“Come over here in the corner,” he bent low to whisper in her ear, “an’ I’ll tell you a few things. You’re old enough to know ’em, old enough and wise enough to help some, I’ll be bound.”
The story he told her was one of smugglers uncaught, of goods brought in without duty, and of men refused right of entry into the United States who, nevertheless, were here.
“They land from somewhere, somehow, in Portland Harbor, or in Casco Bay,” he added. “It’s our duty, the duty of every good American, to find out how and where they come from.
“I suppose your cousin Ruth told you about seeing us pirates the other night?” he said, leaning close.
“Yes.” The girl’s heart leaped. Was a secret to be told? Yes, here it came.
“We wasn’t real pirates; you guessed that. It was only a blind, a masquerade party, but a party with as firm a purpose as ever American patriot ever held. We’re bound together, us twenty-four, in a solemn vow to rid Casco Bay of this menace to our land. And you can help, for a girl sees things sometimes that men never get near.”
“Yes,” said Pearl.
She wanted to tell of the bolts of cloth on the wood schooner, of the dory in the night and the face in the fire. “But those,” she told herself, “are more Ruth’s secrets than mine. I’ll wait and ask her first.”
Meanwhile the fog was clearing. The rocks of Cushing’s Island and the shore line of Peak’s Island were showing through. Very soon they were moving slowly forward. Before Pearl knew it, they were at the dock in Portland Harbor.
“Young lady,” said the Captain of the Standish, “we’d like a few facts to enter in our log. Will you please come to my cabin?”
Very much confused at being the guest of so great a man, Pearl found it hard to answer questions intelligently.
When at last the ordeal was over, the Captain led her to the steamer’s side.
“Look down there,” he said, smiling.
“A new dory, all green and red!” said Pearl.
“And a halibut,” said the Captain. “You lost a halibut, didn’t you say?”
“Why yes, I—”
“The dory and fish are yours,” he said gruffly. “Present from passengers and crew. Little token of—of—Oh, hang it, girl! Climb down and show us you can row her.”
Pearl went down a rope ladder like a monkey. A moment later, waving a joyous, tearful farewell to her new friends, she turned the shining dory’s prow toward home and rowed away.
CHAPTER VI
OFF FOR FURTHER ADVENTURE
Pearl returned home that evening to find a door to new and strange adventure standing wide open before her.
Donald, her brother, was seated before a small fire in the low old-fashioned fireplace at the back of their living room.
“Don!” she cried joyously. “You home?”
“Yep.” Big, broad shouldered, sea tanned, Don turned to smile at her.
“Don, I caught a halibut, a twenty-five pounder!”
“No?”
“I did.”
“Let’s see it.”
“I—I can’t. It went out to sea in my dory. But Don! I’ve got a new dory and a bigger halibut.”
“No?” Don rose.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
“That,” said Don after inspecting the dory fore and aft, and listening to her story, “is a right fine dory, staunch and seaworthy. I’d like to take it to Monhegan.”
“Monhegan?” Pearl’s heart gave a great leap. Monhegan! The dream island of every coast child’s heart. Don was going there.
“Yes,” said Don. “Swordfishing is played out, and the canners have all the horse mackerel they can use this season. I’ve decided to pack my lobster traps on the sloop and go up about there somewhere, mebbe only Booth Bay Harbor. All depends. They say lobster catches are fine on the shoals up there.”
“But Don,” Pearl’s eyes shone with a new hope, “if you take my dory, you’ll take me. You won’t spend all your time tending lobster pots. There’s fine fishing up there. I caught a halibut. You’ll take me, won’t you?”
“Well,” said Don, thoughtfully, “I might. You’d get lonesome, though. Nobody but me and you and the sea; that is, nobody that we know.”
“Take Ruth, too,” Pearl said quickly. “You should have heard her talk about Monhegan over there by the old fort. She’ll be wild to go. And she is considerable of a fisherman, good as most men.”
Don considered the proposition. Ruth was his cousin. They had been much together on the sea. Unlike his dreamy little sister, she had always been able and practical.
