The Mystery on Cobbett's Island

by Kathryn Kenny

  “I’m sorry,” said Peter penitently. “I forgot you’re new to all this nautical lingo. I meant we would head for the church and then follow the chart to—let’s see, what is the next mark?”

  “All it says is ‘Rock,’ ” answered Trixie.

  “It could be that submerged rock out there that they call ‘Black Cat,’ ” Peter conjectured. “The big boats have to steer clear of it, but we don’t have to worry about it in a Lightning, because it’s so far under water, even at low tide.”

  As they strolled around the glassed-in porch, they noticed pictures of beautiful yachts which had belonged to some of the club’s older members. “This was Mr. Condon’s sloop,” said Peter, pointing to a large photograph on the wall. “It was a real winner in its day.”

  “Wouldn’t Mr. Condon sail from here then, if this is where he moored his boat?” Trixie asked. “I’ll bet we’re on the right track at last!”

  “Come on, Trix, you mean ‘the right course,’ don’t you?” Peter chided her with a laugh.

  “Give me time, Peter. I’ll learn,” Trixie answered good-naturedly.

  There was still no sign of Cap, so they continued to explore the club, going into a cheerful room with comfortable chairs, a big fireplace, and a cabinet filled with cups and pennants. In the rear was a hall, its ceiling covered with striped canvas giving the appearance of a huge tent.

  “This is where we have dances, special events, and movies,” Peter explained.

  As they went outside and were walking toward the dock, Trixie said, “How about drawing lots to see who sails with whom? Is that all right, skipper?”

  “Sure thing. It’s a good idea. I was just trying to figure out how we might divide up,” Peter replied.

  Trixie picked up a pebble and a little scallop shell from the beach and held one in each hand behind her back. “The first three to pick the shell go with Peter and the others with Cap.”

  It fell to Trixie, Mart, and Di to go in Star Fire, and the others with Cap who, at that moment, was running toward them down the dock.

  In contrast to Peter, Cap was short and dark. He was solidly built like a football player, and he carried himself well. His hair was dark brown and would have been curly had it not been cut so short.

  “Cap, meet my friends from The Moorings,” Peter said, “Honey, Trixie, and Diana. And these new deck hands are Jim, Brian, and Mart,” he added with a smile.

  “Sorry I’m late, Pete. Hi, everybody. Glad to have you on the island even for only ten days. Pete told me last night when he phoned that you were here for only a short time.”

  They boarded a small powerboat operated by a young man in trim white trousers and a shirt. Peter explained the launch belonged to the club and was used to take members and their guests out to the boats moored in the harbor. “We’d never be caught dead in a motorboat ordinarily, but the launch is a matter of necessity.” Peter chuckled.

  “You can say that again,” chimed in Cap. “No stink-pots for us.”

  As they came alongside Peter’s sleek black boat, Trixie noticed its name, Star Fire, painted in gold letters on the stern. “What do you call your boat, Cap?” she asked.

  “Blitzen—that’s German for Lightning,” he replied. “And I can hardly wait to show old Star Fire here what a real bolt of lightning she is,” he added with a wink to Peter. “Star Fire wouldn’t have a chance.”

  Peter helped Trixie and Di step from the deck of the launch into his boat. Mart followed, carefully balancing one of the lunch baskets which he had somehow managed to get away from Jim. Peter jumped in last with the sail bags and shoved his boat gently away from the launch.

  “Let’s go around Jenson’s Point and then on out to the lighthouse,” Peter said to Cap. “We can tie up and have lunch if it doesn’t take too long to get there. I see we’re going to hit the incoming tide, and that will slow us up, so if we get hungry before we reach the lighthouse, we can eat in the boat.”

  “I’m starved right this minute,” moaned Mart, rubbing his stomach and rolling his eyes upward.

  “After the number of pancakes you ate for breakfast, you shouldn’t be hungry for days,” Diana told him.

  They waved to Cap and his party as the launch took them off to his boat, and then Trixie asked Peter what they might do to help him get ready to sail.

