Sydney’s Outer Banks Blast

by Jean Fischer

Bailey shone her flashlight onto the notebook paper. “Hide under something,” Sydney commanded. “They might see your flashlight.”

  Bailey dodged under the sleeping bag. As Sydney dictated, Bailey wrote:

  Short short long

  Short short short

  SS

  LS

  LSL …

  She wrote for what seemed like forever. Then Sydney stopped dictating. “What’s going on?” Bailey asked from under the sleeping bag.

  Sydney didn’t answer.

  “Syd?” Bailey asked. Her muscles tightened and her heart began to race.

  “It stopped,” Sydney said. “I think you can come out now.”

  Bailey turned off the flashlight and crawled out from under the sleeping bag. “How weird was that?” she asked.

  “Pretty weird,” Sydney answered. “Did you get it all written down?”

  “Every flash of it,” said Bailey proudly. “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know,” Sydney answered. “I think we should e-mail it to McKenzie. She’s good at analyzing things.”

  It was just past 4:30 a.m. now, and the beach was pitch-black. It was about the same time that Bailey had seen the UFO the morning before. As the girls looked out at the water, nothing was above it but fading stars. In a little while, the sun would come up over the Atlantic, and another day would begin.

  “Hey,” Sydney whispered. “Listen.”

  The girls heard footsteps along the wet sand at the edge of the beach. They came from the south and plodded along rhythmically, passing Sydney’s grandparents’ beach house, and then stopping just to the north.

  “Did you see?” said an older male voice in the darkness.

  “It’s Captain Swain!” Bailey gasped.

  “I saw,” a younger male voice answered. “I didn’t put the vehicle in the water. Probably best not to until that girl leaves. At least I got my light back.” Suddenly, Sydney and Bailey saw their coffee mug flash on and off.

  “I think they broke it,” said the younger voice.

  “That’s too bad,” said Captain Swain. “We should get out of here before the sun comes up.”

  Bailey and Sydney sat quietly until they thought the men were gone.

  “See?” said Bailey. “The captain is one of them, and they do have a vehicle. I think that they’re trying to get back to the Mother Ship, Syd.”

  “Let’s e-mail McKenzie right away,” said Sydney. “She won’t be up for a few hours, but I know she checks her e-mail first thing in the morning. Maybe she can tell us what the code says before we leave for the museum.”

  The girls went inside, and Bailey copied the code from her notebook pages to the e-mail document. “There,” she said, typing the last Long short long. “Let’s hope she can figure this out.” She hit SEND, and the message flew off through cyberspace.

  In less than a minute, they got a reply.

  I’m up. Our horse, Princess, foaled about an hour ago. She had a darling colt that we named Benny. I just came in from the barn. I’ll check out your code and e-mail you back.

  As the sun rose, Bailey and Sydney got dressed and packed their backpacks for the drive to Hatteras. After breakfast, just before Gramps went to get his pickup truck, they checked the e-mail. A message was waiting from McKenzie.

  It’s morse code. It says: I think we’re being watched from the Lincoln house. Someone is on the deck with a flashlight.

  Double Trouble

  After a long drive down Highway 12 from the top of the Outer Banks to the bottom, the girls and Gramps stopped at the museum, ready to stretch their legs.

  “It kind of looks like a shipwreck,” said Sydney as she climbed out of her grandfather’s truck. She had never been to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, and she had no idea what to expect. The front of the building was outlined in weathered timbers shaped like the hull of a wooden sailing vessel. The building resembled a long, gray ship. Four porthole windows protruded from its roof, reminding Sydney of giant bug eyes.

  “I think you’ll find some pieces of the ghost ship in here,” Gramps said as they walked to the front door.

  “Pieces?” said Bailey holding the door for them. “What happened to the rest of it?”

  “It stayed aground on the shoals,” said Gramps. “After weeks and months of the wind and waves pounding against it, it started to break apart. Then the coast guard dynamited what was left of it.”

  “Why did they do that?” Bailey asked.

