“Who?”
“That man, the face in the fire!”
“You can’t be sure,” said Betty.
“No,” said Ruth, “not until we go back there. Then perhaps we won’t.”
They parted a moment later, Ruth to go to her cottage on the slope, Pearl to her home on the water front, and Betty to the big summer cottage that tops the hill.
As Ruth lay in her bed by the window, looking out over the bay that night, she felt that the cozy and comfortable little world she knew, the bay, the cluster of little islands, the all enclosing sea, had suddenly become greatly agitated.
“It’s as if a great storm had come sweeping down upon us,” she told herself.
“Mystery, thrills, adventure,” she said a moment later. “I have always longed for these, but now they have begun to come I—I somehow feel that I should like to put out my two hands and push them away.”
With that she fell asleep.
CHAPTER V
THREE GRAY WITCHES
The next afternoon Pearl Bracket went fishing. She felt the need of an opportunity for quiet thought. The events of the past few days had stirred her to the very depths. A quiet, dreamy girl, she was given to sitting across the prow of her brother’s fishing boat or the stern of her ancient dory as it drifted on a placid bay. But this day only Witches Cove would do.
To this imaginative girl Witches Cove had ever been a haunting place of many mysteries. A deep dark pool on three sides by the darkest of firs and hemlocks, on the north of the island where no sunbeams ever fell, it had always cast a spell of enchantment about her.
There, when the tide was coming in, water rushed over half submerged rocks to go booming against the granite wall, then to return murmuring and whispering of many things.
Pearl sat in the stern of her dory on this particular afternoon and recalled all the strange tales that had been woven about the cove.
At one time, so the story ran, it had been a smugglers’ cove. Here in the days of long ago, dark gray, low lying crafts came to anchor at dead of night to bring ashore cargoes of rich silks, tea, coffee and spices.
Still farther back it had been a pirates’ retreat. Even the renowned Captain Kidd had been associated with the place.
“On a very still day,” Uncle Jeremy Trott had told her once in deepest secrecy, “you can still see a spar lyin’ amongst the rocks. That spar came from a Spanish galleon. I’ve seen it. I know. An’ I’ve always held that a treasure chest were lashed to it an’ that it were left there as a markin’ thing, like skulls and cross-bones were on land.”
Pearl had never seen the spar. But more than once her fish-hook had snagged on something down there that was soft like wood and she had lost the hook and part of her line.
Today, however, she thought little of the spar at the bottom of the cove. She thought instead of the strange doings aboard the Black Gull and of Ruth’s face in the fire.
“I’m going back to the old fort,” she told herself stoutly. “There’s more to that than we think.”
“And still,” she thought, as she dragged a larger cunner from the water, “that’s Ruth’s discovery. It’s only fair to let her go to the bottom of it. Nothing important ever happens to me. I—”
She paused to look at the cunner she had caught. Its coloring was curious, all red, blue, green and purple.
“Like he’d been dipped in burning sulphur,” she told herself. “Nothing in Witches Cove is the same as anywhere else. They say it’s the three gray witches. Tom McTag saw ’em once, three gray witches coming up out of the water behind the fog. Boo! It’s spooky here even in daytime. Seems like eyes were peering at you. Seems—”
Her glance strayed to the bank. Then she did receive a shock. Eyes were staring at her, two pairs of glaring red eyes.
For a full moment she sat there petrified. Then, as her senses returned to her, she made out the figures of two huge black cats half hidden in the green shrubs that capped the rocky wall of Witches Cove.
“They’re not real,” she told herself. “They’re witches’ cats.”
To prove this, she caught up the blue, green, purple cunner and sent it flying toward the cats.
That settled it. Growling, snarling, sending fur flying, they were upon the fish and at one another, tooth and nail in an instant.
“Here, you greedy things!” she exclaimed. “Stop that! Here’s another and yet another!” Two cunners followed the first.
It was just as the cats settled down to their feast that her ear caught a movement farther up the bank and a quick look showed her a very small man, wearing great horn rimmed glasses. Squatting there on the steep bank, he was staring at her, then at the cats. For a moment he remained there. The next he turned and disappeared.
