by M. D. Lee
“Do you know how to steer a sailboat?” I ask, handing her the tiller so I can have a look.
“Of course. Just ’cause I’m a girl doesn’t mean I don’t know how to steer a boat. Give me that dang thing!” Jo says grabbing the tiller from me. Before I realize what’s happening, she jams the tiller to starboard then just as quickly the other way sending me tumbling to the cockpit floor.
“Oops,” she says smirking at me lying on the floor with her hand to her mouth pretending to do a tee-hee.
“Hey!” Sara shouts from the cabin. “What’s going on up there?”
“I’m just messin’ with your boyfriend. He thinks I don’t know diddly about steering a boat ’cause I’m a girl.”
“Well stop it,” Sara says. “You’re making a mess down here.”
Once I’m back on my feet I take a quick glance at Jo to make sure she’s not going to do any more stunts like that again. “I never said I didn’t think you could steer a sailboat because you’re a girl. I meant because it’s a little different than steering a powerboat.”
“Sure ya did.” I can’t tell if she believes me or not.
With the binoculars to my eyes I scan the water in the same direction Jo was looking. “I’m not seeing anything but fog.”
“Keep looking, you’ll see it,” she says.
“What am I looking for?” But she doesn’t answer.
Then I see something that looks like it’s moving through the fog and coming toward us. I take a second look and realize I’m seeing a schooner. Putting the binoculars down I try and see it with my naked eyes. I can barely make out a black form of a hull.
“You see it, don’t you?” Jo says more serious than she’s been the whole time.
“See what?” Sara asks as she climbs up from below.
Squinting her eyes against the building fog, Jo says, “The ghost pirate of Blarney Bart.”
Chapter 9
From the Fog
“Blarney Bart?” Sara says grabbing the binoculars from me. “That’s not even funny.” She looks out over the water for a moment, then says, “I don’t see anything.”
Jo gives the tiller back to me then stands next to Sara. “We’re not yankin’ your chain.” Taking hold of the binoculars while Sara’s still looking, Jo gently nudges it more to the left.
“Oh.” Sara gasps. “Are you sure that isn’t a fishing trawler?”
“Take a closer look at the bow,” I say. “There’s a sprit with a sail attached that’s kind of hard to see because the white sail blends in with the fog.”
Sara looks again. “Oh, I see it now. Fisher—ah—it looks like it’s headed at us.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” The schooner’s still a ways off, but I steer the sailboat a little more to the south to do my best to stay away from it.
“And I see it has two masts,” Sara says handing the binoculars over to Jo.
“See,” I say. “A two-masted schooner—just like Blarney Bart’s boat.
Not looking so tough anymore, Jo says, “It just changed course toward us.”
“Son of a… Are you sure?” I stand up trying to get a better look. The air is starting to get damp and my clothes are starting to feel like a wet sponge.
“Of course I’m sure. I know what a boat looks like when it changes course,” Jo snaps back.
Luckily the wind is steady, so for a little sailboat, we’re moving along at a good speed. This time I try and steer even more to the south.
“Good Lord!” Jo says through clenched teeth. “They just altered course again. He knows we’ve come looking for his treasure.”
I shake my head. “That’s impossible. How does a ghost know we’re coming after his treasure?”
Jo looks me square in the eyes, and says, “I don’t know much about these Maine ghosts of yours, but it’s a good bet he knows something’s up because he keeps aiming at us.”
“Let’s see if he can follow this!” I say as I jam the tiller hard to port ducking my head. “Jibing!” Both the girls instantly duck their heads just as the boom snaps across to the other side. Our boat never loses speed as its rails dig into a hard turn sailing back in the opposite direction.
“It’s hard to tell from here, but I think it just turned again,” Sara says.
The fog is getting a little thicker, but not so much that we can’t see the ghost pirate ship. I wipe my now damp hair back. “At least the ghost pirate ship didn’t sink Gus Emery; it just evaporated before it hit. Maybe we’ll get lucky and that’ll happen to us too.”
