The Secret of
Saturday Cove
BARBEE OLIVER CARLETON
ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES GEER
The Secret of Saturday Cove
Copyright © 1961, 1981 by Barbee Oliver Carleton.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
To the boys and girls of Friendship
this book is fondly dedicated
by their friend, the author
Chapter
1
JONATHAN’S CHART
WITH an explosion of spray the trap struck the water and settled slowly downward.
The boy in the dory paused, his hand on the throttle. After the noisy throb of the motor the long cove lay as quiet as a dream. The bay was brilliant with summer — blue of the water, green of the island spruces, the bright spark of mica flashing from the rocks. Everywhere the fragrance of rockweed and spruce. Nowhere a sound but the white gulls screaming and the lap, lap, of water against the dory’s hull.
This is lobstering, David thought with warm, new pride. “This is the life!” he said aloud.
Sally sniffed deeply. “It smells kind of nice,” she agreed. “But what are we waiting for? I have a feeling we ought to hurry.”
David Blake grinned at his young sister seated in the bow. She looked like a figurehead, he decided, chubby though she was in her hated life jacket. Her hair, like his own, was the pale color of beach grass, and like all the Blakes she had eyes as blue as the sea. As usual, she was bouncing with impatience.
“What’s your hurry?” he asked. “We’re pretty near done.”
“You brought me along to help you haul,” Sally reminded him. “So let’s finish hauling. Then I can tell that stuck-up Poke of yours that I hauled all your traps.”
David laughed. “Tell him what?”
“Well, anyway, I helped.”
David started up the motor and they moved on down the cove toward the bay. The afternoon was strangely still, and the little motor beat like a slow pulse.
“You’re just jealous, Sally,” her brother said. “Poke isn’t stuck-up, and you know it.”
“Well, he’s a sissy, then,” Sally declared. “If he isn’t scared of the water, why doesn’t he ever come hauling with you?”
“He just doesn’t like it,” David said defensively. But he frowned, knowing that she was right. Loving the sea as he did, it was hard to be reminded that his best friend hated it.
Sally pointed suddenly behind him. “Look! Thunderheads!”
David glanced toward the west where the little town of Saturday Cove lay shimmering under the hot July sun. Low over the hills behind the town black clouds boiled up angrily. From the distance came the dull mutter of thunder.
“There are four more traps outside Blake’s Island,” he told her. “We’ll have just about time to finish hauling.” He speeded up the motor. With a staccato roar the little dory fanned her way through the smooth waters of the cove. Beating sturdily into the tide rip where cross-currents roiled and churned, she entered the broad acres of Penobscot Bay. Here the water was choppy, and David tightened his hold on the stick.
“If the going gets rough,” he shouted over the noise of the motor, “we can always go ashore at Blake’s and wait out the storm there.”
Sally bobbed her tallow braids. “Then I hope it’ll be a ripsnorter!” she cried. Perhaps they could even explore the Blake homestead again. Before Poke came to town — that queer and quiet boy that David seemed to like so much — she and her brother had spent wonderful hours together, exploring the islands off Saturday Cove. Secretly, she was glad that Poke had proved to be such a sissy about the water. Now David might see how much fun he could have with her, just the two of them again.
Her brother held the dory steady toward the familiar island that lay off Grindstone Point. As the distance shortened, they caught a glimpse of the house — a proud old pioneer still standing among the wind-twisted spruces on the headland.
David felt a rush of affection for the place. His family still owned Blake’s Island, although the house was now used only as a fishermen’s refuge. But this whole area — these islands, this cove — was the blood and bone of the Blake family. For it was into this very harbor that John Blake sailed on a Saturday long ago, so naming the inlet and the village that later grew from the wilderness on the mainland. And somewhere in these waters the boy, Jonathan, had rowed secretly, alone and afraid. . . .
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sally shouted from the bow. “You’re thinking about the Blake treasure.”
David looked surprised. “Who believes that yarn any more?”
Sally narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “You do. I heard you pumping Dad about it last night.”
David said nothing. He squinted past Sally, on the lookout for the first buoys that lay off the ledges.
“I bet you’ve stumbled onto something, David Blake!” Suspicion grew fast in Sally’s mind, and in no time at all was full-grown.
Silently, David avoided a buoy of Willis Greenlaw’s that bobbed in their course.
“And I bet, when I’m not around, you go ashore at Blake’s a lot.”
David started to whistle to himself.
“And maybe you even dig,” Sally accused him.
He laughed. “You’re wrong there, towhead.”
Sally’s eyes flared. “You’ve found out something, I can tell! And I should think you’d let me in on it.”
“Girls talk too much.”
“Well, when I’m twelve,” snapped Sally, “I hope I’ll know enough to get help when I need it.”
“Why don’t you just settle on learning how to swim?” said her brother. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll be too old to totter down to the beach for your lessons.”
Sally bit her lip and looked away, and David felt ashamed. He had struck Sally’s weak spot. Each summer she spent hours at the beach taking the lessons offered by the Red Cross or practicing strokes in an old inner tube, but never once daring to put her head underwater. Each summer she had given up in defeat and shame. Now, the subject of swimming was avoided by the Blakes, and Sally, in despair, had begun to hope for a miracle.
