Late that evening Betty returned from her yachting party. She had had a glorious time, had traveled aboard the most marvelous yacht, all shining brass and mahogany, satin cushions and lace curtains. She had had as her traveling companions such notable people as she had never hoped to know. A senator, a great yachtsman, a wonderful actress and a real poet had been in the party. For all this she found herself over and over longing to be back at the island where she might confide her marvelous secret to those who had a right to know.
They ran over to Monhegan. When she found that Ruth and Pearl were gone, her desire to be back increased tenfold.
Hardly had she raced up to the big cottage on the hill to change from middy and short blue skirt to blouse and knickers than she went tearing at a perilous rate down the hill toward Ruth’s house.
By great good fortune both Ruth and Pearl were there.
“Oh, girls!” she exclaimed in an excited whisper. “I have a most beautiful secret! There’s a hole in the floor and it’s all full of the most marvelous silk things!”
“A hole in the floor!” said Ruth, quite mystified by the girl’s wild rambling.
“Come down to the beach.” Betty dragged at their arms. “No one will hear us there. I—I’ll tell you all about it. Oh, girls! We must do something about it! We truly must!”
Away to the beach they went. There on the golden sand with the dark waters murmuring at their feet, with the lights of Portland Harbor winking and blinking at them, and the moon looking down upon them like some benevolent old grandfather, the two girls listened while Betty unfolded the story of her two visits to old Fort Skammel.
“A warm room,” she said at the end in a voice that was husky with excitement, “a warm room, all glowing with a weird yellow light, and full of silk things, dresses and dresses, all pink and gold, and blue and green. You never saw any like them.”
“We’ll go over there,” said Ruth, “but not at night.”
“No, not at night.” Betty shuddered.
“When we have all seen it, we’ll tell someone, perhaps Captain O’Connor. Can’t go to-morrow morning,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “I promised to go over and lift Don’s lobster traps. Might get back in time to go over in the afternoon.”
So they left the beach with the Portland lights still winking and blinking at them, to return home and to their beds.
As Ruth lay once more in her own bed looking out on the harbor, she caught the slow movement of some great dark bulk, and knew it was the ancient sailing ship,Black Gull. Never before had this ship spoken so clearly of the glorious past of dear old Maine, of ships and the sea, of settlement and glorious conquest, and of her brave sons who in every generation had given their lives for freedom.
Never before had she so longed to see the old ship, with every patched and time-browned sail set, go gliding out into the free and open sea. Perhaps this longing was prophetic of that which was shortly to come.
It was another day, another golden link in the wondrous chain that is life. Both Ruth and Betty were some distance away from their island home, from cottage and big summer house. Fort Skammel, with its haunting mysteries, and Witches Cove were far away in the dreamy distance and well nigh forgotten in the charm of rocks, sky, sea and summer fragrance that was all about them. They had come on a little journey all their own, these two, and for a purpose. At the present moment Ruth was seated upon a rocky ledge completely surrounded by wild sweet peas in full bloom and Betty was somewhere out to sea in a punt.
Green Island, the rugged bit of broken waste on which Ruth sat, is the home of the seagulls. No one has ever lived on that island, but, as evening falls on Casco Bay, many a seagull, weary with his day’s search for food, may be seen winging his way across the dark waters to this, his haven of rest.
Of all the spots near Portland Harbor, the rugged shoals off Green Island are best for lobster fishing. Don had set a number of traps here. Having been called to Portland, he had asked Ruth to sail theFoolemaginout to the island to lift the traps and bring in the catch.
She had asked Betty to go with her. Betty had brought clams and a cod line. There is no better cod fishing to be had than on the shoals by Green Island.
Betty had asked permission to fish over the shoals from Ruth’s punt. Since the day was calm, Ruth had given consent. Such a thing is always risky, for a sudden fog or a squall may come up at any moment. But perhaps Ruth still held in the back of her head the city boy’s declaration, “Life is a joke.” At any rate, Betty had gone. The weather had continued calm and clear.
