THE PHANTOM YACHT
The girls dressed hurriedly and silently, then crept down the boarded-in
stairway and emerged upon the back porch of the cottage. It was not yet
dawn, but a rosy glow in the east assured them that the day was near.
The waiting lad knew that the girls had something to tell, nor was he
wrong.
“Oh, Gibralter, what do you think?” Dories began at once in an excited
whisper that they might not disturb Great-Aunt Jane, who, without doubt,
was still asleep.
“I dunno. What?” the boy was frankly curious.
“We saw it last night. We saw it with our very own eyes! Didn’t we,
Nann?” The other maiden agreed.
“You saw what?” asked the mystified boy, looking from one to the other.
Then, comprehendingly, he added: “Gee, you don’ mean as you saw the spook
from the old ruin, do you?”
Dories nodded, but Nann modified: “Not that, Gibralter. Since there is no
such thing as a ghost, how could we see it? But we did see the light you
were telling about. Someone was walking along the rocks out on the point
carrying a lighted lantern.”
“Wall,” the boy announced triumphantly, “that proves ’twas a spook,
’cause human beings couldn’t get a foothold out there, the rocks are so
jagged and irregular like. But come along, maybe we can find footprints
or suthin’.”
The sun was just rising out of the sea when the three young people stole
back of the boarded-up cottages that stood in a silent row, and emerged
upon the wide stretch of sandy beach that led toward the point.
The tide was low and the waves small and far out. The wet sand glistened
with myriad colors as the sun rose higher. The air was tinglingly cold
and, once out of hearing of the aunt, the girls, no longer fearful, ran
along on the hard sand, laughing and shouting joyfully, while the boy, to
express the exuberance of his feelings, occasionally turned a hand-spring
just ahead of them.
“Oh, what a wonderful morning!” Nann exclaimed, throwing out her arms
toward the sea and taking a deep breath. “It’s good just to be alive.”
Dories agreed. “It’s hard to believe in ghosts on a day like this,” she
declared.
“Then why try?” Nan merrily questioned.
They had reached the high headland of jagged rocks that stretched out
into the sea, and Gibralter, bounding ahead, climbed from one rock to
another, sure-footed as a goat but the girls remained on the sand.
When he turned, they called up to him: “Do you see anything suspicious
looking?”
“Nixy!” was the boy’s reply. Then anxiously: “D’ye think yo’ girls can
climb on the tip-top rock?” Then, noting Dories’ anxious expression as
she viewed the jagged cliff-like mass ahead of her, he concluded with.
“O, course yo’ can’t. Hold on, I’ll give yo’ a hand.”
Very carefully the boy selected crevices that made stairs on which to
climb, and the girls, delighted with the adventure, soon arrived on the
highest rock, which they were glad to find was so huge and flat that they
could all stand there without fear of falling.
“This is a dizzy height,” Dories said, looking down at the waves that
were lazily breaking on the lowest rocks. “But there’s one thing that
puzzles me and makes me think more than ever that what we saw last night
was a ghost.”
“I know,” Nann put in. “I believe I am thinking the same thing. _How_
could a man walk back and forth on these jagged rocks carrying a
lantern?”
“Huh,” their companion remarked, “Spooks kin walk anywhar’s they choose.”
“Why, Gibralter Strait, I do believe that you think there is a ghost in—”
She paused and turned to look in the direction that the boy was pointing.
On the other side of the point, below them, was a swamp, dense with high
rattling tullies and cat-tails. It looked dark and treacherous, for, as
yet, the sunlight had not reached it. About two hundred feet back from
the sea stood the forlorn ruin of what had once been, apparently, a fine
stone mansion.
Two stained white pillars, standing in front, were like ghostly sentinels
telling where the spacious porch had been. Behind them were jagged heaps
of crumbling rock, all that remained of the front and side walls. The
wall in the rear was still standing, and from it the roof, having lost
its support in front, pitched forward with great yawning gaps in it,
where chimneys had been.
Dories unconsciously clung to her friend as they stood gazing down at the
old ruin. “Poor, poor thing,” Nann said, “how sad and lonely it must be,
for, I suppose, once upon a time it was very fine home filled with love
and happiness. Wasn’t it, Gibralter? If you know the story of the old
house, please tell it to us?”
