nettie is becoming savage.”
“I know what will cure her,” cried Helen and bounced out of the room. She came back in a few minutes with a battered violin that she had borrowed from one of the negroes who had been a member of the orchestra the night before. It was a mellow instrument and Helen quickly had it in tune.
“Music has been known to soothe the savage breast,” declared Helen, tucking the violin, swathed in a silk handkerchief, under her dimpled chin.
“I’ll forgive anybody—even my worst enemy—if Ruth will sing, too,” begged Nettie.
So after a few introductory strains Helen began an old ballad that she and Ruth had often practised together. Ruth, sitting with her hands folded in her lap and looking thoughtfully out on the drenched landscape, began to sing.
Nettie set the door ajar. The two girls came in from the other room. Norma, wide-eyed, crouched on the floor to listen. And before long a crowd of faces appeared at the open door.
Quite unconscious of the interest they were creating, the two members of the Briarwood Glee Club played and sang for several minutes. It was Helen who looked toward the door first and saw their audience.
“Oh, Ruth!” she exclaimed, and stopped playing. Ruth turned, the song dying on her lips. The crowd of guests began to applaud and in the distance could be heard Curly Smith clapping his hands together and shouting:
“Bully for Ruth! Bully for Helen! That’s fine.”
“Shut the door, Nettie!” cried Helen, insistently. “I—I really have an idea.”
“The concert is over, ladies,” declared the Southern girl, laughing, and shutting the door.
“What’s the idea, dear?” asked Ruth.
“About raising money for poor Curly.”
“We can give him some ourselves,” Nettie said, for of course she had been taken into the full confidence of the chums about the runaway.
“I can’t,” confessed Helen. “I have scarcely any left. If my fare home were not paid I’d have to borrow.”
“I can give some; but not enough,” said Ruth.
“That’s where my idea comes in,” Helen said. “That’s why I said to shut the door.”
Nettie ejaculated: “Goodness! what does the child mean?”
But Ruth guessed, and her face broke into a smile. “I’m with you, dear!” she cried. “Of course we will—if we’re let.”
“Will what?” gasped Nettie. “You girls are thought readers. What one thinks of the other knows right away.”
“A concert,” said Ruth and Helen together.
“Oh! When?”
“Right here—and now!” said Helen, promptly. “If the Holloways will let us.”
“Oh, girls! what a very splendid idea,” declared Nettie. Then the next moment she added: “But the piano is downstairs, and they could never get it up here. And there’s no room big enough upstairs, anyhow.”
Ruth began to laugh. “I tell you. It shall be a regular chamber concert. We’ll have it in the bed chambers, for a fact!”
“What do you mean?” asked the puzzled Nettie.
“Why, the audience can sit in their rooms or on the stairs or in the long hall up here. We will give the concert downstairs. I don’t know but we’ll have to give it barefooted, girls!”
The laughter that followed was interrupted by a shout from below. They heard somebody say that there was a boat coming.
“Well, maybe there will be something for Curly after all,” Helen cried, as she followed Ruth out of the room.
Through the wide doorway they could see the boat approaching. And they could hear it, too, for it was a small launch chugging swiftly up to the submerged island.
“Oh, goody!” cried Nettie. “Maybe we can get across the river and back to Merredith.”
It looked as though the launch had just come from the other side of the swollen stream. Jimson and several of the negroes were on the porch to meet the launch as it touched.
There were but two men in it, one at the wheel and the other in the bow. The latter, a gray-haired man with a broad-brimmed hat, blue clothes, and a silver star on his breast, stepped out upon the porch in his high boots.
“Hullo, Jimson,” he said, greeting the warehouse boss. “Just a little wet here, ain’t yo’?”
“A little, Sheriff,” said Jimson.
“I’m after a party they told me at your house was probably over here. A boy from the No’th. Name’s Henry Smith. Is he yere? I was told to get him and notify folks up No’th that the little scamp’s cotched. He’s been stealin’ up there, and they want him.”