Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton

Helen moved in the berth above. “Hullo, up there!” whispered Ruth.

“Hullo, down there!” was the quick reply. “What ever made me wake up so early?”

“Because you want to get up early,” replied Ruth, this time sliding out of her berth so adroitly that she did not bump her head.

Helen came tumbling down, skinning her elbow and landing with a thump on the floor. “Gracious to goodness – and all hands around!” she ejaculated. “Talk about sleeping on a shelf in a Pullman car! Why, that’s ‘Home Sweet Home’ to this. I came near to breaking my neck.”

“Come on! scramble into your clothes,” said Ruth, already at the wash basin.

Helen peered out. “Why – oh, my!” she said, shivering and holding the lacy neck of her gown about her. “It’s da-ark yet. It must be midnight.”

“It is ten minutes to four o’clock,” said Ruth promptly. She had studied the route and knew it exactly. “That is Chincoteague Island Light yonder. That’s where those cunning little ponies that Madge Steele’s father had at Sunrise Farm came from.”

“Wha-at?” yawned Helen. “Did they come from the light?”

“No, goosy! from the island. They are bred there.”

Ten minutes later the chums were out on the open deck. They raced forward to see if they could see the sun. His face was still below the sea, but a flush along the edge of the horizon announced his coming.

“Oh, see yonder!” cried Helen. “See the shore! How near! And the long line of beaches. What’s that white line outside the yellow sand?”

“The surf,” Ruth said. “And that must be Hog Island Light. How faint it is. The sun is putting it out.”

“It’s a long way ahead.”

“Yes. We won’t pass that till almost six o’clock. Oh, Helen! there comes the sun.”

“What’s that?” asked Helen, suddenly seizing her chum’s wrist. “Did you hear it?”

“That splash? The men are washing decks.”

“It is a man overboard!” murmured Helen.

“More likely a big fish jumping,” said the practical Ruth.

The girls hung over the rail, looking shoreward, and tried in the uncertain light to see if there was any object floating on the water. If Helen expected to see a black spot like the head of a swimmer, she was disappointed.

But she did see – and so did Ruth – a lazy fishing smack drifting by on the tide. They could almost have thrown a stone aboard of her.

There seemed to be a little excitement aboard the smack. Men ran to and fro and leaned over the rail. Then the girls thought they saw the smackmen spear something, or possibly somebody, with a boathook and haul their prize aboard.

“I believe somebody did fall overboard from this steamer, and those fishermen have picked him up,” Helen declared.

The girls watched the sunrise and the shore line for another hour or more and then went in to breakfast. When they came back to the open deck the steamer was flying past the coast of the lower Peninsula, and Cape Charles Lightship courtesied to her on the swells.

Far, far in the distance they saw the staff of the Cape Henry Light. The steamer soon turned her prow to pass between these two points of land, known to seamen as the Capes of Virginia, which mark the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.

Their fair trip down the coast from New York was almost ended and the chums began to pick up their things in the stateroom and repack their bags.

CHAPTER V – THE NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT

“Do you suppose Nettie and her aunt have arrived, Ruth?”

“I really don’t,” Ruth Fielding said, as she and her chum stood on the upper deck again and watched the shore which they were approaching so rapidly.

“Goodness! won’t you feel funny going up to that big, sprawling hotel alone?”

“No, dear. I sha’n’t be alone,” laughed Ruth. “You will be with me, won’t you?”

Helen merely pinched her for answer.

“The rooms are engaged for us, you know,” Ruth assured her chum. “Mrs. Parsons knew she might be delayed by business in Washington and that we would possibly reach the hotel first. They have our names and all we have to do is to present her card.”

“Fine! I leave it all to you,” agreed Helen.

“Of course you will. You always do,” said Ruth drily. “You certainly are one of the fortunate ones in this world, Helen, dear.”

“How am I?”

“Because,” Ruth said, laughing, “all you ever will do in any emergency will be to roll those pretty eyes of yours and look helpless, and somebody will come to your rescue.”

“Lucky me, then!” sighed her friend. “How green the grass is on the shore, Ruth – and how blue the water. Isn’t this one lovely morning?”

“And a beautiful place we are going to. That’s the fort yonder – the largest in the United States, I shouldn’t wonder.”

As the steamer drew in closer to the dock those passengers who were not going on to Norfolk got their hand baggage together and pressed toward the forward lower deck, from which they would land at the Point. The girls followed suit; but as they came out of their stateroom there was the omnipresent colored man, in his porter’s uniform now, ready to take the bags.