Looking out to sea, Ruth’s eye caught the gleam of Betty’s slender white figure standing up in her punt, fishing. For a time she thought of Betty and almost envied her. She had seen so much of the world and of life.
“Well, some people are lucky,” she told herself. “No use disliking them for their luck.”
At that, forgetting Betty, she sank back upon a bed of fragrant wild sweet peas, to stare dreamily at the drifting white clouds. Then, without really intending to, she fell fast asleep.
She was startled from her sleep a half hour later by a resounding boom that shook the rugged island to its base and set a thousand seagulls soaring and screaming as only seagulls can.
“Target practice,” she told herself, in no great alarm. “Ten-mile guns. Oh, listen!”
Came a loud scream as a shell passed at terrific speed through the air, and again a deafening boom.
“Closer to the island than usual,” she told herself. “Glad I’ve lifted the lobster traps. Guess I’ll get out.”
She was standing now, looking down at her staunch little motor boat that gently bumped the rocky shore of a sheltering cove.
A sudden thought struck her all of a heap. She came to earth with a jolt.
“Betty!” she thought. “Betty Bronson! She doesn’t know about the guns. She can’t. She’ll be killed, blown to bits!”
Fort McKinley is ten miles from Green Island. At certain times of the year a target is set on a raft and a schooner detailed to drag it about. When the target is in position near Green Island, a plane circling low over the water warns fishing crafts away. Then the great guns of the fort, firing projectiles weighing a thousand pounds and more, break their long silence. Ten miles from the fort, close to the drifting target, the huge projectile falls. It strikes the water with a loud report. It bounces, rises once more in air and, singing its song of hate and defiance, flies through the air to at last sink to the bottom a hundred fathoms below. Into this target practice Betty had blundered.
“I wish I could warn her,” Ruth told herself now. “The man in the seaplane should do it. But he probably does not see her at all. Little dark boat against a broad expanse of dark sea. How could he? And besides, perhaps there is no danger after all. The firing for to-day may stop any minute. The target ship may move off in some other direction.”
The firing did not cease. The target ship did not move away.
“Ought to be getting back home.” Ruth’s gaze swept a hazy sky, then fell to her staunch little sloop. “Going to storm. Can’t tell how bad. Hate to spend a night out here.” But without Betty she could not go.
Turning, she made her way down the rocky slope to the spot where her boat was moored.
Her hand was on the painter when again, closer, more terrifying, there came a Zss-Spt-Boom.
Dropping the painter, she turned and walked hurriedly back up the hill.
With strained attention her eyes sought that small white figure. It was nowhere to be seen.
“Gone!” Vast relief was expressed in her tone. “Thought she’d see how unsafe it was.”
Just to make assurance doubly sure, she took up her field glasses and swept the black waters.
One moment of silent attention and she dropped the glasses as if they were hot.
The sight that met her gaze as her eager eyes behind strong field glasses sought out the lone fisherman, set her heart beating madly. A shell, striking some distance back of the little boat, then bouncing in air again, appeared to pass over the city girl’s head.
It was then, for the first time that Betty awoke to her peril. This awakening was like the sudden ending of a dream. The very abruptness of it was her undoing. She had just succeeded in hooking a great fish. Perhaps it was a thirty-pound cod, a ray or a sunfish. She will never know, for, having brought it half way up from the depths, she was shaken to the very core of her being by this terrific boom and nerve wracking scream.
She threw herself backward, tangled with the cod line, set the boat tilting, tried in vain to recover her balance and without knowing how it had all happened, suddenly found herself free of the cod line but submerged in cold salt water and clinging frantically to the bottom of her overturned punt.
Ruth, standing on the hill, saw all this. She saw more; that the girl was still within the danger zone and that the target schooner was moving in a direction that momentarily increased her peril.
“I must go to her,” she told herself with a little gasp of fear. “There is no other way.”
