“Not you!” The old man seized him and pinned him to the rock. “If someone is to undo the harm done by your recklessness it must be another.” The aged inventor paused, out of breath.
That other was Ruth. No one knew that better than she. The time had come when she must battle with death for the life of another.
“Go! Go for a boat!” she shouted to the boy and the man. Her voice carried above the roar of the surf. With that she leaped square into the arms of a gigantic wave to be carried away by it toward the spot where the white speck, which had a moment before been a joyous twelve-year-old girl, struggled more feebly and ever more feebly against the forces that strove to drag her down.
The battle that followed will always remain a part of Monhegan’s colorful history.
Two thoughts stuck in Ruth’s mind as, throwing the foam from her face, she struck for the place where the white spot had last been. She must get a firm grip on the girl; then she must go out, out, OUT. Nothing else could save them. By a great good fortune this was a moment of comparative calm. But such calms are deceiving. Ruth was not to be deceived. The ocean was a cat playing with a mouse. At any moment it might be raging again. To attempt a landing on the rocks, to allow one’s self to be cast high against Black Head’s pitiless wall was to meet death at a single blow.
“I must go out, out, OUT. There is life,” she told herself over and over.
But first the girl. A low wave lifted her. Riding its crest, she caught a glimpse of that slight figure. But now she was gone, perhaps forever.
But no; there she was closer now, still battling feebly against the blind forces dragging her down.
With almost superhuman strength the fisher girl leaped against the waves. Now she had covered half the distance, now two-thirds, and now she reached the child. As if to torment her, a wave snatched her away. She disappeared.
“Gone!” she murmured.
But no, there she was, closer now. Her hand shot out. She grasped a shred of white. It gave way. A second stroke, and she had her.
Gripping her firmly with one hand, she swam with the other. Swimming now with all her might, she made her way out until the sea grew wild again.
Nothing could be done now but keep heads above the foam and spray. One, two, three waves, each one higher than the last, carried them toward the terrible wall of stone. Now they were five yards back, now eight, now ten. With an agonizing cry, the girl saw the rocks loom above them.
But now, just in the nick of time, as if a hand had been laid upon the water and a mighty voice had whispered, “Peace! Be still!” the waves receded.
Ruth, looking into the younger girl’s eyes, read understanding there.
“Can you cling to my blouse? I can swim better.”
The girl’s answer was a grip at the collar that could not be broken.
The next moment a fearful onrush found them farther out, safer. But Ruth’s strength was waning. There was no haven here. A boat was their only hope.
Hardly had she thought this than a dark prow cut a wave a hundred yards beyond them. Above the prow was a sea-tanned face.
“Captain Field!” She shouted aloud with joy. Captain Field is the youngest, bravest of all the Atlantic seaboard.
“Now we will be saved,” she said, huskily. The girl’s grip on her jacket tightened.
The rescue of two girls by a small fishing schooner tossed by such a sea was no easy task. More than once it seemed the boat would be swamped and all lost. Three times the waves snatched them away as they were upon the point of being drawn aboard. But in the end, steady nerves, strong muscles and brave hearts won. Dripping, exhausted, but triumphant, Ruth and the one she had saved were lifted over the gunwale. At once the staunch little motor boat began its journey to a safe harbor, and all the comforts of home.
That evening Ruth sat before a tiny open grate in her room at Field’s cabin. She was alone; wanted to be. The summer folks were giving a concert up at the big hotel. Pearl and Don had gone. She had wanted to sit and think.
She had been angry for hours. “I’ll leave Monhegan in the morning,” she told herself, rising to stamp back and forth across the narrow room. “If Don isn’t ready to go, I’ll take the tug to Booth Harbor and go down by steamer. I won’t stay here, not another day!”
She slumped down in her chair again to stare moodily at the fire. What had angered her? This she herself could not very clearly have told. Perhaps it was because they had tried to make a heroine of her. She hadn’t meant to be a heroine, wouldn’t be made one. The whole population of the island, a hundred and fifty or more, had flocked down to the dock when Captain Field brought her and the rescued girl in.
