THE HAUNTED SHIP
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA, LIMITED
TORONTO
[Illustration: _Ann could feel the dory rise and plunge._]
THE HAUNTED SHIP
by
KATE TUCKER
_Illustrated by_--
ETHEL TAYLOR
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1929
COPYRIGHT, 1929,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped.
Published March, 1929.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
SET UP BY BROWN BROTHERS LINOTYPERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. JO BAILEY AND THREE SEYMOURS 1
II. THE WRECKED SCHOONER 15
III. HOW THE BOAT CAME ASHORE 29
IV. IN THE GOOD GREENWOOD 43
V. ON THE WRECK 66
VI. GOING LOBSTERING 81
VII. PAINTING THE DEER 100
VIII. A MAN WITH A LANTERN 109
IX. A DAY OF MYSTERIES 124
X. THE FIRE IN THE WOODS 141
XI. THROUGH THE PORTHOLE 150
XII. THE FIGUREHEAD’S SECRET 159
XIII. A REASON FOR EVERYTHING 171
ILLUSTRATIONS
Ann could feel the dory rise and plunge _Frontispiece_
PAGE
In the lookout tree they mounted guard in turn 53
With one beautiful jump he vanished 61
The harness showered down in dozens of little
straps 135
THE HAUNTED SHIP
[Illustration]
THE HAUNTED SHIP
CHAPTER I
_JO BAILEY AND THREE SEYMOURS_
“Hey, Jerry, get along there, you fool horse!”
Jo Bailey flipped the reins over the back of the lumbering nag. Not
that there was any hurry, but he was so eager to see what the Seymours
would be like. They were coming from Boston to spend the summer at the
Bailey house and Jo was on his way down to the station at Pine Ledge to
meet their train.
The past winter had been a lonely one for Jo and his father, who lived
up on a hill by the sea, far from the village. Some of the time the
snowdrifts had been seven feet deep, but Jo didn’t expect these city
people to understand what that meant; they could not realize what the
Maine people called “a shut-in winter.” The Seymours were coming after
the grass had grown green and the fields sprouted up through the brown
moist earth, and they would be going home before the cold winds came
down from the north woods, the cold that closed so surely and fiercely
about the Baileys in their white house on the hill above the sea and
shut them in so tightly that they could see nothing but the sea and the
great stretches of snow for a long four months at a time.
Spring changed the whole world for Jo Bailey, and spring was here now;
winter had gone. The soft dirt road sucked up under Jerry’s clumping
feet and brooks ran in merry freshets through their deep gutters on
either side of the road. So Jo swung the old plow horse into place
beside the little station platform and whistled while he waited. The
year’s fun would begin to-day. In the early spring he had helped his
father plant, but that work was done and so was school, and he had long
and pleasant days before him, when his chores could be finished before
breakfast.
Jo never had seen the Seymour family and to-day he was going to find
out what they were like. There were three of them coming with their
father and mother and if they were as nice as their father they’d be
all right. Mr. Seymour was a painter who had discovered the Bailey
house last year while he was wandering along the Maine coast on
a sketching trip. He had said that the Bailey farm was the most
beautiful place he ever had seen.
Of course Jo liked hearing that, and he felt proud at knowing that an
artist from Boston found the old farm so lovely, though exactly what
the painter saw in the big ocean pounding against the foot of the
tall broken cliff, the stretch of smooth meadow running down over the
slope of the hill, and the dense pine woods reaching back for miles
and miles, Jo couldn’t understand any better than the Seymours could
comprehend his winter.
The Seymours were about his own age, Jo was thinking as he sat on a box
on the station platform, whistling and waiting. The oldest was a girl,
Ann, Mr. Seymour had told him last summer, and Jo was skeptical as to
what he might expect from her. A little bit of a fraidcat, probably,
always dressing up and particular about her clothes; but he could bear
it, if only the boy was spry. “Spry” was a word that meant a great deal
in Maine; in Jo’s opinion if a boy was “spry” he was all that a boy
should be.