The boy cast a quick glance at the timid Dories. “I dunno as I’d ought
to. She scares so easy,” he told them.
“I’ll promise not to scare this time,” Dories hastened to say. “Honest,
Gib, I am as eager to hear the story as Nann is, so please tell it.”
Thus urged, the boy began. He did not speak, however, in his usual merry,
bantering voice, but in a hollow whisper which he believed better fitted
to the tale he had to tell.
“Wall,” he said, as he seated himself on a rock, motioning the girls to
do likewise, “I might as well start way back at the beginnin’. Pa says
that this here house was built nigh thirty year ago by a fine upstandin’
man as called himself Colonel Wadbury and gave out that he’d come from
Virginia for his gal’s health. Pa said the gal was a sad-lookin’ creature
as ever he’d set eyes on, an’ bye an’ bye ’twas rumored around Siquaw
that she was in love an’ wantin’ to marry some furreigner, an’ that the
old Colonel had fetched her to this out-o’-the-way place so that he could
keep watch on her. He sure sartin built her a fine mansion to live in.
“Pa said ’twas filled with paintin’s of ancestors, and books an’ queer
furreign rugs a hangin’ on the walls, though thar was plenty beside on
the floor. Pa’d been to a museum up to Boston onct, an’ he said as ’twas
purty much like that inside the place.
“Wall, when ’twas all finished, the two tuk to livin’ in it with a man
servant an’ an old woman to keep an eye on the gal, seemed like.
“’Twan’t swamp around here in those days, ’twas sand, and the Colonel had
a plant put in that grew all over—sand verbeny he called it, but folks in
Siquaw Center shook their heads, knowin’ as how the day would come when
the old sea would rise up an’ claim its own, bein’ as that had all been
ocean onct on a time.
“Pa says as how he tol’ the Colonel that he was takin’ big chances,
buildin’ a house as hefty as that thar one, on nothin’ but sand, but that
wan’t all he built either. Furst off ’twas a high sea wall to keep the
ocean back off his place, then ’twas a pier wi’ lights along it, and then
he fetched a yacht from somewhere.
“Pa says he’d never seen a craft like it, an’ he’d been a sea-farin’ man
ever since the North Star tuk to shinin’, or a powerful long time,
anyhow. That yacht, Pa says, was the whitest, mos’ glistenin’ thing he’d
ever sot eyes on. An’ graceful! When the sailors, as wore white clothes,
tuk to sailin’ it up and down, Pa says folks from Siquaw Center tuk a
holiday just to come down to the shore to watch the craft. It slid along
so silent and was so all-over white, Gus Pilsley, him as was school
teacher days and kep’ the poolhall nights, said it looked like a ‘phantom
yacht,’ an’ that’s what folks got to callin’ it.
“Pa says it was well named, for, if ever a ghost rode on it, ’twas the
gal who went out sailin’ every day. Sometimes the Colonel was with her,
but most times ’twas the old woman, but she never was let to go alone.
The Colonel’s orders was that the sailors shouldn’t go beyond the three
miles that was American. He wasn’t goin’ to have his gal sailin’ in
waters that was shared by no furreigners, him bein’ that sot agin them,
like as not because the gal wanted to marry one of ’em. So day arter day,
early and late, Pa says, she sailed on her ‘Phantom Yacht’ up and down
but keepin’ well this side o’ the island over yonder.”
Gibralter had risen and was pointing out to sea. The girls stood at his
side shading their eyes. “That’s it!” he told them. “That’s the island.
It’s on the three-mile line, but Pa says it’s the mos’ treacherous island
on this here coast, bein’ as thar’s hidden shoals fer half a mile all
around it, an’ thar’s many a whitenin’ skeleton out thar of fishin’ boats
that went too close.” The lad reseated himself and the girls did
likewise. Then he resumed the tale. “Wall, so it went on all summer long.
Pa says if you’d look out at sunrise like’s not thar’d be that yacht
slidin’ silent-like up and down. Pa says it got to hauntin’ him. He’d
even come down here on moonlit nights an’, sure nuf, thar’d be that
Phantom Yacht glidin’ around, but one night suthin’ happened as Pa says
he’ll never forget if he lives to be as old as Methusalah’s grandfather.”
“W-what happened?” the girls leaned forward. “Did the yacht run on the
shoals?” Nann asked eagerly.