There had been shouts of “What a wonder! A miracle girl!”
An artist had wanted her to pose for a portrait. “So romantically rugged,” he had said as he gripped her arm with fingers that were soft.
“Romantically rugged.” She didn’t want her portrait painted; had only wanted dry clothes.
“They had no right to do it,” she told herself savagely. “If that boy and girl hadn’t been tempting God and Providence by playing in the surf, I wouldn’t have been obliged to risk my life to save the girl. And on top of that they have the nerve to want me to pose as a heroine!”
She slumped lower in her chair. Yes, she’d go home to-morrow. She had begun by loving Monhegan. The bold, stark beauty of it had fascinated her. Nowhere else did the surf run so high. Nowhere else were the headlands so bold. No surf was so green, blue and purple as that which rose and fell off Black Head, Burnt Head and Skull Rock.
But now the cold brutality of nature as demonstrated here left her terrified and cold.
Perhaps, after all, she was only in a physical slump after a heroic effort. For all that, she had formed a resolve to leave Monhegan in the morning. Like a spike in a mahogany log, the resolve had struck home. It would not be withdrawn.
As for Pearl, she was at that moment listening to such music as it was seldom her privilege to hear—Tittle’s Serenade done on harp, flute, violin and cello. Her eyes were half closed, but for all that she was seeing things. She was, as in a vision, looking into the night where a single ray of light fell upon a mysterious dark-winged seaplane speeding away through the fog above the sea.
* * * * * * * *
It was at noon of that day that Betty found herself moving slowly, cautiously down the narrow passageway at the heart of old Fort Skammel, that was supposed to lead to the spot where Ruth had seen the face in the light of her Roman candle on the Fourth of July.
The place was spooky enough in daytime. In truth, day and night were alike in those subterranean passageways which had once led from dungeon to dungeon and from a battery room to one at a farther corner of the massive pile of masonry. No ray of light ever entered there. The walls were damp and clammy as a tomb.
Still, urged on by mystery and who knows what need of change and excitement, the slender, dark-eyed girl pushed forward down this corridor, round a curve, across a small room which echoed in a hollow way at her every footstep, then round a curve again until with a wildly beating heart she paused on the very spot where Ruth had fired the eventful Roman candle.
Nor was she to wait long for a thrill. Of a sudden, of all places in that dark, damp and chill passage, a hot breath of air struck her cheek.
Her face blanched as she sprang backward. It was as if a fiery dragon, inhabiting this forsaken place, had breathed his hot breath upon her.
Be it said to her credit that, after that one step backward, she held her ground. Lifting a trembling hand, she shot the light of her electric torch before her.
That which met her gaze brought an exclamation to her lips. Not ten feet before her a square in the floor, some three feet across, tilted upward. Moved by an invisible, silent force, it tilted more and more. A crack had appeared between the floor and the tilting slab. From this crack came the blast of heat that fanned her cheek.
“The fort is on fire,” she told herself in a moment of wild terror.
Then, in spite of her fright, she laughed. How could a structure built entirely of stone burn? The thing was absurd; yet there was the heat from that subterranean cavity.
“There!” She caught her breath again. The heat waves had been cut short off. She looked. The slab of stone was dropping silently down.
“It—why it’s as if someone lifted it to have a look at me!” she told herself as a fresh tremor shot up her spine.
She did not doubt for a moment that this conclusion was correct. In spite of this, and in defiance of her trembling limbs that threatened to collapse, she moved forward until she stood upon the very slab that had been lifted.
“Don’t seem different from the others,” she told herself. “Nothing to mark it.”
“Well,” she told herself as her eager feet carried her farther and farther from that haunting spot, “I’ve done a little exploring. I’ve made a discovery and had a thrill. That’s quite enough for one day.”
“Ought to tell someone,” she mused as she sat before the wood fire in the great fireplace of the big summer cottage on the hill that evening. “But then, I wonder if I should? It’s really Ruth’s mystery. She should have a share in its uncovering. I’ll go back to-morrow and see what more I can discover,” she told herself at last.