“Someone living in the old Hornaby Place,” she told herself with a quick intake of breath. “Must be. Cats wouldn’t be here. Nobody’s been there for more than six years, and it’s the only place on the island. I wonder—”
She wondered many things before she was through. And in the meantime she caught some fish; not the sort she had hoped to catch, however. Pearl, as has been said, was a dreamer. One often dreams of bigger and better things. It was so with her fishing.
Then, of a sudden, she caught her breath and set her teeth hard as she tugged at the stout codfish line.
“It’s a big one,” she told herself as the look of determination on her round freckled face deepened. “A big cod, or maybe a chicken halibut. If only I can land him!”
Two fathoms of line shot through her fingers, cutting them till they bled.
“Can’t hold him—but I’ve got to!” she told herself as, wrapping the line about her hands, she braced herself against the gunwale, tipping her dory to a rakish angle.
“I’ll land him,” she avowed through tight set teeth. “Don won’t laugh at me tonight.”
Like many another girl born and bred on the rugged coast of Maine, Pearl was fond of hand-line fishing. Time and again she had begged her big brother, Don, to take her deep-sea fishing in his sloop.
“Why, little girl,” he would laugh, “look at you! You’re no bigger than a fair-sized beefsteak cod yourself. If you got one on a line he’d pull you overboard. Then we’d have an awful time telling which was you and which the fish, one or t’other. You just stay and wash your dishes, sister. We’ll catch the fish.”
Pearl did wash her dishes. She did a great many other things besides. But when the work was done and the tide was right, she would dig a pail of clams for bait and go rowing away to the Witches Cove.
Usually she returned with a string of cunners and shiny polloks.
That there were some wary old rock cod hiding away in the secret watery recesses at the bottom of Witches Cove she had always known. That a halibut weighing fifty pounds had once been caught there she knew also.
So tonight, with hopes high and nerves all a-tingle, she tugged at the line.
“Tire him out,” she told herself grimly. She threw her shoulders back and gave a tremendous tug. Without warning the line went dead slack.
“Lost him,” she all but sobbed.
“But no.” As she reeled rapidly in, there came another tug. Not so strong now. She had no difficulty pulling the catch toward her.
“Tangled round some kelp before,” she told herself disappointedly. “Only a small one after all.”
That she was partly wrong, she knew in a moment. A broad spot of white appeared in the dark waters beneath her, and a moment later she was landing a halibut weighing perhaps twenty-five pounds.
“Oh, you beauty!” she exclaimed. “Now they can’t say I’m not a fisherman!”
The two kinds of fish most relished by the coast of Maine people are sword fish and young halibut. Pearl’s mother would be delighted. Don and some of the other boys were off on a long fishing cruise. There had been no really fine fish in the house for more than a week.
For some little time, while she regained her poise, Pearl sat admiring her catch.
“I got you,” she said at last.
Then of a sudden her face clouded. “After all,” she told herself, “it’s nothing, catching a fish. The grand old times are gone. Nothing ever really happens. If only I’d lived in the days of great, great, great grandfather Josia Bracket. Those were the brave days!”
As she closed her eyes she seemed to see Casco Bay as it had been in the pioneer times when the first Bracket landed there.
“No houses, no stores, no steamships,” she told herself. “No city of Portland, no summer tourists, no ferry boats. Only a cabin here, another there, woods and water and skulking Indians, and the whole wide world to live and fight in. What wonderful days!”
As she opened her eyes she started. As if willing to conform to her wishes, nature had blotted out the present as far as that might be done. A heavy fog drifting silently in from the sea had hidden the wharves and storage houses in Portland Harbor, and the homes that line the shore of Peak’s Island. Even the cliffs that formed Witches Cove were growing shadowy and unreal.
A fog, however, be it ever so dense, cannot shut out all signs of progress. A moment had passed when the ding-dong of a bell reached her ears.
