Читать книгу The Phantom Yacht - Norton Carol - Страница 4

There were very few people on the seaward-bound train; indeed Miss Jane Moore, Nann and Dories were the only occupants of the chair car. After settling herself comfortably in the chair nearest the front, the old woman, with a sweep of her arm toward the back, said almost petulantly: “Sit as far away from me as you can. I may want to sleep, and I know girls. They chatter, chatter, chatter, titter, titter, titter all about nothing.”

Her companions were glad to obey, and when they were seated at the rear end of the car, they kept their heads close together while they visited that they might not disturb the elderly woman, who, to all appearances, fell at once into a light doze.

As soon as the train was under way, Dories asked: “Now do tell me how this perfectly, unbelievably wonderful thing has happened?”

Nann laughed happily. “Maybe your Great-Aunt Jane is a fairy godmother in disguise,” she whispered. They both glanced at the far corner, but the black veiled figure was much more suggestive of a witch than a good fairy.

“The disguise surely is a complete one,” Dories said with a shudder. “My, it gives me the chilly shivers when I think how I might be going to spend a whole month alone with her. But now tell me, just what did happen?”

“Can’t you guess? You wrote your aunt a letter, didn’t you, telling all about me and even giving the name of the hotel where Dad and I were staying?”

Dories nodded, “Yes, that’s true. Mother wanted me to write to Aunt Jane and I couldn’t think of a thing to tell her about, and so I wrote about you.”

“Well,” Nann continued to enlighten her friend, “she must have written me that very day inviting me to be her guest at Siquaw Point for the month of October, but she asked me not to let you know. I sent the last picture postcard, the one of our hotel, just after I had received her letter, and you can imagine how wild I was to tell you. I hadn’t started going to the Boston High. Dear old Dad said a month later wouldn’t matter, and so here I am.” The girls clasped hands and beamed joyfully at each other.

Dories’ next glance toward the sleeping old woman was one of gratitude. “I’m going to try hard to love her, that is, if she’ll let me.” Then, after a thoughtful moment, Dories continued: “Great-Aunt Jane must have been very different when Dad was a boy, for he cared a lot for her, Mother said.” Then with one of her quick changes she exclaimed in a low voice, “Nann Sibbett, I have lain awake nights dreading the dismal month I was to spend at that forsaken summer resort. I just knew there’d be ghosts in those boarded-up cottages, but now that you’re going to be with me, I almost hope that something exciting will happen.”

“So do I!” Nann agreed.

It was four o’clock when the train, which consisted of an engine, two coaches and a chair-car, stopped in what seemed at first to be but wide stretches of meadows and marsh lands, but, peering ahead, the girls saw a few wooden buildings and a platform. “Siquaw Center!” the brakeman opened a door to announce. Miss Jane Moore sat up so suddenly, and when she threw back her veil she seemed so very wide awake, the girls found themselves wondering if she had really been asleep at all. The brakeman assisted the old woman to alight and placed her bags on the platform, then, hardly pausing, the train again was under way. Meadows and marshes stretched in all directions, but about a mile to the east the girls could see a wide expanse of gray-blue ocean.

“I guess the name means the center of the marshes,” Dori whispered, making a wry face while her aunt was talking to the station-master, a tall, lank, red-whiskered man in blue overalls who did not remove his cap nor stop chewing what seemed to be a rather large quid.

“Yeah!” the girls heard his reply to the woman’s question. “Gib’ll fetch the stage right over. Quare time o’ year for yo’ to be comin’ out, Mis’ Moore, ain’t it? Yeah! I got your letter this here mornin’. The supplies ar’ all ready to tote over to yer cottage.”

The girls were wondering who Gib might be when they heard a rumbling beyond the wooden building and saw a very old stage coach drawn by a rather boney old white horse and driven by a tall, lank, red-headed boy. A small girl, with curls of the same color, sat on the high seat at his side. “Hurry up, thar, you Gib Strait!” the man, who was recognizable as the boy’s father, called to him. “Come tote Mis’ Moore’s luggage.” Then the man sauntered off, having not even glanced in the direction of the two girls, but the rather ungainly boy who was hurrying toward them was looking at them with but slightly concealed curiosity.

Miss Moore greeted him with, “How do you do, Gibralter Strait.” Upon hearing this astonishing name, the two girls found it hard not to laugh, but the lad, evidently understanding, smiled broadly and nodded awkwardly as Miss Moore solemnly proceeded to introduce him.