With one short word of prayer for strength, the fishergirl of the Maine coast dashed down the slope, jumped into her sloop, threw over the wheel, then went pop-popping straight away toward the imperiled girl and her overturned punt. Straight on into the path of the raging terror that was intended for enemies in time of war she went, without one thought of turning back.
“One thing,” she thought more calmly, “is in my favor. My boat is white. The seaplane scout may see me. He can signal them to stop firing.”
Boom! Zing! Boom! the terror sounded again.
Her heart skipped a beat. Perspiration stood out on her nose. She felt deathly cold all over. Yet a firm and steady hand steered the motor boat straight on its course.
Of a sudden from over her head there came the thunder of motors. For ten seconds it was deafening. Then, quite as suddenly as it had started, it ceased.
Ruth’s heart stood still. “What now?” she thought. The pop-popping of her own tiny motor seemed but the discharge of a toy pistol.
She was soon enough to know what was next. Glancing up, she dodged and barely escaped leaping into the sea. The great seaplane seemed about to fall upon her.
The plane, of course, was not as close as it had seemed. It was so close that, as the motor suddenly ceased its throbbing, she caught the singing of struts as the plane went zooming on through the air. She did not hear distinctly the words that were shouted down to her, but she did catch the import of their meaning. It was a warning that she was in great danger and must get out of those waters at once. As an answer she could only shout back that a girl in an overturned punt was in far greater danger than she. She pointed in the direction of Betty and the punt. This pointing must have accomplished more than all her screams, for certainly her last words were lost in the sudden thunder of motors.
The plane was up and off again. Had he understood? Would he flash a signal that meant, “Cease firing?” She dared hope so.
Ten seconds later she realized how brave the sea scout had been. A glancing shell passed through the air at the very spot where, a few seconds before, his plane had been.
“If there is another shot?” she thought. She dared not think further.
But now, once again her eyes were upon the punt and Betty. Already she was alongside.
“Here! Give me your hand!” she said in words that came short and quick. Betty obeyed. She dropped with a thump in the bottom of the boat. Then, with all speed, they were away.
Not until they were safe on Green Island did they realize that the sea scout had flashed a message and firing had ceased.
“Well,” Ruth sighed as they dropped in the sun among the wild sweet peas, “we—we’re safe.”
“Are we?” Betty’s face still showed signs of terror.
“Yes. They never shoot at the island. But you’ve got to get out of those clothes,” Ruth added quickly.
In silence she helped Betty out of her sodden garments. After rubbing and chafing her limbs until the pink of health came to them, she wrapped her in her own storm coat and told her to lie there in the sun while she wrung her clothes out and spread them on the rocks to dry.
“You—your punt!” Betty said at last with a choke in her voice that came near to a sob.
“They’re firing again now,” said Ruth. “We may be able to get it and tow it in later. Can’t now. But didn’t you hear the guns?” she asked.
“The guns? Why, yes, I guess I did. Must have—as in a dream. They’re always booming away over at the fort. And I was having such wonderful luck! Lots of cod, one ten-pounder. And a polluk long as I am. Just hooked one so big I couldn’t land him when that terrible thing happened! But Ruth—do you truly think we can save your punt?”
“Might. I hope so. Current is strong. That will carry it away. Hope they stop soon.”
“I hope so,” said Betty dreamily. The shock, the bright sunshine, the drug-like scent of wild sweet peas were getting the better of her. Soon, with head pillowed on her arm, she was fast asleep.
As she slept Ruth thought of many things, of the seagulls soaring overhead, of her lost punt, of the booming, bursting shells, of the old shipBlack Gulland of the strange secret room in the depths of old Fort Skammel.
The firing ceased without her knowing it. Betty awoke and struggled into her wind-blown, sundried garments. Still she sat staring dreamily at the sea.
Then a sudden burst of sound broke in upon her day dreams.
“The plane,” she said, springing to her feet. “It’s coming close.”
