A LIGHT IN THE DARK
The girls cautiously crept up the back stairway which was sheltered from
fog and wind only by rough boards between which were often wide cracks.
Time and again a puff of air threatened to put out the flickering flame
in the lantern. With one hand Nann guarded it, lest it suddenly sputter
out and leave them in darkness. There was a closed door at the top of the
stairs, and of course, it was locked, but the key was in it.
“Doesn’t that seem sort of queer?” Dories asked as her friend unlocked
the door, removed the key and placed it on the inside.
“Well, it does, sort of,” Nann had to acknowledge, “but I’m mighty glad
it was there, or how else could we have entered?”
Dories said nothing, but, deep in her heart, she was wishing that she and
Nann were safely back in Elmwood, where there were electric lights and
other comforts of civilization.
Holding the lantern high, the girls stood in the middle of the loft room
and looked around. It was unfinished after the fashion of attics, and
though it was quite high at the peak, the sloping roof made a tent-like
effect. There were two windows. One opened out toward the rocky point,
above which a continuous inward rush of white breakers could be seen, and
the other, at the opposite side, opened toward swampy meadows, a mile
across which on clear nights could be seen the lights of Siquaw Center.
A big, old-fashioned high posted bed, an equally old-fashioned mahogany
bureau and two chairs were all of the furnishings.
They found bedding in the bureau drawers, as Miss Moore had told them.
Placing the lantern on the bureau, Nann said: “If we wish to have light
on the subject, we’d better make the bed in a hurry. You take that side
and I’ll take this, and we’ll have these quilts spread in a twinkling.”
Dories did as she was told and the bed was soon ready for occupancy. Then
the girls scrambled out of their dresses, and, just as they leaped in
between the quilts, the flame in the lantern sputtered and went out.
Dories clutched her friend fearfully. “Oh, Nann,” she said, “we never
looked under the bed nor behind that curtained-off corner. I don’t dare
go to sleep unless I know what’s there.”
Her companion laughed. “What do you ’spose is there?” she inquired.
“How can I tell?” Dories retorted. “That’s why I wish we had looked and
then I would know.”
Her friend’s voice, merry even in the darkness, was reassuring. “I can
tell you just as well as if I had looked,” she announced with confidence.
“Back of these curtains, you would find nothing but a row of nails or
hooks on which to hang our garments when we unpack our suitcases, and
under the bed there is only dust in little rolled-up heaps—like as not.
Now, dear, let’s see who can go to sleep first, for you know we have an
engagement with our friend, Gibralter Strait, at sunrise tomorrow
morning.”
“You say that as though you were pleased with the prospect,” Dories
complained.
“Pleased fails to express the joy with which I anticipate the——” Nann
said no more, for Dories had clutched her, whispering excitedly, “Hark!
What was that noise? It sounds far off, maybe where the haunted ruin is.”
Nann listened and then calmly replied: “More than likely it’s the fog
horn about which Gib told us, and that other noise is the muffled roar of
the surf crashing over the rocks out on the point. If there are any more
noises that you wish me to explain, please produce them now. If not, I’m
going to sleep.”
After that Dories lay very still for a time, confident that she wouldn’t
sleep a wink. Nann, however, was soon deep in slumber and Dories soon
followed her example. It was midnight when she awakened with a start, sat
up and looked about her. She felt sure that a light had awakened her. At
first she couldn’t recall where she was. She turned toward the window.
The fog had lifted and the night was clear. For a moment she sat watching
the white, rushing line of the surf, then, farther along, she saw a dark
looming object.
Suddenly she clutched her companion. “Nann,” she whispered dramatically,
“there it is! There’s a light moving over by the point. Do you suppose
that’s the ghost from the old ruin?”
“The what?” Nann sat up, dazed from being so suddenly awakened. Then,
when Dories repeated her remark, her companion gazed out of the window
toward the point.
“H’m-m!” she said, “It’s a light all right. A lantern, I should say, and
its moving slowly along as though it were being carried by someone who is
searching for something among the rocks.”
Dori’s hold on her friend’s arm became tighter. “It’s coming this way!
I’m just ever so sure that it is. Oh, Nann, why did we come to this
dreadful place? What if that light came right up to this cottage and saw
that it wasn’t boarded up and knew someone was here and——”
Nann chuckled. “Aren’t you getting rather mixed in your figures of
speech?” she teased. “A lantern can’t see or know, but of course I
understand that you mean the-well-er-person carrying the lantern. I
suppose you will agree that it is a person, for ghosts don’t have to
carry lanterns, you know.”
“How do you know so much about ghosts, since you say there are no such
things?” Dori flared.
“Well, nothing can’t carry a lantern, can it?” was the unruffled reply.
Then the two girls were silent, watching the light which seemed now and
then to be held high as though whoever carried it paused at times to look
about him and then continued to search on the rocks.
Slowly, slowly the light approached the row of boarded-up cabins. The
girls crept from bed and knelt at the window on the seaward side. Nann,
because she was interested, and Dori because she did not want to be left
alone.
“Do you think it’s coming this far?” came the anxious whisper. Nann shook
her head. “No,” she said, “it’s going back toward the point and so I’m
going back to bed. I’m chilled through as it is.”
They were soon under the covers and when they again glanced toward the
window the light had disappeared. “Seems to have been swallowed up,” Nann
remarked.
“Maybe it’s fallen over the cliff. I almost hope that it has, and been
swept out to sea.”
“Meaning the lantern, I suppose, or do you mean the carrier thereof?”
“Nann Sibbett, I don’t see how you can help being just as afraid of
whatever it is, or, rather of whoever it is, as I am.”
“Because I am convinced that since it, or he, doesn’t know of my
existence, I am not the object of the search, so why should I be afraid?
Now, Miss Dories Moore, if you wish to stay awake speculating as to what
became of that light, you may, but I’m going to sleep, and, if this loft
bedroom of ours is just swarming with ghosts and mysterious lights, don’t
you waken me to look at them until morning.”
So saying, Nann curled up and went to sleep. Dories, fearing that she
would again be awakened by a light, drew the quilt up over her head so
that she could not see it.
Although she was nearly smothered, like an ostrich, she felt safer, and
in time she too slept, but she dreamed of headless horsemen and
hollow-eyed skeletons that walked out on the rocky point at midnight
carrying lanterns.
It was nearing dawn when a low whistle outside awakened the girls.
“It’s Gibralter Strait, I do believe,” Nann declared, at once alert.
Then, as she sprang up, she whispered, “Do hurry, Dori. I feel ever so
sure that we are this day starting on a thrilling adventure.”