To cover his embarrassment, the lad hastened to say. “Well, Miss Moore, sort o’ surprisin’ to see yo’ hereabouts this time o’ year. Be yo’ goin’ to the Pint?”

The old woman looked at him scathingly. “Well, Gibralter, where in heaven’s name would I be going? I’m not crazy enough yet to stay long in the Center. Here, you take my bags; the girls can carry their own.”

“Yessum, Miss Moore,” the boy flushed up to the roots of his red hair. He knew that he wasn’t making a very good impression on the young ladies. He glanced at them furtively as they all walked toward the stage; then, when he saw them smiling toward him, not critically but in a most friendly fashion, there was merry response in his warm red-brown eyes. What he said was: “If them bags are too hefty, set ’em down an’ I’ll come back for ’em.”

“O, we can carry them easily,” Nann assured him.

The small girl on the high seat was staring down at them with eyes and mouth open. She had on a nondescript dress which very evidently had been made over from a garment meant for someone older. When the girls glanced up, she smiled down at them, showing an open space where two front teeth were missing.

“What’s your name, little one?” Nann called up to her. The lad was inside the coach helping Miss Moore to settle among her bags.

The child’s grin grew wilder, but she did not reply. Nann turned toward her brother, who was just emerging: “What is your little sister’s name?” she asked.

The boy flushed. Nann and Dori decided that he was easily embarrassed or that he was unused to girls of his own age. But they better understood the flush when they heard the answer: “Her name’s Behring.” Then he hurried on to explain: “I know our names are queer. It was Pa’s notion to give us geography names, being as our last is Strait. That’s why mine’s Gibralter. Yo’ kin laugh if yo’ want to,” he added good-naturedly. “I would if ’twasn’t my name.” Then in a low voice, with a swift glance toward the station, he confided, “I mean to change my name when I come of age. I sure sartin do.”

The girls felt at once that they would like this boy whose sensitive face expressed his every emotion and who had so evident a sense of humor. They were about to climb inside of the coach with Miss Moore when a shrill, querulous voice from a general store across from the station attracted their attention. A tall, angular woman in a skimp calico dress stood there. “Howdy, Miss Moore,” she called, then as though not expecting a reply to her salutation, she continued: “Behring Strait, you come here right this minute and mind the baby. What yo’ gallavantin’ off fer, and me with the supper gettin’ to do?” Nann and Dori glanced at each other merrily, each wondering which strait the baby was named after.

The small girl obeyed quickly. Mrs. Strait impressed the listeners as a woman who demanded instant obedience. As soon as the three passengers were settled inside, the coach started with a lurch. The sandy road wound through the wide, swampy meadows. It was rough and rutty. Miss Moore sat with closed eyes and, as she was wedged in between two heavy bags, she was not jounced about as much as were the girls. They took it good-naturedly, but Dories found it hard to imagine how she could have endured the journey if she had been alone with her queer Aunt Jane. Nann decided that the old woman feined sleep on all occasions to avoid the necessity of talking to them.

At last, even above the rattle of the old coach, could be heard the crashing surf on rocks, and the girls peered eagerly ahead. What they saw was a wide strip of sand and a row of weather-beaten cottages, boarded up, as Dori had prophesied, and beyond them white-crested, huge gray breakers rushing and roaring up on the sand.

The boney white horse came to a sudden stop at the edge of the beach, nor would it attempt to go any farther. The boy leaped over a wheel and threw open the back door. “Guess you’ll have to walk a piece along the beach, Miss Moore. The coach gets stuck so often in the sand ol’ Methuselah ain’t takin’ no chances at tryin’ to haul it out,” he informed the occupants.

The girls were almost surprised to find that the horse hadn’t been named after a strait. Miss Moore threw back her veil and opened her eyes at once. Upon hearing what the boy had to say, she leaned forward to gaze at the largest cottage in the middle of the row. She spoke sharply: “Gibralter, why didn’t your father carry out my orders? I wrote him distinctly to open up the cottage and air it out. Why didn’t he do that when he brought over the supplies, that’s what I’d like to know? I declare to it, even if he is your father, I must say Simon Strait is a most shiftless man.”

The boy said at once, as though in an effort to apologize: “Pa’s been real sick all summer, Miss Moore, and like ’twas he fergot it, but I kin open up easy, if I kin find suthin’ to pry off the boards with. I think likely I’ll find an axe, anyhow, out in the back shed whar I used to chop wood fer you. I’m most sure I will.”