  “Because it was a hazard to ships sailing out there. Most of the pieces ended up on the beach. Some of them floated down here to Hatteras Island and got put in the museum. Look over there. There’s the capstan. It was used to haul in the ropes on the ship.”

  The heavy, rusty metal device of the Carroll A. Deering rested in front of them. The top was shaped like a lampshade, and a pole came out of the bottom like a rusty old water pipe.

  “Was that really a part of the ship?” Sydney asked.

  “Yes,” said Gramps. “It’s the part that raised and lowered the anchors.”

  Bailey was busy looking at other pieces in the exhibit. She saw timbers from the hull and also pieces of the ship’s boom—the long wooden pole that had held up the sails.

  “Can you imagine,” she said. “This thing was on the ship when all of those sailors disappeared.” She felt a shiver run down her spine. “It was there when it happened. The wind probably tore the sails off it when it rocked back and forth on the shoals.”

  Something ran up the side of her arm and made her jump.

  “Scrape … scrape …,” Sydney whispered as her fingers tickled Bailey’s shoulder.

  “That’s not funny!” Bailey protested. “If this thing could talk, it would tell us exactly what happened.”

  “Interested in the Carroll A. Deering, are you?” The museum curator walked toward them. He was a short, older man with a bald head and a happy smile.

  Gramps shook his hand. “Travis Lincoln,” he introduced himself.

  “David Jones,” said the curator.

  “We’d like to know what really happened to the sailors on the ghost ship,” said Sydney. “They couldn’t have just disappeared. There has to be a logical explanation.”

  Mr. Jones stood with his elbow resting against a glass cabinet that held more artifacts from the ship. “Well,” he said, “that depends on who you talk to. What do you girls think?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Sydney. “A lot of ships have wrecked off the coast around here. But this one seems so mysterious.” She looked inside the glass case at a model of the Carroll A. Deering.

  “I think they were abducted by aliens!” said Bailey. “I’m almost sure of it.”

  “Aliens,” said Mr. Jones. “Why, that’s a theory I haven’t heard before. What makes you think it was aliens?”

  Bailey waited for a few visitors to pass out of earshot before she answered. “Because we’ve seen them,” she said softly. “With our own eyes.”

  Sydney frowned at Bailey. “We’re not sure what we saw,” Sydney said. “We saw some strange lights over the ocean the other night and unusual footprints on the beach.”

  “Big footprints that looked like waffles!” Bailey added. “And then an alien spacecraft whooshed past us on the beach in the dark. It didn’t make a sound, but it hit us with a big puff of air.”

  Gramps looked confused.

  “Young lady, you have quite the imagination,” said Mr. Jones. “Let’s sit down and talk about this. Maybe I can shed some light on what really happened to the crew of the Carroll A. Deering.”

  He led them to a small, round table and some chairs. The table held a book about the ghost ship and some brochures about the museum. “Now, tell me. What are your names?”

  “Sydney Lincoln.”

  “Bailey Chang.”

  “Well, Sydney and Bailey, folks have come up with three logical explanations. The first one is that the crew abandoned ship. When the coast guard got to the Carroll A. Dee
ring, the rope ladder was hanging over the side, and both lifeboats were gone. Someone had run red flares up the rigging to indicate trouble on board.”

  “Red flares?” said Sydney. “The lights we saw over the ocean the other night were red.”

  “And sometimes multicolored and flashing,” said Bailey. “Maybe it wasn’t a spaceship we saw. Maybe it was the ghost ship!”

  “I doubt that, Bailey,” said Mr. Jones. “Because what’s left of the ghost ship is right here.”

  “You have a point,” Bailey said. “But how about a ghost of the ghost ship?”

  Mr. Jones smiled and continued. “Now, if the crew did jump ship, they did it in a big hurry, because the galley was set up for a meal, and everything was left behind. However, the theory of abandonment doesn’t add up.”

  “Why?” Sydney asked.

  “Because the men were professional sailors who knew what they were doing. In stormy seas, they would be able to steer the ship away from the shoals, but the evidence shows that they sailed right into them!

  “Two days before that they’d sailed past the Cape Lookout Lightship, and a crew member reported to the lightkeeper that they had lost both of their anchors, but they’d gotten through the worst of the storm.

