THE TILTING FLOOR
That evening Ruth sat before a tiny open grate in her room at Field’s
cabin. She was alone; wanted to be. The summer folks were giving a
concert up at the big hotel. Pearl and Don had gone. She had wanted to
sit and think.
She had been angry for hours. “I’ll leave Monhegan in the morning,” she
told herself, rising to stamp back and forth across the narrow room. “If
Don isn’t ready to go, I’ll take the tug to Booth Harbor and go down by
steamer. I won’t stay here, not another day!”
She slumped down in her chair again to stare moodily at the fire. What
had angered her? This she herself could not very clearly have told.
Perhaps it was because they had tried to make a heroine of her. She
hadn’t meant to be a heroine, wouldn’t be made one. The whole population
of the island, a hundred and fifty or more, had flocked down to the dock
when Captain Field brought her and the rescued girl in.
There had been shouts of “What a wonder! A miracle girl!”
An artist had wanted her to pose for a portrait. “So romantically
rugged,” he had said as he gripped her arm with fingers that were soft.
“Romantically rugged.” She didn’t want her portrait painted; had only
wanted dry clothes.
“They had no right to do it,” she told herself savagely. “If that boy and
girl hadn’t been tempting God and Providence by playing in the surf, I
wouldn’t have been obliged to risk my life to save the girl. And on top
of that they have the nerve to want me to pose as a heroine!”
She slumped lower in her chair. Yes, she’d go home to-morrow. She had
begun by loving Monhegan. The bold, stark beauty of it had fascinated
her. Nowhere else did the surf run so high. Nowhere else were the
headlands so bold. No surf was so green, blue and purple as that which
rose and fell off Black Head, Burnt Head and Skull Rock.
But now the cold brutality of nature as demonstrated here left her
terrified and cold.
Perhaps, after all, she was only in a physical slump after a heroic
effort. For all that, she had formed a resolve to leave Monhegan in the
morning. Like a spike in a mahogany log, the resolve had struck home. It
would not be withdrawn.
As for Pearl, she was at that moment listening to such music as it was
seldom her privilege to hear—Tittle’s Serenade done on harp, flute,
violin and cello. Her eyes were half closed, but for all that she was
seeing things. She was, as in a vision, looking into the night where a
single ray of light fell upon a mysterious dark-winged seaplane speeding
away through the fog above the sea.
* * * * * * * *
It was at noon of that day that Betty found herself moving slowly,
cautiously down the narrow passageway at the heart of old Fort Skammel,
that was supposed to lead to the spot where Ruth had seen the face in the
light of her Roman candle on the Fourth of July.
The place was spooky enough in daytime. In truth, day and night were
alike in those subterranean passageways which had once led from dungeon
to dungeon and from a battery room to one at a farther corner of the
massive pile of masonry. No ray of light ever entered there. The walls
were damp and clammy as a tomb.
Still, urged on by mystery and who knows what need of change and
excitement, the slender, dark-eyed girl pushed forward down this
corridor, round a curve, across a small room which echoed in a hollow way
at her every footstep, then round a curve again until with a wildly
beating heart she paused on the very spot where Ruth had fired the
eventful Roman candle.
Nor was she to wait long for a thrill. Of a sudden, of all places in that
dark, damp and chill passage, a hot breath of air struck her cheek.
Her face blanched as she sprang backward. It was as if a fiery dragon,
inhabiting this forsaken place, had breathed his hot breath upon her.
Be it said to her credit that, after that one step backward, she held her
ground. Lifting a trembling hand, she shot the light of her electric
torch before her.
That which met her gaze brought an exclamation to her lips. Not ten feet
before her a square in the floor, some three feet across, tilted upward.
Moved by an invisible, silent force, it tilted more and more. A crack had
appeared between the floor and the tilting slab. From this crack came the
blast of heat that fanned her cheek.
“The fort is on fire,” she told herself in a moment of wild terror.
Then, in spite of her fright, she laughed. How could a structure built
entirely of stone burn? The thing was absurd; yet there was the heat from
that subterranean cavity.
“There!” She caught her breath again. The heat waves had been cut short
off. She looked. The slab of stone was dropping silently down.
“It—why it’s as if someone lifted it to have a look at me!” she told
herself as a fresh tremor shot up her spine.
She did not doubt for a moment that this conclusion was correct. In spite
of this, and in defiance of her trembling limbs that threatened to
collapse, she moved forward until she stood upon the very slab that had
been lifted.
“Don’t seem different from the others,” she told herself. “Nothing to
mark it.”
“Well,” she told herself as her eager feet carried her farther and
farther from that haunting spot, “I’ve done a little exploring. I’ve made
a discovery and had a thrill. That’s quite enough for one day.”
“Ought to tell someone,” she mused as she sat before the wood fire in the
great fireplace of the big summer cottage on the hill that evening. “But
then, I wonder if I should? It’s really Ruth’s mystery. She should have a
share in its uncovering. I’ll go back to-morrow and see what more I can
discover,” she told herself at last.
