BIG SPOON ISLAND.
The next morning our young friends prepared for a three days' trip on
their little sloop. For a week they had discussed it and had carefully
considered when it was best to go.
"I want to wait till the moon fulls," Frank had said, "for then the
weather will be better, and as our friend Manson is in a romantic frame
of mind, he will enjoy it all the more."
Everything likely to be needed was put on board their boat; provisions,
water, extra clothing, guns, fishing gear, and also, it must be said, a
bottle of good old whiskey, for on such a trip it might be even more
needful than food.
"We will take along the banjo," Obed said, for he was quite an expert
with that cheerful instrument, "and evenings we can have some darkey
songs."
"What is the program?" asked Manson, when everything was stowed, the
sails set, and with Frank at the helm they were gliding out of the
little island harbor. "Where are we going?"
"Well," replied Frank, "I think we will run to Big Spoon Island first
and try for mackerel. There is a nice little harbor there if it comes on
to blow, and two miles out are some good cod grounds. I suppose you
would like to visit Pocket Island?"
"I would like to just call there," said Manson, "for you have excited my
curiosity. I have a weakness for ghost hunting, you told me once, and
now you must gratify it, you see."
There is, perhaps, no pleasanter way for three or four young men to
spend a day or two than to have a tidy little yacht all to themselves,
and sail her away off among the Maine coast islands, with a summer day
breeze and clear skies to cheer them.
To feel themselves just lifted over the broad ground swells, ruffled by
a light wind that smells sweet and crisp; to watch some distant green
island gradually coming nearer, or the seagulls lighting on the water
just ahead, or the white clouds in the blue sky, and with no sense of
danger, but only the care-free buoyancy of youth and good spirits, is to
many the very acme of enjoyment. At least, it was to Manson, to whom
such an experience was entirely new. When they reached Spoon Island he
went into raptures over it, for it was a rarity, even among the many
beautiful ones he had visited. As its name implied, it was shaped like a
spoon, about five hundreds rods long and formed of white sand, with a
growth of green sedge grass all over it. On the broadest part was a
cluster of spruce forming a little thicket and beside this, and entered
by a narrow inlet the tiniest bit of a harbor, just large enough to
shelter a small sloop. The seagulls had also discovered its beauty, for
thousands hovered about it, and the small harbor was alive with them.
The island was a favorite nesting-place for them as well, and their
shrill cries at being disturbed almost obliterated the voice of the
ocean.
"We will anchor under the lee," said Frank, as they drew near, "and try
for mackerel, and then run into the harbor, make everything snug, and
stay here to-night, or"--with a droll look at Manson--"perhaps you would
prefer to go to Pocket Island and have ghosts for company!"
"This is good enough for me," replied Manson, "and I guess the gulls
will be the more cheerful companions!"
When the sloop was at anchor, sails furled, and they were all waiting
for mackerel bites, he said: "What is there so mysterious about this
Pocket Island, and why are people afraid to go there? Tell me all about
it! You have got me so worked up over it, I dreamed I heard a bull
bellowing last night."
"Well," replied Frank, "it's like all ghost stories and spook spots in
the world; all imagination, I guess. I do not take any stock in them,
and dad laughs at the entire batch. The only reality about it is that
the island itself is the most forbidding pile of rock, covered with the
worst tangle of scrub spruce you ever saw, and the shore is full of deep
fissures and cracks. The one mysterious fact is, that strange bellowing
noise that you can't locate anywhere. You may clamber all over the
island and all around the shores and it seems to be just ahead of you,
or just behind; so far as the stories go, well; the queer harbor inside
is said to have been a smuggler's hiding-place years ago, and there are
all kinds of yarns connected with the island, from bloody murders down
to strange sea monsters seen crawling over the rocks. It has a bad name
and is seldom visited; for one reason, I think, because it's impossible
to land there except in a small boat, and then only when the sea is
smooth. The bellowing noise, I believe, is made by the waves entering
some cavern below high-water mark. There is also an odd sort of a story
linked with it about a little Jew who was known to be a smuggler and who
played a sharp trick on a few people ten or twelve years ago. I do not
think he had any connection with the island, however, although some say
he had. I fancy it's because any ghost-haunted spot always attracts all
the mysterious stories told in its neighborhood."
All this was interesting to Manson, and not only added a charm to all
the islands he had visited, but made him especially anxious to explore
this one.
"Do not laugh at me," he said when Frank had finished his recital, "for
expecting to see Indians paddling canoes among your islands when your
people down here believe all the ghost stories they do. My fancy is only
the shadow of what was certainly a reality not so very long ago; while
your stories are spook yarns of the most hobgoblin shape. I want to go
to Pocket Island, however," he added a little later, reflectively, "and
hear that mysterious bellowing anyhow."
That evening when the sloop was riding quietly at anchor in the little
Spoon Island harbor and the full moon just rising, round and red, out of
the sea, Obed brought his banjo on deck and away out there, miles from
any other island, and mingling with the murmur of the ocean's voice
about this one, there came the strains of old, familiar plantation songs
sung by those three young friends, at peace with all the world and happy
in their seclusion. The gulls had gone to rest, the sea almost so, for
the ground swell only washed the island's sandy shore and idly rocked
the sloop as she rode secure at anchor. The moon and the man in it both
smiled, and when Manson and Frank, wearied of singing, lived over once
more the battle scenes they had passed through, feeling that never again
could they or would they be called upon to face such danger, it may be
said that they were as near contentment as often comes in life. And if
the droll look of the man in the moon brought back to one a certain
night years before, when, as a bashful boy, he could hardly find courage
to kiss a blue-eyed girl whom he had walked home with, and who had since
become very dear to him, it is not surprising. Neither was it at all
strange, if, when looking seaward, that night, he could see far away in
the broadening path of silvery sheen, a small, dark island; that he
should feel it held a mystery; and that some occult influence had linked
that uncanny place, in some way not as yet understood, with his own past
and future; that it was some link, some tangible spot, some queer
connection between dreams and hopes that might develop into real facts.
While not what is usually called superstitious, Manson could not
understand why he had from the very first mention of this island, felt
an unaccountable influence attracting him toward it. What it was he
could not tell, and yet every hour seemed to bind this influence all the
closer, and as it were, cast its spell over him. When they all turned in
for the night, he could not go to sleep. His thoughts would go back to
that horrible night on the battlefield when he, in his agonies, fancied
himself wading down a cool, clear brook; then to the strange influence
Liddy had said she felt when, in keeping a foolish promise, she had all
alone paid a visit to Blue Hill, and now this weird spell of enchantment
that was growing upon him. Was there some mysterious plot in his life
that was being unfolded step by step, and one that was far beyond his
comprehension? Was his chance meeting with this friend, Frank, on the
picket line, a part of it? Was the imperative inclination to always take
Liddy away to the top of Blue Hill when he wished to speak to her very
soul, also due to some incomprehensible power that was shaping and
bending their lives together? That they were, and must be as one in the
future--as long as life lasted, he believed as firmly as he believed he
lived, and yet beyond that belief there was--and here he met an
impassable barrier and could go no further, only realizing that he was
being led by an unseen force. Was it a power that was pushing him toward
Pocket Island? He could not tell.