  “Well, before we start anything, I’ll give you the first lesson,” said Peter, looking a little embarrassed. “You see, the first rule on any boat is that no one does anything unless he is told to by the skipper. I know this sounds kind of bossy, but it avoids a lot of confusion.” He laughed as he started to pull the mainsail out of the bag. “If I yell at you like Captain Bligh, don’t think a thing about it; just obey!”

  When they had put the rudder and tiller in place and hoisted the sails, Peter took his place in the stern and told Mart to unfasten the line which held the boat to its mooring. With a deft flick of the tiller, Star Fire bore off, the sails filled, and they were away, making for the distant steeple.

  “Don’t worry if the boat heels,” said Peter, “and I don’t mean the way a dog heels behind its master.” He chuckled. “Heeling is our way of saying the boat is tipping on one side. All I have to do is let out this line, called the mainsheet, and the boat will level off and settle right down on her bottom. Heeling is a perfectly natural way for a boat to sail, so get comfortable, and enjoy it.”

  “You mean the mainsheet is a rope and not a sail?” asked Mart.

  “They say there’s no such thing as a rope on a boat,” Peter informed him, “only lines, guys, sheets, and halyards.”

  Cap was also under sail by now, and the two boats went out of the harbor with a good breeze blowing out of the west.

  “See that red buoy up ahead?” asked Peter when they had left the clubhouse quite a distance behind. “That’s the nun I was telling you about the day we found the chart. It’s N 2. When you leave a harbor, you always sail by the red buoy so that it’s on your left side, or as we say, to port. When you return, you leave it on your right, or starboard, side.”

  “Whew! There’s more to sailing than meets the eye,” said Trixie, who had been listening intently to Peter’s explanation.

  “You can never learn all there is to know about sailing if you live to be a hundred,” continued Peter. “Every time I go out it seems the conditions of wind or tide or weather are different. That’s what makes it such a great sport. It’s you and your boat against nature.”

  “Say, Peter, that red nun we just passed doesn’t show up on Ed’s chart,” Trixie said as she studied the map spread out on her knees.

  “Could be it wasn’t there in those days,” Peter speculated. “Channels do shift, especially if there are heavy storms which change the shoreline.” He looked behind him and pointed out a spit of land jutting out from the shore. “That’s Jenson’s Point over there,” he commented.

  “Aren’t we going there before we go to the lighthouse?” Trixie asked, looking in the direction he was pointing.

  “Sure thing,” Peter answered with a smile. “But when you’re in a sailboat, the quickest way to get from one place to another isn’t always by going in a straight line.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Diana, wide-eyed. “Can’t you just steer the boat like an automobile and let the wind push you along?”

  “I wish it were that simple,” Peter replied, “especially when I’m trying to beat Cap across the finish line.” He explained that the boat isn’t pushed along by the wind blowing against the sails, but that the wind flowing over the sails on the leeward side gives a lift or suction action that makes the boat go ahead.

  “Sounds like the same principle as an airplane,” Mart said.

  “You’re right,” Peter answered. “As a matter of fact, it was through aviation experiments they first discovered how the wind works. Men have been sailing boats for ages without really knowing how they operated.”

  “Leonardo da Vinci came pretty close to finding out way back around f
ifteen hundred,” added Mart. “What a brain!”

  “Now I see why you have to figure out where the wind’s coming from and zigzag back and forth to get where you’re going,” said Trixie.

  “So we’re actually going to Jenson’s Point even though it looks as though we were headed straight for England,” Diana added with a giggle.

  “Right you are,” Peter answered. “We’ll come about in a few minutes and tack in another direction, or zigzag, as Trixie would say.”

  They were by now close in to the Greenpoint shore where the spire was plainly visible. “Now we head for Black Cat, don’t we?” Peter asked Trixie.

  “We head for where Black Cat is supposed to be,” she said. “Everything seems pretty elusive out here.”

  “Are those the Bunker boats?” asked Mart, pointing to several large vessels tied up to docks on the Greenpoint shore.