Had she but known it, reinforcements were shortly to be on the way. In Don’s room on Monhegan, Ruth, Pearl and Don had just held a consultation. In the end they agreed that they should start for home in the morning.
A short while after this, Ruth, as she was about to fall asleep, reached a comforting conclusion:
“Since I saved that girl’s life,” she told herself, “it should square that swordfish affair. I can now spend the swordfish money with a good conscience. I shall have a new punt as soon as I reach Portland Harbor.”
Don’s boat was a sailing sloop with a “kicker” (a small gasoline motor) to give him a lift when the wind was against him. The day they started for home was unusually calm. Sails bagged and flapped in the gentle breeze. The little motor pop-popped away, doing its best, but they made little progress until toward night, when a brisk breeze came up from the east. Then, setting all sail, and shutting off the motor, they bent to the wind and went gliding along before it.
There is nothing quite like a seaworthy sail boat, a fair wind and a gently rippling sea. At night, with the sea all black about you and the stars glimmering above, you appear to drift through a faultless sky toward worlds unknown.
Ruth and Pearl, after their exciting experiences on Monhegan, enjoyed this to the full. Not for long, however, for there was something in the salt sea air and the gently rocking boat which suggested long hours of sleep. So, after wrapping themselves in blankets, with a spare sail for a mattress, they stretched out upon the deck and were soon lost to the world of reality and at home in the land of dreams.
It was on this same calm day that Betty returned to old Fort Skammel and the scene of the tilting stone floor.
Just what she expected to see or do, she could not perhaps have told. Driven on by the spirit of adventure, and beckoned forward by the lure of mystery, she just went, that was all.
As it turned out, she saw that which gave her food for thought during many a long hour.
Having made her way, with hesitating steps and backward glances, to the spot where Ruth had seen the face-in-the-fire, she threw her light ahead; then, with a quick little “Oh-oo” took an involuntary step backward.
The square section of stone floor was now tilted to a rakish angle. It appeared stationary. Beneath it was revealed an open space some three feet across.
As the girl switched off her light and stood there trembling, she realized that a faint unearthly yellow light shone from the half dark space beneath the stone.
For a full moment, with no sound save the wild beating of her heart to disturb the silence of the place, she stood there motionless.
Then, seeing that nothing happened, she plucked up courage, and, without turning on her torch, dropped on hands and knees, to creep toward the oblong of yellow light.
Three times her heart leaped into her mouth. A small stone rolling from beneath her hand wakened low echoes in the place. A stone that gave way beneath her suggested that she might at any moment be plunged into an unknown abyss below. Some sound in the distance, probably made by a rat, all but made her flee. In time she found herself gazing down into the space beneath the tilted floor.
The sight that met her gaze was worthy of her effort. A small square room lay beneath her and in that room, revealed by the witch-like yellow light, piled on every side and in great squares at the center, were bolts and bolts of richly colored silks and boxes beyond number, all filled, if one were to be guided by the three that had been broken open, with silk dresses, red, blue, orange, green, silver and gold, fit for any princess of old.
“Oh! Ah!” she said under her breath.
Then, just as she was beginning to wonder and to plan, there sounded far down some dark corridor heavy footsteps.
In wild consternation, without again switching on her torch, she sprang away down the narrow passageway. Nor did she draw an easy breath until she was in her punt and half way across the bay.
Then as she dropped the oars for a second she drank in three long breaths of air to at last release a long drawn “Whew!”
She had not been in the big summer cottage on the hill five minutes, her brain pulsating from a desire to tell someone of her marvelous discovery, when the rich lady of the house told her of a yachting party to start early next morning.
“We will be gone three or four days,” she was told. “Pack your bag well, and don’t forget your bathing suit.”
“Three days! Oh—er—” She came very near letting the cat out of the bag right there, but caught herself just in time.
“Why! Don’t you want to go?” Her benefactress stared at her in astonishment. “It will be a most marvelous trip, all the way to Booth Bay and perhaps Monhegan, and on Sir Thomas Wright’s eighty-foot yacht. You never saw such a boat, Betty. Never!”
