Some three hours later Florence stirred uneasily in her sleep. It was a very dark night. The cabin on the wreckedPilgrimin which she slept was a well of darkness. Yet there were times when, for one brief second, every detail of the cabin showed out in bold relief. The over-ornamented walls, done in white and gold, the narrow shelf where a small clock ticked loudly, the rough table with two short legs and two long ones to make up for the slanting deck; all these could be seen plainly. So too could the blond hair of her bunk-mate, Jeanne, sleeping beside her in the berth where for forty years only ship captains had slept.
The large girl stirred once again. One brown arm stole from beneath the covers. The hand seemed to reach for some object hung in space.
“A barrel of gold.” Her lips said the words aloud. The sound of her own voice roused her to a state of half-awakeness. “A barrel of gold,” she repeated.
For some little time she lay there half asleep, half awake.
Her sleep had been disturbed by certain sounds, distant rumbles, rushes and swishes of water; also by those vivid flashes of light.
A moment more and she sat bolt upright in bed.
“Going to storm,” she mumbled to herself, without being greatly disturbed. It had stormed before. Three times great, dark clouds had come driving in across black waters to engulf them. Each time the wreckedPilgrim, with her three last passengers on board, had weathered the storm in as stalwart a manner as any ship afloat on the sea.
For some time she sat there listening, watching. As the flashes of light grew brighter, more frequent, and the rumbles broke into short, sharp crashes, she crept silently from beneath the covers to draw on a heavy mackinaw, then step out upon the deck.
At once a cold chill seized her. A flash of lightning had revealed such a cloud as she had not seen in all her life. Inky black, straight up and down like a gigantic pillar, it appeared to glide across waters that reflected its ink-blackness and to grow—grow—grow as it advanced.
Stepping quickly back into the cabin, she shook her companions into wakefulness.
“Jeanne! Greta! Wake up! It is going to storm. Something rather terrible!”
Instantly she went about the business of lighting a flickering candle. Then she drew on knickers and high boots.
Her mind was in a whirl, yet she managed to maintain a certain degree of inner calm.
What was to be done? Here they were, three girls on board a wreck with a storm that promised unparalleled violence, sweeping down upon them.
There was but one way of leaving the wreck. They must go, if at all, in their sixteen-foot rowboat—a mere nutshell in such a time as this. And yet—
“Are—are you dressed?” she asked shakily.
“Yes, all dressed.” Both Jeanne and Greta appeared to be quite calm.
“All right. Throw what things you can into your suitcase, then come on.” She set the example by tossing garments into a corner, then cramming them into her bag.
Having thrust a flashlight into her pocket, she led the way out into the night.
She was met by a gust of wind that all but blew her off the deck.
“Look—look out!” she warned. “Hang on tight! Over here! The boat’s over here.”
To leave the ship at such a time as this seemed madness. Yet there had come to her a sense of guidance. In times of great crises she had more than once experienced just this. Now she moved like one directed by a master hand.
The water appeared blacker now. The flashes of light were vivid beyond belief. The swells were coming in. Great sweeping swells, they lifted the little rowboat, tied on the lee side of the wreck, to a prodigious height, then dropped it into a well of darkness.
“Drop—drop your bag into the boat when it comes—comes up.” Wind seemed to fill the girl’s ears. It caught her words and cast them away.
Down went the bags, and with them the boat.
One, two, three, up surged the boat again.
“Now! Over you go!” Seizing Greta, she fairly threw her into the boat.
Her heart sank with the boat. It rose with it as well. Jeanne was next. A moment more and she was over the side, clinging to the seat, cutting the rope, seizing the oars, then shoving off, all in one wild breath.
“We—we’ll keep—keep our stern to the storm!” she screamed. “Head in toward Duncan’s Bay. Some sandy beaches there. Mi—might land. Mi—” The wind blew the words from her throat.
The cove that forms an approach to Duncan’s Bay is shaped like the top of an hourglass. At the seaward side it is a mile wide. At the land side it is tapered to a narrow channel. By great good fortune the wind was shoreward and slightly toward the entrance of Duncan’s Bay. The big girl’s hope was to work her boat back into this cove where, more and more protected by the reef, she might find calmer water.
