THE HAUNTED HOUSE
At four o’clock next morning, when Arthur Warren tried to rouse the other
boys, they were loath to turn out. It was warm inside, under the
blankets, and the sea air outside was cool and damp. Out in the cockpit
Arthur lighted an oil-stove, which they always carried aboard, made the
coffee in a big pot, and set it on to boil. Then he called the sleepers
in the cabin again.
“Come you, Art, shut up out there! How do you expect any one can sleep,
with you bawling out in that fashion?”
This was from George Warren, whose voice denoted that he was only about
half-awake.
“Don’t want you to sleep any more,” answered Arthur. “Want you to get up
and fish.”
“Don’t care to fish,” said George, still only half-awake.
“Well,” persisted Arthur, “may I inquire what you did come over here
for?”
“Certainly you may. I came over here to sleep. I like the air over here.
Now, please don’t disturb us any more, Arthur. You can be decent, you
know, when you’ve a mind to be.” And with this request, drowsily mumbled,
George pulled the blanket comfortably about him and settled back for
another nap.
At this juncture, however, his brother poked his head in at the
companionway and yelled at the top of his lungs:
“Hulloa, there! Hulloa, I say! There’s a school of mackerel breaking off
the point. Wake up, every lazy lubber aboard!”
“Say, Art, you’re a mean scoundrel,” said George Warren, emerging once
more from the blankets. “You know there isn’t a mackerel in sight. I’ll
be just fool enough to look out of the window, though, so you can laugh,
so get ready.” And George looked sleepily out of the little cabin window.
He had no sooner done so, however, than he sprang up, exclaiming,
excitedly:
“There they are, sure enough. Boys, get up! Get up! There’s a school of
mackerel breaking off the point, as sure as we’re alive.”
The boys needed no further urging. They dressed and scrambled out on
deck. Not far away from the sloop could be seen plainly that tiny
chop-sea which is caused by the breaking of a school of mackerel. The
calm surface of the water was broken there by a series of miniature
ripples which could not be mistaken. The fish were there, but would they
bite?
“They are coming this way,” said Arthur. “We can soon reach them with the
throw-bait. We shall not have to leave the sloop.”
Hastily they got the bait out. It was a bucket filled with scraps of fish
and clams, chopped fine and mixed with salt water. Taking a long-handled
dipper, Arthur half-filled it with the bait and threw it as far as he
could out toward the school of fish.
The mackerel seized upon it greedily. From the sloop the boys could see
them dart through the water after it as it slowly sank. The water was
fairly alive with fish, ravenously hungry.
“Hurrah!” cried Arthur. “They’re hungry as sharks. Get the lines out,
quick.”
In a twinkling every boy had a line overboard; but, to their
disappointment, not a fish would bite. They still seized the throw-bait
that was cast out, but not one of them would take a baited hook.
“If that isn’t a regular mackerel trick, I’ll eat my bait,” said George
Warren. “Cap’n Sam said mackerel would often act that way, though I never
saw them when they wouldn’t bite before. He says they will play around a
boat for hours and not touch a hook, and, all of a sudden, they’ll
commence and bite as though they were starving.”
The boy’s words were unexpectedly verified at this moment by a sudden
twitch at his line and by corresponding twitches at all the other lines.
The fish had begun biting in earnest. The next moment the boys had three
or four aboard, handsome fellows, striped green and black, changing to a
bluish shade, and soon the cockpit seemed alive with them.
It was new sport for Tom and Bob, but they soon learned to tend two
lines, one in each hand; to drop one and haul the other in at a bite, and
to slat the mackerel off the hook with a quick snap, instead of stopping
to take them off by hand.
The mackerel bit fiercely, sometimes at the bare hook even, like fish
gone crazy. It seemed as though they might go on catching them all day
long, for the water was alive with them; but all at once the fish stopped
biting as abruptly as they had begun. They still played around the boat,
but not a fish would touch a hook.
“We may as well put up our lines, boys. They are through biting for this
morning,” said Arthur Warren. “Besides, we have more fish now than we
know what to do with.”
There was no doubt of that. They had caught several hundred of the
fish—enough to supply the village.