“Yes, yes, I’d love to go.” Betty’s tone was quite cheerful and sincere now. She had caught that magic name Monhegan.
“Ruth and Pearl are up there,” she told herself. “It’s a small island. I am sure to see them. I’ll tell Ruth. It’s her secret. Then, when we come back—” She closed her eyes and saw again those piles and piles of shimmering silken dresses.
“I’d like to try them on, every one,” she told herself with a little gurgle of delight that set the others in the room staring at her.
But Ruth and Pearl, as you already know, were on their way home.
“Look, Don. What a strange red light.” Pearl, who had been curled like a kitten on the prow of the boat, rose on her elbows to point away to sea.
“Where?” Don asked.
“Over by Witches Cove.”
“Plenty of lights on the sea,” he grumbled. He was tightening the last bolts in the pride of his life, his sloop with a kicker, which he had whimsically namedFoolemagin. They had been home from Monhegan a full day now. His motor had gone wrong, and he was repairing it. In a few moments she would be cutting the waters down the bay. He did not wish to be disturbed.
“But this one acts so strangely,” Pearl persisted. “It sort of wavers up and down, like—like a ship in distress.”
“Distress! What nonsense!” the boy exclaimed impatiently as he tossed down a hammer and seized a wrench. “There is no sea tonight. A little swell, that’s all. How could a ship go aground on a night like this?”
“There now!” he sighed at last. “She ought to do for a trial trip.”
Releasing his boat from the float to which she was anchored, he threw the motor into gear. Purring as sweetly as a cat on the hearth, the motor set the boat gliding through the water.
“What could be finer?” He dropped back on the circular seat in the stern.
Indeed, what could? The sea, the night and a boat. Such a boat, too! True, the hull of theFoolemaginhad seen much service. But it was strongly built, and Don Bracket knew his business. He had calked her well. And her motor was nearly new. Little wonder that the boy’s heart swelled with joy and pride as the boat, responding to the lightest touch, headed for the open sea.
The boy had worked hard and long for this prize. In a twelve-foot punt he had rowed hundreds of miles. Setting lobster pots, trapping crabs, digging clams for the summer folks, he had added a dime here, a quarter there, a dollar now and then until there was enough.
“Now,” he thought, “since Monhegan disappointed me, I’ll get busy here at home. I’ll make a lot more lobster pots. I’ll set them out by Green Island, Witches Cove and the Hue and Cry. I’ll get big ones, five pounders, beauties.”
In his dreaming he quite forgot the girl who still lay half curled up back of the prow. To one who did not know her, Pearl might have seemed a kitten sort of girl, soft, dreamy and purring. Not so Don. He knew she could swim as strong and far as he, that she could row a punt or drag a lobster pot from the shoals with the best of them.
She could relax it is true. Everyone should be able to do that. She was relaxed now, staring dreamy eyed into the gathering darkness. But of a sudden she sat bolt upright.
“Look, Don!” she cried. “Look at the wavering red light. Over by Witches Cove.” They were much nearer now. “It is someone in distress. Must be.”
Without reply, Don turned the prow of his boat toward the shoals back of Witches Cove, set his motors doing their best, then leaned back to watch with half closed eyes that wavering light.
“Lights,” said the girl, as if half talking to herself.
“There are plenty of lights about the bay these days—too many,” said the boy. “Mysterious doings, I’d say. That fellow in the cabin by Witches Cove knows something about it all, I’ll be bound. He may have something to do with this light, decoy or something. But I’ll see.”
He kept his boat headed squarely for the light.
The girl did not answer his remarks. They had set her thinking all the same. There had been strange doings about the bay. And not the least mysterious person who might be connected with them was the man who had taken up his abode in the abandoned cabin among the black clump of firs that cast their dark shadows over Witches Cove.
Many and strange were the thoughts that passed through her mind as they came closer and closer to that dark sea cove about which weird and fantastic tales had been woven.