To ride a great storm in a rowboat is always thrilling, but not certainly too dangerous. If the waves are long and high, you may ride to their crest, glide down the other side, then rise again.
Pulling with all her might, the stout young oarsman held her boat’s stern to the gale. They rose. They fell. They rose again, this time in the midst of hissing foam.
“This—this is going to be worth telling,” she shrieked. “If we live to tell it.
“But I don’t think we will,” she whispered to herself.
Now and again sharp flashes of lightning revealed their position. They were working back into the cove. But each moment the storm grew wilder. The wind fairly shrieked in their ears. Their hair flew out wildly. Some sea bird, seeking shelter, shot past them at a wild speed.
Clinging to one another, Jeanne and Greta sat in the stern. As Greta watched that onrushing pillar of cloud, she was all but overcome by the conviction that never again would they romp upon the deck of the ill-fated ship.
“And we have known such joy there!” she told herself with a low sob. “Our swimming pool, long, lazy hours in the sun, songs at sunset. When shall we know such joys again?”
Then a strange question crept into her mind. What was it the men on the black schooner had sought on the wreck?
“Whatever it was,” she whispered, “they will never find it now.”
And yet, could she be sure of this? Moments, not hours, would tell.
Then the storm broke. A vivid flash revealed the dark column. It appeared to hover over thePilgrim.
“Oh!” Greta covered her eyes.
Florence still stared straight away and continued to row. This was no time for flinching. She saw the battered wreck rise high in air. After that came moments of intense darkness, such darkness as seems solid, like a black wall at the dead of night.
When at last the blackness lifted, a flash of light showed the pillar of cloud far away and on the reef—not a sign of the ill-fated ship, thePilgrim.
“Look!” Jeanne cried, pointing away in the other direction. “Look over there! A light!”
There could be no mistaking it. Off toward the entrance to Duncan’s Harbor was a swaying light.
“It’s a boat. Some sort of a boat. We—we’ll try to head that way.
“The ship,” Florence said soberly a moment later, “is gone! It was like an arm, that cloud, a great black arm reaching down and picking it up. I saw it. A waterspout, I suppose they’d call it. We—we were saved by God’s guidance.”
A short time later they found themselves approaching a small power boat that, tossing about over the waves, moved cautiously nearer.
To their great joy they found this to be Swen, and with him was Vincent Stearns.
“I didn’t want to leave you,” Swen said a trifle shamefacedly, once he had them on board and well within the narrows. “I was afraid. But when I saw that cloud, when I knew what was sure to happen, I got Vincent to come with me. Now here we are, and, thank God, you are safe!”
“Listen!” It was Greta who held up a hand for silence as they passed out of the narrows. Music had reached her ears, wild, delirious music, such as one may produce only at the end of a terrific storm.
The storm was over—there could be no questioning that. The moon was out in all its glory. And there, his gray hair glistening in that light, standing before their tent on the camping ground, was the Phantom, Percy O’Hara. He was playing as perhaps he had never played before.
“Now,” Greta whispered, “I have found him. I shall never lose him again.”
Florence, you might say, was strange. At this dramatic moment she was thinking to herself, “A barrel, a copper-bound barrel. A barrel of gold.”
“A Barrel of gold!” Florence cried as the music ceased and she sprang ashore. “Come on! A copper-bound barrel! A barrel of gold!” She was able to keep her secret no longer.
Forgetting all else, Jeanne, Swen and Vincent followed her. Not so Greta. She had found her mysterious friend once more. She would throw discretion and all conventions to the wind.
“You—you will tell me?” She hurried up to the musician smiling there in the moonlight.
“Why, yes, my sweet little girl, if it will bring you joy I will tell you my secret which, after all—” he motioned her to a seat on a log by the fire. “Which, after all, is truly no secret at all.
“Being famous,” he said, smiling in a strange way, “is not all that men think it. To hear people say, ‘Here he comes! There he goes!’ and to know they mean you, to be stared at all day long! Who could wish for that?”