“You keep working on your swimming,” David added more kindly, “and I’ll let you in on something.”
“You will?” broke in Sally.
“If and when I need any help,” her brother finished firmly.
Disappointed, Sally was about to retort when thunder cracked close by. Southwesterly, beyond Grindstone Point, sea and sky already seemed to meet in a mighty silver rainfall. “It’ll be a ripsnorter,” Sally told herself, exulting. “I have a feeling. . . .”
David, too, was studying the sky. “Plenty of time,” he said. He shut off the motor and drifted close to the red-and-black striped buoy off their starboard side.
Intent, Sally leaned forward. The business of hooking and hauling in the trap never failed to excite her. “Let me try, Dave,” she said. She would show him how well a girl could do it.
Seizing the gaff, she made a thrust at the toggle line, and missed. Then, as the dory was about to pass over the line, Sally timed her move deliberately. With one swift stroke of the hook she snared the rope. Triumphant, she dragged the buoy into the dory.
“There!” She looked to her brother for approval.
“Not bad,” David said. Then, bracing himself, he hauled in the wet rope, coil over coil, until the trap came over the side, streaming rockweed and water.
“Oh, good.” Sally eyed the green-blue catch in the trap. “We’ve caught three in this one.”
But David did not need his iron ruler to note that on
e was a “short,” its main shell under the legal length. Back into the water went the lobster in a dark and shining arc. “Two it is,” he corrected. Cautiously, he took one of the creatures between head and flapping tail. Holding first one waving claw, then the other, he pushed a wooden wedge firmly into the joint. This done, he tossed the shellfish into a bushel basket now filled with the day’s restless catch.
He thrust the other teasingly toward Sally. “How about plugging him for me?”
For a moment Sally hesitated. Then, with a hand not wholly steady, she grasped the second lobster well behind its punishing claws, as David had done. Gingerly, she inserted the plug into one claw, then into the other. When the chore was completed Sally was breathing as hard as if she had been running. Supposing the hideous thing had seized one of her fingers!
As David moved on to the other traps he explained, his voice eager, how a lobster uses his claws as a knife and a fork, one for cutting, one for crushing. Surprised, Sally stared at him. Why, not only did David love lobstering, he even loved these lobsters.
“If they snap off a finger,” she told him tartly, “I can’t see what difference it makes whether they cut it off or crush it off.”
Her brother laughed. “Well, you still have all ten of yours, haven’t you? You did fine. If you could stay out of trouble long enough you might even make a good hauling partner someday.”
“Thanks,” said Sally briefly. But she glowed inside with pride.
Swiftly, David baited the last trap and thrust it into the darkening bay. The motions were growing sure and familiar, but skill had not come overnight. From early boyhood he had gone lobstering out of the cove with his Uncle Charlie.
Then, this summer of his twelfth year, he had done more than that. With a knowledge gained during long hours of helping at Fishermen’s Dock, David had caulked and repaired Uncle Charlie’s old dory. Almost before the last patch of snow had melted from behind the gear sheds, he and Poke had painted her and stenciled high on her side the name, Lobster Boy. Then, his thirty traps and trap heads made ready during the blustering weeks of winter, he was prepared. When the days turned warm and school ended, he, too, ran his own trap line, short though it was, along with Willis Greenlaw and Foggy Dennett and the other lobstermen. With each week that passed David added to his little college fund at the bank. With each day he gained a deeper respect for the sea.
Now, glancing at the sky, he saw that he had delayed too long. In the few brief minutes he had taken to finish running his line the squall had gathered itself and sprung. Whitecaps fled across the bay like rabbits before the weasel wind. And down in the cove he saw the spray leap high against the channel buoys. There was no longer any choice between the town landing and the nearby island.
“It looks like we make a run for Blake’s,” he shouted, and he opened the motor wide.
Sally’s answer was lost in the quick roar. Dodging the tossing buoys, they made a broad arc around the point. Once beyond the shelter of the ledges, the little dory pitched sharply in the tide rip. Now and again the propeller rose out of water, and the motor coughed and hesitated.
“Don’t let her stall,” breathed David, and he felt the perspiration gather on his brow. But the motor beat on, and minutes later they entered the island cove. Throttling back, he ran the dory up onto the shore above the tide line.
Before they had beached and tied her, the rain began. It fell at first in great, cool drops. Then, as they struggled across the slippery ledges, the very heavens seemed to open.
“Hurry up,” gasped David. He caught his sister’s wet hand and half dragged her through the spruces. Past the dim shape of the barn they raced, and down the path where grass slapped wet against their legs. Before them stood the house — foursquare and silver-gray in the rain. With a thrust of his shoulder, David forced open the creaking door. Panting, they pushed it shut behind them.
Here was refuge. For, dark and musty though the old kitchen might be, here they were safe from the sea and the wind.
David groped above the wooden sink for the candle and matches he had used before. This time, he thought, he had been lucky. He would not ignore the thunder-heads again. He would not trust to luck.