While Jo waited at the station, Ann Seymour was sitting impatiently
in the train, looking forward to just such a place as Jo’s meadow to
stretch her long legs in a good run. School and basket ball were very
well in winter but she had grown as tired as Jo of the cold, and as
soon as April weather brought out the buds on Boston Common, Ann grew
restless and began to talk about Maine.
Ann was fourteen, just like Jo Bailey; her brother Ben was twelve, and
Helen was ten. She was decidedly the baby of the family and one of the
reasons for their all coming to Pine Ledge so early in the season.
She had been dreadfully ill during the past year and Mr. Seymour had
thought of Pine Ledge farm as the best place for Helen when they first
talked about a summer vacation. So the plans were made and he had told
the children about Jo--how he had no mother, and, because of this, they
must share their own mother with him; how he lived bravely in the snow
all winter and walked through the drifts to school; and how he knew all
about the woods and the rocks and tides and went fishing, up-river and
out to sea. He made Jo sound interesting, and the Seymours were waiting
to see him quite as impatiently as he was waiting for them.
“Will there be Indians at Pine Ledge?” Helen’s round blue eyes were
like saucers as she peered out of the car window into the woods and
fields through which the train was sliding so rapidly. “Will there be
real live Indians with feathers and paint on them?”
“Don’t be such a silly,” said Ben. He secretly hoped there were Indians
but he wouldn’t have admitted it to any one. “Indians moved away from
this country years ago, years and years ago, all except a few tame
Indians. But perhaps there are bears out in those woods. Bears live
where green bushes grow so thick. They hide in the bushes and jump out
when you’re not looking.”
He was delighted to see Helen shiver in frightened excitement. It made
him feel rather trembly, too, to think of bears as big as men that
jumped out and growled.
“Have they big teeth?” asked Helen, as she pressed her small nose
against the window glass, looking hard for a glimpse of a bear.
“I guess they have teeth! And round ears and claws and fur.”
“Oh-h-h! I don’t want to met any bears.” Helen’s nose was pressed into
a flat white spot in her desire to look deeper into the woods.
“Jo Bailey won’t let them touch you, will he, father?” said Ann
reassuringly.
She turned to her father, who sat absorbed in watching the country
flowing past his window. She knew how he loved the green fields and the
woods, all the lovely shapes of things and the way they were placed on
the green earth, for he painted them on wide, long canvases. Sometimes
the things he painted didn’t look as Ann thought they ought to, but she
always found him ready to explain why he made them so different from
the way they had appeared to her eyes. People who knew about painting
said that his work had unusually fine quality and Ann believed that
soon he would be very famous and then there would be a great deal more
money to spend than they had now. She would be able to go west and
start a ranch with hundreds of horses and cowboys riding them. That was
the dream of her life.
Ben didn’t care much about having more money. He was satisfied to sit
and watch his father at work. Often Mr. Seymour gave him an old piece
of stretched canvas to paint on while he sat so quietly there beside
him. Ben liked to splash in the paint and try to do something himself.
In spite of being a boy he was not nearly as strong as Ann, although
he was only two years younger. She could tumble him over easily, but
she was unusually strong for her age. It was hard for Ann to remember
always not to be too rough with Ben and Helen. She was not quite aware
of how she was looking forward to being with Jo Bailey, for her father
had said, “Jo’s as sturdy as they make ’em.” Jo, Ann knew, would be
able to do everything she could and then do more. And Jo would tell
them about bears and Indians, for though, like Ben, she knew perfectly
well that no Indians or bears would be in the Pine Ledge woods, she
liked to imagine that there might be some.
“Dad,” she said to Mr. Seymour, and he turned his keen smiling eyes
toward her. “Jo will know whether bears come into his woods, won’t he?
Tell Helen that Jo will take care of her.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” answered Mr. Seymour, “but he will speak for
himself in about one minute from now, for here we are.”
What a scurrying for coats and bags as the train pulled up before the
square wooden box that was Pine Ledge station! They all climbed down
the high steps to the platform, Helen without hat or coat because, as
usual, she had been too excited to get them on until the last moment
had come.