“We’ll make friends with every one in town,” said George Warren. “These
are the first mackerel of the season, and we will give away all we cannot
use.”
“I feel as though I could eat about four now,” said young Joe.
“I can eat at least six,” said Henry Burns.
“We’ll try you and see,” said Arthur, producing an enormous frying-pan
from a locker and a junk of pork from another. “Tom, you’re the boss cook
of the crowd. You fry the fish while the rest of us clean up the boat,
make things shipshape, and get ready to sail.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Tom, rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s see, four apiece
is how many?”
And soon the appetizing odour of the frying fish, mingled with that of
the steaming coffee, saluted most temptingly the nostrils of the six
hungry boys.
It was several hours after this, when the yacht was bowling along in the
western bay, near the head of the island, before a fresh southerly
breeze, that young Joe said:
“I know how we can play a stupendous joke on everybody in the village.”
Joe being the youngest of the brothers, and of the party, and it being
therefore necessary that he should be occasionally squelched, George
merely said:
“You don’t think of anything, Joe, but playing jokes.”
“All right,” retorted Joe, “seeing you are all so wildly enthusiastic,
I’ll just keep it to myself.”
“Nonsense, Joe, don’t be huffy,” said Arthur, whose curiosity was
aroused. “Tell us what it is, and if it is any good we’ll try it, won’t
we, boys?”
There being an unanimously affirmative reply, young Joe proceeded.
“Well,” said he, “there’s no risk at all about this. You know the old
farmhouse on the bluff across the cove? Everybody in the village believes
it is haunted. I found that out yesterday, when I was in Cap’n Sam’s
store. The house hasn’t been lived in for two years, and not a soul in
the village has dared to go near it at night in all that time. If any of
them had to stay over there all night, they would sleep out in the woods
rather than go into the house.
“You see, the house belonged to a man by the name of Randall, Captain
Randall, who lived there with his wife. This was a little more than two
years ago. He owned a little fishing-smack, in which he went short trips
down the coast. One night in a storm he drove in on to the bluff; the
smack was pounded to pieces, and he was drowned. His wife died not long
after.
“Since then, the villagers have thought the house haunted. They hear
shrieks from there during the night, and think they see strange lights in
the windows. They were discussing it in the store yesterday. Cap’n Sam
declared that, only a few nights ago, when he was coming across the cove
from Billy Cook’s, he saw the ghost of Captain Randall pass out of the
back door of the old house and disappear in the woods.
“Billy Cook, who lives up the cove, was in the store, too. He said he and
his wife hear screams come from there often in the night, especially when
it is storming; and two other villagers said they had seen lights in the
windows long after midnight.
“That new boarder at Colonel Witham’s was in there, too, Henry. He said
he knew houses were haunted, and told several stories about ghosts, which
he said were true. But I believe he knew they were lies, and he was only
amusing himself; but that’s nothing to do with the matter. The villagers
seemed to believe all that he said.
“Now, what I propose is, that we manufacture some brand-new ghosts for
them, some they have never seen before. There are some red and green
lights up at the cottage, that were left over from the Fourth of July,
which we can burn inside the house, after letting out a few screeches
that will arouse the village. Then we’ll wrap sheets around us and run
past the windows, while the lights are burning. We’ll have something
wrapped in white to fling off the cliff, too, in a flare of light.
“Then we’ll run down through the woods and take everything with us. And
if we don’t have some fun the next day listening to the ghost-stories
about the village, why, my name isn’t Joe, that’s all.”
“That’s not such a bad scheme, Joe,” said George.
“It’s a daisy,” said Henry Burns, “and easily done. What’s to hinder our
going up there to-night and taking up the lights and the sheets and
looking the place over? I never was inside the old house myself, though I
have been close to it at night, and never saw or heard of any ghosts. We
can carry a lantern up with us and light it after we get inside. If any
one sees the light from the village he will think it’s the ghosts walking
again.”
“I don’t like so much of this running around in the night,” said Tom,
flexing his biceps. “A fellow must have sleep to keep in condition, but I
guess they can count on us in this case, can’t they, Bob? It’s too good
to be missed.”
“You bet!” replied Bob. “We can turn in and sleep this afternoon. Count
me in, for one.”