  “And something was strange about that. Usually a ship’s officer makes the report. But on that day the lightkeeper didn’t see an officer on deck with the men. Not the captain or a mate or even an engineer. So the officers might have already been missing by then. And the ship ran aground so near the Hatteras Lighthouse that the crew would have been better off to wait for a rescue than to jump ship. The ship didn’t seem to be taking on water or anything.”

  Bailey nervously folded the pages of a brochure. “So maybe the crew member was a ghost?”

  “No,” said Mr. Jones. “But the crew member might have been up to no good. The officers might have been tied up on board or thrown overboard or even killed.”

  Gramps had been listening and looking through the book about the Carroll A. Deering. “What’s your second theory?” he asked.

  “Mutiny,” said Mr. Jones.

  “What does that mean?” Sydney wondered.

  “Mutiny means the sailors take over the ship,” said Gramps. “If the sailors didn’t like the captain, they sometimes found a way to get rid of him.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Jones. “Captain Willis Wormell was the captain of the Carroll A. Deering, and he and his first mate, a man named McLellan, probably didn’t get along. Some folks think there was a mutiny at sea. Something strange must have happened because it should have taken the ship about twelve hours to get from Cape Fear to Cape Lookout, but it took six days!”

  “Why so long?” Bailey asked.

  “No one knows,” Mr. Jones answered. “It’s part of the mystery. But some of the ship’s charts were found in the wreck. After the ship got past Cape Fear, none of the entries in the charts were in Captain Wormell’s handwriting. Three sets of boots were found in the captain’s cabin, but none of them were the captain’s. Some folks think he was killed and thrown overboard.”

  “Was he?” Sydney asked.

  “No one knows,” said Mr. Jones.

  “Boy,” Bailey said. “There sure is a lot of stuff that no one knows. So it still could be aliens, right?”

  “I doubt it,” said the curator. “Plenty of things point to a mutiny, but there’s no evidence, and if you know anything about solving a mystery, you know you need evidence.”

  “Oh, we know that!” said Sydney. “Our group of friends, the Camp Club Girls, have solved several mysteries now.”

  Gramps smiled. “The girls and their friends from summer camp have quite the reputation for solving mysteries. You wouldn’t believe some of the adventures they’ve had.”

  “I can only imagine,” said Mr. Jones.

  “I suppose it could have been mutiny,” said Sydney. “But without evidence, we can’t make that conclusion. If McLellan killed the officers and the crew, he had to do something with the bodies, and they were never found. Were there any signs of a fight on board?”

  “No,” said Mr. Jones. “Wormell was a big man and could have put up quite a fight. And both lifeboats were missing, and that doesn’t make sense if McLellan was the only one left on board.”

  “That is weird,” said Bailey. “But there’s not enough evidence in either of those theories to convince me the crew members weren’t abducted by aliens.”

  “Is there evidence to convince you that they were?” Sydney asked.

  Bailey bit her lower lip. “No,” she confessed. “What’s the third theory?”

  “Pirates,” said Mr. Jones.

  “Like Blackbeard?” Sydney asked.

  “No,” Mr. Jones replied. “He died long before then. But pirates still sailed in the sea. One theory is that pirates took over another ship named the Hewitt, killed everyone, and then threw a tarp over the ship’s nameplate. So, if anyone saw the ship, they wouldn’t know which one it was.

  “And shortly after the Carroll A. Deering passed the Cape Lookout Lightship, another ship sailed by—”

  “What’s a lightship, anyhow?” Bailey interrupted.

  “A lightship is a special ship equipped with a really bright light,” said Mr. Jones. “Lightships are used in places where a lighthouse can’t be built. They’re moored off the coast in places that are dangerous for ships to navigate.” He found a picture of a lightship in the book on the table and showed it to the girls.

  “Maybe the signals we saw were from a lightship?” Bailey said.

  “Signals?” said Gramps.

  “We think we saw someone flashing a white light in Morse code early this morning,” said Sydney. “It was in the ocean straight out from our house at around four o’clock.”