Ruth and Helen let him take the bags, though they were very well able to carry them, for he was insistent. The stewardess – a comfortable looking old “aunty” in starched cap and apron – was likewise bobbing courtesies to them as they went through the saloon. Helen’s ready purse drew the colored population of that boat as a honey-pot does bees.

As they descended to the lower deck, suddenly the queer looking school teacher, with the short hair and funny clothes, faced them. The purser had evidently been trying to pacify her, but now he gave it up.

“You mean to tell me that you won’t demand to have these girls examined —searched?” cried the angry woman. “They may have taken my ticket for fun, but it’s a serious matter and they are now afraid to give it up. I know ’em – root and branch!”

“Do you know these two young ladies?” demanded the purser, in surprise.

“Yes; I know their kind. I have been teaching girls just like ’em for fifteen years. They’re up to all kinds of mischief.”

“Oh, madam!” cried the purser, “that is strong language. I cannot hold these young ladies on your say-so. You have no evidence. Nor do I believe they have your ticket in their possession.”

“Of course you’d take their side!” sniffed the woman.

“I am on the side of innocence always. If you care to get into trouble by speaking to the police, you will probably find two policemen waiting on the dock as we go ashore. They are after that disguised boy who came aboard.”

The woman tossed her head and strode away, after glaring again at the embarrassed girls. The purser said, gently:

“I am very sorry, young ladies, that you have been annoyed by that person. And I am glad that you did not let the offence make us any more trouble. Of course, she had no right to speak of you and to you as she has.

“I believe she is to be pitied, however. I learn that she is going on a trip South for her health, after a particularly arduous year’s work. She is, as she intimates, a teacher in a big girl’s boarding school in New England. She is probably not a favorite with her pupils at best, and is now undoubtedly broken down nervously and not quite responsible for what she says and does.”

Then the purser continued, smiling: “Perhaps you can imagine that her pupils have not tried to make her life pleasant. I have a daughter about your age who goes to such a school, and I know from her that sometimes the girls are rather thoughtless of an instructor’s comfort – if they dislike her.”

“Oh, that is true enough, I expect,” Ruth admitted. “See how they used to treat little Picolet!” she added to Helen.

“I guess no girl would fall in love with this horrid creature who says we stole her ticket.”

“She is not of a lovable disposition, that is sure,” agreed the purser. “Her name is Miss Miggs. I hope you will not see her again.”

“Oh! you don’t suppose she will try to make trouble for us ashore?” Ruth cried.

“I will see that she does not. I will speak to the officers who I expect are awaiting the boat’s arrival. They have already communicated with us by wireless about that boy.”

“Wireless!” cried Helen. “And we didn’t know you had it aboard. I certainly would have thanked Tom for those roses. And then, Ruth! Just think of telegraphing by wireless!”

“Sorry you missed that, young ladies. The instrument is in Room Seventy,” said the purser, bustling away.

“‘Too late! too late! the villain cried!’” murmured Helen. “We missed that.”

“Never mind,” said Ruth, smiling. “If we go back to New York by boat we can hang around the wireless telegraph room all the time and you can send messages to all your friends.”

“No I can’t,” said Helen shortly.

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t have any money left by that time,” Helen declared ruefully. “Goodness! how much it does cost to travel.”

“It does, I guess, if you practise such generosity as you have practised,” said Ruth. “Do use a little judgment, Helen. You tip recklessly, and you buy everything you see.”

“No,” declared her chum. “There’s one thing I’ve seen that I wouldn’t buy if it was selling as cheap as ‘two bits,’ as these folks say down here.”

“What’s that?” asked Ruth, with a laugh.

“That old maid school marm from New England,” Helen replied promptly.

“Poor thing!” commented Ruth.

“There you go! Pitying her already! How do you know that she won’t try to have us arrested?”

“Goodness! we’ll hope not,” said Ruth, as they surged toward the gangway with the rest of the disembarking passengers, the boat having already docked.

The crowd came out into the sunshine of a perfect morning upon a bustling dock. There was a goodly crowd from the hotels to see the newcomers land. Some of the passengers were met by friends; but neither Nettie Parsons nor her aunt were in sight.

The porter who carried the girls’ bags, however, handed them over to a hotel porter and evidently said a good word for them to that functionary; for he was very attentive and led the chums out of the crowd toward the broad veranda of the hotel front.

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