A HAUNTED BAY
As you have guessed, the plane heard by the Red Rover and Berley Todd was
Drew Lane’s red racer. And Johnny Thompson was riding in the rear
cockpit.
Drew had planned his trip well. They should have reached the island
before dark. But misfortune had befallen them. Forced down by a leaky
fuel pipe, they had found themselves on the surface of a small lake in
the midst of a great forest where there was no one. After two hours of
labor with a few tools and scant material, they had managed to repair the
leak. This delay had forced them to fly in the night, and here they were
approaching an island known to them only by reports and by a map that lay
spread out before Drew in the cockpit.
Despite his meager knowledge, he did wonderfully well. Having arrived at
the east end of the island, he flew directly across it. Catching the
gleams of light that came from three narrow bands of water, he knew them
to be Rock Harbor, Tobin’s Harbor and Duncan’s Bay. Choosing the middle
one of these, he dropped low to go scooting along less than two hundred
feet in air.
As he flew, the gleam of a powerful searchlight, attached to the plane,
played upon the water.
Of a sudden that light shot upward, then blinked out.
“Found what he was looking for,” Johnny Thompson told himself. “But what
was it?”
To this question he could form no certain answer; perhaps a boat, a cabin
or an airplane. In fact, Johnny was almost completely in the dark
regarding the purpose and probable outcome of this, the latest of Drew
Lane’s adventures.
When he had met the young detective he had said never a word. In silence
they had climbed into the plane and flown away. Who had kidnaped the Red
Rover and Berley Todd? Johnny did not know. Did Drew Lane know? Were the
kidnapers on this island? Was the Red Rover? Was Berley Todd? The boy did
not know. All he knew was that he appeared to be right bang up against
one more exciting adventure, and that was enough.
Tipping the plane at a rakish angle, Drew Lane sent it over a narrow
ridge of land to drop at last upon a narrow stretch of black water. This
was Rock Harbor. The scout’s cabin was not half a mile away. Hearing the
drum of a motor, he extinguished his light, then sprang to the door just
in time to see the plane land.
“Hm!” he breathed. “More kidnapers, officers of the law, or just ordinary
folks. I expected to have a dull time at this place, all by myself, but
blamed if it ain’t been exciting so far.”
At that he buckled his one remaining “shootin’ iron” about his waist and
disappeared into the night.
At that same hour a second plane, all silver and white, circled over a
stretch of water black as night, then, graceful as a sea gull, sank to
rest.
The body of water was Duncan’s Bay. Two miles long, one quarter as wide,
with trees growing to the very edge of its lapping waters and never so
much as an abandoned shack standing beside it, this bay at all seasons of
the year is a dark and lonesome spot as night falls across the world.
Night was here. So too were the chill winds of November. But the single
occupant of the plane appeared to give little heed to all this. Unfolding
a curious sort of collapsible rubber boat, he filled it with air, took a
short paddle from his fusilage, stepped into the rubber affair and
paddled ashore.
The spot upon which he landed had perhaps at one time been a barren
stretch of sand. Overgrown now with tangled grass and low bushes, it
forms a perfect camping ground. Such it has been for countless
generations. From this spot ten thousand camp fires have sent their
golden gleams across the black waters of Duncan’s Bay. Each in turn has
faded into the darkness of night. Had this strange visitor, a slender
person in a long black coat, cared for such things, he might have dug
beneath his very feet and found there charcoal and half burned bones from
fires that had gleamed a hundred, perhaps two hundred years ago. For,
since Isle Royale lifted its rocky head from out the deep and took on a
cap of green, this spot has been the camping place of man.
The stranger did not dig. He stood there long as if in silent
contemplation.
He might have fished, for in these very waters such great northern pikes
(wolves of all fresh water seas) as are not found elsewhere play among
the wavering weeds. Had he cared to wait for dawn, then had he put out
across the narrow bay to set a silver spoon gleaming through the black
waters, he might have experienced such a thrill as is seldom accorded a
fisherman.
He did not wait for dawn. Instead, by the gleam of a small flashlight he
studied a slip of paper for a moment; then turning abruptly about, lost
himself in the dense brush that lines the slope of a high ridge just back
of this narrow clearing.
Duncan’s Bay is separated from Tobin’s Harbor—which, as you will recall,
was the landing place of first the kidnapers’ plane and after that Drew
Lane’s red racer—by a tall and narrow ridge of rocks heavily overgrown
with brush.
A half hour after this tall person from the silver plane vanished from
the camping grounds of Duncan’s Bay, a strange apparition might have been
seen at the very crest of the ridge.
At this spot, known as Lookout Louise, one may stand at a point some
hundreds of feet above the water level and look down upon the dark and
somber bay that lies below. On this particular night, viewed from this
height, the silver plane seemed a giant sea gull with wings outspread.
But the apparition—he wore a long flowing robe of filmy white. As the
moon came out to gleam upon him, his head appeared as white as his robe.
And his body was bones, just gleaming white bones, or so it would have
seemed had some one been there to look. There was no one.
For one full moment he stood gazing down at the black waters and the
silver plane. Then, turning slowly about, he gave utterance to a low,
hollow chuckle as weird as the song of the wind in the pines of a
churchyard at midnight. Then, like the phantom he seemed, he dropped away
into the shadows that lay above Tobin’s Harbor where at that very moment
the fate of Drew Lane, Johnny Thompson and the kidnapers swung
uncertainly in the balance. And even as this strange apparition vanished,
he appeared to gallop.