Читать книгу The Clue at Skeleton Rocks - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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The piercing blast of a fog-horn woke Hal and his uncle a little past midnight. They sat up in their berths, bewildered. Suddenly, however, the flash of a light past the porthole helped to clear their sleep-ridden minds.

“It’s from Skeleton Rocks, Unk. There must be quite a mist gathering, huh?”

“Must be,” Denis Keen agreed, unable to stifle a long and audible yawn. And as the fog-horn pierced the ocean silence once more, he started. “Heavens! That thing’s enough to waken the dead.”

“Guess that’s what it’s intended for.” Hal yawned then too, and pulling his lanky legs out from under the covers, he set his feet down on the floor. “As long as I’m awake, I’ll go out and see how thick it is,” he added, reaching for his shoes and socks. “Want to come, Unk?”

Denis Keen sighed and slid down again under his warm covers.

“Thank heavens, my curiosity doesn’t carry me to such limits,” he murmured out of his soft pillow. “No, Hal, I’ve no desire to leave this nice warm bunk and get chilled to the bone on that cold deck. I can hear that pesky fog-horn only too well right here. Also, I believe it wouldn’t be blowing if the mist wasn’t thick—I don’t have to go out on deck to see something my own common sense can tell me right here where I’m warm and comfortable!” He chuckled softly.

“You lazy bird!” Hal said, making a playful attempt at throwing his pillow into his uncle’s bunk. “Don’t you s’pose I realize the horn wouldn’t be blowing if the mist wasn’t thick!” He grinned good-naturedly. “What I really want to see is the thick mist—see what it feels like way up here at the edge of things. Boy, I’ve never seen a really good fog on the ocean before and I don’t want to miss this one. I’m glad the horn did wake me up.”

“I’m not,” Denis Keen said whimsically. “Besides, an ocean fog depresses me no end, and I’d rather close my eyes to it any night. So pace the chill deck alone, nephew of mine, and scamper out of here quick before you get me so wide awake that I won’t be able to get to sleep before morning.”

Hal looked back over his broad shoulder with an affectionate twinkle in his eyes. This uncle of his was the best companion a fellow would want, he was thinking. They seemed to understand each other perfectly, he and this boyish brother of his dead father.

“Then you’re going to get up and have a turn in the mist with me, Unk, huh?” Hal laughed.

“Yes,” the other said with a mock sigh, “you’ve known all along that you’d force me to do it. I’m twenty years older than you are, I must remind you, Hal, yet you expect me to act your own age. I really ought to get my eight hours tonight—really! Instead . . . oh, well, hand me my shoes! I’ve an idea the floor’s none too cozy.”

Hal handed him the shoes, laughing.

“As a matter of fact, this floor’s as cold as a shark’s heart, and it’s said that that’s the coldest thing extant.”

“Talking about sharks,” Denis Keen said, rising with a shivering motion throughout his slim and well-preserved physique, “makes me think about this crazy notion of yours to spend a perfectly good Easter vacation out there at that lonely lighthouse. Whatever possessed you to tell Captain Dell you would do it!”

“Don’t ask me, Unk!” Hal said gaily. He reached toward a chair and whisking his windbreaker from it, drew it on over his head. “The idea just popped into my little old bean, that’s all. I just had a hunch that Skeleton Rocks would have the desired effect.”

“What effect is that?” His uncle was struggling with a knotted shoelace.

“Any effect you can think of,” Hal answered whimsically. “I’m not particular which. As Shakespeare would have said, ‘The Effect’s the thing’!”

“If I didn’t know you as I do, I’d think you were out of your head, Hal. As it is, you may be suffering from some hallucination. In any case, Skeleton Rocks seems to have appealed to you, eh?”

“That’s just it, Unk. Speaking seriously, it isn’t just any crazy idea of mine this time. I want to go there to see just what it is in these lonely, wave-swept lighthouses that can keep Barrowe and his kind, isolated like they are from all mankind, year in and year out. And by that same token, I want to see what it was that forced that poor old Bill Hollins to suicide. There must have been something stronger than himself! Have you stopped to figure that the government treats her lighthouse men pretty fine? After all the years Bill Hollins was in the Service, he must have had enough to feel secure and retire if he’d wanted to. In any case, he didn’t have to stay at Skeleton Rocks if he didn’t want to. What made him prefer suicide in that cold, friendless ocean to a nice, warm berth on land?”