“See!” said Betty. “He’s not flying. He’s scooting along on the surface of the water. He’s towing something. Oh, good!” She leaped into the air to do a wild dance.
“It’s your punt! It’s not lost! He found it! He’s bringing it in!”
This was all quite gloriously true. Very soon the seaplane came to a halt before the island. The aviator unbuckled himself; then walked back along the fusilage to drop into the punt and begin rowing shoreward.
As he came close Ruth saw that he was a young army officer with a clean, frank face.
“You’re lucky,” he said to Betty. “Lucky to have such a brave friend. You might have been killed.”
Betty’s arm stole round Ruth’s waist. Ruth’s face took on an unusual rosy tint.
“I’ve brought back your punt,” he said in apparent embarrassment. “It’s rather a long swim back to my plane.”
“I—I’ll row you out,” said Ruth, springing forward.
“I hoped you might.”
As the young officer sat in the stern and Ruth rowed him out to sea he noted with apparent pleasure the play of the splendid muscles in her brown arms.
“Some seaman,” he complimented her.
Again Ruth flushed.
As they swung in beside the seaplane the girl’s eyes took in every detail of the plane.
“Never saw one so close before,” she said.
“Want to take a ride?”
“Not now.”
“Sometime?”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you know,” she said as he stood up in the punt, “a friend of mine, my cousin, saw a plane pass Monhegan in the dead of night. Trans-Atlantic plane, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. Only none have crossed for a long time. Say!” he said, sitting down again. “What sort of a plane was it?”
“Large, sea-colored plane. No name. No insignia. No mark of any kind.”
“That’s queer. Listen!” He put a hand on her arm. “Keep that dark. You may have made an important discovery. Men are coming to this country that we don’t want here. Things have happened. There’s more than one way to get into America these days.”
“Strange,” he mused, “you can’t make a great discovery, invent some new thing, do a daring deed, but those who are selfish, heartless, who wish to kill, destroy, tear down, take possession of it! But I must go. Hope I see you again soon.”
“Thanks for bringing back the punt,” Ruth said.
“Don’t mention it.”
He sprang upon the fusilage. Ruth rowed away. Motors thundered. The plane glided away, rose, then speedily became a speck in the sky.
Ruth bumped the rocky shore with a crash that nearly overturned the punt. She was thinking of many things.
They did not go to old Fort Skammel that evening. It was late when they got back to their island and Betty’s nerves were pretty well shaken up by the happenings of the day.
That night as the hours of slumber approached Ruth lay on her bed looking out toward the bay. The night was hot and sultry. A lazy warm breeze from the land waved the thin curtains in a ghostlike fashion. There was no need for covers, so she lay there allowing the breeze to fan her toes. Half awake, half asleep, she mused and dreamed of many things.
The night was dark, the sky overcast. Neither moon nor stars shone through. The scene before her, save for a wavering light here and there, was black. “Like a beautiful picture suddenly wiped out by the swing of a broad, black brush,” she told herself.
Still there were the lights. One might imagine them to be anything. In her fancy she told herself that the red light, very high above the water, was hung on the mast of the old wood hauling schooner.
“And her hold is packed full of valuable silks,” she told herself. It was easy to dream on such a night. One might imagine anything and believe it.
She stared away toward old Fort Skammel. A light flared over there. “They’re carrying the silks from that hot little underground room,” she told herself, and at once became quite excited about it.
“Should have gone over there this very day,” she mused.
But no, the light vanished. It showed no more. “Couldn’t load all that in the dark. To-morrow,” she said. There was an air of finality in her tone.
She tried to see the ancient schooner,Black Gull. Too dark for that. She could imagine it all the same. She could see her swinging there at anchor, a dark, brooding giant, whispering of the past, telling of glorious old State of Maine days, that were gone forever.
“I love you, love you, love you,” the girl whispered as if the dark old ship were a person, a gallant knight of her dreams.
At that, leaning back on her pillow, one brown hand beneath her head, she fell asleep.
