_ON THE WRECK_
Robin Hood and his band did not let the grass grow under their feet,
after they had once decided to thoroughly investigate the mystery of
the wrecked schooner. Ann, herself, felt much stronger and braver now
that she had allies. She was quite willing to admit that she had been
squeamish about going aboard and examining the ship alone or with no
one but Ben and Helen. Although Mr. Seymour had reported the boat to be
uninhabited and perfectly safe, Ann, nevertheless, had wondered whether
perhaps the ghosts might not have been on a vacation the day her father
went aboard with Mr. Bailey.
The band chose to begin their undertaking early in the afternoon of
the day following their discovery of the fire in the woods. The sun
was bright and therefore the demon on the bow was quite unlifelike and
battered.
Jo bent his back, for a step, and Ann was the first to climb up to
the sloping deck. After she had scrambled to safety she let down her
hands to help Ben and then Helen, and then she lent a hand to Jo as he
braced his feet against the wooden side and walked as a fly might until
he could catch the gunwale and swing himself over the rail.
“It is a very big boat,” ventured Helen, whispering, as she looked
over the wide deck with its shining weathered gray boards. “It is much
bigger than it looks from the house.”
“Now, right here,” Jo interposed, “let’s make up our minds to one
thing. Nobody is to whisper and nobody is to scream, no matter what
happens. A whisper will frighten a person even when there is nothing
to be afraid of, and if anybody screams in my ear I know I shall jump
right out of my skin.”
“I don’t see how you have the courage to come back, Jo,” said Ben
admiringly.
“I’m not so terribly courageous,” admitted Jo candidly. “If it hadn’t
been for Ann’s thinking that the fire had something to do with the ship
I shouldn’t be here now, I know that much!”
“Where shall we go first?” Ann asked, and then, because she thought she
might have seemed unsympathetic, she added, “I don’t believe we shall
find anything wrong to-day. If men are really hanging about the boat
they couldn’t come here in the open daylight, for they’d be sure to be
seen.”
“We’ll go down to the captain’s quarters first,” Jo decided. “And then
we’ll work forward into the crew’s sleeping place, and later look down
in the hold. The whole place was bare and empty when my father and
yours came to look her over.”
As they walked along the deck Ben kept close to the railing, as if he
thought he could jump over it in case anything happened. And as he
walked he ran his hand along the side, for the sea had worn the rails
until they felt like silk under his fingers. Suddenly he stopped by a
splintered break in the top rail and picked something from its outside
edge.
“See what I’ve found,” he exclaimed as he glanced at what he held in
his hand. “Oh,” he said in a tone of disappointment, “it is nothing but
a piece of old cloth.”
He started to throw it away but Jo caught his arm.
“Let’s see it,” Jo said, and took the torn piece of blue woolen from
Ben’s hand. “Hum,” he grunted thoughtfully as he turned it over and
felt of it carefully.
“What is it, Jo?” asked Ann. “Does it mean something?”
“That I don’t rightly know,” Jo answered slowly. “It is just ordinary
blue wool, but I know that not one of the fishermen around here wears
anything like it. The really interesting thing about it, seems to me,
is that it hasn’t been out in the weather any time. I should say it had
never been rained on, nor the sun had a chance to bleach it. See, it
hasn’t begun to fade.”
“You are right,” said Ann. She took the soft material in her hands.
“This couldn’t have been torn from the clothing of any of the men who
came to investigate, because that was so long ago that cloth torn from
their suits would have worn away, such a little piece as this, with
threads sticking out where it was torn off.”
“What sort of suit did your father wear the day he came here with my
father?” inquired Jo.
“It was gray. He didn’t bring any dark suits with him, I’m sure,”
answered Ann.
“And that isn’t the kind of cloth his blue suits are made of,” asserted
Ben. “This is so thick; he wouldn’t wear that fuzzy thing.”
Jo put the bit of cloth into a pocket and carefully tucked it down into
a safe corner; then he examined the splintered rail where their clue
had been found.
“See,” he explained while the others hung over the edge to look, “the
cloth caught on the outside of this splinter, as though the man who
wore it slid down the side, holding on to the rail with his hands
before he jumped free.”