“There!” she exclaimed, shaking her fist at the bell buoy which, however invisible through the fog, kept up its steady ding-dong. “There now! You’ve gone and spoiled it all. I’d like to tie my sweater about your noisy tongue!
“But of course that won’t do. The boat from Booth Bay Harbor will be passing in an hour or two. If this fog keeps up, the pilot will need your noisy voice to guide him through.”
“Oh, well,” she sighed, “what’s the use of fussing? Fish a little longer, then go home.”
She settled back in the bow of her light dory, with the prow tilting at a rakish angle, baited her hook and cast the line overboard.
Fishing wasn’t likely to be over exciting now. She had made her record catch. Never before had she landed one so large and fine. What she wanted most of all was to sit and dream a while, to dream of the brave deeds of long ago.
And such a time to dream! Even the cliffs twenty yards away were lost to her sight now. A ring of white fog, her boat and her own little self, that was all there was to her present world.
“Indians over there on Peak’s Island,” she told herself, still dreaming. “Indians and some French. Settlers on Portland Head all crowded into the stockade. Going to be a battle. Some soldiers in a big ship anchored far out. They don’t know. A message is needed. I’ll go in my little dory.
“Will you please be still!” she exclaimed as the bell buoy clanged louder than ever as a great swell came sweeping in from the sea.
The bell did not keep still. Ding-dong, Ding-dong, Ding-dong, it spoke of cliffs and shallows and of a channel between that was safe, wide and deep.
The girl gave her attention to fishing. Cunners took her bait. She caught a small one, but threw him back. A great old cod, red with iodine from the kelp, gave her a thrill. He snapped at her bait, snagged on the hook, then shook himself free.
“Go it!” she exclaimed. “What’s cod beside chicken halibut? Wouldn’t—”
She broke short off. The ding-dong of that buoy bell never had sounded so near before.
Ding-dong, Ding-dong. It seemed to be at her very side. She gave a pull at her anchor line.
“Fast enough,” she told herself. “Not drifting toward the buoy. Besides, wouldn’t drift that way. Tide’s setting out.”
The big red cod or another of his sort claimed her attention. She teased him by bobbing bait up and down. She loaded the hook with juicy clams and tried again. This time it seemed that success must crown her efforts. The fish was hooked. She began reeling in.
“A beauty!” she whispered as a great red head appeared close to the surface. And then, with a last mighty effort, the fish tore himself free.
“Oh!” she cried, “You—”
Ding-dong, Ding-dong.
She started, looked about, then stood straight up to stare open mouthed at what she saw.
And at that moment, faint and from far away there came the hoarse hoot of the fog horn on the steamer from Booth Bay Harbor.
“A hundred passengers on that boat,” she thought as her heart stood still, “perhaps two hundred, three hundred people, men, women and children, many little children coming home from a joyous vacation.”
She looked again at the thing she had seen and could scarcely believe her eyes.
Dim, indistinct but unmistakable, had appeared the outline of a steel frame, and at its center a large bell.
“Like a ghost,” she told herself.
“But it’s no ghost!” Instantly she sprang into action. Cutting her fish line, she allowed it to drift. Dragging up her dripping anchor, she dropped it into the boat. Then, gripping the oars, she put all her strength into a dozen strokes that brought her with a bump against the side of the steel frame from which the bell hung suspended.
The next thing she did was strange, indeed. Having removed her heavy wool sweater, she wrapped it tightly about the clapper of the bell, then tied it securely there with a stout cod line.
“There now,” she said, breathing heavily as she sank to a sitting position on one of the hollow steel floats that prevented the bell and its frame from sinking. “Now, perhaps you will keep still and let me dream.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, suddenly attempting to stand up. “The dory’s gone!”
It was true. In her haste to muffle the bell, she had failed to tie her painter securely. Now it had drifted away into the fog.
“Time to dream now,” she told herself ruefully. “May never do anything else.”
To one who knows little of the ways of boats and buoys and other things belonging to the sea, the girl’s acts might seem madness.
