“Doesn’t seem possible it could be anyone living in the other boats,” she mused. “I’ve seen that young man they call Mark Pence, the fellow who lives in the gasoline schooner, just once. He seems to be decent enough.”
“And the old fishermen,” put in Marian, “I hired two of them to pose for some sketches last week. Nice old fellows, they are; a little rough but entirely harmless. Besides, what difference could it make to them whether we live here or not?”
“There’s the Chinamen who run a little laundry in that old scow,” said Lucile thoughtfully, “but they are the mildest-mannered of them all, with their black pajama suits and pigtails.”
“And that’s all of them, except Old Timmie and his wife,” said Florence, rising and pressing the lever which brought the electric range into position. “And as for Timmie, I’d as soon suspect my own father.”
“We’ll tell him about it,” said Lucile. “He might help us.”
They did tell Timmie, but he could throw no light on the subject. He appeared puzzled and a little disturbed, but his final counsel was:
“Someone playing a practical joke on you. Pay no attention to it. Pay no attention at all.” The girls accepted his advice. Indeed, there was nothing they could do about it.
“All the same,” was Lucile’s concluding word, “I don’t like it. Looks as if someone in this vicinity were doing something they should not do and were afraid we’d catch them at it. I for one shall keep an eye out for trouble.”
The other two girls agreed with her, and while they did not alter their daily program in the least, they did keep a sharp lookout for suspicious characters who might be lurking about the dry dock.
CHAPTER II
THE BLUE FACE IN THE NIGHT
Lucile need not have kept an eye out for trouble. Trouble was destined to find her and needed no watching. As she expressed it afterward: “It doesn’t seem to matter much where you are nor what you are doing, if you are destined for adventures you’ll have them.”
But the thing which happened to her on the following evening, though doubly mysterious and haunting in its character, appeared to have no connection whatever to the incident of the note.
The storm which had been rising all night had lulled with the morning sun, but by mid-afternoon was raging again with redoubled fury. Sending the spray dashing high above the breakwaters, it now and then cast a huge cake of ice clear of the water’s tallest crest and brought it down upon the breakwater’s rim with the sound of an exploding cannon. Carrying blinding sheets of snow before it, the wind rose steadily in force and volume until the most hardy pedestrian made headway against it with the greatest difficulty.
When Lucile left the university grounds to face east and to begin forcing her way against the wind to the yacht, night had fallen. “Dark as it should be at seven—woo! what a gale!” she shivered, as buttoning her mackinaw tightly about her throat, she bent forward to meet the storm.
For a half hour, her body beaten and torn by the wind, her face cut by driving sleet, she fought her way onward into the night. She had reached the shore of the lake and was making her way south, or at least thought she was. So dense was the darkness that it was with the utmost difficulty that she kept her directions.
“Wish—wish I had tried getting a place to stay nearer the university,” she half sobbed.
As if in answer to these words, the storm appeared to redouble its fury. Seizing her with its whirling grip, it carried her in a semicircle, to land her at last against a stone wall. So great was the force of her impact that for the moment she lay there at the foot of the wall, only partly conscious of what was going on about her.
When at last she was able to rise, she knew that she had completely lost her way.
“Might as well follow the wall,” she thought desperately. “Little more sheltered here. Bring me to some place after a time.”
The fury of wind and snow continued. At times she fancied she felt the spray from waves dampen her cheeks. She heard distinctly the break of these waves—“Against the wall,” she told herself, shuddering as the thought came to her that she might suddenly reach the end of this wall and be blown into the lake.
“Anyway I can’t stay here,” she muttered. “Too cold. Face is freezing, I guess.”
She paused to remove a glove and touch her cheek. The next instant she was rubbing it vigorously. “Frozen all right. Have to get in somewhere soon.”
Just at that moment her heart leaped wildly. For a moment the drive of snow had slackened. In that moment, a great, black bulk loomed up at her right.
“Some building,” she thrilled, and at once doubled her efforts to escape from the storm and reach this promised shelter.
As, still hugging the wall, she came closer to the looming structure, she saw that it showed not a single gleaming light. The next moment her lips parted in an exclamation of dismay:
“The old Spanish Mission! No one there—hasn’t been for years.”
Once she had forced her mind to sober thought, she realized that she had no reason to hope for anything better. There were but four structures on that mile of park-front on the lake all deserted at this time of year: a broad, low pavilion; a huge, flat bath-house; a towering castle, relic of a great fair once held on these grounds, and this Spanish Mission, which never had been a real mission, but merely a reproduction of one dating back into other centuries, a huge wooden hull of a thing.
Resembling a block-house, with its narrow windows and low doors, it had always stirred Lucile’s curiosity. Now she was about to seek shelter in it, or at least in the lee of it. It was deserted, empty, fast falling into decay, a mysterious, haunty place. Yet, so buffeted by the storm was she, so frightened by the onrush of the elements, that she felt quite equal to creeping through some opening into its vast emptiness should an opening appear.
And an opening did offer her opportunity to test her nerve. It was a window, the glass shattered by the storm. Her heart beating wildly, she squeezed through into the inky blackness. On tiptoe, she made her way down the wall to the right. She was obliged to feel for every step. There was not a ray of light.