“Well, ghosts don’t wear thick blue woolen clothes,” said Ann. “We can
be sure that real people have been here.”
“I call this a pretty promising find of Ben’s,” said Jo, as he led the
way toward the open hatch. “It makes me feel very different about this
boat.”
Sliding down the companion-ladder they landed in the tiny passage from
which the captain’s cubbyhole and the mate’s opened on either side.
The captain’s stateroom was slightly larger than the mate’s, and his
berth ran under the open porthole in which the thick glass had been
shattered. The berth was piled with moldering blankets; apparently no
one had touched them since the wreck. Beside the berth, wedged between
it and the wall, a table stood with its only drawer pulled open,
showing that it was empty.
“The log should have been there,” explained Jo, “in that drawer. But it
had been taken away before ever our men got to the wreck. And over here
on this wall is the closet where the captain kept his clothes; they
were hanging in it when we were here last.”
Ann unhinged the latch and swung the door open. Two suits hung from the
hooks. She felt them to discover whether anything was in the pockets,
and she found the cloth damp and sticky. The closet smelled of the sea.
There was a familiar feel to the cloth under her fingers. “I believe
that this coat is made of the same cloth as the piece Ben found.”
Jo and Ben came quickly to her side. “The cloth of this suit is better
quality,” pronounced Jo, “and the coat isn’t torn anywhere. Most
deep-sea men wear clothes like that and so the torn piece doesn’t mean
much except that the man who wore it is a sailor, most likely.”
Helen was very much interested in the little cubbyhole. “I should like
this room for a doll house,” she said, and she stayed in it while the
others went across the passage to the mate’s stateroom.
They found things there in the same condition; empty drawers, moldy
blankets and a closet damp with brine.
Suddenly Helen called from the other cabin. “Come quick, Jo!”
They tumbled over each other in their efforts to reach her, and they
found her pointing to the blankets on the berth.
“Some one has been sleeping there!” she said breathlessly.
They had not looked closely at the berth when they had been in the
cabin and now they saw that the tousled heavy blankets were matted
flat, just as they would be if a man had slept on them and had not
troubled to shake them when he rose.
“Whoever he was, he didn’t choose a comfortable place,” said Ben,
looking up at the broken port. “The rain must beat in here every time
there is a storm.”
Ann turned to speak to Jo; she thought that he was directly behind her,
for she heard him move. But when she looked he was not there. He was
standing before the table, running his hand behind the drawer. If he
hadn’t been close beside her, who had? Neither Ben nor Helen was near
enough to be the person whose presence she had felt. Ann shook herself
slightly. She mustn’t be so foolish and nervous; she hadn’t supposed
she was capable of imagining things that weren’t there. The others were
so bravely forgetting that they once had thought that the ship might
be haunted, and she, the oldest of the Seymours, mustn’t be a coward.
Jo left the drawer and came over to the berth again.
“We’ll shift these blankets,” he said, “stir them up a little. And then
next time we come we can tell whether some one has been sleeping on
them again.”
A second time Ann heard a slight stir behind her, and this time Jo
heard it, too. He stooped with the edge of the blankets in his hands,
as though he were frozen. Then he dropped the blankets and leaped from
the doorway into the hall. Ann ran after him, and so did Ben and Helen.
“Whoever it was has gone up the ladder,” said Jo, evidently trying to
make his voice sound natural. His lips were set in a straight line.
“Was somebody here?” asked Ben in surprise. He had not felt the
presence nor heard the sound that had been so plain to Ann and Jo.
“Somebody came back of us,” Jo told him. “You heard him move, didn’t
you, Ann?” He seemed to wish to be reassured.
“I heard it twice,” said Ann. Her fingers were cold and she tucked them
into the palms of her hands. She was chilly all over.
“Shouldn’t wonder if it might not be the wind coming in through the
porthole of the mate’s cabin,” suggested Ben. “Wind often makes a queer
noise.”
“You may be right,” said Jo slowly. “We’ll look.”
He led the way into the smaller cabin again. The porthole was closed
tightly and it was unbroken.
“I think I will go up on deck,” said Helen abruptly.
“We will all go,” said Jo. “We’ve seen about everything down here, I
should think.”