“But you charmed them with your music,” Greta said in a low tone.
“Yes,” he agreed, “that was not so bad. To stand before thousands, to know that you are truly bringing joy to their lives, that is grand.
“But even that—” his voice took on a weary note. “Even that loses its charm when you are weary and they still say, ‘Play for us. Play here. Play there.’ Then you long to be away from it all, to forget, and to make a fresh start.
“And so,” he added, smiling down at her, “so I ran away to Greenstone Ridge.
“One more thing—” his tone became more deeply serious. “I wanted to create a little music of my own, all my own. I suppose the desire to create is in the heart of all. Up there alone on Greenstone Ridge I wrote music. I played it to the birds, the wolves, the moose, but mainly to the twittering birds. You have heard some of it. How—how do you like it?”
“I think,” Greta whispered, “that it is divine!”
“But now—” Greta’s tone was wistful. “Now you will come back and you will play again! And you will teach others?”
“Yes.” There was a touch of tenderness in his voice. “Yes, dear little girl, I will go back now. I will teach others, and you shall be my very first pupil.”
“Oh!” she breathed. “How—how marvelous! But—” her voice sank to a whisper. “We—we are not rich.”
“Rich? Who spoke of money?” Once more he beamed down upon her. “No true artist wants money from his disciples. All he asks is that his pupils have the touch divine. And that, my child, is yours. It is your very great gift.”
For a time there was silence beside the campfire. That silence was broken by a shout of laughter. It came from the party of treasure hunters. Florence’s barrel had been dragged from its sandy hiding place.
“I’ll just break in the head with the spade,” she said as it lay on its side.
“No! No!” Vincent Stearns took the spade from her. Setting the barrel on end, he rubbed the sand away to find a wooden cork. With the heavy handle of his hunting knife he drove this in, and at once a pungent odor filled the air.
“Rum!” said Vincent. “Very old rum!”
“And not gold?” Florence’s hopes fell.
“Just rum,” the photographer repeated. “Some trader buried it years ago. Poor fellow! He never came back!”
“I—I’ll pour it out.” Florence’s hand was on the small barrel.
“Oh, I—I wouldn’t do that!” Once again Vincent intervened. “They say old rum is very good for colds. That right, Swen?”
“Sure it is, in the winter.” Swen smiled broadly.
“Leave it to Swen and me,” Vincent suggested. And so it was left.
“But those green eyes I saw up on the ridge,” Greta was saying to Percy O’Hara. “I saw them twice. They were horrible.”
“That,” Percy O’Hara chuckled, “was the light from my green-eyed mansion.
“You see,” he laughed again, “I found a great many greenstones on the ridge. One day I got a grinding wheel from Swen’s little store.”
“He told me,” she murmured.
“I left money for it. I polished the stones and set them in some soft sort of rock for tiny windows to the crude cabin I built. When my lamp was lit they shone out green in the night, those eyes to my green-eyed mansion.”
“A green-eyed mansion on the ridge of Isle Royale,” Greta said in a low tone. “Perhaps some day the whole world will learn of it and make a pilgrimage to it.”
“God forbid!” said Percy O’Hara fervently.
Vincent Stearns and Percy O’Hara bade their young friends farewell at dawn. With Swen they went gliding away toward Rock Harbor Lodge. They would wait the coming of a passing steamer that would carry them home.
When the chill damp of morning was gone, the three girls spread blankets on the sand and fell fast asleep.
It was mid-afternoon when they sat down to the first meal of the day. It was a regal feast, for Swen had left two large, juicy steaks, and Vincent had contributed a large box of chocolates.
While they were in the midst of this repast there came from the bay a piercing scream. It was followed by a most ludicrous laugh.
“That,” exclaimed Florence, jumping up, “is old Dizzy, the dear, crazy old loon! He survived the storm.”
She threw him a large piece of fresh meat. After swallowing it at a gulp, he favored her with one more burst of laughter, then went splashing away.
“Do you know,” she said as she resumed her place, “we’ve got a few days left here? I, for one, am through with mysteries. I’m all for having a hilarious good time—boating, swimming, fishing, hiking, and never a care!”