“Some big hall,” she decided. After she had moved along for a space of forty feet or more she whispered: “The chapel!” Her heart skipped a beat. “Imagine being in a deserted chapel on such a night!”
Suddenly overcome with the thought that she might stumble into an altar or a crucifix, she halted and stood there trembling. She had always felt a great awe for such things.
She stood there until her legs ached with the strain of holding to one position. Then she pushed on slowly. Suddenly she brushed against something. Recoiling in fright, she stood there motionless.
At last she had the courage to bend over and put out a hand. To her intense relief, she found that she had come upon a bench standing against the wall. Having tested its strength, she sat down. Leaning back, she rested.
“That’s better,” she breathed. “The storm will soon be over. Then I’ll get out of here and go to the yacht.”
The drive of the wind, the chill of the storm had made her drowsy. The night before her sleep had been disturbed. As she sat there her head drooped more and more. It began nodding, then suddenly came up with a jerk.
Again she was awake! She would not fall asleep, she told herself. Would not. Would not!
Yet, in three minutes she was nodding again. This time her chin sank lower and lower, until at last it rested on her breast, which moved slowly up and down in the rhythmic breathing of one who sleeps.
How long she slept would be hard to tell. So natural was her awaking that she did not realize that she had been asleep at all.
Yet she sensed that something about the place was different. A vague uneasiness stole over her.
Once she had opened her eyes, she knew what it was. There was light—a strange light, somewhere in the room; a dim, almost imperceptible illumination pervaded all.
As she turned her head, without moving in her seat, she wi
th difficulty suppressed a scream.
At the far end of the room was an apparition, or so at least it seemed.
“A blue face! A face of blue fire. It can’t be.” She rubbed her eyes.
“And yet it is.” Her mind did all the talking. Her lips were numb. It is doubtful if she could have spoken had she dared to. But this was no time to speak.
She did not believe in ghosts, yet there was a face, an illumined face; an ugly face, more fiendish than any she had ever seen. Appearing alive, it rose from the center of a decaying table standing before an altar. Beside the altar, revealed by the pale, bluish light which the face appeared to shed about it, were two tarnished candlesticks and back of it, against the wall, hung a crucifix.
Completely paralyzed by the sight of this blue face in the night and by its awesome surroundings, she sat there quite motionless.
The light of the blue face appeared to wax and wane, to come and go like the faint smiles that often pass over a child’s face.
Lucile was suddenly seized with the notion that the face was looking at her. At the same time there came the question: “Is there light enough to reveal my face?” She glanced down to the floor, then breathed a sigh of relief; she could not see her own feet. Silently drawing her scarf over her face, covering all but her eyes and hiding her hands beneath her coat, she sat there hardly daring to breathe.
She did not have long to wait for, out of the darkness into the pale blue light, there stole three figures. Whether these were men or women, monks, nuns or devils, she could not tell, so closely were they enshrouded in robes or coats of black cloth.
They knelt before the blue face and remained there motionless.
To quiet her nerves, Lucile began to count. She had reached one hundred, when, for fear she would lose all control of herself and scream or run, she closed her eyes. She had counted to one thousand before she dared open them again.
When she did so she found another surprise awaiting her. The kneeling figures were gone. Gone, too, was the face; or at least, it was no longer illumined. The place was dark as a dungeon. Strangely enough, too, the wail of the storm had subsided to a whisper. Only the distant boom of breakers told her that a terrific blizzard had passed over the lake.
Rising without a sound, she tiptoed her way along the wall. Reaching the window, she leaped out upon the ground and was away like a flash. With knees that trembled so they would scarcely support her, she ran for a full half mile before she dared slow down and look back. The snowstorm was over, the moon half out. She could see for some distance behind her, but all she saw was a glistening stretch of snowy landscape. Then she made her way thoughtfully to the dry dock.
Once on board the O Moo she told the other girls nothing of her adventures; merely said she had been delayed by the storm. But that evening as she attempted to study, she would now and then give a sudden start. Once she sprang up so violently that she upset her chair.
“What in the world is the matter?” Marian demanded.
“Nothing, just nerves,” she said, forcing a smile, but she did not attempt to study after that. She went and curled up in a huge, upholstered rocker. Even here she did not fall asleep, but sat staring wide-eyed before her until it was bedtime.
They had all been in their berths for fifteen minutes. Florence had dozed off when she was suddenly wakened by a hand on her arm. It was Lucile.
“Please—please!” she whispered. “I can’t sleep alone tonight.”
Florence put out a strong hand and drew her up into the berth, then pulled the covers down over them both and clasped her gently in her arms.
Lucile did not move for some time. She had apparently fallen asleep when she suddenly started violently and whispered hoarsely:
“No! No! It can’t be; I—I don’t believe in ghosts.”
At the same time a great shudder shot through her frame.
“Tell me about it,” whispered Florence, holding her tight.
Then, in halting, whispered sentences, Lucile told of the night’s adventure.