“It’s dark in here, isn’t it?” Sally whispered. “Spooky, sort of.”
“It ought to be, with most of the windows shuttered up. Don’t go and get scared now.”
“Who’s scared?” scoffed Sally. But she remained close beside him as a snarl of thunder echoed through the empty house.
David lighted a candle and thrust it into an old bottle. In the dim light poor Sally’s face seemed very pale, her eyes enormous. Maybe he ought to let her in on his discovery, David thought. That would take her mind off the storm, all right. He seized the bottle and held it high. “Come on, Sally. I’m going to show you something.”
Instantly, their shadows leaped into giant shapes against the wall. Sally eyed the murky rooms that yawned beyond the kitchen. “N-no, thanks. It’s so c-cosy in this nice old kitchen.” She settled herself firmly on an overturned nail keg. “Besides, I’m c-cold.”
David set the bottle down. “All right. It’ll keep.” He moved over to the huge fireplace and laid a fire, using the driftwood and paper that he kept ready in the wood box. Often, when it was damp hauling and he was wet and cold, he stopped off at the island and built himself a fire. Occasionally, he knew, the other lobstermen did the same thing. The door was always open.
Sally asked suddenly, “What’ll keep? Is it something about the Blake treasure?”
“Could be,” said David. Carefully, he poured a little kerosene onto the wood from a can left by one of the men. Let her wonder. It would give her something to think about besides the storm.
Another explosion of thunder. Then the hail began to fall, rattling like birdshot against the shutters.
A cunning gleam came into Sally’s eyes. “What makes you think there ever was any treasure in the first place?”
David struck a match and the wood kindled into flame. “Everyone in the family always said there was, for one thing. Dad’s father told him about it, and his father told him, and that’s the way it went, back two hundred years or more.”
“Well, I never did see why they didn’t dig it up again.”
David shrugged. “Nobody knows. Maybe they couldn’t find it.”
Sally sniffed. “That’s silly. If I buried something, I guess I could find it again. Anyway, why did they want to hide it in the first place?”
“You just want to hear the story again,” said David. He pulled a box close to the blaze and Sally moved beside him. Outside, the wind and the hail battered the ancient house. But here in the kitchen the fire crackled and they were warm and content.
“One night,” David began, “during the Revolutionary War, John Blake saw a shaving mill come into this cove.”
“What’s a shaving mill?” asked his sister, not quite remembering.
“Dad says that’s what they called the long boats that the British used. Wherever there was a house or a settlement, they would come ashore off their frigates and take whatever they needed.”
Sally was indignant. “That was dirty.”
“That was war,” David said dryly. “Well, one night a band of British came ashore and climbed the path we just came up over. They seized John Blake’s musket and they butchered the sheep and cows and made off with what they wanted.”
For a moment the two were silent, seeing in the shadowy kitchen the heavy-booted Redcoats, the children huddled about their mother, the white face of John Blake who, without his firing piece, was helpless to defend his home.
“John’s wife, Sally—”
“Sally Blake! Like me,” Sally broke in.
David nodded. “Lots of the Blake girls have been named Sally after her. Anyway, the first Sally sent the oldest boy, Jonathan, to hide the valuables — family silver, I think, and pewter, and things like that. And the British never found them.”
“Then they might be right
here in this house,” cried Sally. She seemed not to hear the thunder that crashed and echoed among the islands.
David placed a piece of driftwood on the flames. “But if Jonathan had hidden the things in the house, he could have found them again, couldn’t he?”
“I should think so.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking.” David faced his sister. “If I had been John and Sally Blake, I’d have stuffed the valuables into something the minute I saw the British drop anchor. Then I’d have sent Jonathan off with them in a boat. Then, when the British came and swarmed all over the house, the valuables would have been safe on some other island. Besides . . .”
“Besides, what?”
David hesitated.
Sally jumped off her keg in a fury. “If you had your precious old Poke here, I bet you’d tell him!”
“Poke doesn’t talk.”
“Poke does, too, talk.” Sally insisted. “Sometimes he talks exactly like an ency . . . an encyclo . . . a book.”
David studied his sister’s angry face. Then he laughed. “All right, hothead. Never mind about Poke. Cool off and come on.”
David picked up the light and led the way to the buttery, with Sally following closely at his heels. Here it was even darker than the kitchen, and dank with the chill of stone and age. Except for several rusted old lanterns lined up against the wall, the place seemed empty.
David handed Sally the light and stooped to open the door of a low cupboard. “There was a stack of old newspapers in here and I’ve used them up, building fires. So yesterday I poked around for some more, way in back of this beam.”
Sally peered in. “It looks spidery in there.”
“And I found this!” David dragged forth a heavy crock. From it he pulled a roll of musty papers.
“Grandfather’s charts,” he said briefly. “Most of them are like the ones we all use now, except they’re too mildewed to be much good.”
Sally sniffed with distaste.
“But take a look at this one!” A note of excitement had crept into David’s voice.
The Secret of Saturday Cove Page 1
