"Wow! it's sure a banshee!" whooped Jimmie.
"A-am I dreaming, fellows?" exclaimed Herb, rubbing his eyes
desperately.
"O-oh! look at it shake its fist at us, would you! It's ten feet high,
if it's one!" came from the quivering lips of Buster.
But Jack as yet had not said a word, though he was staring just as hard
at the remarkable sight ashore as any of them. It was something
different from anything that had ever before crossed his path. Perhaps
Jack might have felt a little chilly sensation as he looked; but he was
not at all frightened.
Up on the rise of the mysterious island there had appeared a dim figure
that seemed, just as Nick vowed, to be all of ten feet in height. At
first it was like a curling column of smoke, when a certain kind of wood
has been thrown on the fire. Then it seemed to take form, and change to
a flickering yellow glow.
The groaning sounds continued all the while, as though this disturbed
spirit from the other world might be in great pain. And certainly the
figure was waving one of its arms as though waving them off.
All of this Jack saw, yet no panic gripped him as it seemed to do the
rest, who were crouching there, staring, and gasping for breath.
"Jimmie, hand me my shotgun, and let's see if it can stand Number
Threes!"
Jack called this out in a loud, clear voice. Not that he wanted the gun
to any great extent; but he had an object in saying it.
But Jimmie really believed he meant what he said. While he groped for
the gun he was saying aloud:
"Sure, now, 'tis mesilf as doan't belave ye kin knock the daylight out
of that banshee wid little shots, Jack, darlint. But if so be ye mane to
thry, take the gun, while I shut me eyes."
"'Tain't any use," broke in George; "the thing's disappeared!"
And so it had, vanishing as mysteriously as it had come, and leaving
only a black void in front of them. Even that steady groaning had
stopped, proving conclusively that it had had to do with the appearance
of the spectre.
Jack laughed, to the utter astonishment of the rest.
"I don't see anything funny about this business," complained Nick.
"Well, p'raps you fellers will quit quizzing me after that experience!"
said Josh, with just a little ring of triumph in his unsteady voice.
"And will you please stop shaking that way?" remarked George. "For you
make the boat rock the worst kind. It was bad enough seeing that blessed
thing, without taking a header overboard right now."
"Jack, what makes you laugh?" asked quiet Herb, who knew that the other
would not have acted in the way he did unless with good and sufficient
cause.
"Do you really want to know?" asked Jack, quietly.
Somehow the fact that one of their number did not seem to be affected by
the panic that had swept over the rest began to make George and Jimmie
ashamed.
"Sure we do, Jack," remarked the latter, eagerly.
"I was laughing because it was so funny to see how our fine ghost bobbed
out of sight the very instant I called to Jimmie to hand me my Marlin,"
said Jack.
"Oh! I see now!" cried George; "you mean that ghosts needn't be afraid
of a handful of bird shot. Is that it, Jack?"
"That's what I meant. I've read lots of ghost stories, just like Josh
here; though I never believed them for one minute. But in every case the
fellow who tells the yarn declares that bullets have no effect at all on
real goblins. Am I right, Josh?"
"It's true, every word of it, Jack!" the other answered, promptly. "Why,
I've heard where a soldier whacked the head off a ghost, who coolly
picked it up and stuck it on again as neat as you please. Oh! no, they
needn't be afraid of little bird shot, not a bit of it."
"Well, this ghost was timid, you see," Jack proceeded. "He fell over
just as soon as I called out about my gun."
"Look here, you mean something by that, sure you do!" remarked Herb.
"Fellers, he's hinting that it was a job set up on us--that's what Jack
means," declared Nick.
"Out with it, Jack. Don't you see that we're all in a blue funk over
this queer deal? If you know anything, share it with your pards," said
Herb.
"That's it," observed Josh, who had by now somewhat recovered from his
fright; "put us wise old commodore. What d'ye think it was, now?"
"I'll tell you, boys," Jack said, impressively. "In my opinion, honest
Injun, now, somebody was trying to frighten us away from here."
"Say, it did wave its long, bony arm, all right!" exclaimed Josh.
"We all saw that," Herb put in; "but what do you suppose anybody would
want to make us move our anchorage so much as to go to all that fuss and
feathers to scare us?"
"Well," answered Jack, "that's a thing I can just tell--yet! You all
admit it did keep waving its arms. And you heard those lovely groans
stop just at the same time the thing disappeared. I thought I heard a
sound like something falling to the ground. Did anybody else get that?"
"I heard some noise," admitted George. "But, Jack, you certain must have
some little suspicion about who engineered this silly game, if it was a
set-up job?"
"Well, Josh saw a boat," calmly remarked the one addressed.
"Listen to that, would you?" exclaimed Nick. "He means that it was
Clarence who got up that cute game right now--Clarence, our old friend
of the baseball diamond. And perhaps the ghost that groaned was only
Bully Joe. Fellers, it sound good to me."
"Well, it would be just like Tricky Clarence, as sure as you live!"
admitted Herb, who had possibly been the least alarmed of the five.
"But why should he want us to vacate?" demanded Josh, who disliked very
much to give up his pet illusion, and believe that the ghost was only
the result of a clumsy trick on the part of some person or persons
unknown.
"Perhaps he wants this fine little cove himself," suggested George.
"That hardly fills the bill," Jack went on. "He might think to get even
for some of the times we've won out in the past. I tell you right now
I'm bothered to understand it."
"Do we clear out in the morning, then?" asked Herb.