“Then,” said George, “suppose we all start from our cottage at ten
o’clock to-night. We’ll launch the rowboat from the beach and slip across
and look things over.”
So it was agreed.
The yacht had long turned the head of the island and was beating down
alongshore in the eastern bay. Presently they rounded the bluff and came
into the cove. It was nearly noon.
High up on the bluff, and several rods back from the edge of the cliffs,
was the old farmhouse; it stood out conspicuously, though at some
distance from the water-front, for the land rose quite sharply and the
house occupied the top of the eminence. Around it, on all sides except
that facing the village, was a dark, heavy growth of hemlocks and pines.
It was a mysterious, shadowy place, even by day; but when darkness set in
about it, standing off solitary and alone, as it did, from the rest of
the village, with the waters lying between, it is little wonder that
superstition inhabited it with ghosts and that it was a spot to be
shunned.
At the outermost end of the cliffs that protruded into the bay, a ravine,
where the ledge at some time had been rent apart, led from the water up
toward the cottage, affording a precarious pathway. There was a natural
stairway of rock for some distance from the water’s edge, and at the end
nearest the old house a series of clumsy wooden stairs led up from the
ravine to the surface of the bluff. These were now old and rather
rickety; but a light person, at some risk, could still use them.
The villagers, as a rule, avoided the house and this pathway to the
bluff. If they had occasion to go ashore there, they usually landed
farther up the cove at a beach, and walked through the woods at a
distance from the house. No one cared to go very near it.
When the sloop had come to anchor in the cove opposite the Warren
cottage, the boys took a boatload of mackerel ashore, besides a basketful
in the canoe. They carried them around to every cottage in the village,
and even to the hotel, though, as George Warren remarked, they would have
to get Colonel Witham out of bed some night in a hurry to make up for it.
Certainly the village, supping that night on their catch, was inclined to
forget and forgive them many a prank that had been stored up for future
punishment.
When Henry Burns made his exit across the roof that night, he made a
careful survey before climbing out on it to see that the stranger was not
there. There were no signs of him, and Henry got away safely. Tom and Bob
were at the Warren cottage when he arrived. Everything was in readiness,
and they all set out for the shore.
“These clouds in the sky are favourable,” said Tom. “If it was as bright
as it was last night, we might have to postpone our trip. This mackerel
sky, through which the moon shines dimly, is just the thing.”
“Everything seems to be favourable,” added George, as they hurried down
the bank to the beach.
And yet not quite everything, for, when they had reached the shore and
came to look for the boat, it was not there.
“That’s too bad,” cried young Joe. “And we left it here at five o’clock,
too, after washing it out thoroughly, because we had brought the mackerel
ashore in it.”
“Who could have stolen it?” asked Tom.
“No one,” replied Joe. “Nobody ever has a boat stolen in this harbour.
Some one who wanted to cross the cove has borrowed it. We shall find it
all right in the morning,—but that don’t help us out now. It’s provoking
enough, and strange, too, after all, that the one who took it didn’t step
up to the cottage and let us know, as the cottage is so near. But boats
are almost common property here; any man in the harbour would lend us his
boat in a minute.”
“We must do the next best thing,” said Arthur, “and take one from the
slip at the wharf. No one will want his boat at this hour.”
“Though some one does seem to want ours,” broke in Joe. “Curious, isn’t
it, that whoever it is should come around into the cove and get our boat,
when there are any number at the slip?”
It certainly was rather strange.
Following Arthur’s suggestion, the boys proceeded to the slip and
embarked in a big dory, the property of Captain Sam. Then they rowed
quickly across the cove.
It took them but a few minutes to reach the other shore, for the cove was
smooth as glass. They headed for the bluff, and pointed directly into the
black, shadowy hole which they knew to be the natural landing-place. It
was a peculiar, narrow little dock, completely rock-bound, except for the
passage leading into it. It lay entirely in the shadow, but they had
landed there before, and knew just where to steer for a shelf, or ledge,
of rock that made a natural slip.
Still, their familiarity with the place did not prevent them from bumping
suddenly into a rowboat that lay moored there. They pushed it aside to
make a landing, and found to their amazement that it was their own.