  “Yes, they’re in port either to unload or for repairs,” Peter explained. “They go out to sea for the menhaden unless the fishing happens to be good right here in the bay. Then you can hear the men singing their work chants as they haul the nets. When they have a good load, they come back, unload, and pay off the men according to the weight of the haul.”

  “That’s probably what Ed meant in the letter about its not mattering how long he was gone. I guess,” mused Trixie, “he didn’t want to come home until they had a full load.”

  She was suddenly interrupted by Peter. “Get ready to change course! When I holler ‘Ready about—hard alee,’ everybody duck, or you’ll get clobbered by the boom. Ready about. Hard alee!” he yelled, putting the tiller sharply over, and all three crouched down as the boom came across bringing the sail to the other side of the boat. Then they all took turns handling the main and the jib sheets, Peter showing them how to keep the sails filled by pulling in or letting out the lines.

  Trixie, when she had a free moment, spread out the copy of Ed’s chart again and studied it intently. Presently she said, “According to this, we’ve passed over Black Cat Rock and should be heading south toward a black buoy, but I don’t see one anywhere.” She shaded her eyes and looked around in all directions.

  “There’s a black can a little farther on around the point,” Peter said. “That may be the one he means.”

  After several tacks, they came up close to Jenson’s Point. Mart caught sight of a blue heron just offshore in the reeds waiting patiently for a fish to show up. Even though the boat came up close to land, it was so quiet that the bird was not disturbed. The Bob-Whites were curious about some tall poles along the shore. They had little platforms on top, and on most of the platforms there was a rough pile of branches.

  “Those are osprey nests,” Peter explained as a wide-winged grayish bird rose from one of the poles and screamed down at the boat as it sailed past. “Some people call them fish hawks. They come up from Florida or the West Indies the middle of March and stay until September. The electric light company puts up those platforms for them so they won’t build their nests on the light poles and interfere with the wires.”

  “Or maybe listen in on our fascinating conversations,” said Mart, laughing.

  “One eavesdropping session on one of your conversations would cure them for sure,” Trixie teased. “No bird, unless it’s a wise old owl, could understand your language.”

  “Speaking of big words and ospreys,” Peter said, “these birds are monogamous.”

  “Are what?” cried Diana. “Mart, do you know what he’s talking about?”

  Mart had to admit that he hadn’t the faintest idea what monogamous could be.

  “It means that ospreys keep the same mate for life,” Peter told them, “and I’ve read that swans and geese have the same habit. Another interesting thing about ospreys,” he went on, “is that they reinforce their nests before they go south so they’ll be in good condition in the spring, and even hurricane winds don’t seem to knock them off.”

  Cap was now within hailing distance of the Star Fire, and at Mart’s suggestion, they decided to eat their lunch in the cove. They dropped anchor in the shallow water to keep from drifting, and hungrily opened the lunch baskets. The cook had prepared succulent chicken, fried to a golden brown, hard-boiled eggs, cucumber sandwiches, and brownies for dessert. A big Thermos bottle of orange juice was very welcome, for they were all thirsty after being in the sun so long.

  “It’s a good thing these eggs are already peeled,” said Peter. “If there’s one thing I hate to clean out of the bilge of a boat, it’s egg shells, and potato chips are just about as bad.”

  After lunch Cap suggested they get under way, and the two boats headed out into the bay toward the lighthouse.

  Chapter 9

  An Accident

  Peter gave Trixie the mainsheet and asked Di to take the jib. He shifted Mart, who was the heaviest of the three, around to various places on the boat to maintain a good balance. The wind freshened a bit as they got out into the middle of the bay and headed east. Trixie, glancing over her shoulder, noticed that Cap was tacking, and she started to ask Peter why he didn’t do the same thing, but she remembered just in time what he had said about the crew interfering and stopped in the middle of a sentence, her face red with embarrassment.

  “Don’t be silly, Trix. Ask all the questions you want. That’s the way to learn,” Peter reassured her. “Yes, I see Cap’s trying to put Blitzen around from the port tack, but his sails don’t seem to be filling very well on starboard. Watch him! Whoops! There he goes, flopping back to port.” His voice was filled with excitement.

  The Lightnings streaked through the water, spray blowing up over their bows, and everyone was tense with excitement.