"I hope you won't say yes to that, fellows. In the first place, it goes
against my grain to be chased away by Clarence Macklin or anybody else,
who has no right to order us around. And then again, there are some
things I'd like to look into connected with this queer affair."
When Jack talked like that he knew the others would fall in with his
wishes; for they had long ago come to look upon him as a leader.
"Oh! we'll stick it out if you say so, Jack," declared George. "But you
ought to tell us anything else you've got on your mind."
"There was one thing that puzzled me," Jack continued. "It happened
while Josh was dozing, or else looking somewhere else, for he didn't
seem to notice it. And I didn't say anything, because there was no use
waking the rest of you up then."
"But what was it, Jack?" questioned Kick.
"Why, we settled it in our minds that the old island was uninhabited,
didn't we boys?" asked the other.
"That's so," several hastened to declare.
"Well, about half an hour ago, as I chanced to turn my head and look
that way, I caught sight of a dim light moving along near the ground. It
would disappear, and then come in view again, all the while moving."
"Now, I've seen just such a funny light, when a man with a lantern was
walking through the woods," burst out Herb.
"Just what I settled it in my mind that was," chuckled Jack. "But it
wasn't so strange that some one should be ashore, and I didn't let it
bother me any. After what has happened, though, you can see it must have
meant something."
"That's a fact," admitted George. "And, fellows, I'm coming around to
Jack's way of thinking. I just bet Tricky Clarence was behind that
show."
"Oh! well, let's try to forget it for tonight," Jack observed; "and as
it's now just one o'clock, George and Nick will have to take their turn
on guard."
"Sure," replied Buster, cheerfully. "Sleep and me have parted company
for the rest of this night, after what I saw. So it's me for a four hour
stretch; Herb, you can snooze right along till sun-up, if you want."
"Oh! can I? Thanks," laughed the one addressed, with a touch of
skepticism in his voice; for he knew only too well what a difference
there was between Buster's promises and the keeping of them; he always
meant well, but found the flesh weak.
And it proved just as wise Herb supposed would be the case; when the
time came for George to go off duty he found Nick fast asleep; so that
Herb had to be aroused by repeated calls and punching of the side of the
_Comfort_.
Then daylight came; but according to Jack's arrangements no one was
aroused until the hour of five, when the sun was well up. July days are
long indeed in this northern clime, and the twilight lingers until
nearly nine in the evening.
"Who's going to try the fishing today?" asked Jack, as they were
partaking of their bacon and egg breakfast, a supply of the hen fruit
having been obtained on the previous day from a Canadian farmer, near
whose place the little fleet of motor boats had stopped.
"Why, Herb and myself talked of going, if so be you'd post us about the
best trolling ground," George remarked.
"Tell you all I know about it," replied Jack, readily enough. "But if
you are lucky enough to strike a big musky like the one I got, you'll
have your hands full. Better take the gaff hook along. I wished many
times yesterday I had it."
"Will we, George?" asked Herb, in a vein of sarcasm.
"Catch me putting my hand on a pirate like that while he's got an ounce
of fight left in him," the other declared. "Why, one snap of those jaws
and he'd take your whole paw off, sure. Yes, give us the gaff hook, or
we don't go."
"Then you don't intend to keep us company?" asked Herb of Jack.
"I think I'll just hang around here this morning, boys."
"Oh! all right. I can see with half an eye that you've got something up
your sleeve, Jack; but post us when the show comes off, won't you?"
George remarked, laughingly.
An hour later, long after the two ambitious fishermen had departed in
their little rowboats for a siege of trolling along the lonely shores of
the island, Jack quietly stepped into his own dinky, and paddled ashore.
"Now what can he be up to?" Nick asked Josh, as they looked after the
other.
"Give me something easy, will you?" replied that worthy. "But all the
same, I noticed that Jack was careful to take his gun along."
"But he can't shoot any game now; the law is on nearly everything, you
know. And up here the wardens are always on the lookout for poachers,"
Nick continued.
"Oh, shucks!" Josh complained, "you don't see through a millstone, even
when it's got a big hole in it. Can't you understand that Jack is bent
on looking up that ghost business? Wonder if it was Tricky Clarence at
the back of it. Gee! but when I first set eyes on the same I really
thought it was a dead sure spirit of some old Injun chief come back from
the Happy Hunting Grounds to warn us away."
"Huh! I noticed that you hung on to that same idea to the bitter end,"
Nick continued pugnaciously. "Right now, I bet you believe deep down in
your silly heart, it was a regular hobgoblin. Oh! I know you all right,
Josh Purdue; and you've got a scary heart all right. But I saw, just as
soon as Jack spoke up, how we'd been fooled by Clarence. Wait till he
comes back, and he'll prove it."
"I'd like to know how?" demanded Josh. "Expect him to interview that
_thing_, and get a written confession? I'm just wondering what we'll run
up against if we're bound to stay here in this cove another night."
"Piffle!" scoffed Nick. "What about guns, hey, tell me that? Ghosts
don't appear to like guns much, do they? Jack says not, and Jack, he
ought to know. Stay here? Of course we will; a week, two of 'em, if we
feel like it!"
"Oh! yes, how brave some people are in the middle of the day, when the
sun's shining," jeered Josh. "But wait; that's all! I expect to see you
get the scare of your life tonight, don't you know. If that _thing_ gets
real mad, and digs in for us you needn't bother worrying about taking on
any more fat, because you'll shake that hard you'll lose pounds and
pounds! But let's wait till Jack comes back, and find out what he's
discovered. I've got a good notion to follow him ashore, if I can pull
up the anchor and beach the _Comfort_. Watch how I manage it."