ch was level with her
shoulders.

She started from the ship in this rude conveyance, and the girls
gathered eagerly to greet her when she landed. But several waves
washed completely over the breeches buoy and the girl was each time
buried from sight. She was unconscious when they lifted her out.

She was a black-haired girl of fourteen or thereabout, well built and
strong. The captain's wife was too anxious about the crew to pay much
attention to the waif, and Ruth and her friends bore Nita, the castaway,
off to the station, where it was warm.

The boys remained to see the last of the crew--Captain Kirby
himself--brought ashore. And none too soon was this accomplished, for
within the half hour the schooner had broken in two. Its wreckage and
the lumber with which it had been loaded so covered the sea between
the reef and the shore that the waves were beaten down, and had it been
completely calm an active man could have traveled dry-shod over the
flotsam to the reef.

Meanwhile Nita had been brought to her senses. But there was nothing at
the station for the girl from the wreck to put on while her own clothing
was dried, and it was Heavy who came forward with a very sensible
suggestion.

"Let's take her home with us. Plenty of things there. Wrap her up good
and warm and we'll take her on the buckboard. We can all crowd on--all
but the boys."

The boys had not seen enough yet, anyway, and were not ready to go; but
the girls were eager to return to the bungalow--especially when they
could take the castaway with them.

"And there we'll get her to tell us all about it," whispered Helen
to Ruth. "My! she must have an interesting story to tell."

CHAPTER XI

THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAY

There was only the cook in the station and nobody to stop the girls from
taking Nita away. She had recovered her senses, but scarcely appreciated
as yet where she was; nor did she seem to care what became of her.

Heavy called the man who had driven them over, and in ten minutes after
she was ashore the castaway was on the buckboard with her new friends
and the ponies were bearing them all at a spanking pace toward the Stone
bungalow on Lighthouse Point.

The fact that this strange girl had been no relation of the wife of the
schooner's captain, and that Mrs. Kirby seemed, indeed, to know very
little about her, mystified the stout girl and her friends exceedingly.
They whispered a good deal among themselves about the casta