Kitabı oku: «Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence», sayfa 5

CHAPTER IX – THE GHOST OF THE ISLAND

“Wow! it’s sure a banshee!” whooped Jimmie.

“A-am I dreaming, fellows?” exclaimed Herb, rubbing his eyes desperately.

“O-oh! look at it shake its fist at us, would you! It’s ten feet high, if it’s one!” came from the quivering lips of Buster.

But Jack as yet had not said a word, though he was staring just as hard at the remarkable sight ashore as any of them. It was something different from anything that had ever before crossed his path. Perhaps Jack might have felt a little chilly sensation as he looked; but he was not at all frightened.

Up on the rise of the mysterious island there had appeared a dim figure that seemed, just as Nick vowed, to be all of ten feet in height. At first it was like a curling column of smoke, when a certain kind of wood has been thrown on the fire. Then it seemed to take form, and change to a flickering yellow glow.

The groaning sounds continued all the while, as though this disturbed spirit from the other world might be in great pain. And certainly the figure was waving one of its arms as though waving them off.

All of this Jack saw, yet no panic gripped him as it seemed to do the rest, who were crouching there, staring, and gasping for breath.

“Jimmie, hand me my shotgun, and let’s see if it can stand Number Threes!”

Jack called this out in a loud, clear voice. Not that he wanted the gun to any great extent; but he had an object in saying it.

But Jimmie really believed he meant what he said. While he groped for the gun he was saying aloud:

“Sure, now, ’tis mesilf as doan’t belave ye kin knock the daylight out of that banshee wid little shots, Jack, darlint. But if so be ye mane to thry, take the gun, while I shut me eyes.”

“’Tain’t any use,” broke in George; “the thing’s disappeared!”

And so it had, vanishing as mysteriously as it had come, and leaving only a black void in front of them. Even that steady groaning had stopped, proving conclusively that it had had to do with the appearance of the spectre.

Jack laughed, to the utter astonishment of the rest.

“I don’t see anything funny about this business,” complained Nick.

“Well, p’raps you fellers will quit quizzing me after that experience!” said Josh, with just a little ring of triumph in his unsteady voice.

“And will you please stop shaking that way?” remarked George. “For you make the boat rock the worst kind. It was bad enough seeing that blessed thing, without taking a header overboard right now.”

“Jack, what makes you laugh?” asked quiet Herb, who knew that the other would not have acted in the way he did unless with good and sufficient cause.

“Do you really want to know?” asked Jack, quietly.

Somehow the fact that one of their number did not seem to be affected by the panic that had swept over the rest began to make George and Jimmie ashamed.

“Sure we do, Jack,” remarked the latter, eagerly.

“I was laughing because it was so funny to see how our fine ghost bobbed out of sight the very instant I called to Jimmie to hand me my Marlin,” said Jack.

“Oh! I see now!” cried George; “you mean that ghosts needn’t be afraid of a handful of bird shot. Is that it, Jack?”

“That’s what I meant. I’ve read lots of ghost stories, just like Josh here; though I never believed them for one minute. But in every case the fellow who tells the yarn declares that bullets have no effect at all on real goblins. Am I right, Josh?”

“It’s true, every word of it, Jack!” the other answered, promptly. “Why, I’ve heard where a soldier whacked the head off a ghost, who coolly picked it up and stuck it on again as neat as you please. Oh! no, they needn’t be afraid of little bird shot, not a bit of it.”

“Well, this ghost was timid, you see,” Jack proceeded. “He fell over just as soon as I called out about my gun.”

“Look here, you mean something by that, sure you do!” remarked Herb.

“Fellers, he’s hinting that it was a job set up on us – that’s what Jack means,” declared Nick.

“Out with it, Jack. Don’t you see that we’re all in a blue funk over this queer deal? If you know anything, share it with your pards,” said Herb.

“That’s it,” observed Josh, who had by now somewhat recovered from his fright; “put us wise old commodore. What d’ye think it was, now?”

“I’ll tell you, boys,” Jack said, impressively. “In my opinion, honest Injun, now, somebody was trying to frighten us away from here.”

“Say, it did wave its long, bony arm, all right!” exclaimed Josh.

“We all saw that,” Herb put in; “but what do you suppose anybody would want to make us move our anchorage so much as to go to all that fuss and feathers to scare us?”

“Well,” answered Jack, “that’s a thing I can just tell – yet! You all admit it did keep waving its arms. And you heard those lovely groans stop just at the same time the thing disappeared. I thought I heard a sound like something falling to the ground. Did anybody else get that?”

“I heard some noise,” admitted George. “But, Jack, you certain must have some little suspicion about who engineered this silly game, if it was a set-up job?”

“Well, Josh saw a boat,” calmly remarked the one addressed.