“Would you two listen to yourselves?” Sara stands up again looking across the water. “There’s no such thing as a ghost pirate ship.”
Jo points at the black hull that’s materializing out of the fog getting closer by the minute. “No such thing? It looks real to me. And it’s going to feel real when it fires its cannons at us. We’re gonna find out what ghost cannonballs feel like!”
Sara climbs back down the ladder into the cabin, then calls up, “Fisher, how do you work this thing?”
“What thing? Can’t look right now, little busy trying to keep ghost pirates from sinking us!” I give the tiller a slight shove to starboard, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. The ghost ship is gaining on us. Blast it!
“Dang! If we were on my dad’s boat we’d just punch the throttles and get the heck gone. What y’all got for weapons on this ragboat?” Jo shouts to me while the ghost pirate gets closer.
“Weapons? Why would we have weapons?” Looking back over my shoulder I can see the black-hulled schooner’s clearly now in our wake.
“I’m not going down without a fight,” Jo says while she starts rummaging underneath the seats looking for anything she can use to fight ghost pirates. Getting down on her hands and knees, she pulls out the mop I’ve got stowed for cleaning the deck. “This’ll do!” Standing up with the mop in both hands, she quickly cracks the mop handle over her knee breaking it in half.
“Aw! Why’d you have to go and break my mop?”
“If you had proper weapons on board I wouldn’t have had to do that.” She looks at me squinting hard and with the mop-handle in one hand gives it a swish back and forth through the air.
“You really think you can club a ghost?” By now, even through the fog, I can clearly see the bow aimed right at us and its full sails pushing it along. I can tell it’s got some good speed by the frothy white wave where the bow meets the water.
“Jo! Can you see if they’ve got cannons aimed at us? Gus Emery said they aimed cannons at him.”
“Negative!” she calls back. “But they’re ghosts, and ghosts are sneaky. A cannon could materialize right before our eyes.”
I take a quick look behind me. Without a doubt the black schooner’s grown bigger. It’s going to easily catch us. Will it fire on us or simply run us down? I’ve never dealt with ghosts before; I have no idea what to do.
Looking up at our sails I realize, in all the excitement I forgot to check the sails. The jib sail in front is flogging just a little. That’ll slow us down. “Jo! Trim the jib sheet. We should be able to coax a little more speed out of her.”
“The jib sheet? I’m a powerboater! What in Elvis’s Ghost is a jib sheet!”
I call back, “The rope lying on the cabin top by your right hand. It controls the front sail. Pull it tighter until the flogging stops. Then cleat it down.”
She does it perfectly. The sail takes a better shape and the boat heels over a little more. In a sailboat, unfortunately, going ‘faster’ is ever hardly noticeable. Again I take a quick look over my shoulder. We might be moving faster, but maybe not; it’s hard to tell. The one thing I’m sure, though, is the black schooner is still gaining on us. And it won’t take long for them to run us over, or fire their cannons at us.
From below in the cabin I can hear some crackling sounds. What’s she doing down there?
I’m about to ask when Jo shouts, “They’re just about on us!” Shouting at the schooner, she yells, “You
’re nothing but a lotta hot air! You’re not even real! Come on, let’s see what you got!” The broom handle in her hand is swishing back and forth in a deadly arch.
From below I can barely hear Sara say, “Schooner—schooner—schooner, off our starboard quarter, this is the Sticky Wicket. Over.”
Almost instantly there’s another voice below, but muffled. “Sticky Wicket. HOLD YOUR COURSE!”
Chapter 10
Embarrassing
“Fisher! Did you hear that?” Sara yells from below in the cabin. “They want us to hold our course.”
“Who wants us to hold course? What are you doing down there? We’re trying to outrun ghost pirates up here!”
“Good Lord, Fisher! Stop fooling around and just hold course!” I don’t think I’ve ever heard Sara talk like that before, but then again I bet she’s never been chased by a ghost before.
From below there’s the muffled voice again, “Stick Wicket, this is the schooner Adelaide. Requesting you HOLD COURSE.”