Just how long she slept she may never know. Enough that she suddenly found herself sitting up wide awake and staring out at the bay that was all aglow with a strange, lurid, unearthly light.
“It’s the end of the world,” she told herself and wondered at her own calmness.
“It’s Portland Harbor. It’s on fire, burning up!” came a little more excitedly as she found herself more truly awake.
It was only as she sprang to her feet and stood there in the window with her dream robes blowing about her that she realized the full and terrible truth.
Then she covered her eyes with her hands as she sank to the bed with a sharp cry.
“Black Gull, you are on fire. You are burning up!”
And there she had at last the solemn truth. At once her mind was in a whirl. How had it happened? She recalled the curious visit she and Betty had made there in the night and of the remarkable pirate band that had come to join them. Had these men returned? Had a match carelessly dropped, a stove overheated, brought the great catastrophe?
What could be done? Nothing. There was no fireboat. No pipe line could reach her.Black Gullwas doomed.
In a state of suppressed excitement that held her nerves at the bursting point, she sat there watching a spectacle such as is the lot of few to see.
At first the blaze, flaming fiercely, fanned by the off shore breeze, went raging out to sea. But at last, all at once, as if awed by this sublime spectacle, the death of a great ship, the wind dropped and the blaze, like flames of some gigantic candle, rose up—up—up until it seemed to the watching girl that they must reach the sky and set the planets, the stars, the very universe aflame.
As she sat there, lips apart, pupils dilated, motionless, watching, the spectacle became a thing of many dreams. Now the flames were but the burning of a stupendous campfire, the dark bulk that stood half concealed, half revealed, docks, lighthouses, islands, were figures of reposing and crouching giants.
Then the flames became a ladder of fire. Down this ladder, a thousand angels, whose wings could not be touched by fire, swarmed.
The ship burned with a clear, red flame now. The water about her became a pool of red and old rose. At the edge of this pool small bulks moved, motor boats, row boats, launches.
“What can they do?” she murmured. “Nothing. Let them go to bed. They are like hunting hounds, in at the death.”
She wondered vaguely if the person responsible for this catastrophe were circling there, too. Strangely enough, she fancied she could pick the man, a dark-faced foreigner with a shock of black hair.
“The face-in-the-fire,” she thought.
For a moment she thought of dressing, of launching her punt and going on a still hunt for the man. In the end, she sat there watching to the end the death of much that was dear to her.
The end came with a suddenness that was startling. The masts had fallen, one at a time. Slowly, regularly, like seamen dropping from a ladder into a dory, they fell to send sparks shooting skyward. Then, with a thunder that was deafening, there came the shock of a terrific explosion.
For a space of seconds all the fire at the center of the earth seemed to be shooting skyward. Then darkness and silence, such as the girl had never known, settled over all.
Only the sea spoke. With a wild rushing breath it whispered of wind and storms, of treachery and death. Three times its whisper came loudly from the sandy beach. Then softly, it repeated its message until it died to nothing, and a breeze springing up from nowhere caught it up and carried it out to sea.
Springing to her feet, her arms flung wide, the girl stood there for a full moment. Rigid, silent, she was swearing vengeance on the destroyers ofBlack Gull.
Dropping to her place, again she scanned the sea. One by one, like death candles, lights were appearing. Here one, there one, they formed at last the flaming outline of a ship’s deck. All had been burned or blown away but the stout hull that for so many years had done battle with the waves. For an hour these burned brightly. Then, one by one they blinked out. The tide was rising. The sea had come to the rescue. It was extinguishing the fire. On the morrow the black skeleton of a gallant ship would show there above the restless waves.
“Gone!” she all but sobbed as she buried her face in the pillow. “Black Gullis gone forever.”
Early next morning Ruth and Pearl sailed theFlyawayto the scene of the night’s conflagration. No more mournful sight can be found than the wreck of a great ship, lifting its shattered form above the sea. They did not linger long. One thing Ruth observed, and that to her advantage in the future. The explosion had blown a hole in the right side of the ship. This left an open space above the water some ten feet wide. Other than this, save at extreme high tide, the ship’s hull rose above the water.