“Listen to that, would you?” exclaimed Nick. “He means that it was Clarence who got up that cute game right now – Clarence, our old friend of the baseball diamond. And perhaps the ghost that groaned was only Bully Joe. Fellers, it sound good to me.”

“Well, it would be just like Tricky Clarence, as sure as you live!” admitted Herb, who had possibly been the least alarmed of the five.

“But why should he want us to vacate?” demanded Josh, who disliked very much to give up his pet illusion, and believe that the ghost was only the result of a clumsy trick on the part of some person or persons unknown.

“Perhaps he wants this fine little cove himself,” suggested George.

“That hardly fills the bill,” Jack went on. “He might think to get even for some of the times we’ve won out in the past. I tell you right now I’m bothered to understand it.”

“Do we clear out in the morning, then?” asked Herb.

“I hope you won’t say yes to that, fellows. In the first place, it goes against my grain to be chased away by Clarence Macklin or anybody else, who has no right to order us around. And then again, there are some things I’d like to look into connected with this queer affair.”

When Jack talked like that he knew the others would fall in with his wishes; for they had long ago come to look upon him as a leader.

“Oh! we’ll stick it out if you say so, Jack,” declared George. “But you ought to tell us anything else you’ve got on your mind.”

“There was one thing that puzzled me,” Jack continued. “It happened while Josh was dozing, or else looking somewhere else, for he didn’t seem to notice it. And I didn’t say anything, because there was no use waking the rest of you up then.”

“But what was it, Jack?” questioned Kick.

“Why, we settled it in our minds that the old island was uninhabited, didn’t we boys?” asked the other.

“That’s so,” several hastened to declare.

“Well, about half an hour ago, as I chanced to turn my head and look that way, I caught sight of a dim light moving along near the ground. It would disappear, and then come in view again, all the while moving.”

“Now, I’ve seen just such a funny light, when a man with a lantern was walking through the woods,” burst out Herb.

“Just what I settled it in my mind that was,” chuckled Jack. “But it wasn’t so strange that some one should be ashore, and I didn’t let it bother me any. After what has happened, though, you can see it must have meant something.”

“That’s a fact,” admitted George. “And, fellows, I’m coming around to Jack’s way of thinking. I just bet Tricky Clarence was behind that show.”

“Oh! well, let’s try to forget it for tonight,” Jack observed; “and as it’s now just one o’clock, George and Nick will have to take their turn on guard.”

“Sure,” replied Buster, cheerfully. “Sleep and me have parted company for the rest of this night, after what I saw. So it’s me for a four hour stretch; Herb, you can snooze right along till sun-up, if you want.”

“Oh! can I? Thanks,” laughed the one addressed, with a touch of skepticism in his voice; for he knew only too well what a difference there was between Buster’s promises and the keeping of them; he always meant well, but found the flesh weak.

And it proved just as wise Herb supposed would be the case; when the time came for George to go off duty he found Nick fast asleep; so that Herb had to be aroused by repeated calls and punching of the side of the Comfort.

Then daylight came; but according to Jack’s arrangements no one was aroused until the hour of five, when the sun was well up. July days are long indeed in this northern clime, and the twilight lingers until nearly nine in the evening.

“Who’s going to try the fishing today?” asked Jack, as they were partaking of their bacon and egg breakfast, a supply of the hen fruit having been obtained on the previous day from a Canadian farmer, near whose place the little fleet of motor boats had stopped.

“Why, Herb and myself talked of going, if so be you’d post us about the best trolling ground,” George remarked.

“Tell you all I know about it,” replied Jack, readily enough. “But if you are lucky enough to strike a big musky like the one I got, you’ll have your hands full. Better take the gaff hook along. I wished many times yesterday I had it.”

“Will we, George?” asked Herb, in a vein of sarcasm.

“Catch me putting my hand on a pirate like that while he’s got an ounce of fight left in him,” the other declared. “Why, one snap of those jaws and he’d take your whole paw off, sure. Yes, give us the gaff hook, or we don’t go.”

“Then you don’t intend to keep us company?” asked Herb of Jack.

“I think I’ll just hang around here this morning, boys.”

“Oh! all right. I can see with half an eye that you’ve got something up your sleeve, Jack; but post us when the show comes off, won’t you?” George remarked, laughingly.

An hour later, long after the two ambitious fishermen had departed in their little rowboats for a siege of trolling along the lonely shores of the island, Jack quietly stepped into his own dinky, and paddled ashore.

“Now what can he be up to?” Nick asked Josh, as they looked after the other.

“Give me something easy, will you?” replied that worthy. “But all the same, I noticed that Jack was careful to take his gun along.”

“But he can’t shoot any game now; the law is on nearly everything, you know. And up here the wardens are always on the lookout for poachers,” Nick continued.