  “Wow!” Mart cried a few minutes later. “Cap’s sure making up for lost time now. Just look at that boat go!”

  “Come on, Star Fire!” yelled Trixie as Blitzen came almost abreast of them. There was much jovial shouting back and forth as the two boats raced for the lighthouse. When they came fairly close to it, Peter told Cap he was going in on the south side of the rocky pile on which the lighthouse stood, leaving Cap free to approach the old dock on the opposite side.

  After dropping sails, Peter paddled around to the dock, using the one oar he always carried in the boat, and as he did so, Trixie pulled out the chart again, mumbling to herself as she pored over it.

  “Either Ed was crazy, or we are,” she finally said. “That last buoy just happens to be on the wrong side of the lighthouse. Otherwise, everything is dandy,” she added sarcastically.

  “Oh, Trixie, I’m beginning to think we’re all wrong,” cried Honey who had, by now, joined her friend. “The rock didn’t even show. The black buoy wasn’t where it should have been, and now the nun has apparently walked around to the other side of the lighthouse.”

  “I know, but let’s explore it anyway. That letter was written ages ago, and, as Peter says, things change. It certainly looks as though the lighthouse is here where the chart is marked ‘Finish,’ doesn’t it?” Trixie speculated.

  They secured Star Fire to the stern of Cap’s boat and Peter called out, “By Jove, Cap, that boat of yours can really move!”

  “She did get up and go, didn’t she?” Cap answered with a smile.

  “She sure did, and she’ll be real hard to beat,” Peter replied. “The tune-up races are Friday, you know. So may the best man win!”

  “Or the best boat,” Cap laughed. Then, turning to the Bob-Whites, he added, “That’s the funny thing about boats, no two are ever quite alike even if they’re the same class. Each has a nature all her own.”

  Peter and Cap had frequently visited the lighthouse, and they were anxious to show their friends through it. “It was built about 1890,” Cap told them as they clambered up the rocks to the front entrance. “In those days, they got the light from oil lanterns with huge reflectors back of them. The keeper had to stay year round to keep them going.”

  “I suppose electricity is more practical, but it sure takes the romance away from
places like this,” said Diana dreamily. “I’d love to live way out here with a dog and cat for company. Think of all the books I could read.”

  “Oh, you know you’d get bored stiff after the first week without your friends,” said Trixie. “You’d be inviting us all out to keep you company. But getting back to the light, Peter, why don’t they use the lighthouse now?”

  “The sandbar gradually shifted, so the Coast Guard put up the flashing light buoy to mark the channel,” he explained.

  Trixie had found time, while Cap was tying up his boat, to tell the others that although the chart looked awfully dubious, they were all to keep their eyes open for any clues. They went through all the rooms of the two-storied house and up into the tower. All that remained of the building were the four stone walls and the partitions. Vandals had broken the windows and pulled much of the stairway down, but it was easy to imagine the ghosts of past keepers still haunting the place, as the wind whistled through the vacant rooms. But if the house held any secrets, it steadfastly refused to give them up to the Bob-Whites.

  After they had explored every nook and cranny, they lay outside on the flat rocks in the sun until Peter suggested they had better be starting back. “The tide certainly hasn’t been much help today,” he said ruefully. “We came out when it was going in, and here we are going home with it dead against us. If we take the eddy, we’ll be back in plenty of time for supper, though.”

  “Hey, Pete,” said Cap, “what say we each take a different course home? You hug the island shore and I’ll go over near Greenpoint, and we’ll see if there’s any difference in the strength of the back eddy on the two shores.”

  “I’m game,” Peter answered with enthusiasm. “I’ve always had trouble deciding which was the fastest.”

  “What’s all this talk about eddies?” inquired Mart.

  “Well, let’s see, how can I explain it?” Peter mused. “It’s like shoving your hand in a jar full of water,” he went on. “The water has to go somewhere, so it pours out from all sides. It’s the same when the tide comes racing into the bay. You get a current along the shores in the opposite direction from the tide. Eddies help you to make better time when the tide is against you.”