A GHOST WALKS
"Ever take much interest in gasoline engines?" Curlie suddenly inquired
of Joe.
"Yes, quite a bit; had a shift on one of those marine kinds last summer
on the Great Lakes."
"Good! You'll have to take a shift here on the _Kittlewake_. This trip
can't be made without sleep. I'll spell the captain at the wheel and you
can relieve that lanky engineer."
Again they lapsed into silence. Half unconsciously each boy was taking
stock of the craft they had requisitioned, trying to judge whether or
not she was equal to the task she had been put to. Speed she had in
plenty. "Do forty knots a 'our," the skipper put it, "an' never 'eat a
bearin'."
She was a trim craft. Narrow of beam, a two-master with a steel hull
that stood well out of the water forward, she rode the water with the
repose and high glee of the bird she was named after.
"Yes, she's a beauty, and a go-getter," Curlie was thinking to himself,
"but in a storm, now, four or five hundred miles from land, what then?"
Had he known how soon his question was to be answered he might well have
shuddered.
"Better go down and have a look at the engines before you turn in for a
wink of sleep," he told Joe.
When Joe had gone below, Curlie still sat there on the rail aft. The
throb of the engines beneath him, the rapid rush of air that fanned his
cheek, was medicine to his weary brain. He had been caught in a
whirlwind of events and here, for a time, he had been cast down in a
quiet place where his mind might clear itself of the wreckage of thought
that had been torn up and strewn about within it.
It had been a wild race. He had lost thus far; would he lose in the
end? Had he, after all, trusted too much to theory? Had these two sons
of rich men really only gone for some picnic trip to a well-known island
farther south along the coast? Or had they, as he had assumed, guided by
their ancient map, gone in search of the island of "many barbarians and
much gold," an island which he was convinced existed only in name?
The girl, too; what had she meant when she said she was in some ways
responsible for her brother's actions? There was something queer about
the whole affair. Who had taken the wireless equipment from the wrecked
car out there by the Forest Preserve? Did young Ardmore have the ancient
original of that interesting map or only the photograph? If he did not
have it, who was in possession of it? Strange thing that it would be
lost for a hundred years only to have a brand-new photograph of it show
up all at once. Rather ghostly, he thought. He had meant to ask Gladys
Ardmore about that. He'd ask her now if she were here. But he was more
than glad she was not here.
"No trip for a girl," he told himself, "and she said she'd go. Strange
she gave it up so easily. Strange that--"
His thoughts broke off suddenly as he stared forward. The _Kittlewake_
was equipped with three cabins; a forecastle and aftercabin, both below
the main deck, built largely for stormy weather, and a fair-weather
cabin in the center of the main deck. The night was dark, the moon not
having come up. It was difficult to distinguish objects at a distance,
but, unless his eyes deceived him, Curlie saw some object, all white and
ghostly, rising slowly from the hatchway leading to the forecastle. Cold
perspiration sprang out upon his brow, his heart beat madly, his knees
trembled as he involuntarily moved forward. That was the way he had of
treating ghosts; he walked straight at them.
In the meantime, had one been on some craft three hundred miles farther
on in the direct course of the _Kittlewake_, he might have caught the
thunderous drumming of two powerful Liberty motors. He might also have
seen a spot of light playing constantly upon the black waters. While
this light was constant, it moved rapidly forward in a wide circle. The
circle was never the same in size or location, yet the spot of light did
not move more than twenty miles in any direction from a certain given
center. The spot of illumination came from a powerful searchlight
mounted upon a seaplane. It was manipulated by a boy in the rear seat. A
second boy drove the plane. These boys, as you have no doubt long since
guessed, were Vincent Ardmore and his reckless pal, Alfred Brightwood.
This light had been playing upon the water since darkness had fallen,
some three hours before. They had been circling for four hours. Their
hopes of completing their search before dark had been thwarted by a
defective engine which had compelled them to make a landing upon the sea
when the journey was only half completed.
At this particular moment the plane was climbing steadily. It was a
perfect "man-bird" of the air, was this _Stormy Petrel_. With broad
spreading planes and powerful motors, it was the type of plane that now
and again hops off from some point in England during the dewy morning
hours and carries her crew safely to Cuba without a single stop.
Yet these boys were not planning a trip across to Europe. They were, as
Curlie had supposed they might be, hunting for the island of "many
barbarians and much gold."
When they had mounted to a considerable height, Alfred shut off the
engines and allowed her to volplane toward the sea.
"Aw, let's give it up and get back," said Vincent downheartedly. "It's
not here. Probably that old map-maker made a mistake of a trifling
hundred miles or so."
"That's a grand idea!" exclaimed Brightwood, grasping at a straw. "Not a
hundred miles but perhaps thirty or forty miles. Old boy, we'll be
cooking lunch on a stove of pure gold in half an hour. You'll see! Just
get your light fixed right and I'll take a wider circle. That'll get
it."
"But if we use up much more gas we won't get back to land," hesitated
Vincent.
"Land! Who wants to get back to land!" the other exploded. "If worst
comes to worst we've got the wireless, haven't we? We can light on the
water and send out an S. O. S., can't we? I must say you're a mighty bum
sailor."
"Oh, all right," said Vincent, stung into silence, "go ahead and try
it."
Again the motors thundered. Again the spot light traced a circular path
across the dark waters, which to the boy who held the light, appeared to
be reaching up black, fiendish hands to drag them down. This time the
circle they cut was many miles in circumference, miles which drew deeply
from the supply of gasoline in their tanks.