“Hal, you’re positively hopeless! From what Captain Dell told me, Hollins was a trifle eccentric just like Barrowe. Perhaps his eccentricity just took that form, that’s all. Why all this pother about a man who led a colorless life and who died of his own volition?”

“A theory of mine, Unk,” said Hal shrugging his stalwart shoulders. “Ever since I can remember I’ve heard people talk about the mystery and fascination of the sea. Now that I’ve got the chance—now that I’m right on the scene, I want to see what’s in it.”

“You can do that just by standing out on deck. There’s fish, fog and storm and I may add, an occasional shark in these waters. What more do you want to see?”

“The things that landsmen never see—the things that Barrowe and Hollins have been seeing all these years. It isn’t so much what Hollins did, Unk . . . oh, if it comes down to it, I really can’t say why I want to stay here a week or two. I simply want to.”

Denis Keen, fully dressed and amply protected against the damp cold on deck, walked to his nephew standing at the door, and put his arm about his shoulders fraternally.

“Don’t let me string you any longer, Hal. Whatever your reason is for wanting to stay here, it’s a good one. There’s romance in the sea and a chap of your age is bound to feel it. I dare say that two weeks at Skeleton Rocks will be a whole lot better than knocking around New York your whole Easter vacation. You’ll get some rest and fine air up here. Your mother will be glad to hear you’ve stayed on. Well, you’re wanting to get out in that pesky mist, so come on.”

They could see but a few feet from the rail; the mist all but enclosed the sturdy tender. The light from the Rocks, however, still seemed to penetrate that atmospheric shroud, and now and again the two deck-strollers were forced to put their hands against their ears to shut out the piercing blasts of the fog-horn.

“It’s so gloomy and spooky, it’s fascinating, don’t you think so, Unk?” Hal said, his hands deep in his pockets as he puffed determinedly on a cigarette.

“Nothing is fascinating to me when it causes my ear-drums to feel as if someone had been pummeling my head for hours,” answered Denis Keen quizzically. He waved his pipe with a dramatic flourish. “To answer your question though—I’m not fascinated with the thought of the gloom and the spookiness of the mist. I’m too old and too practical and too unromantic to be captivated by that angle of it! You ought to realize that, Hal. My reaction to this whole thing is that God’s in his heaven, and Barrowe’s right on the job at Skeleton Rocks! That’s fascinating enough for me.”

Hal laughed and they sauntered arm in arm toward the port rail. There they stopped and, resting their elbows on the cold brass rail, stared out into the mist and darkness. For a moment there was no sound of the fog-horn—nothing but the swish of the waves as they lapped against the hull, and the deep silence of the ocean.

There was a light in the pilot house; the first mate was on watch, and Hal had noticed when he and his uncle had passed by that the man was preoccupied with a book. Both the light and the man were just about visible from where the watchers stood—everything else aboard the tender was obscured by the mist.

Hal glanced idly down at the scupper and fixed his eyes upon a piece of tin-foil that was floating slowly through it atop a trickling stream. Suddenly the thick lock of errant red hair, that bane of his life, blew down over his forehead, and just as suddenly he tossed it back into place with a violent shake of his head.

“Breeze must be stirring, Unk,” he observed, unconscious of his whispered tones. “Anyway, I heard something stirring.”

“I felt it too,” Denis agreed in a barely audible voice. “Still, I did hear something else; it wasn’t the water either! Yet again it did sound like water only . . .”

“Sh! I think I heard something then, Unk. A plash, plash sort of . . . I got it! It’s a boat somewhere near us.” Hal’s voice was so low, it sounded ghostly.

Denis tugged at his arm, indicating complete silence. For a full minute they stood together and listened and were shortly rewarded by the unmistakable sounds of oars. A small boat was passing near them; there wasn’t the slightest doubt about it.

At that moment, the light from the Rocks swept across the Cactus, lighting up in its great range a considerable portion of that darkened area northeast of the tender, and flashing on to the reef. That whole arc of radiant light had been made in not more than three-tenths of a second, and yet there was time enough for both Hal and his uncle to see a man in a row-boat illumined quite vividly against the dark water.

His sturdy arms were at the oars, directing the small craft with an almost ferocious intensity straight toward the wreck of the schooner, Sister Ann. And singularly enough, as the piercing light swept over him, he crouched instantly in the bottom of the boat with all the agility of a fleeing feline.

Darkness obliterated both man and boat before Hal could utter a sound. The light had completed its arc and there would be an eclipse of two seconds before it again swung out over the murmuring sea lanes.

Hal and Denis Keen waited for its coming in breathless silence.