So this was Jo, waiting for them beside a fat old plow horse and a
roomy brown wagon that Ann learned to call the buckboard. Jo was much
bigger than Ann had thought he would be, and freckles were spattered
on his tanned face. He wore a very faded pair of clean overalls and
the collar of his blue shirt stood out like a second pair of ears. He
grinned a wide shy grin and his heavy boots scraped awkwardly on the
platform as he walked across to meet them.
Helen couldn’t wait. She ran across to him before the others were
fairly out of the train. “Where are the Indians and the bears? Please
show them to me right away.”
“Bears?” answered Jo, laughing in spite of his bashfulness. “Bears--
Well, I guess I can find you places where they have been, later in the
summer, around the berry patches, but they don’t linger here in the
springtime. And the Injuns were scared away years ago. People ain’t
scalped up here any more.”
All the Seymours were around him by this time. “We shall have to do
without the Indians,” said Mrs. Seymour gayly. “Really, I prefer not to
be scalped.”
Jo laughed again as he went to help with the baggage; a feeling
of satisfaction and contentment filled him. These new people were
friendly. He was going to like them.
“I’ll take those, Mr. Seymour.” And over Jo’s square shoulders went the
strapped shawls, the extra coats, and with three valises in each hand
the boy strode down to the buckboard.
Ben’s mouth dropped open in astonishment as he watched.
“Isn’t that too heavy a load?” Mr. Seymour protested; but Jo called
back, “Not a mite heavier than milk pails.”
“How strong you are!” exclaimed Ann.
After Mr. Seymour had gathered up his share of the remaining luggage
two bags remained. Ben looked at them. He had not supposed that he
could lift them from the platform but he had watched Jo with admiring
eyes, and now when Ann stooped for the bags he suddenly brushed her
aside and grabbed the two valises.
“I’ll do that,” he said, and he struggled after his father and Jo, the
two bags trailing from his lean frail arms.
Jo piled baggage and Seymours into the two-seated wagon, although how
he managed to stow them all away Ann couldn’t imagine until she saw him
do it. The buckboard seemed elastic, and Jerry, the big lumbering old
horse, traveled along as though he had no load at all.
“Want to sit on the little front seat with me?” Jo asked Ann. Jo had
decided at first glance that he liked this thin tall ruddy girl with
her bobbed hair. She didn’t seem like the girls he had known; she was
more like a boy with her frank smile and clear eyes. No frills or
fancies about her, no sly nudgings or giggles that might mean anything,
no holding hands. No pretending not to understand his own sensible
frankness, no trying to make him remember that she was a girl. She sat
beside him as he drove, her bright eyes darting this way and that,
letting nothing escape her sight, excitedly seeking out the things that
Jo had known every day of his life. Jo knew that if he had gone to
Boston he would have felt the same way about things that were different
from those at home.
Funny thing--he had expected to like the boy best, but even this early
Jo saw that he was going to have the most fun with the girl whom he had
dreaded meeting.
They seemed to enjoy their drive so much that Jo took them the long way
around, through the village. There the houses were grouped together,
crouching down like a flock of little chickens about the tall church
that looked like a guardian white hen. All around the outskirts green
hillocks rose, framing the village into a cuddling nest. This was
planned, Jo explained, to protect the houses in winter, when the gales
brought the snow out of the north and buried the roads beyond the
pine-covered mounds.
“The wind blows like all get out,” he chattered. “And the folks are
glad to be together so that they can reach the store and the church,
and the children can go to school. The wind blows so hard that it
passes right over the top of this valley, playing leapfrog over the
hills.”
“Where do you go to school?” Mrs. Seymour asked from the back seat.
Jo turned to answer her. “I come down here.”
“You mean you come down here to live in winter?”
“No, we don’t want to leave the homestead. Jerry brings me in good
weather, and when he can’t get through I go on snowshoes to the nearest
neighbors and the school dray picks me up there.”
“You walk? All that distance?” Even Mr. Seymour was astonished.
“It ain’t so far. Only four or five miles.”
Ann was tremendously impressed. “You come all that distance every day?”
“Lots of the fellows do it, and the girls, too. Everybody goes to
school even if they do live out on a farm.” Jo was very matter-of-fact
about it. He never had thought of pitying himself, nor thought of
admiring himself, either.