There were persons who could not be induced to fish there; no, not even at midday, and now it was night.
For this girl whose home had always been on Peak’s Island, this cove had always held a charmed fascination. As a small child, listening to the tales of gray witches that rose from its depths in the dark of the moon, she had time and again begged to be taken there.
As soon as she was old enough to row a punt this far, she had fairly haunted the spot on Saturdays and holidays. The banks of this pool were steep and rocky. There were spots where its depths even at low tide exceeded twenty feet. There were times when the waters were as dark and green as old jade. At such times the movement of the incoming tide seemed caused by some monster disturbed in his slumbers at the pool’s bottom, and the rush of water among the rocks seemed a whispering voice. The very fish she caught there were different. As if touched by the brush of a great artist, they took on fantastic colors—red, deep blue, purple and green. The girl loved the spot. She thrilled now as she neared it.
It had been on one of her Saturday afternoon fishing trips, not two weeks back, as you may remember, that she had first discovered that someone had taken up his abode on this small rocky and hitherto uninhabited island.
She fell to thinking now of the two great cats and the little man with the wide-rimmed glasses.
“There! Right back there!” she said suddenly as the light, swinging clear of the sea, continued to waver backward and forward in a jerky and uncertain manner.
“I know,” the boy answered. “Be there in a minute. It may be some false alarm. Be ready for a sudden start if I need to make it. If it’s smugglers or booze runners we may have to run for it. They don’t love company too well.”
The thing they saw as they rounded the reef and stood close in, astonished them much. Lying on her side, with a gash in her side, was a one time smartly rigged sailboat. Holding to the mast, and waving a lantern around which was wound a red cloth, was a boy a year or two younger than Don. Clinging to him for support as the heavy swell lifted and lowered the wreck was a mere slip of a girl.
“Not a day past twelve,” was Pearl’s mental comment.
In an instant she recognized them. Yet she could not believe her eyes.
“It can’t be,” she said in a low tone, more to herself than to Don. “But it is! It’s the girl Ruth saved from the surf at Monhegan, and her brother.”
The strangest part of all was that the girl at this moment showed no sign of terror. Her black eyes danced, as much as to say, “Well, here is a real lark!”
“Where’d you come from?” Don asked.
“Monhegan.”
“Monhegan!” Don gasped. A girl and a boy in a sailboat coming fifty miles over an open sea. The thing seemed incredible.
“We didn’t mean to come so far,” said the boy. “Went out for a little lark. Didn’t know much about this boat. Uncle gave her to me a week ago. She got going and I couldn’t head her in, so we just came on down. Some joke, eh?”
Don didn’t see any joke in it. A fine boat wrecked and all that, but he had to admit that affairs do not look the same to all people.
“What you going to do?” he asked.
“Can’t you take us ashore?”
“Yes. But this boat of yours?”
“Let her bust up. Don’t care much for sailing. Dad’s getting me a motor launch.”
“You mean—” Don stared incredulous. True, the sailboat was an old model. For all that, she had been a fast one in her day, and could easily be made seaworthy.
“Cost thousands,” he thought.
“Don! Don!” Pearl was tugging at his arm, whispering excitedly in his ear. “Ask them to let us have it. We can fix it up. I want it for my very own.”
So excited was she that her whisper came near to being a low scream. The strange boy heard, and smiled.
“If you can save her, she’s yours,” he promised. “Only get us out of this. We’re wet and getting cold.”
To Don the thing that the other boy proposed—that the boat, any boat for that matter, should be left to pound its heart out like a robin beating its breast against a cage, seemed a crime little short of murder. To a boy whose ancestors for generations have belonged on the sea, a ship is a living thing.
“We’ll take you over,” he said shortly. “Get in. Quick.”
Without further word, the boy and girl climbed aboard.
By great good fortune Ruth was at the dock when they came in. To her was entrusted the task of conducting the boy and girl to warm quarters where they might find a change of clothing.
In Ruth’s cottage the boy and girl sat beside the fisher girl in silence, dreamily watching the fire.