Suddenly it all makes sense; Sara’s talking on the VHF radio, and she’s speaking to the schooner that’s about to run us over.
Sara keys the mic, “Adelaide, this is the Sticky Wicket. Holding course; over.”
After hearing that I hold the tiller straight, close my eyes and rub my temples. What a fool I am.
No longer than a minute after their radio transmission, the two-masted schooner, Adelaide, passes us to starboard. As it passes, I see many passengers at the rail, all wearing bright yellow life jackets, and most of them are waving to us. Jo waves back, then turns around to me and shrugs. When it passes us completely, the captain at the wheel looks back at me and gives me a salute. The transom, the rear of the boat which I can now see clearly, has the name Adelaide painted in gold-flec. Underneath the name it reads, Boothbay ME. Of course; I remember there’s an old restored schooner out of Boothbay that takes people out for day sails. Tourists. I let out a heavy sigh.
Sara has joined me in the cockpit and also watches as the schooner begins to disappear back into the fog ahead of us. She doesn’t say anything and simply smiles at me.
“Maybe we should turn around and head back toward Damariscove Island,” she suggests.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “You’re right. We should head back to Damariscove. Tacking!” Both girls know that’s the command that I’m going to turn the boat around, so they duck their heads to avoid the boom swinging across overhead. Once we’re on the new course Sara shows Jo how to set the sails on the new side. Jo seems to be a fast learner.
It’s a good thing I asked Sara take a compass bearing to the island before we entered the fog. Now using the numbers she wrote down, all I have to do is steer the boat toward that compass heading, and with a little luck we should find the entrance to the cove. I think we’re still a ways off because before the ‘ghost pirate’ incident, the island was just barely on the horizon. The three of us settle in for some long sailing.
No one’s spoken of it yet, but I keep thinking about what a chump I was to think the schooner was a ghost pirates’ ship. It feels like the topic is as heavy as the fog; we know it’s there, we saw it, but we’re not talking about it. Maybe it’s just me, but the tension seems to be building.
Finally, I can’t stand it anymore. “That was…ah…kinda funny, thinking the Adelaide was a ghost pirate ship, huh?”
Jo lets out a big sigh. “Sure was. I probably won’t be telling this story anytime soon to the gang on the dock back home.”
Looking down at the cockpit floor, I say, “I feel kind of stupid about it now. It’s really embarrassing.” We all smile a little, but none of us really laugh. The only sound that we can hear is the water rushing past the hull while we consider for a moment about what just happened.
Sara finally breaks the silence. “That’s not so embarrassing. Once when I was in grade school I was eating my lunch sitting next to my friend Bev. I had just taken a big gulp of milk when Bev said something really funny and the milk came pouring out of my nose.”
“Big deal,” I say. “That happens to everyone.”
Sara continues, “That’s not the embarrassing part. When I stood up I realized milk had gone all over the front of my pants. It looked like I-wet-myself. When I left the cafeteria everyone was laughing and pointing at me. Even Bev was making fun of me.”
“That is pretty embarrassing,” I agree.
“It took me a long time to get over it. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have everyone laugh at you?” Sara says.
Jo jumps in. “That’s nothing. Last year I was sitting in class, and I had to pee really bad. I mean bad. But I didn’t want to raise my hand to be excused to go to the can; everyone would’ve laughed for sure. So I sat and watched the clock on the wall while I waited for the bell to ring. I’ve never seen a clock move so dang slow. I thought my insides were going to explode like a water balloon. Finally, when I couldn’t hold it for another second, the bell rang. I jumped up to run to the girls’ room, but I got tangled up in the desk and hit the floor. When I landed on the floor—” Jo pauses and looks at Sara then me. “—I peed all over myself. I don’t have to tell you how bad that was. I was so humiliated I told my mom the next day I was sick and couldn’t go to school for the next three days.”
Sara and I begin to chuckle a little. Jo smiles too and starts to laugh also, and soon, the three of us can hardly stop laughing.