“Oh, shucks!” Josh complained, “you don’t see through a millstone, even when it’s got a big hole in it. Can’t you understand that Jack is bent on looking up that ghost business? Wonder if it was Tricky Clarence at the back of it. Gee! but when I first set eyes on the same I really thought it was a dead sure spirit of some old Injun chief come back from the Happy Hunting Grounds to warn us away.”

“Huh! I noticed that you hung on to that same idea to the bitter end,” Nick continued pugnaciously. “Right now, I bet you believe deep down in your silly heart, it was a regular hobgoblin. Oh! I know you all right, Josh Purdue; and you’ve got a scary heart all right. But I saw, just as soon as Jack spoke up, how we’d been fooled by Clarence. Wait till he comes back, and he’ll prove it.”

“I’d like to know how?” demanded Josh. “Expect him to interview that thing, and get a written confession? I’m just wondering what we’ll run up against if we’re bound to stay here in this cove another night.”

“Piffle!” scoffed Nick. “What about guns, hey, tell me that? Ghosts don’t appear to like guns much, do they? Jack says not, and Jack, he ought to know. Stay here? Of course we will; a week, two of ’em, if we feel like it!”

“Oh! yes, how brave some people are in the middle of the day, when the sun’s shining,” jeered Josh. “But wait; that’s all! I expect to see you get the scare of your life tonight, don’t you know. If that thing gets real mad, and digs in for us you needn’t bother worrying about taking on any more fat, because you’ll shake that hard you’ll lose pounds and pounds! But let’s wait till Jack comes back, and find out what he’s discovered. I’ve got a good notion to follow him ashore, if I can pull up the anchor and beach the Comfort. Watch how I manage it.”

CHAPTER X – FOLLOWING A TRAIL

Josh found his little plan was not hard of accomplishment. All he had to do was to push the Wireless around, after letting out all the cable connected with the anchor, when he was able to jump ashore.

He took with him another rope that was fastened to the stern of the motor boat, and this he fastened to the nearest tree. Now, when he wanted to go aboard, all he had to do was to unfasten this latter hawser, climb over the side, and draw the Wireless back to her original anchorage.

“Good boy!” cried Nick, who had been a close observer of this clever little game. “You go up head. When it comes to dodges like that, you take the cake.”

It was not often that Josh heard a compliment from this source, and he had to stop and wave his hand toward the cook of the Comfort, before following after Jack.

He had not gone twenty feet before he discovered the object of his concern, who appeared to be bending over something that seemed to greatly interest him.

“Hello! there, what’ve you found, Jack? Signs of a diamond mine, or traces of the ice age they tell us about?” Josh demanded, as he reached the side of the other.

“Hello yourself, Josh,” replied Jack, looking up with a smile, as though pleased because he was to have some one to talk to, and possibly confer with. “Well, no, I can’t just say that either of your guesses comes anywhere near the truth. I’m only examining a trail.”

“What’s that? Then this old island hasn’t always been as deserted as it looks right now, if people sometimes drop ashore here?” remarked Josh, his interest at once aroused.

“Look here and tell me what you see,” the other lad continued, as he pointed to the ground near his feet.

“Say, as sure as you live, it is, for a fact,” exclaimed Josh. “Looks like they’d done a heap of passing up and down this way, too. D’ye know, Jack, I wondered what those marks on the little beach meant, and now I understand. Boats, that’s what; boats that have been drawn up there when the water was higher than it is now.”

“Yes, I saw them,” said Jack, quietly. “In fact, I looked to find such marks on the sand. And this broad trail began there, too.”

“Oh! I’m beginning to tumble to a few things. I guess that in the season, this same tight little island may be a place for duck shooters to hold out. Perhaps we might even find an old deserted shanty somewhere back yonder in which they camp out during the blustery fall months.”

“Hold on, Josh,” remarked Jack. “Is that all you know about signs?”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” asked the other, puzzled.

“Take another squint at these marks, and then tell me what you think, Josh.”

“Say, I tumble to what you mean!” exclaimed Josh, after he had bent down once more. “You expect me to say that if these marks had been made months ago, with a winter’s ice and snow, and a summer’s heavy rains, they’d have been washed out long ago. And so they would, Jack, so they would. You’re right about it. They’ve been made lately! They look fresh, for a fact!”

“Now you’re tumbling to facts, Josh. Remember, we had a big downpour just three days ago, don’t you?” Jack went on.

“Sure I do. And you’re on to that, too. But I grab your meaning now, all right. There are marks here that must have been made since that rain.”

“Well, what do you say about it now?” continued the boy who could read signs.

“Instead of duck shooters they’re fishermen,” observed Josh, calmly. “Yes, and you remember how those three boats came along, and the men in each stared so hard at us? Jack, I see it all now. We just happened in a favorite place of theirs, and they didn’t like it for a cent. Why, they even tried to scare us off with that silly ghost business that gave poor old Pudding such a fright.”

Jack only smiled.