“Do you mean to say,” said Ruth, breaking the silence, “that your sister’s very narrow escape from drowning made no impression upon you, that you are as willing as ever to gamble with your life?”
“She didn’t drown, did she?” the boy looked at her and laughed. “She had luck. Her time hadn’t come, that’s all. No use making a fuss about that.”
“Life,” Ruth said quietly, “is a precious possession. No one has a right to think of it lightly.”
“Life,” said the boy with a toss of the head, “is a joke. We’re here because we’re here and because we are to have a good time. What’s the use of making a fuss?”
Ruth looked at him but said no more.
In her own room an hour later she sat looking off at the bay. Her thoughts were sadly mixed. She felt that the plan of life that had always been hers was slipping.
“Much work, friends, a home and a little pleasure now and then, holidays, and—and—
“‘Life,’” she quoted thoughtfully, “‘is a joke. Life is a joke. What’s the use of making a fuss?’”
She took down a box from a what-not in the corner. There was money in the box, the last of the swordfish money. She had bought a punt because it was truly needed. She had meant to spend the remainder for useful things about the house and for fishing tackle which was also very practical.
But now, “Life is a joke.” She allowed the coins to slip through her fingers like grains of sand.
“A figured taffeta dress,” she thought. “I’ve always wanted one, and a new hat, and new pumps. I’ll have them, too. Life is a joke.”
Had she truly convinced herself that it was not worth while to look upon the business of living as a serious matter? Who can say? Perhaps she did not know herself.
As for Don and Pearl, they hurried back and were soon busily engaged in the business of preparing to salvage the wreck.
To Pearl, who kept repeating to herself, “If we can only do it. If only we can!” the moments consumed by Don in rolling barrels and carrying chains to the sloop seemed endless. But at last with the meager deck of theFoolemaginpiled high, they headed once more for Witches Cove.
The cove, as they neared it this time, seemed more fearsome and ghostly than ever before. The moon was under a cloud. The clump of firs hung like a menacing thing over the cliff. The light from the mysterious stranger’s cabin was gone. Pearl shuddered as she caught the long drawn wail of a prowling cat.
She shook herself free from these fancies. There was work to be done. Would they succeed? She prayed that they might. The tide was still rising. That would help. The empty barrels, once they were sunk beneath the surface and chained to the broken hull, would help to buoy the sailboat up.
With practiced hand Don began the task that lay before him. Pearl helped when she could.
The first gray streaks of dawn were showing across the water when, with a little sigh of satisfaction, Don beached the disabled boat on their own sandy shore.
“With a line from shore,” said Don, “she’ll be safe here until noonday tide. Then I’ll get her drawn up high and dry.”
Pearl did not reply. Curled up in the prow of his motor boat, she had fallen fast asleep.
“Brave girl,” he whispered. “If we can make that boat tight and seaworthy she shall be all your own.”
* * * * * * * *
At eleven o’clock of a moonless, starlit night Pearl lay on the deck of the boat, her own first sailing boat. The work of repair was done. TheFlyaway, as they had rechristened her, had gone on her maiden trip ’round the island and down the bay. She had proven herself a thing of unspeakable joy. Speed, quick to pick up, with a keel of lead that held her steady in a heavy blow, responsive to the lightest touch on rudder or sail, she was all that mind might ask or heart desire.
Already Pearl loved her as she might a flesh and blood companion. To lie on her deck here beneath the stars was like resting in the arms of her mother.
Three hours before, Ruth had rowed Pearl out in her new punt. Then, because there was work to do ashore, she had rowed back again.
One “Whoo-o! Whoo-o!” through cupped lips and she would come for her.
The night was still. Scarcely a vessel was stirring on the bay. Only once, a half hour or so before, she had caught the creak of oars. She had not so much as risen on elbow to see what boat it might be. Had she done so, she would have experienced a shock.
“Getting late,” she told herself. “Have to go in.”
Rising on her knees, she cupped her hands to utter the old familiar call, “Whoo-oo-ee.”
A call came echoing back. She listened for the sound of Ruth’s shoving off. Instead she caught low exclamations of surprise.
