Part 1 (1/2)
The Flying Stingaree
by Harold Leland Goodwin
What's shaped like a sting ray and flies over Chesapeake Bay? This is the eerie riddle which confronts Rick Brant and his friend Don Scott when, seeking shelter from a storm, they anchor the houseboat _Spindrift_ in a lonely cove along the Maryland shore and spot the flying stingaree
The ”thing,” they learn, is not the only one of its kind--one is actually suspected of having kidnaped a man!
The residents of the Eastern Shore of Maryland believe the strange objects are flying saucers, but, weary of ridicule, have ceased reporting the sightings
Rick and Scotty, their scientific curiosity aroused, begin a coed by their friend Steve Aent, whose sue is near the cove
As the clues mount up, the trail leads to Calvert's Favor, a historic plantation house--and to the very bottom of Chesapeake Bay How Rick and Scotty, at the risk of their lives, ground the eerie e suspense
[Illustration: _Little Choptank River_]
CHAPTER I
Chesapeake Bay
The stingaree swaraphyto the ray, whose sole interest in life was food, but his position--had he known it--was in the channel that runs between Poplar Island and the town of Wittman on the Eastern Shore of Maryland The ray was also directly in the path of an odd-looking cruising houseboat, the _Spindrift_, that had just rounded the north point of Poplar Island and entered the channel
The sting ray's color was an olive brown, so dark in tone that he looked like wet black leather He was roughly dia, sli the base of its upper side It was from the barbs, which served as defensive weapons, that the naaree, derived The ray was harmless toon the botto a serious and painful wound
A tiny crab, hatched only a week before, swa a slight disturbance The ray sensed the sh the water like a fantastic spaceshi+p of the future Intent on the crab, the ray ignored the stronger vibrations caused by a pair of outboard , flat-bottomed hull Not until the crab ithin reach did the ray sense ihi surface and into the air
Rick Brant, at the hel houseboat, saw the ray break water and he let out a yell ”Scotty! Look!”
Don Scott, asleep at full length on the houseboat's sun deck, which was also its cabin top, awoke in tiaree!” he exclai with life than Chesapeake Bay, unless it was the jungles of the South Pacific Books, guides to eastern land and water birds, regional fish and reptiles, rested on the cabin top before hi with a pair of binoculars He had used theles, wild swans, ospreys, wild duck and geese, terrapin, snapping turtles and water snakes, as well as a horde of lesser creatures Trailing lines over the houseboat stern had captured striped sea bass, called ”rockfish” locally, a species of druills, pink croakers that the Marylanders called ”hardheads,” and the blue crabs for which the bay is fa up bushels of soft-shelled, long-necked claers called ”eyes” and ”skip-jacks”--sailing craft used for dredging oysters The boats were not operated during the oyster breeding season from the end of March until Septereat bay was to be expected As son of the director of the world-famous Spindrift Scientific Foundation, located on Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey, he had been brought up a with his natural--and insatiable--curiosity
The tall, slim, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy was co, especially on the water, and life on the _Spindrift_ couldn't have been more casual He was dressed in a tattered pair of shorts and a wristwatch Once, in the cool of the evening, he had slipped on a sweat shi+rt Otherwise, the shorts had been his sole attire while on board since leaving his home island a few days before
Scotty, a husky, dark-haired boy clad only in red swi trunks, came down the ladder from the cabin top and stood beside Rick in the cockpit
”Now that you woke me up to look at a fish, suppose you tellunder the Bay Bridge off Annapolis”