  “What were you girls doing up at four o’clock?” asked Gramps.

  “Watching for UFOs,” said Bailey.

  “Oh, girls,” said Gramps, shaking his head. “There are no such things as UFOs … Mr. Jones, please tell us more about the Hewitt.”

  “Well, that second ship, the one that was following the Deering, was hailed by the lightship at Cape Lookout. Usually, someone on board would shout a report, like the crew member from the Deering did. Only, this time, the ship sailed right on by without reporting. The lightship keeper said he couldn’t find a nameplate on the ship, so no one knows, but it could have been the Hewitt.”

  “Another unknown,” said Bailey.

  “The theory is that pirates killed everyone on the Hewitt and then stole the vessel. After that, they attacked the Deering, killed its crew, and stole anything valuable. Then they transferred their treasure to the Hewitt, steered the Carroll A. Deering in the direction of the shoals, and jumped ship.”

  Sydney was fidgeting with her cornrows again, like she often did when she was thinking. “But what about the bodies of all those sailors? They were never found.”

  “They never were,” Mr. Jones agreed. “And some of their remains would have probably appeared sooner or later.”

  “Except that we found one of their bones on the beach,” said Bailey.

  “What?” Gramps exclaimed.

  “I stepped on a bone in the sand, and Sydney said it was part of a dead sailor.”

  “I did not!” said Sydney. “I was telling you a ghost story. The bone was probably left from someone’s barbeque lunch.”

  Mr. Jones chuckled. “It sounds like you girls are having quite the time up there in Corolla.”

  Sydney remembered what she had been thinking about before Bailey had mentioned the bone. “What happened to the Hewitt?” she asked.

  “Well,” said Mr. Jones. “That’s another great mystery. It disappeared around the same time the Carroll A. Deering was found stuck in the shoals. It was never heard from again.”

  “Another ghost ship!” said Bailey. “It sounds like there’s no more evidence to support those theories than mine: I still think they were abducted by aliens.”

  M
r. Jones sighed. “I guess I can’t argue with you, Bailey. But I don’t believe in UFOs.”

  “Me neither,” said Gramps.

  Bailey looked to Sydney for support.

  “I don’t know,” Sydney said. “We’ve seen and heard some strange things lately and haven’t found any logical explanations.”

  “You’re the Camp Club Girls!” Mr. Jones said. “Be good detectives, and see if you can find an explanation for your UFOs. If nothing else, you’ll come up with some good theories. Who knows, maybe fifty years from now, people will discuss your UFO theories the way we just discussed the theories about the Deering.”

  The girls thanked Mr. Jones for his time. Then they went to explore the rest of the museum.

  Bailey was excited to see a lighthouse exhibit, including a model of the Cape Hatteras black-and-white striped lighthouse. She enjoyed looking at the exhibits for each of the lighthouses on the Outer Banks, including the Currituck Beach Lighthouse, in Corolla.

  “Hey, Kate would be interested in this,” said Sydney. “When the lighthouse we climbed was first built, it didn’t have electricity. The lighthouse keeper had to rotate the lens at the top of the tower by hand so the light appeared to flash.”

  Bailey looked at a diagram of the lighthouse showing all of its parts. “If Kate had lived back then, she’d have found some sort of high-tech gadget to make it easier. Hey, if there was no electricity, where did the light come from?”

  Sydney read the caption under a picture. “It came from a giant oil lamp,” she said. “The lens was rotated with a system of weights, sort of the way a grandfather clock works. The lighthouse keeper or his assistant had to crank the weights by hand every two and a half hours. Look, here’s a picture.”

  Bailey studied the old, yellowed photo of the lighthouse keeper cranking the weights. “Captain Swain!”

  “What?” said Sydney.

  “It says here, CAPTAIN NATHAN SWAIN ROTATES THE LENS ON THE CURRITUCK BEACH LIGHTHOUSE, 1910. Sydney, that’s a picture of him. It’s Captain Swain!”

  Sydney looked carefully at the photo. “It does sort of look like him,” she said, “but it can’t be, because this picture was taken one hundred years ago.”