This program was carried out until quite suddenly out of a clear sky mystery once more caught them. Nor will any of them live to regret it.
It all came about because Florence suggested that they row out to the reef where the unluckyPilgrimhad gone aground.
To them the reef was a mournful sight. Nothing appeared above the placid surface. A little way down on the jagged rocks were the boilers and engines of thePilgrim.
“And look!” Florence exclaimed. “Barrels down there. Three barrels. Not very far down either. Barrels of oil, Swen said they were. Must have shaken out of the hull, like peas out of a pod. But barrels of oil. You’d think they might be worth something.”
Then, like a flash, a thought came to her. “That man on the schooner, the diver, what was he after? Could it be—?” She dared not trust herself to think further. Swen was coming that night with supplies. She would tell him about the barrels.
“Yes,” Swen agreed at once when he had been told of the discovery, “those barrels of oil are worth quite a little. If it’s linseed oil they’d be worth fifty dollars apiece. Lubricating oil is cheaper, but would be worth going after. Dive down and put on grappling hooks. Drag them up on the reef. That should be easy.”
“Well!” Florence exclaimed. “We’ve been ‘three last passengers’ and castaways. Now we are about to turn wreckers!”
And wreckers they were. They found it an easy task to attach the grappling irons, then with a cable attached to Swen’s small power boat to drag the first two barrels to the dry surface of the jagged reef.
The third barrel presented difficulties. It appeared unusually heavy. Twice the hooks slipped off. The third time the capstan on the boat gave way. But in time this third barrel lay beside its two companions on the reef, well above water.
“There you are!” Swen exulted. “A fine day’s work! We’ll just tie up and have a look.” He nosed the boat inshore.
“Huh!” he grunted a short time later. “Two barrels of lubricating oil. Not so good.
“But look!” he exclaimed. “What’s this? This third barrel has rubbed against the rock until it got a hole in its side. No oil in that.”
Just at that moment Florence caught sight of something that set her heart racing—a glint of gold from that hole in the barrel.
“Sw-wen!” she said shakily. “Just help me roll that barrel over.”
“Why? What?” Swen complied, and as he did so a golden coin rolled from the hole in the barrel.
“A barrel of gold!” Florence sat down suddenly. She sat in a puddle of water on the concave side of a rock and did not know it.
A barrel of gold it was—no less. The head of the steel barrel had been removed. A great number of gold coins, wrapped in paper, had been packed inside, then the head had been sealed up by steel welding. When the barrel had been painted it looked just like any other.
Three hours later when the little fishing boat pulled away she carried a considerable treasure all in gold coins.
“Of course,” Swen warned, “it’s not our gold. But there’s something in it for us all the same. Salvage, I guess you would call it.”
The mystery of that barrel of gold was not solved at once. Little by little it became known that a very rich and stubborn man had refused to give up his hoarded gold when the United States Government, for the good of all its people, demanded that he should. Thinking to evade the law, he had packed his gold in a metal barrel and had attempted to ship it to Canada, and, as we know, had failed.
Just who the men were on the schooner, with the diver on board, will probably never be revealed. Were they hired by the rich man to retrieve the treasure? Were they plain thieves who, having got some knowledge of the gold, proposed to take it for themselves? Who can say?
Before the girls left the island a rumor was set afloat that there were bears to be found on the island. It was traced to the mainland. It was discovered there that a certain man of doubtful character had started the rumor. As proof of his story he displayed scratched hands and tattered clothing. He had met the bear, he said, by the old lighthouse at the end of Rock Harbor.
“That,” Jeanne laughed, “must have been the head hunter. It was my bear he met. I’m glad, though,” she added, “that he escaped with his life. It is too terrible to die. The bear punished him quite enough.”
The three girls were back in their city homes when the salvage on their barrel of gold arrived. Finding it to be quite a tidy sum, they promptly divided it in two parts and sent one part to Swen to be used for the best interests of his fisherfolk. That which remained they placed in the bank, a treasure hoard to be spent, in part at least, on some further adventure. If you care to know what those adventures might be you are invited to read the book calledGypsy Flight.