“That’s strange!” whispered Florence. “Reminds me of something an aged sailor told me once, something that happened on the Asiatic side of the Pacific. Too long to tell now. Tell you sometime though. Doesn’t seem as if there could be any connection. Surely couldn’t be. But you never can tell. Better turn over and go to sleep.”
Relieved of half her fear by the telling of the story, Lucile fell asleep and slept soundly until morning.
CHAPTER III
LUCILE’S QUICK ACTION GAS
You must not imagine (and you might well be forgiven for doing so, if you have read the preceding chapters) that the experiences of the three girls whose lives are pictured here were a series of closely crowded thrilling adventures. It was not the case that no sooner was the curtain run down on one mysterious happening than the stage was set for another. Few lives are like that. Adventures do come to us all at times and we face them for the most part bravely. Some amuse and entertain, others startle and appall, but each teaches in its own way some new lesson of life.
Adventures taken from the lives of others bring to us the greatest ratio of entertainment, but it is our own exciting and mysterious adventures that we speak of most often when we are clustered on the deck of some vessel or gathered about a camp fire.
While not many pages of this book may be devoted to the everyday school life of these girls, they had it just the same. Florence and Lucile strolled the campus as other girls strolled. They cut classes at times. They passed difficult examinations with some credit. They reveled in the grandeur of the architecture of the buildings of the university. They thrilled at the thought that they were a part of the great throng that daily swarmed from the lecture halls, and were somewhat downcast when they came fully to realize their own insignificance when cast into such a tossing sea of humanity.
Marian, the artist, also had her everyday rounds to make. She caught the 8:15 car downtown five days in the week to labor industriously with charcoal and brush. She saw her Alaskan sketches, which had been praised so often and so highly, picked to pieces by the ruthless criticism of a competent teacher, but she rallied from her first disappointment to resolve for better work in the future. She began to plan how this might be accomplished.
Florence, Marian and Lucile were plain, ordinary, normal girls, yet in one respect they were different from others; at least Lucile and Marian were from the first, and Florence, being the strongest, most physically capable of them all, soon caught their spirit. They had about them a certain fearless outlook on life which is nearly always found in those who have spent many months in the far North—an attitude which seems to say, “Adventure and Trouble, I have met you before. I welcome you and will profit by and conquer you.”
Two or three rather ordinary incidents in their life on board the O Moo prove that the life they lived there was, on the whole, a very simple, normal life, yet they also illustrate the indisputable fact that the simplest matters in the world, the casting of a tin can off a boat for instance, may be connected with some interesting and thrilling adventure.
As to that particular tin can, Marian bought it at a grocery store along with twenty-three other cans, filled with some unknown contents and sold at the ridiculously low price of eight cents per can. The reason that the price was so low and the contents unknown was that the labels had, during the process of handling, been accidentally torn off. The cans had been sent on to the retailer and were sold in grab-bag lots of two dozen each.
“You see,” the obliging grocer had explained, “there may be only corn or peas in them. Very well, they are even then worth twelve cents a can at the very least. But then again there may be blackberries in thick syrup, worth thirty or forty cents a can. Then what a bargain!”
“Well, girls,” Marian exclaimed when she had finished telling of her bargain and they of exclaiming over it, “what shall we have for dinner tonight? Loganberries in thick syrup or sliced pineapple?”
“Oh, pineapple by all m
eans!” Florence exclaimed.
“Good enough for me,” smiled Lucile.
“All right. Here goes.” Marian stabbed one of the unknown quantities with the can-opener, then applied her nose to the opening.
“Corn!” she exclaimed in disgust.
“Oh, well,” consoled Florence, “we can eat corn once. Lucile doesn’t care for it, but she can have something else. Here’s a bowl; pour it out in that. Then open the loganberries. They’ll do.”
Again the can-opener fell. Again came the disgusted exclamation, “Corn!”
Lucile giggled and Florence danced a hornpipe of joy. “That’s one on you, Marian, old dear,” she shouted. “Oh, well, just give us plain peaches. They’ll do.”
“Here’s one that has a real gurgly sound when you shake it,” said Lucile, holding a can to her ear and shaking hard. “I think it’s strawberries.”
When Marian opened that can and had peered into it, she said never a word but, walking to the cabin door, pitched it, contents and all, over the rail and down to the crusted snow twenty feet below. There it bounced about for a time, spilled its contents upon the ground, then lay quite still, a new tin can glistening in the moonlight. But watch that can. It is connected with some further adventure.
“Corn! Corn! Corn!” chanted Marian in a shrill voice breaking with laughter. “And what a bargain.”
“But look what I drew!” exclaimed Lucile, pointing to a can she had just opened.
“Pineapple! Sliced pineapple!” the others cheered in unison. Then the three cans of corn were speedily forgiven. But the empty can lay blinking in the moonlight all the same.
The other affair, which occurred a few days later, might have turned into a rather serious matter had it not been for Lucile’s alert mind.
Lucile had what she styled a “bug” for creating things. “If only,” she exclaimed again and again, “I could create something different from anything that has been created before I know I should be supremely happy. If only I could write a real story that would get into print, or discover some new chemical combination that would do things, that would be glorious.”
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