“Makes sort of a harbor,” said Pearl. “Believe you could sail theFlyawayright inside. Make a grand place to weather a squall.”
The three girls, Betty, Ruth and Pearl, fully intended going to old Fort Skammel that day. But life on the islands in Casco Bay is a busy one. Fish must be caught, clams dug, crabs and lobsters trapped and boiled. Summer visitors must be served for it is their money that fills the flour box, and the coal bin, too.
There was to be a great party up at the big hotel. Crabmeat salad was on the menu. The Brackets and Byrans were to supply the meal. So, all day long Ruth and Pearl picked away at boiled crabs, heaping up a little mountain of white meat.
“It’s too late to go to the fort now,” said Ruth as she straightened up to ease her aching back. “Let’s go for a sail instead.”
So a sail it was. They dropped down around the island and, skimming along over a faultless sea, came at last just as the shadows were deepening to Witches Cove.
“Let’s drop anchor and have our supper here,” suggested Pearl.
“Three gray witches may rise from the water and ask to join us,” said Ruth with a low laugh.
“Let them,” said Pearl, sending the anchor with a plunk into the sea. “There are worse creatures about than gray witches. Here’s hoping they don’t come too close to us.”
The tide was setting in. TheFlyawaywhich, like some active child, seemed always aching to be away, swung and turned, turned and dragged at anchor until she lay within a few feet of the rocky shore. Lying on the deck, munching crabmeat sandwiches and whispering of many things, the girls did not notice this until, with a suddenness that was startling, some dark object came flying through the air to land lightly on the deck.
“Boo!” exclaimed Pearl, springing up.
“Only a black cat,” laughed Ruth. “Smelled our crabmeat. There are some cunners in the box by the mast. Give him one.”
The girls had settled down once more to quiet murmuring, when from the rocks on the shore came a call.
“Ahoy, there! Something tells me you have one of my cats.”
“Or he has us,” said Pearl.
“Oh! It is you?” It was the little Secret Service man who spoke. “How are you? Anything new?”
“You should know!” said Ruth. “Black Gullis gone!”
“Yes, that’s right. But I don’t see——”
“Then you don’t see very well. She was blown up. Wasn’t supposed to be any explosives in her hold, was there? Who put them there?”
Ruth went on to remind him of her stolen punt and of the explosives she had found in it. She told him too of the secret meeting of the mock pirates on theBlack Gull.
“Does look like the work of the man smugglers,” he admitted. “Question is, were they using the old ship as a storehouse for stolen explosives, or did they wish to destroy the meeting place of those who have been attempting to bring them to justice?”
“Well, at any rate,” he said after a moment’s silence, “theBlack Gullis gone, and that’s one more loss to charge against them. Something tells me that their days in this, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, are numbered.”
“I hope so,” said Ruth fervently.
“Ruth,” whispered Pearl, leaning close, “shall we tell him about Fort Skammel?”
“No. Not yet,” the other girl whispered back.
His lunch finished, the black cat was returned to his master, then in the darkness theFlyawayedged out to the channel and away toward home.
In order to avoid the deeper channel where larger boats might be encountered, they sailed close to old Fort Skammel. There in the shadows of those ancient walls they met with further adventure.
As they came very close to the fort that at this point towers straight above the sea, the night suddenly went dark. It was as if some ghost of other days, a prisoner perhaps who had died in the fort’s dungeon, had turned off the light of the Universe.
Ruth shuddered and suddenly felt herself grow cold all over.
“Only a very dark cloud before the moon,” she told herself. “No danger. Know the way in the dark.”
So she did, but there was danger all the same. That she knew well enough in a moment, for of a sudden there came the pop-pop of a gasoline motor and a boat swinging round the point of the island began following them.