“Well,” he said, “suppose we follow this trail for a bit. I have an idea it will lead us to the very place where I thought I saw a moving light, like a swinging lantern, last night.”

Josh was eager to keep step with him; but there was no trouble experienced in picking up the trail, so plainly marked were the tracks.

“There it is, Jack!” exclaimed Josh, suddenly; for he had been looking ahead all the time his companion kept his eyes fixed on the ground.

“It is a shanty of some sort, isn’t it?” remarked Jack, without much emotion; for he had been absolutely positive as to what they would discover, so that the announcement did not excite him.

“Why, yes, a tumbledown sort of a shack,” observed Josh, with a trace of disappointment about his manner. “I’d pity the fellows who spent a rainy day in such a rookery. Why, the roof is falling in at one end; and the door hangs on one rusty hinge.”

Jack saw all these things as quickly as did his companion, even though he failed to cry out and express himself as vehemently as Josh took pains to do.

“Old dilapidated cabin as it is, note one thing, will you,” he remarked.

“You mean that the tracks lead up to the door, is that it, Jack?”

“Well, yes,” the other continued, “but just notice that there’s a rusty padlock on the door. Stop and think if that doesn’t look queer, considering that if anybody wanted to get in, all they’d have to do would be to knock that one hinge, and the whole door would drop flat?”

“Say, that makes me laugh, for a fact,” Josh chuckled. “But it’s just what you’d expect to run across up among these simple people of the border. They make me think of the ostrich. Don’t you know we read the silly thing just sticks its head in a little bush, and thinks because it can’t see anything that it’s got a bully hiding place.”

“Yes, that sort of covers the bill,” said Jack. “I guess this padlock is only meant to tell people who have no business here that they are not wanted inside this shack. It stands as a warning. To enter after that would be a breach of the rights to property, as Lawyer George would say.”

“Looky here, would you!” cried Josh, presently, while his companion was prowling around, and peeping through a hole in the wall, as though curious to know what the interior of the cabin looked like.

“What have you found now?” asked Jack, who was himself wondering why that new single trail had been made, coming out of the dense bushes at the back of the hut, and showing signs of recent passage, which somehow he could not help connecting with the flash of that lantern on the preceding night.

“The bally old lock don’t hold even a little bit,” announced Josh, as though that circumstance added to his hilarity. “See, I can lift it off with one finger. It’s a fake, that’s what it is, Jack. But while it might fool ordinary people, it can’t a live Yankee. Now what d’ye say to going in?”

Jack laughed as though amused at the reasoning of his chum, and remarked:

“I see you think we wouldn’t be breaking the law of possession if we walked in when the lock was out of gear. That sounds nice, Josh, but many a chicken thief has found that such a plea didn’t save him. But all the same, I’m going to step in and look around a bit.”

“Seems to me it smells fishy around here?” observed Josh, sniffing eagerly.

“Oh! that’s easy enough to explain,” and Jack pointed to several heads of black bass that lay near by. “Somebody has had a fish dinner, for there is the ash bed of a fire. It may have been passing sportsmen from one of the big hotels; then again, perhaps the people who made the trail also cooked a meal or two here!”

Once inside the cabin he looked around. There was virtually nothing to see. The place had not a sign of furniture of any description. Some straw lay on the hard earthen floor, as though it might be made useful in case one wished to pass the night there.

Josh almost doubled up with laughter.

“This is sure the greatest joke ever,” he remarked. “To think of trying to keep trespassers out of this old trap, just like it held all a squatter’s possessions. Jack, what d’ye think the silly donkey meant by that padlock? Did he keep his stuff here once, and locked the door? I’m all in a fog.”

Jack said nothing, only “browsed” around, as he expressed it, kicking the straw aside in places, only to replace it as he had found it, as though not wishing to leave any signs that trespassers had invaded the cabin of the mysterious island.

But all the while he was thinking deeply.

And once, after the laughing and scoffing Josh had stepped outside to look about him again, Jack stooped down and picked some object up off the earthen floor, which he seemed to examine with considerable curiosity before stowing away in one of his many pockets.

“Seen all you want to of the strange palace of the Thousand Islands?” asked the merry Josh, when his companion again appeared.

“Oh! yes, and I’ll put the lock back just as we found it,” replied the other.

Then he started to follow the plain trail that led through the dense thicket to the rear of the cabin. It took him nearly twenty minutes to zigzag through the intricate growth, for all manner of obstacles caused him to turn aside, even as they had the one who had come and gone this way on the preceding night.

When he finally reached the shore it was far around the point that jutted out above the cove where the motor boats were anchored. And after Jack had stooped down to examine the sandy beach, he arose with a peculiar smile, and a knowing shake of the head; but the only words he used as he walked along the sandy stretch near the water’s edge were:

“I thought I’d find where the keel of a boat landed on this beach!”