Once more on deck in full sunlight everybody felt more comfortable, for
it is a spooky business to hunt through the empty cabins of a haunted
ship and there are plenty of grown-ups who never would have gone there
at all.
From the deck they peered into the blackness of the hold, but they
could see nothing without the flashlight that Ben promised to bring
next time. Down in the depths bright little glimmers showed here and
there from the opened seams in the side of the schooner, but there was
not enough light to reveal any possible secrets hidden in the hold.
A ladder led down into the darkness, but after Jo had tested it and
descended a few steps he reported that some of the rungs were broken;
it was too unsafe to go down unless one could see the exact condition
of every step before he trusted his weight to it.
He paused a few seconds before he climbed into the light again, and he
bent his head to listen.
“The water is in here,” he called. “I guess it keeps pretty high up; I
can hear it swish a little.”
“If the water is so high, no one could hide down there,” said Helen
decidedly. “They would get all wet.”
“It wouldn’t be much over their knees,” Jo answered. “That’s about
where the first cracked seam comes. Any water that got in above that
would run out with the tide. But it wouldn’t be pleasant to stay down
there long, you can bet on that.”
The band found the crew’s quarters very much as they found the cabins,
except that the sailors’ clothing had been tossed on to the floor.
Dungarees, boots, slickers, and coats were all thrown everywhere and
great spots of green mildew showed on them.
“I think that some one should have carried these clothes home and worn
them,” said Ben.
“Yes, it seems a dreadful waste,” said Ann. “Has every one in Pine
Ledge more than enough warm suits and coats?”
Jo laughed sarcastically at Ann’s question. “They could have used the
things, all right,” he said, “and by the law of salvage anybody has a
right to take what is found on beaches or in an abandoned boat, if it
is not claimed by its original owner. But nobody in these parts has any
use for a thing from this boat. I don’t believe that any man in the
village would touch these clothes; you couldn’t make anybody wear one
of these oilskins out into a storm, not for love nor money. They all
think there is a curse on this boat and they believe the curse would
settle on them if they so much as wore a southwester that came off of
her.”
Ann and Jo had been listening almost unconsciously for the return of
the sound that had startled them. They were keyed up to a high pitch
and their nerves were taut. While they searched the crew’s quarters Ann
had to fight to keep herself at the work in hand. She constantly had
the feeling that some one was watching; she wanted to turn her head
quickly and look over her shoulder. She looked at Jo, and instinctively
she knew that he was struggling against the same desire.
Then she remembered again that Mr. Bailey had told her father and
mother about this curious impression; it was the feeling of eyes
upon them that made him and all the other fishermen shun this boat.
Evidently it hadn’t been their own fearful and timorous imaginations,
as her father believed. Something or some one must be on board. She
couldn’t have had this feeling so strongly unless there were some
foundation for it.
“There is nothing here,” Jo finally said. “We might as well finish up
with the kitchen galley now. That is the only place left.”
Ann was glad to be able to turn around at last. She spun quickly, but--
Of course nothing stood in the broken sagging doorway. She was being
silly!
Once more on deck, the feeling evaporated. The four adventurers stood
in the warm sun a moment or two and then plunged into the gloom of
the kitchen galley. Over in one corner the rusted stove stood awry,
its doors gaping open. Ben lifted the lids. Within the stove the
thick ashes of many fires lay undisturbed, although a little ash had
scattered over the kitchen floor when the boat tilted. All around the
walls of the little room shelves climbed up to the ceiling and from
them tin cans had rolled helter-skelter. There was not one left on a
shelf.
Already the sun had sunk low in the west. It was down behind the pines
on the hill, and in a few minutes it would be gone.
“It is time to go home,” said Helen. “I’m not going to stay any longer.”
“I think that we are late for supper already,” and from the tones of
his voice Ann could tell that Ben had been as anxious as she for some
word that would take them over the side of the schooner without having
seemed to hurry away.
Ann could not help remembering how that figurehead had leered in the
dusk of the evening of their arrival; it hadn’t seemed half as menacing
since that time, but to be on the schooner as night fell was more than
she was willing to endure unnecessarily.