“No one lives on the island,” she said to Pearl in a low tone tense with emotion. “They must be following us. They burnedBlack Gulllast night. Now they are after us. Well, if the wind holds they won’t get us.”
She put her boat exactly before the wind. Her deck tipped till it dipped water. Yet the staunch-hearted girl did not alter the course by so much as an inch.
“Show ’em,Flyaway. Show ’em!” She spoke in tender tones as if the schooner were a child.
They were gliding silently up the bay when a pencil of light like a hot finger reached forward to touch them, then blinked out.
“Powerful electric torch,” the girl told herself.
A moment, two, three passed. The pop-popping grew louder.
“Gaining,” she said with a sigh that was a sob. “Should have told all. Had the customs officials, Civil Service, Captain O’Connor and all after them,” she said to Pearl. “But that room in the old fort. I wanted to see it. Silks, dresses, such things as she’d never seen, that’s what Betty said.”
The pencil of light felt for them again out of the dark, found them, then swung away.
“Nearer,” said Ruth. “Much nearer. Get us. And then?”
She leaned far forward, trying to see into the night. Fort Georges was ahead there somewhere, and——
The sudden reach of the white finger of light showed her something—a dark bulk straight ahead.
Quick as a flash she shot a line free, gripped a yardarm, reefed the sail, reached out into the dark, felt something, braced herself against it, held the schooner away, but allowed her to move forward until with a sigh she lost the touch of that hard bulk and all but fell into the sea.
The schooner swerved to the right, then glided forward once more.
“Hist!” Ruth whispered. “We are inside the sunken hull ofBlack Gull. For—for the moment, even in death she has saved us.
“Quick!” she said ten seconds later. “We will leave theFlyawayhere and take to our dory.”
As they crept away into the night with muffled oars making no sound, they saw the pencil of light searching the bay for them. It searched in vain.
A half hour later they were on their own beach. At once Don in theFoolemaginwas away with three armed men to scour the bay. They found theFlyawaywhere the girls had left her, inside the scarred hull ofBlack Gull, but the motor boat with its creeping pencil of white light had vanished off the sea.
“To-morrow,” Ruth said to Pearl as she bade her good night, “shall be the last day. Either we visit the mystery room of old Fort Skammel or we turn the whole affair over to the authorities.”
Before retiring Ruth sat for a long time before her window, looking out into the night, thinking things through.
The night was too dark to see far. In a way, she was thankful for that.Black Gullwas gone. She felt a tightening at the throat. When she recalled how the broken and charred skeleton of this once noble boat had saved her from something very terrible, she wanted to cry. Two unruly tears did splash down on her cheek.
“I must be brave,” she told herself. “There is much work to do.”
Work. They would go to old Fort Skammel in the morning. She was sure of that. And then?
The whole affair, or group of affairs, as she looked back upon them, now appeared to be coming together. The old wood ship with the bolts of cloth in her hold, the dory’s creaking oars in the night, their visit toBlack Gull, the strange pirate band, the face-in-the-fire, the curious little man at Witches Cove, the mysterious room at the heart of the old fort, their pursuers this very night, it all appeared to be reaching out to join into a solid whole.
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Betty’s experience off Green Island with the big guns and the seaplane might prove to be a part of the drama, though how I can’t see.”
A sound from off the bay reminded her of the great dark seaplane Pearl had seen off Monhegan.
“Monhegan and the girl I saved from the sea,” she said to herself. “How do they work in? Well, perhaps they don’t. As life is built up, some stones must be thrown aside.
“Life,” she said quite suddenly, “life is a joke.”
Somehow the words did not seem to ring true. She was tempted to wonder how she had come to believe that at all.
“It was the way that boy said it, I suppose,” she told herself. “Some people have a way about them. They are hard to resist.”
Stepping to the chest of drawers in one corner of her room, she took out the figured taffeta dress. It was a very attractive dress—pink roses over a background of pale gray. She had never worn it. To wear it would be to declare to her little world that she believed life was a joke. At least that was the way she felt about it. So, as yet, she did not feel ready to put it on.