“Oh, Pearl,” came in troubled tones, “the punt’s gone! Did you see anybody?”
“No.” The girl was on her feet, fumbling the sail. “But I heard them. They were headed for Portland Harbor. They must have stolen it. Quick! Get some boat and come out. There’s a stiff breeze. We’ll catch them yet.”
“Right!” Ruth went racing down the beach.
For a girl Pearl displayed an astonishing amount of skill with sail and rigging. Before Ruth in a borrowed dory bumped alongside she had the sail up and was winding away at the anchor rope. A minute more and they were gliding silently through the night.
“Nothing like a sailboat for following a thief,” Ruth whispered. “Silent.”
“Not a sound. Slip right onto them.”
“Hope we can!” The older girl’s work-hardened fingers gripped a long oar. If they overhauled the thief there’d be no tardy justice. He’d get it good and plenty right on the side of the head. It was the way of the bay. They were heartless wretches, these Portland wharf rats. On the sea boat stealing is bad as horse stealing on land. Yet if one of these men missed the last ferry he took the first rowboat he came upon, rowed across the bay, then cut her adrift. The owner was not likely to see his boat again.
As the water glided beneath them and the semi-darkness advanced to swallow them up, Ruth kept an eye out for a light or a movement upon the water. Twice she thought they were upon them. Each time, with an intake of breath, she gave Pearl whispered instructions and the boat swerved in its course. Each time they were disappointed. A floating barrel, a clump of eel grass had deceived them.
And now they were nearing a vast bulk that loomed dark and menacing before them. Old Fort Georges, built of stone before the Civil War, now abandoned save as a storeroom and warehouse, lay directly in their path.
This fort, that was said by some to be a storing place for enough army explosives to blow the whole group of islands out to sea, had always cast a spell of gloom and half terror over the girl at the helm. She was glad enough when Ruth told her to swing over to the right and give it a wide berth.
The fort is built on a reef. To pass it one must allow for the reef. Pearl, who knew these waters as well as any man, was swinging far out when her cousin whispered:
“Wait! Swing her in a bit. I heard a sound over there. Like something heavy being dropped into a boat.”
As Pearl obeyed her heart was in her mouth. Eerie business, this skulking about an abandoned fort at midnight.
What followed will always remain a mass of confused memories in Pearl’s mind. As the boat glided along, something appeared before them. With a suddenness that was startling, Ruth cut down the sail, then seized the rudder. Even so they missed the other boat, Ruth’s punt, by a very narrow margin.
They shot by, but not before Ruth, jumping clear of the sailboat, landed in the punt.
As she gripped at her breast to still her heart’s mad beating, Pearl caught sounds of blows, then cries for mercy, followed by muttered words of warning. There came a splash, then another. Then save for the labored pant of someone swimming, all was still.
At once wild questions took possession of Pearl. What if her cousin had been thrown overboard? Here she was with sail down, a girl, defenseless.
Gripping the rope, she hauled madly at the sail. It went up with a sudden start, then stuck. She threw her whole weight upon it. It gave way suddenly, to drop her sprawling upon the deck. She lost her hold. The sail came down with a bang.
She was in the midst of her third frantic attempt to get under way, to go for help, when a voice quite near her said:
“It’s all right. Let the sail go. I’ll hoist it. Catch this painter.”
“Ruth!” Pearl’s tone voiced her joy.
A rope struck across the deck. She caught it. The next moment her cousin was climbing on board.
“Itwasmy punt,” said Ruth quietly.
“But the men? What did they do?”
“Went overboard, and swam for the fort. Let ’em shiver there till morning. Do ’em good. Teach ’em a lesson.”
“Something queer, though,” she said as she made the painter fast. “They seemed terribly afraid I’d beat up their cargo. Must be fresh eggs. Let’s have a flashlight. We’ll take a look.”
A circle of light fell across the punt. A long drawn breath of excitement escaped the girl’s lips.
“No wonder they were in a hurry to get away!” There was genuine alarm in her tone.