“Hulloa!” cried George, springing out on to the broad, shelving ledge;
“that is queerer still. Here’s the old _Anna_, and what in the world is
she doing here? Who can have brought her? And what for? There’s something
strange about it. Why, there isn’t a man in the village that would dare
go near the haunted house at night, and yet somebody is over here now,
for some reason.”
If it were possible for Henry Burns to be excited ever, he was so now.
“Get in here, quick, George,” he said, “and don’t make any noise. I think
I know what it means, and I’ll tell you just as soon as we get out of
here. We can’t get away any too soon, either.”
“Why not take the _Anna_ out with us?” said young Joe, “and pay somebody
off for running away with it? He would only have to walk a few miles
around the cove to get back again—”
“No, no, leave the boat where it is,” said Henry Burns. “And let’s get
out of here quick.”
“Why, what’s the matter with you, Henry?” asked George, jumping back into
the boat and giving it a vigorous shove off. “Any one would think to see
you that some one was being murdered up there.”
Henry Burns’s earnestness was sufficient to convince them, however, that
something serious was involved in their actions, and they made haste to
get out into the cove again.
“Row for the beach above, boys,” continued Henry Burns, “and we will go
up to the old house through the woods. I think I know who is up there in
the house, and if I am right it means that we may make an important
discovery. The man who I think is up there is Mr. Kemble.”
“What! The cripple?” asked Tom.
“This is another one of Henry Burns’s jokes,” said George. “You’re having
lots of fun with us, aren’t you, Henry?”
“I tell you I am in earnest,” said Henry Burns. “We won’t burn any lights
to-night, and you better make up your mind to that, right off. There’s
more serious business ahead of us.”
And then, when they had landed on the beach and had drawn the boat
noiselessly up on the shore, Henry Burns told them of the adventure he
had had on the roof of the hotel. How he had seen the stranger throw off
his disguise of weakness, and become, suddenly, a man of strength and
action; how he believed the man to be somehow connected with the thieves
who had committed the robbery, and how he believed that the man was now
up there in the haunted house, though for what purpose he could not tell.
It might be he had something to conceal there.
“Cracky!” exclaimed Tom, when Henry Burns had finished his story. “This
beats ghost hunting all hollow; but we are by no means certain that it is
this stranger who is up there.”
“No, but I believe as Henry does, that it is he,” said George Warren.
“Who else would have any object in being up there this hour of the night?
We know from what Henry saw that the man is dangerous, that he seems to
be in hiding—”
“And that if he should catch one of us spying on him up there in the old
house, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot,” interrupted young Joe, who would
rather have risked the meeting with a legion of ghosts than with one real
live thief, armed and desperate.
“That’s true enough,” answered Henry Burns; “but we must not give him
that opportunity, if it is he, which, of course, we’re by no means sure
of. At any rate, we want to see and not be seen by whoever is there, and
we cannot go any too quietly.”
Then, as the tide was rising, and they might be gone some time, they
lifted the dory and carried it up out of the reach of high water, after
which they began the ascent of the hill. There was not a breath of wind
stirring, and there was not a sound of life in the woods. The tide crept
in softly, and not even a wave could be heard on the shore.
Out through the trees they could see, as they climbed, glimpses of the
water, calm and placid as a mill-pond, lit up dimly by the moonlight
shining through a patchwork of clouds that covered all the sky. Beyond
this the darkness of the village was accentuated by a light here and
there, glimmering from the window of some cottage.
Then they came to the brow of the hill, and could see the haunted house
through the trees. They approached cautiously. It looked gloomier than
ever, with its sagging, moss-grown roof, its shattered window-panes, and
the door in the side hanging awry from a single hinge.
In what once had been the dooryard there were a few straggling clumps of
bushes, and thistles and burdocks grew in rank profusion.
It was a sight to dampen the ardour of stouter hunters than this band of
boys. But when, added to all this, there suddenly flashed across one of
the windows a ray of light, faint and flickering, but discernible to them
all, and which the next instant disappeared, they halted irresolutely and
debated what they should do.
It was finally determined that Henry Burns and Bob White should go on
ahead to the old house, while the rest waited at a little distance till
they should reconnoitre. The two set off at once, while the others waited
behind a clump of trees. They did not have to wait long, for the two
returned shortly, telling them to come on softly. When within a few rods
of the house they dropped on their hands and knees and crept along.