Spreading it out on the bed, she looked at it for a long time. Then, carefully folding it up again, she put it back in the drawer.
After that, with all the realization of what to-morrow might bring forth, she did something she had not done since she was a little child. She dropped on her knees beside her humble bed, and placed her palms together in prayer.
Coming events do not always cast their shadows before them; or, if they do, those shadows are so filmy and ghostlike that only one endowed with the keenest of vision is able to see them. Never was there a fresher, calmer sea than that which greeted the three girls, Betty, Pearl and Ruth, when they pushed off in Ruth’s punt that morning bound for Fort Skammel. A perfect morning, not a shadowy suggestion of adventure. And yet——
An hour after they left the sandy beach of the island, Ruth’s unnerved fingers dropped a lighted electric torch on the floor at the heart of the ancient fort. It fell with a dull thud, and blinked out.
“Hot,” Ruth whispered. “The air down there is hot!”
“I told you,” Betty whispered back. She was working feverishly, struggling to free a second flashlight from the tangled mesh of her knitted sweater pocket.
Sensing what she was about, Ruth whispered:
“Get—get it?”
“Not yet.” The younger girl’s words came in short gasps.
Little wonder that they were startled. Having penetrated into the very heart of the old fort, having made their way through a one-time secret passage to a dungeon, they had come at last to the door in the floor. And the door stood wide open. Against their cheeks, grown cold from constant contact with clammy air, had blown a breath that seemed hot like the blast of a furnace.
They had come to a sudden halt, and there they stood.
Even in the broad light of day there is something gloomy, foreboding and mysterious about old Fort Skammel. Children who have ventured across the bay to the all but deserted island, where this ancient abandoned fort stands, will tell you of curious tales of adventures met with there, how the red eyes of rats as big as cats gleamed at them in the dark, how they have discovered secret passageways that led on and on until in fright they turned and went racing back into the bright light of day, and how at times ghostlike voices sounded down the echoing aisles.
In a little cove where the sand was snow white the three girls had drawn their punt high on the beach. Pearl had volunteered to stand guard outside. The other two had begun wending their way over a path that winds between tall grass and bushes to the fort.
Finding themselves at last before a great open stone archway that led directly into the chill damp of the fort, they had paused to listen and to think. The next moment, with a little quickening at her heart, Ruth had led the way into the semi-darkness of a stone corridor, and from there on and on into the deepening darkness. Now, here they were. Ruth had longed to look into that mysterious room. The opening to it was now at her feet, yet she felt more inclined to run away than to linger.
“Can’t you get it?” she whispered again, as no light appeared.
“It’s caught in my pocket. No, now I have it.”
The next instant a yellow light brought out once more the damp and dripping walls of stone with the mysterious opening in the floor at their feet.
“It was hot.” Ruth’s tone was full of awe. “I felt it. I felt hot air on my cheek!”
“So did I.”
Putting out two fingers, Ruth felt the fanning of hot air. “Warm,” she said, “not hot. Just seemed that way. But how could it be?”
“Can’t be a stove?”
“No. Tons of granite above.” Her eyes sought the low stone arch over their heads.
“Going to see,” said Ruth stoutly, dropping on her knees.
With a gasp Betty put out a hand to stop her. She was too late. Ruth had caught the ledge and swung down. Betty could but follow. The next instant they were looking upon a strange scene. This room, warmed by some mysterious power, as Betty had said, was piled high with bales and boxes of every description.
One of the boxes had slid from its place and burst open, revealing a half dozen silk dresses of bright and varied hues.
At once Ruth’s heart was in her throat. Here was treasure. Where was its keeper?
A rapid survey of the room revealed the surprising fact that there was no keeper, or at least, if there was one, he was away.
The thing that the two girls did after recovering from their astonishment might, by some cold and practical people, seem the height of folly. Certainly, under the circumstances, it could not be called wise. But who of us all behave wisely at all times?