They were not. By some mischance, the chain fastened to a huge rock at the bottom of the channel, which held the bell buoy to its place, had given way. The bell buoy still clanging its message, now a false message indeed, was drifting out to sea. If the S. S. Standish, the Booth Bay Harbor steamer, were guided by this false message catastrophe would befall her. With all on board she would go crashing into a cliff or be piled upon some rocky shoal.
Pearl could see it all, just as it would happen. A terrible crash, then unutterable confusion. Men shouting, children crying, women praying, seamen struggling and the black sea closing down upon a sinking ship.
“But now, thank God,” she said fervently, “it shall not be. Not hearing the bell, having no sure guide, they will stand away till the fog lifts.”
Then of a sudden her heart went cold and beads of perspiration started out on her forehead. What was to come of her? With her dory gone, she was going straight out to sea on the frame of a drifting buoy. What chance could there be?
A moment of calm thought, a whispered prayer, and she shut the thought from her mind. She was doing her plain duty. She was in God’s care. That was enough.
The hoot of the steamer’s fog horn sounded louder. Nearer and nearer they came. They had passed the Witch Rock bell in safety. There was need of Pearl’s bell buoy now.
Of a sudden she caught the clang of the bell, the pilot’s signal for half speed.
“He’s missed the bell. They are safe. They’ll lay outside until the fog lifts. Thank-thank God!”
Still she drifted out to sea. But her own peril was lost in great joy because of the safety of others.
Another jangling of bells. Quarter speed.
A thought struck her all of a heap. Hastily unwrapping the bell clapper of the buoy, she struck the bell a sharp tap. Again, again and yet again this strange signal sounded. It was the pilot’s signal for half speed.
Three times she repeated it. Then came the ship’s bell with the same signal.
“They heard,” she whispered tensely.
Then, with a throbbing heart, she sent out in Morse signals the call for help, S. O. S.
There sounded the rattle of chains. They were lowering a boat.
Moments of silence followed, then from out the fog there came,
“Ahoy there!”
Sweeter words were never heard by any girl.
“Ahoy there!” she called back.
A moment more, and four astonished seamen stared at a girl riding a drifting buoy.
* * * *
“What you doing on the buoy?” said the kind-hearted and grateful captain as Pearl climbed aboard the steamer and was surrounded by curious passengers.
“Why I—I was fishing. I caught a chicken halibut and—”
Of a sudden her eyes went wide; her dory and chicken halibut were gone.
“Yes, yes, go on,” said the eager members of the group. She succeeded in finishing her story, but all through the telling there flashed into her mind the picture of her dory and the only chicken halibut she had ever caught, drifting out to sea.
All up and down the deck, as they waited for the fog to lift, grateful passengers and crew repeated the girl’s story. And always at the end they added, “Lost her fish. Lost her dory. Too bad!”
“Well, young lady,” a gruff Irish voice said as Pearl spun round to listen, “you seem born to adventure.”
The girl found herself looking into the eyes of Captain Patrick O’Connor, he of the pirate crew of the Black Gull.
“Yes, I do,” she replied in uncertain tones.
“Lay by this, young lady,” the Captain went on, “that buoy chain was cut.”
“Cut?”
“Certain was. Them buoys are inspected regular. Look! They’ve brought the buoy alongside. They’re hoistin’ her on board. Mark my word, the chain’s not worn much, not enough to cause her to break.”
It was not. As they examined the end of the chain, they found no marks of hammer, file or hack-saw, but the last link was nearly as perfect as when first forged.
“Of course, they wouldn’t leave the cut link to tell on ’em,” O’Connor leaned over to whisper in the girl’s ear. “They’re told on sure enough, all the same.”
“But-but—” the girl stammered, trying in vain to understand, “if I hadn’t found it, if I hadn’t silenced its lying tongue, you’d have gone on the rocks.”
“So we would, young lady. And there’s them hidin’ away along these here waters as would have been glad to see it. There’s twenty-four men aboard this ship, that’s hated worse than death by some.
The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 122