“Why? What is it?” Pearl gripped her arm.
“Dynamite,” Ruth answered soberly. “Enough to blow us all to Glory sixteen times. And if I had struck a stick of it squarely with my oar—” Again she let out a long low sigh.
“Well, we’ve got it,” she concluded. “Next thing is something else.”
There really was only one thing to be done; that was to take the dynamite to the office of the Coast Guard in Portland and to tell the officer all there was to tell about it. This they did on the next morning. When this was done they considered the matter closed. It was not, however, not by a long mile.
That day, after Ruth had delivered her fear-inspiring cargo, which had doubtless been stolen from Fort Georges, to the proper authorities, she went uptown to shop. There she selected with care a figured taffeta dress, a bright new hat and new shoes.
“I won’t show them to anyone until Sunday,” she told herself. When an uneasy feeling took possession of her she stilled it by whispering, “Life is a joke.” Had she been asked quite suddenly what that had to do with a figured taffeta dress, she might not, perhaps, have been able to tell.
That same day, Pearl took her new dory and rowed away to her favorite fishing ground, Witches Cove.
She had not been fishing long when she caught sight of the mysterious little man who, with his two great black cats, had come to live in the abandoned cottage above the cove.
At first he was seated on a tall rock, studying the sea with a great brass telescope. Presently, however, she saw that he had left the rock and was making his way down the fern grown rocks near her. As he came, she studied him out of one corner of her eye. She lost two perfectly good cunners doing this, but it was worth the price. This man was peculiar, a “new type,” one of Pearl’s learned friends would have called him. He was short almost to deformity. He was bow-legged and very broad shouldered. He wore dark glasses which completely hid his eyes. Pearl thought nothing of this last. Many persons living by the ocean wear such glasses to protect their eyes from the dazzling reflection that comes from the mirror-like surface of the sea.
“Hello, little girl,” he said quietly as he settled himself on a rock overhanging the sea. “How’s the fishing?”
Pearl resented being called little, though indeed she was small for sixteen. She was a little frightened too. Witches Cove is a lonely spot, and as we have said before, quite spooky with all its black and green reflections and its constant murmuring that seems to come from nowhere.
But she had come to fish. Between the man and her boat were twenty feet of deep water. Besides, the man intrigued her. So she stayed.
“The fishing is fine,” she said.
“Often think I’ll try it.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Too busy.”
For a moment there was silence. Pearl had caught sight of a great cunner down there among the waving kelp. She was tempting him with a delicious bit of soft clam.
Up went her line, down again, away to one side.
“O-o! He got it!” she murmured, drawing in her line. With a deft hand she replaced her bait with a bit of tougher clam meat. Thirty seconds later a three-pounder was beating a tattoo in the bottom of her boat.
“That is a good one,” said the stranger. “Can you now afford a moment for talk?”
“Why?”
“It may be worth your while.”
“Well.” The girl settled back.
The man began to speak. In the twenty minutes that followed, this mystery man of the rocky isle told the girl things she had never dreamed of. He had opened up for her a new and quite terrible world. He ended by startling her with his knowledge of recent events.
“Someone stole your cousin’s punt,” he said quite suddenly, tilting on his tiptoes above the black waters.
Pearl looked at him in surprise. “Last night.”
“It was loaded with explosives when you got it back.”
Again the girl stared.
“Look out for those men. They’re dangerous. We’ve nearly got them three times. They escaped us. Can’t find out where they stay.”
Pearl thought of the face-in-the-fire, and old Fort Skammel. Her heart gave a great bounce, but she said nothing.
“How do you know such things?” she asked after a moment.
He leaned far forward. “I’ll tell you something, but you must not repeat it.”
“I won’t.”
“Well, then, I’m a Secret Service man.” Her heart bounced again. She had read books about such men, and they were thrilling and scarey.
“Thanks,” she said. “I won’t tell. And I—I’ll help if I can. It’s my country.”
“That’s the spirit. Come to me anytime you have a thing to tell.”
A fish took her bait. She pulled him in. When she looked up, the man was gone.