After a while we do stop laughing, and Sara looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Fisher. Your turn.”
“Wasn’t the ghost pirate enough?” Sara and Jo both shake their head.
“Okay.” I reluctantly give in. There are so many, I have to think of just one.
But one story stands out from the rest. “Last year, I was sitting in math class and we were taking a big test. The classroom was silent. The problem was, I had a lot of baked beans at lunch, and I had to fart—bad. Holding it in was so bad I couldn’t even work on the test. I just sat there. Then, by accident I dropped my pencil, but the gas was so awful I couldn’t even bend over to pick it up. The teacher saw me drop the pencil and noticed I wasn’t moving to pick it up. Finally she demanded I pick it up; so I did. I was like the Hindenburg exploding. And it was long, too. It just kept coming and coming like when you let go of a balloon that you’re trying to fill with air. Everyone in the room couldn’t stop laughing. But that wasn’t the worst part. It was one of those really stinky ones. Like a baboon had just left a steaming pile on the floor. It was so bad the teacher had to clear everyone out of the classroom until the air cleared.”
Once again we start on a laughing attack; one of those where anything you do after that is funny no matter what. It’s too bad it wasn’t that funny when all the kids were making fun of me. It took a while, but eventually we calm down enough to remember why we are out here in the fog.
Sara says, “Let’s keep our eyes peeled; we should be close to the island. Fisher. Are we still on course?”
I glance at the compass and nod. “Sara. When you viewed the chart, what did the cove look like?” I ask.
“It’s a lot like a long lobster claw. On the south end, it’s narrow and goes quite a ways into the island. It looks like we should be able to anchor anywhere in the channel, but it might be best if we go all the way into the cove.”
There’s something she said about the channel that’s nagging at me, but I can’t seem to think of it. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.
Jo is back on look-out standing up by the mast when she calls out, “I see the island.” Pointing she says, “It’s just off our port bow. Just keep going in the same direction and we should be good.”
I look where she’s pointing and I can just start to see land materializing out of the fog. The breeze is nice and steady, not too strong, just enough to push us along at a reasonable speed. I keep thinking about the narrow channel; something is still nagging me about it.
I call to Sara and Jo, “Be ready on the halyards to lower the sails. If the channel is na
rrow, I doubt we’ll be able to sail all the way in. There are two paddles below under the seat. Let’s have those out and ready to use.” Both girls go below and rummage around until they’re back on deck with two paddles.
As we get closer to the island I can see just to the right of the entrance white water splashing into the air; rocks. I point to them and say, “Let’s make sure we steer clear of those. It’ll smash us to splinters.”
Jo looks back at me. “You’re the one steering. You make sure we steer clear.”
I make a face and give her a mocking salute.
After a while, when we’re a little less than a quarter of a mile away, with the rocks now behind us, I can see the water looks calm in the entrance; the island is blocking the wind. I do my best to sail us in, but the closer we get, the less wind. The sailboat moves slower and slower. Soon sitting right at the entrance to the cove we are stopped dead in the water.
“Looks like I was right,” I say. “Let’s drop the sails and see if we can paddle the boat in.” Sailboats really aren’t meant to paddle, but this boat is small enough we can get away with it. Most people never paddle a sailboat, but every now and then it needs to be done. It’ll be slow going, but it’s better than just sitting dead in the water not moving at all.
Both Sara and Jo are on opposite sides of the mast, and they begin to paddle. I stay at the tiller and keep steering. It’s not fast, but at least we’re moving. And as long as it’s calm, paddling’s no big deal.
Closer to the entrance, I can see a high-tide waterline mark across the rocks about ten feet above the water; that means it’s low tide and the water should be coming in. Farther past the entrance I can see some buildings on the left. The building is quite large especially being way out here on an island. It’s covered in gray shingles. Above its red roof there’s a narrow look-out tower with windows that go all the way around. That’d be a cool fort.
Sara calls out and uses the paddle to point, “That must be the old life-saving station. I read it on the chart. I believe it’s been shut down for a while.”