“Why, yes,” he said at last, “I don’t see why she shouldn’t go, if she wants to.”
Ruth was overjoyed at the prospect. She had no trouble in obtaining permission to go, for, though Don had barely turned twenty, he was known as one of the ablest seamen on all Casco Bay, and no one feared to sail with him.
So, one day when the sky was clear and the water a sheet of blue, they rounded the island and went scudding away toward the island of many dreams.
As old Fort Skammel faded from their sight, Ruth thought of the unsolved mystery hidden there and resolved to delve more deeply into it as soon as she returned from this trip.
Someone has said that all of life is closely interwoven, that warp and woof, it is all one. Certainly this at times appears to be true. There was that lurking in the immediate future which was to connect experiences at Monhegan with the old fort’s hidden secret. But this for a time was hidden by the veil of the future which ever hangs like a fog just before us.
CHAPTER VII
SOME LOBSTERS
It was strange. As Donald Bracket shaded his eyes to peer into the driving fog he seemed to see a face. The muscles of that face were twisted into a smile. Not a pleasant smile, it came near being a leer.
Of course, there was no face; only an after image that had somehow crept up from the shadowy recesses of his brain. A very vivid image, it remained there against the fog for many seconds before it slowly faded.
“Peter Tomingo,” he said to himself. “It’s fairly spooky, as if he had sent us out to get into this mess, knowing we’d fall into it.
“But then,” he thought a moment later as he steered his sloop square into the heart of a great wave, “he didn’t know. No one could foretell such a storm four days in advance. Besides, he couldn’t count on my coming out this very day.”
“Whew!” He caught his breath. Cutting its way through the crest of the wave, his twenty-foot fishing boat went plunging down the other side. For a matter of seconds the air about him was all white spray. This passed, but the driving fog remained.
“Good thing the canvas is there.” He tightened a rope that held a protecting canvas across the prow of his boat. “Be dangerous to get one’s motor wet in such a blow. Might be fatal.”
Once more, wrinkling his brow, he stared into the fog. “Wish I could sight Monhegan. Wish—”
An exclamation escaped his lips. He drew his hands hastily across his eyes. The face, the crafty smile, were there again. The lips appeared to move. They seemed to be saying:
“The shoal is just there. Plenty da lobsters. Plenty big. Wanta go. Boat too small, mine. Too far froma da shore. Plenty da lobster. Get reech queek.”
“Well, anyway, he told the truth,” Don said to himself. “There are lobsters aplenty.” He glanced down at a crate where a mass of legs, eyes and great green pinchers squirmed and twisted while the boat, worried by the ever increasing storm, rolled and pitched like a bit of drift in a mountain cataract.
He threw a look at the two water drenched girls, Pearl and Ruth, who sat huddled in the prow, and his brow wrinkled.
“Have to get out of this,” he told himself, taking a fresh grip on his steering stick. “Only question is, where?”
That indeed was the question. Fifteen miles to the westward was the mainland and rocky shores little known to him. He was far from his usual fishing ground. Somewhere out there in th
e fog, perhaps very near, scarcely a mile long, a mere granite boulder jutting out of the sea, was the island called Monhegan. Smaller rocks jutting up from the sea formed a safe harbor for this island. Once there he could weather the storm in safety. Again he shaded his eyes to peer into the fog.
For a full moment, with straining eyes, he stood there motionless. Then of a sudden a sigh of satisfaction escaped his lips. Towering a hundred or more feet above the sea, a bold headline loomed before him.
“Black Head,” he whispered. “That’s better.”
Touching his lever, he set his boat at a slight angle to the rushing waves, then took a deep breath. The battle was begun, not finished. The channel that led to Monhegan’s cozy harbor was narrow. It was guarded by nature’s sentinels—black and frowning rocks on one side, reefs booming and white on the other. Many a stauncher boat than his had turned back before these perils. The rocky shore of Monhegan has taken its toll of lives all down the years.
“It is to be a battle,” he exulted, “and I shall win!”
