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There is not a fish or any other living thing in all the 2,500 to 3,000 square miles of beautiful and mysterious waters, except the yearly increasing swarms of summer bathers. Not a shark, or a stingaree, to scare the timid swimmer or floater; not a minnow, or a frog, a tadpole, or a pollywog nothing that lives, moves, swims, crawls or wiggles. It is the ideal sea-bathing place of the world.
Brant returned. Barby and Jan were standing far forward, close to where the cabin top curved downward to the forward deck. Rick joined them. "This is fun!" Barby exclaimed. "Rick this houseboat was the best idea you ever had!" "We all should have traveled down together," Jan said. "Then the whole family could have been in on the case of the flying stingaree."
His mind drew a picture, and he saw himself bent forward into the wind. In his memory he felt the slashing rain, the slipperiness of the wet anchor line. He could visualize the water whipped into dimpled wavelets by wind and rain. He saw the flying stingaree loom, and saw himself dropping flat. There had been a clang as something hard hit the rail! There had been a splash!
Rick watched the water, and finally saw a dark blur on the sandy bottom ahead and to the left. He drew, then waited until he saw the dark patch move. This time he allowed for the water's refraction. He loosed the arrow. The stingaree felt the impact and reacted violently. Its tail lashed up to strike with sharp barbs at the intruder. The tail lashed the arrow shaft without effect.
The stingaree swam slowly through the warm waters of Chesapeake Bay. Geography meant nothing to 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.
They ducked under the blind, side by side, and swam to the front of the structure where brush from last year's cover remained. Cautiously Rick peered out, then sucked in his breath. A truck had been wheeled out of the barn. It had a dish antenna on top. And next to the truck, a mass of black plastic was slowly inflating. A flying stingaree! Rick looked quickly for a spot to which he could swim.
But if stingarees don't fly, he asked himself, what looks like a stingaree and does fly? He realized suddenly that the sound of the motor was louder once again. Someone investigating the houseboat? He swung out of bed. The cool air of morning was in sharp contrast to the warmth of his sleeping bag. Quickly he slipped into shorts and sweat shirt.
"It went right over the boat. I think it hit the upper rail. We'll check later. But it wasn't a flying saucer. I'm sure of that." "What was it?" Scotty demanded. "A flying stingaree!" Orvil Harris, Crabber Rick Brant awoke to the sound of a motor. For a moment he lay quietly in his bunk, listening. The sun through the cabin windows told him it was early in the morning.
The case of the flying stingaree was just getting interesting. "What are the flying stingarees?" he asked quietly. Scotty shifted position in his chair and looked at Rick quizzically. "You don't expect an answer. But I can tell you a few things they are not." "Tell away," Rick urged. "They are not flying saucers, aircraft, kites, sting rays, birds, fish, or good red herrings.
The tail hung down almost to the ground, the rocket hanging at an angle at its end. The loudspeaker voice said, "Stand by. Mark! Zero minus thirty." The bodyguard reached up and cut the rope! Rick saw the flying stingaree heading directly toward him, rising slowly, caught by the ground wind. He brought his spear gun into position and rose to his full height, snapping off the safety catch.
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