Miss Moore sank back. “Well, hurry up about it, then. I’ll stay in the coach till you get the windows uncovered.” When the boy was gone, the woman turned toward her niece. “Open up that small black bag, Dories; the one near you, and get out the back-door key. There’s a hammer just inside on the kitchen table, if it’s where I left it.” She continued her directions: “Give it to Gibralter and tell him, when he gets the boards off the windows, to carry in some wood and make a fire. A fog is coming in this minute and it’s as wet as rain.”

The key having been found, the girls ran gleefully around the cabin in search of the boy. They found him emerging from a shed carrying a hatchet. He grinned at them as though they were old friends. “Some cheerful place, this!” he commented as he began ripping off the boards from one of the kitchen windows. “You girls must o’ needed sea air a lot to come to this place out o’ season like this with a – a – wall, with a old lady like Miss Moore is.” Dories felt sure that the boy was thinking something quite different, but was not saying it because it was a relative of hers about whom he was talking. What she replied was: “I can’t understand it myself. I mean why Great-Aunt Jane wanted to come to this dismal place after everyone else has gone.”

They were up on the back porch and, as she looked out across the swampy meadows over which a heavy fog was settling, then she continued, more to Nann than to the boy: “I promised Mother I wouldn’t be afraid of ghosts, but honestly I never saw a spookier place.”

The boy had been making so much noise ripping off boards that he had only heard the last two words. “Spooks war yo’ speakin’ of?” he inquired. “Well, I guess yo’ll think thar’s spooks enough along about the middle of the night when the fog horn’s a moanin’ an’ the surf’s a crashin’ out on the pint o’ rocks, an’ what’s more, thar is folks at Siquaw Center as says thar’s a sure enough spook livin’ over in the ruins that used to be ol’ Colonel Wadbury’s place.”

The girls shuddered and Dories cast a “Didn’t I tell you so” glance at her friend, but Nann, less fearful by nature, was interested and curious, and after looking about in vain for the “ruin”, she inquired its whereabouts.

Gibralter enlightened them. “O, ’tisn’t in sight,” he said, “that is, not from here. It’s over beyant the rocky pint. From the highest rock thar you kin see it plain.”

Then as he went on around the cottage taking off boards, the girls followed to hear more of the interesting subject. “Fine house it used to be when my Pa was a kid, but now thar’s nothing but stone walls a standin’. A human bein’ couldn’t live in that ol’ shell, nohow. But – ” the boy could not resist the temptation to elaborate the theme when he saw the wide eyes of his listeners, “’long about midnight folks at the Center do say as how they’ve seen a light movin’ about in the old ruin. Nobody’s dared to go near ’nuf to find out what ’tis. The swamps all about are like quicksand. If you step in ’em, wall, golly gee, it’s good-bye fer yo’. Leastwise that’s what ol’-timers say, an’ so the spook, if thar is one over thar, is safe ’nuf from introosion.”

While the boy had been talking, he had removed all of the wooden blinds, his listeners having followed him about the cabin. Dories had been so interested that she had quite forgotten about the huge key that she had been carrying. “O my!” she exclaimed, suddenly noticing it. “But then you didn’t need the hammer after all. Now I’ll skip around and open the back door, and, Gibralter, will you bring in some wood, Aunt Jane said, to build us a fire?”

While the boy was gone, Nann confided merrily, “There now, Dories Moore, you’ve been wishing for an adventure, and here is one all ready made and waiting. Pray, what could be more thrilling than an old ruin surrounded by an uncrossable swamp and a mysterious light which appears at midnight?”

The boy returned with an armful of logs left over from the supply of a previous summer. “Gib,” Nann addressed him in her friendliest fashion, “may we call you that? Gibralter is so long. I’d like to visit your ruin and inspect the ghost in his lair. Really and truly, isn’t there any way to reach the place?”

The boy looked as though he had a secret which he did not care to reveal. “Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t,” he said uncommittedly. Then, with a brightening expression in his red-brown eyes, “Anyway, I’ll show you the old ruin if yo’ll meet me at sun-up tomorrow mornin’ out at the pint o’ rocks.”

“I’m game,” Nann said gleefully. “It sounds interesting to me all right. How about you, Dori?”

“O, I’m quite willing to see the place from a distance,” the other replied, “but nothing could induce me to go very near it.” Neither of the girls thought of asking the advice of their elderly hostess, who, at that very moment, appeared around a corner of the cabin to inquire why it was taking such an endless time to open up the cottage. Luckily Gib had started a fire in the kitchen stove, which partly mollified the woman’s wrath. After bringing in the bags and supplies, the boy took his departure, and they could hear him whistling as he drove away through the fog.