In the meantime, while his immediate attention was devoted to the present struggle, the questions regarding Tomingo and the lobster industry were revolving themselves in the back of his mind.
They, the three of them, Don, Ruth and Pearl, had reached the mainland nearest to the island of Monhegan, Booth Bay Harbor, in safety. There they had taken up their abode in an abandoned fisherman’s shack. Shortly after that Don had met Tomingo.
To Tomingo he had confided his plans for lobster trapping. Tomingo had told him of the reef far out from the mainland, but near Monhegan, where the lobster fishing was unusually good. Without thinking much about it, he had followed the tip. The weather had been fine. Having piled his motor boat high with lobster pots, he had gone pop-popping away toward Monhegan.
He had experienced no difficulty in finding the long sunken reef Tomingo had pointed out on the chart. He had baited his pots with codfish heads, then dropped them one by one along the reef. After adjusting the bright red floats, each marked with his initials, he had cast an appraising eye along the tossing string of them, then turned his boat’s prow toward his shack.
“Fifteen miles is a long way to come for lobsters,” he had thought to himself. “But the reefs close in are fished out. If the catch is good I’ll do well enough.”
A two days’ storm had kept him from his traps. The morning of this, the third day, had promised fair weather; so with his sister and cousin on board, he had ventured out. Nature had kept but half her promise. Fair weather had continued while he was visiting the shoal. The work of lifting the traps had been particularly difficult. Ruth had given him a ready hand at this. Six traps were fairly loaded with lobsters. A seventh had been torn in pieces by a fifteen pound codfish that had blundered into it. Another trap had been demolished by a dogfish. All the other traps had yielded a fair harvest.
“It sure was a good catch,” the boy told himself as he thought of it now. “Never had a better.”
“But that Tomingo,” he thought again. “Why did he tell me about it, me, a stranger and an American?”
That, indeed, was a question worthy of consideration. The conflict between native born and foreign born fishermen all along the Maine coast has for many long years been a hard-fought and bitter one. At times floats have been cut and traps set adrift and sharp battles fought with fists and clubbed oars. It seemed inconceivable, now that he thought of it, that any foreigner should have told him of this rich fishing ground.
“It is true,” he told himself, “that Tomingo’s boat is smaller and less seaworthy than mine. I wouldn’t want to come this far in it myself. But some of his friends and fellow countrymen have far better boats than mine. Why should they not fish that shoal?”
He could not answer this question. “There’s a trick in it somewhere, I’ll be bound, and I’ll find it soon enough without doubt. Meanwhile there is business at hand.”
And, indeed, there was. The frowning rocks of Black Head, Burnt Head and Skull Rock loomed squarely before him. He had been told enough to know that this was the back of the island, that he must round the point to the left, circle half about the island and enter from the other side.
“Going to be a hard pull,” he said, setting his teeth hard, “but if the old engine stays with me I’ll make it.”
The memory of that next hour will remain with the boy as long as the stars shine down upon him and the sun brightens his mornings.
The wind, the fog, the storm, the falling night. Above the roar of the sea a long-drawn voice, hoarse and insistent, never ending, the voice of Manana, the great fog horn that, driven by great engines, watched over night and day, warned of rocky shoals and disaster.
With that voice sounding in his ears, with damp spray cutting sharply across his face, with his light craft like a frightened rabbit leaping from wave to wave, he steered clear of Black Head, White Head and Skull Rock, to round the point and come swinging round toward the narrow entrance where he would find safe haven or a grave.
He was heading for what he believed to be the channel when a light creeping slowly across the sky caught and held his attention. It was growing dark now, difficult to see ten yards before him. He needed to get in at once. For all this, the mysterious light intrigued him. Beginning at the right, it moved slowly over a narrow arc against the black sky. Pausing for the merest fraction of a second, it appeared to retrace its way over an invisible celestial way.
“What can it be?” For a moment he was bewildered. Then, like a flash it came to him. He was looking at the crest of the great rock that lay before Monhegan. On Monhegan a powerful light was set. As it played backward and forward it tinged the crest of Manana, as the rock was called, with a faint halo of glory.