Had she but known it, reinforcements were shortly to be on the way. In
Don’s room on Monhegan, Ruth, Pearl and Don had just held a consultation.
In the end they agreed that they should start for home in the morning.
A short while after this, Ruth, as she was about to fall asleep, reached
a comforting conclusion:
“Since I saved that girl’s life,” she told herself, “it should square
that swordfish affair. I can now spend the swordfish money with a good
conscience. I shall have a new punt as soon as I reach Portland Harbor.”
Don’s boat was a sailing sloop with a “kicker” (a small gasoline motor)
to give him a lift when the wind was against him. The day they started
for home was unusually calm. Sails bagged and flapped in the gentle
breeze. The little motor pop-popped away, doing its best, but they made
little progress until toward night, when a brisk breeze came up from the
east. Then, setting all sail, and shutting off the motor, they bent to
the wind and went gliding along before it.
There is nothing quite like a seaworthy sail boat, a fair wind and a
gently rippling sea. At night, with the sea all black about you and the
stars glimmering above, you appear to drift through a faultless sky
toward worlds unknown.
Ruth and Pearl, after their exciting experiences on Monhegan, enjoyed
this to the full. Not for long, however, for there was something in the
salt sea air and the gently rocking boat which suggested long hours of
sleep. So, after wrapping themselves in blankets, with a spare sail for a
mattress, they stretched out upon the deck and were soon lost to the
world of reality and at home in the land of dreams.
It was on this same calm day that Betty returned to old Fort Skammel and
the scene of the tilting stone floor.
Just what she expected to see or do, she could not perhaps have told.
Driven on by the spirit of adventure, and beckoned forward by the lure of
mystery, she just went, that was all.
As it turned out, she saw that which gave her food for thought during
many a long hour.
Having made her way, with hesitating steps and backward glances, to the
spot where Ruth had seen the face-in-the-fire, she threw her light ahead;
then, with a quick little “Oh-oo” took an involuntary step backward.
The square section of stone floor was now tilted to a rakish angle. It
appeared stationary. Beneath it was revealed an open space some three
feet across.
As the girl switched off her light and stood there trembling, she
realized that a faint unearthly yellow light shone from the half dark
space beneath the stone.
For a full moment, with no sound save the wild beating of her heart to
disturb the silence of the place, she stood there motionless.
Then, seeing that nothing happened, she plucked up courage, and, without
turning on her torch, dropped on hands and knees, to creep toward the
oblong of yellow light.
Three times her heart leaped into her mouth. A small stone rolling from
beneath her hand wakened low echoes in the place. A stone that gave way
beneath her suggested that she might at any moment be plunged into an
unknown abyss below. Some sound in the distance, probably made by a rat,
all but made her flee. In time she found herself gazing down into the
space beneath the tilted floor.
The sight that met her gaze was worthy of her effort. A small square room
lay beneath her and in that room, revealed by the witch-like yellow
light, piled on every side and in great squares at the center, were bolts
and bolts of richly colored silks and boxes beyond number, all filled, if
one were to be guided by the three that had been broken open, with silk
dresses, red, blue, orange, green, silver and gold, fit for any princess
of old.
“Oh! Ah!” she said under her breath.
Then, just as she was beginning to wonder and to plan, there sounded far
down some dark corridor heavy footsteps.
In wild consternation, without again switching on her torch, she sprang
away down the narrow passageway. Nor did she draw an easy breath until
she was in her punt and half way across the bay.
Then as she dropped the oars for a second she drank in three long breaths
of air to at last release a long drawn “Whew!”
She had not been in the big summer cottage on the hill five minutes, her
brain pulsating from a desire to tell someone of her marvelous discovery,
when the rich lady of the house told her of a yachting party to start
early next morning.
“We will be gone three or four days,” she was told. “Pack your bag well,
and don’t forget your bathing suit.”
“Three days! Oh—er—” She came very near letting the cat out of the bag
right there, but caught herself just in time.
“Why! Don’t you want to go?” Her benefactress stared at her in
astonishment. “It will be a most marvelous trip, all the way to Booth Bay
and perhaps Monhegan, and on Sir Thomas Wright’s eighty-foot yacht. You
never saw such a boat, Betty. Never!”
“Yes, yes, I’d love to go.” Betty’s tone was quite cheerful and sincere
now. She had caught that magic name Monhegan.
“Ruth and Pearl are up there,” she told herself. “It’s a small island. I
am sure to see them. I’ll tell Ruth. It’s her secret. Then, when we come
back—” She closed her eyes and saw again those piles and piles of
shimmering silken dresses.
“I’d like to try them on, every one,” she told herself with a little
gurgle of delight that set the others in the room staring at her.
But Ruth and Pearl, as you already know, were on their way home.