All at once the two ahead stopped and whispered to the others to listen.
They heard noises that seemed to come from the cellar, which sounded as
though some one was digging in the earth. Then, as they came within range
of a long, shallow cellar window, they saw the rays of a lantern.
They crept up closely and peered in through the pane. There, in the damp,
dingy, cobwebbed cellar of the haunted house, dimly lighted by the rays
of a lantern, which stood on an old wooden bench, a man was working. He
had his coat off and was digging in the ground with a spade, throwing up
shovelfuls of the hard clay.
The rays of light from the lantern were not diffused evenly throughout
the cellar, but shot out in one direction, toward the spot where the man
was at work; and this because it was neither the ordinary ship’s lantern,
nor yet a house lantern, but a small dark lantern, such as a burglar
might carry on his person, with a sliding shutter in front.
The man’s sleeves were rolled up, displaying arms that were corded with
muscle, and on which the veins stood out as he worked. He handled the
spade awkwardly enough, but made up in strength for his lack of skill.
Presently he paused and looked up, and they saw that it was, as Henry
Burns had prophesied, the stranger guest.
A curious occupation for one who was cruising for his health! Indeed, he
looked so little like a man that was weak and ill, and so much like one
that was powerful and reckless and devoid of fear, as the light of the
lantern caused his figure to stand out in relief against the darkness,
that, though they were six and he but one, had he seen them and sprung
up, they would have fled in terror.
Then, as he stooped down to grasp the lantern, they drew quickly back
from the window. It was well they did so, for, taking up the lantern, the
man flashed it upon the window-panes, and then, turning it in all
directions, threw the rays of light in all parts of the cellar and out
through a window opposite. Then he set it down again; and it was evident
his suspicions had not been aroused, for he resumed his digging.
After a few minutes he threw down the spade and produced from the
darkness a small tin box, which they had not seen before, which he
deposited in the hole he had dug. Then he shovelled the earth back upon
it, stamping it in with his feet, and so refilled the hole. The remaining
loose earth he scattered about the cellar.
The boys waited no longer, but crept back to the edge of the woods. In a
few minutes they saw a faint flash of light through one of the windows in
the floor above, and presently they saw the man come out of the door in
the front of the house. He had extinguished the lantern and was still
carrying the spade. As he walked quickly down the path to the
landing-place, he left the path and hid the spade beneath some
underbrush, after which he disappeared over the edge of the cliff.
Finally they saw him out in the middle of the cove, pulling vigorously
for the other shore.
“Well,” said Henry Burns, as they watched him out of sight, “there are
lots of sick men whom I would rather meet over here in the night-time
than that same Mr. Kemble.”
“He’s as strong as a lion,” said young Joe. “Did you see the veins stand
out on his arms as he worked? I felt like making for the woods every time
he straightened himself up, with that spade in his hand.”
“I don’t believe any of us felt any too comfortable,” said Tom, “though
I’m sure I shouldn’t be afraid to meet him in the daytime, with Bob and
one of the rest of us. It’s the influence of the night-time that
frightened us. And he seemed to be right in his element in it.”
“Let’s dig that box up and get away from here and discuss the matter
afterward,” said George. “It’s getting late, and we don’t want mother to
worry. I’ll get the spade.” And he ran and brought it.
They went into the haunted house then, groping their way in the darkness,
for they had left their own lantern in the dory. They made their way to
the kitchen and found the cellar door, with some difficulty. Then, lest
the old stairs should be unsafe, they went down one at a time.
It was an easy matter to unearth the box, though they worked in utter
darkness. When they had secured it, they refilled the hole and then
stamped the earth down as they had found it. This being done, they were
glad enough to get away from the house, to replace the spade beneath the
underbrush, where the man had hidden it, and hurry down to the shore.
Launching the dory, they embarked, Henry Burns carrying the box, and,
with George and Arthur Warren at the oars, they had soon crossed the cove
and landed on the beach.
There, too, was the _Anna_, drawn high up on shore, where the stranger
had left it. It was a large and heavy boat, and it must have required
enormous strength in one man to drag it there.