Ann liked the way the small white houses nestled together with the
church steeple standing over them. The steeple reminded her of a
lighthouse piercing up into the blue sky. Above it the scudding bits
of cloud were flying by like little sailboats she had once seen racing
across Boston Bay.
After they had passed through the village Jo turned into a winding
road which grew wilder and more unkempt as Jerry plodded along. Puffs
of dust rose behind the wheels and the hot sun on the pines made the
air heavy with fragrance. Finally the road plunged down into a ravine
where the air was cool and the sound of running water could be heard.
The pines met overhead and made a soft rustling noise more quiet than
silence.
“The river runs under the road here,” explained Jo. “Then it goes down
into the sea. The sea is just beyond those trees,” and he pointed
through the pines with his whipstock.
From the ravine once again they climbed into the sunlight, mounting
up over cliffs and rocks, until the sea suddenly spread out endlessly
before them. From here they could look back and see the mouth of the
river as it foamed out of the pines into the broader expanse of water.
Gray shingled huts were clustered on the banks just out of reach of the
swishing rush of tide, and bent figures of men, tiny, and yellow in
their oilskins, could be seen moving in and out of the boats drawn on
the shore.
“Lobstermen,” said Jo before Ann had a chance to ask him. “They bring
their boats in there. We have our boat down in the cove, my father and
I. Do you know anything about lobstering?” And he turned to her with
his eyes twinkling. Well enough he knew she did not.
Ann laughed aloud with him. “I’ve seen them in the fish market. And
I’ve eaten them. But I don’t know a thing about catching them.” She
looked at him inquiringly. “Is it fun?”
“I’ll take you out with me sometime, if you will promise not to be
seasick.”
“I can’t promise that, because I don’t know and of course I couldn’t
help it if I had to be seasick, but I shouldn’t care--I can be sure of
that!”
“Take me, too,” Helen demanded from the rear seat.
“All right.” Jo nodded and turned to Ben. “And you, if you would like
to come.”
“I’ll come if I can help row.” Ben was still feeling strong after his
battle with the bags. He wanted to do everything that Jo did.
Jo understood. “You could, but we don’t have to row any more. The boat
has a motor. But you can help to pull the lobster pots up; that’s hard
work and Miss Ann wouldn’t like to get herself all over wet.”
“Don’t call me Miss Ann,” the girl cried impatiently. “It makes me feel
grown up and I hate it! I’m Ann. My gracious, I’ve done nothing but
talk of you as Jo ever since my father planned to come up here this
summer. I feel as if I’d known you for years.”
“All right,” said Jo. Secretly he was delighted, but he did not quite
know how to show it and was not quite sure that he cared to let them
see. “You will get all messed up with the bait and the water, but
perhaps you won’t mind. There’s the house just yonder,” and he pointed
around the bend of the road.
“Where?” they all shouted. And there it was, outlined against the dark
of the forest behind it. It was a small one-storied frame house like
those in the village, with the roof at the back sloping almost down
to the ground, a white hen with her wings outstretched to cover these
children from the city.
The house stood at the extreme edge of a broad meadow that ran from the
woods to the high bluff at the foot of which lay a rocky beach; black
woods behind and then the smooth stretch of pasture and beyond it the
ocean.
The sun had already set, leaving an afterglow that was dimming rapidly,
and the Seymours suddenly felt tired and glad that they were to reach
shelter before dark. The air grew colder with the setting of the sun
and the glimmer of a lamp in the window was welcome.
Even Jo seemed anxious to get home and he urged Jerry into a trot. “Hey
up, Jerry,” he chirped, and slapped the reins over the smooth round
back. Jerry pricked up his ears and blew his breath quickly through his
nostrils. He obeyed as if he had meant to hurry without being told.
Everything grew tense in the peaceful twilight, as if a storm were
creeping across the smooth sea to burst in fury against the cliff. Ann
glanced at Jo’s face and found that his chin was set tightly and his
eyes looked straight ahead. He didn’t look frightened, but Ann knew
that he had no wish to be caught on this particular bit of road after
the night had fallen.
Up over the bluff the wagon rattled, Jerry’s feet making a clump-clump
in the stillness. Across and down the slight hill they went.
[Illustration]