Jo glanced around the galley as though to prove to himself that he
wouldn’t be afraid to stay longer. Suddenly he stopped and threw his
head up.
“Listen!” he said in a low tense voice.
They all heard it this time and Helen crept close into Ann’s protecting
arm. This was not an evasive faint sound like the other; it was a
regular soft sussh-sussh that seemed at first to come from the deck.
Jo stole to the door on tiptoe but the deck was as bare and empty as
when they had entered the galley.
The noise did not stop. Sussh-sussh-sussh-sussh. It seemed farther away
now, up near the bow and the figurehead. It was stilled for a moment
and then it began again, near the captain’s cabin. They heard a faint
scratching, as though something had slid along the floor somewhere, and
then again the sussh-sussh growing fainter.
“Come on,” Jo spoke hoarsely through pale tight lips. “Now’s our chance
to get off.”
The doughty band ran in full retreat to the side of the ship. Jo swung
each of them overside in his strong arms and he was the last to leave
the wreck. He dropped beside them in the sand.
None of them stopped to look up into the face of the figurehead that
towered over them as they ran by. With wings of the wind in their feet
they sped up the meadow toward the lights where their suppers were
waiting for them.
At supper Mrs. Seymour noticed Helen’s pale tired face. She had grown
to expect a certain sort of tiredness in all of the children at night,
and this was very different. She looked from one to another of them.
“How did you like playing on the ship?” she asked casually.
“How did you know that we were there?” asked Ann.
“I saw you climbing up and once in a while I saw you on deck,”
explained Mrs. Seymour.
To Ann there was something very reassuring in the thought that all the
time they had been on the schooner their mother had been keeping an
eye on them; they had been perfectly safe, even when Ann was feeling
nervous and fidgety and wanting to look over her shoulder. That was
that, thought Ann, “And I’ll never let myself feel the least bit afraid
again, when I am on the wreck.”
She could not know that Mrs. Seymour had spent an anxious afternoon.
She trusted her husband’s judgment, but sometimes mothers know things
without being told, while fathers have to hear reasonable explanations
before they can understand the very same things that mothers have known
by instinct.
“We had such a lot of fun on the wreck, mother,” said Ann.
“Yes,” said Helen pluckily, “we had lots of fun. You won’t tell us not
to go there, will you, mother? Please!”
Ben looked at both the girls as if he wished to remind them of
the band’s pledge of secrecy. But he need not have worried. Ann’s
determination to solve the mystery unaided by the help of older people
was even stouter than his, and Helen had always proved a trustworthy
young thing who never gave a secret away.
Ann knew that her mother wanted to hear more about the afternoon; she
must explain a part of what they were doing. “The band has taken
an oath, a strict oath to keep secret everything connected with the
wreck--you’ll understand, won’t you, that is why we can’t talk about it
more? If you ask us to tell you, of course we will, but we are planning
a surprise.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about the ship, Emily,” said Mr.
Seymour. “Helen played too hard to-day, that’s all that is wrong.
To-morrow she will be as brown and rosy as ever.”
So Mrs. Seymour said nothing more and the whole family talked about
other things.
Later in the evening Jo came over and the band gathered around the fire
in the living room for a conference while Mr. and Mrs. Seymour read in
the kitchen.
“What do you suppose it was that we heard?” Ben asked in a whisper;
sometimes his mother had been known to hear more than she should. Not
that the band wished to deceive, but they had started on an exciting
adventure and they meant to put it through alone.
“I know it was not made by ghosts,” asserted Ann. “Nor by that wicked
demon, either. He’s nailed too tight to the bow.”
“I don’t believe that I want to go on the wreck again to-morrow,” said
Helen. “It makes me feel too tired.”
“We won’t go on again, not any of us,” Jo said. “I’ve been thinking
over the situation while I had my supper. We’ll keep a sharp lookout
for the man who built that fire; sort of hang around the woods, we
will, and watch the ship, too, but from the outside. If anybody or
anything climbs over the side we’re bound to see it.”
“I’m going to watch for that lantern,” said Ann.
Jo nodded wisely. “If we can find out who it is that carries the
lantern we shall know what made the noise; that’s how it looks to me.”