“What a boon to the sailor!” he thought. “What real heroes are those who live on this bleak island winter and summer! What—”
His thoughts broke straight off. Before him he had caught an appalling sound, the rush of surf beating upon a rocky shoal.
Reflected from Manana, a single gleam of light gave him further warning. The shoals were just before him. The waves there were breaking mountain high. Turning his boat squarely about, he set his engine to doing its best and trusted himself to the trough of a wave. Instantly there came a drenching crash of cold black water.
He clung desperately to his course. Any moment the engine, deluged by a greater sea, might go dead. Then would come the end.
“But there’s no other way.” He set his teeth hard.
Once more he caught the moving gleam across the sky. That gleam saved him. He held to a course perpendicular to its line of motion as long as he dared. Then, swinging through a quarter circle he shot straight ahead. Five minutes later, drenched to the skin, panting from excitement and well nigh exhausted, but now quite safe, he ran his boat alongside a punt where a yellow light gleamed.
“Hello!” said a voice. A lantern held high revealed a boyish face. “Pretty lucky you got in. Nasty night. Some blow!” said the boy.
“Wouldn’t have made it,” said Don, “only I caught the gleam on the crest of Manana. It guided me in.”
“Tie up,” invited the boy. “I’ll take you ashore in my punt.”
“What you got there?” he asked in a surprised tone as the light of his lantern fell upon the crate.
“Lobsters,” said Don.
“Lobsters?” The boy let out a whistle of surprise. “Where’d you get ’em?”
“On a shoal, little way out.” Don hadn’t meant to tell that. He hadn’t liked the sound of that whistle. He spoke before he thought.
“You’d better watch out,” said the other boy. Then without allowing time for further remarks, “All set? Hop in then. I got to go ashore. The gang will be looking for me.”
As the young stranger rowed the two girls and Don ashore, Don wondered over his strange warning.
“You better look out!” What could he have meant? He wanted to ask. Natural reserve held him back.
Only once
during the short journey was the silence broken. They were passing a boat covered with canvas and sunk to the gunwale.
“What’s that for?” Don asked.
“Lobster pond. Keep lobsters there.”
“Why do they keep them?”
“There are a hundred or more of us summer folks out here,” the other boy explained. “We like a lobster salad now and then. They keep them for us. Mighty decent of them to bother. A fine lot, these fishermen. Real sports.”
Don thought it strange that lobsters should be kept when there was a steady market for them and they were to be caught out here with comparative ease. However, he asked no further questions.
“Thanks for the lift.” He stood looking up at the few lights that gleamed through the fog. “Suppose I’ll have to stay here all night.”
“Suppose so. I’d take you to our cottage, but it’s small. We’re full up. Couldn’t crowd one more in an end. There’s a summer hotel up yonder.”
“Summer hotel. Four dollars up. Society folks.” Don looked down at his sodden garments. “No, thanks. Where do the fisherfolk live? I’m one of them.”
“Why—” The boy appeared surprised. “Captain Field lives just down there beyond the wharf. But you wouldn’t go there?”
“Wouldn’t? Why not?” Something in the other boy’s tone angered Donald.
“You ought to know.” The boy’s tone was sharp. He turned to go.
“But I don’t.”
“Then you’re dumb. That’s all I have to say for you. You’re breaking into the closed season on lobsters. You couldn’t do anything worse.”
“The closed season!” Don’s eyes opened wide. “You’re crazy. There’s no closed season on lobsters, not in the State of Maine.”
“On Monhegan there is, and believe me it’s tight closed. Try it out and see.”
“But that would have to be a law. No one owns the shoals.”
“Guess if you lived on this rocky island winter and summer, heat, cold, supplies, no supplies, if you took it all as it came, you’d feel that you owned the shoals. That’s the way the folks here feel. They want time to fish for cod and take summer parties about, so they haul up their traps and call June to November a closed season.
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