"To the light, of course," returned her chum.
"Give me the hitch-rein!" cried Jane Ann Hicks, snatching the coil of line from Ruth's hand, and the next moment she leaped from the deck of the catboat to the wharf.
The distance was seven or eight feet, but she cleaned it and landed on the stringpiece. She threw the line around one of the piles and made a knot with a dexterity that would have surprised her companions at another time.
But there was no opportunity then for Tom, Helen and Ruth to stop to notice it. All three got ashore the moment the catboat bumped, and they left her where she was and followed the flying Western girl up the wharf and over the stretches of sand towards the lightkeeper's cottage.
Before their feet were off the planks of the wharf Jack Crab's boat collided with the Jennie S. and the man scrambled upon her deck, and across it to the wharf. He left his own dory to go ashore if it would, and set out to catch the girl who—he considered—was worth five hundred dollars to him.
But Jane Ann and her friends whisked into the little white house at the foot of the light shaft, and slammed the door before Crab reached it.
"For the Land of Goshen!" cried the old
