The Phantom Yacht

“It’s the ghost. He’s still in there.” This triumphantly from Nann, the fearless. “That’s the same scrambling noise that I heard before. Come on. Don’t be afraid. I’ll throw open the door and at least we’ll see who it is.”

Leaping forward, Nann unbolted the door and held up the lantern. The shed was as empty as it had been before, and there was nothing at all in the barrel.

Dories’ sigh was one of relief, and she fairly darted back to the warm kitchen, nor did she breathe naturally until the outer door was bolted. Then Nann inquired, “What did the note say. We forgot to read it?” Stooping, she took it from under a splinter of wood and, opening it, read: “In ten days you will know all.”

CHAPTER XVII

MORE MYSTERIES

Long after Dories slept that night Nann lay awake thinking of the several mysteries surrounding them. Who was leaving the notes in places where the girls could not help finding them; who was carrying a lantern on the rocky point at night; was it the same light that was seen in the old ruin by people living in Siquaw Center, and why had the blind in the Burton cottage opened ever so little and then closed again as though someone had peered out at them for a brief moment? It was indeed puzzling. Could it possibly have anything to do with the Phantom Yacht? Nann decided that was impossible. At last she fell asleep. When she awakened it was nearly dawn. The fog had drifted away, the stars shone out and the full moon made it as light as day.

Nann, the fearless, decided to dress and go out on the sand and look at the Burton cottage. She was nearly dressed before she realized that if Dories woke and found her gone, she might scream out in her fright and waken the old woman, and so she shook her gently, whispering her plan. Dories’ eyes showed her terror at being left alone. She got up at once. “I simply will not stay in this haunted loft,” she declared vehemently. “I’m going with you.” As it was still dark they took the lighted lantern with them, but when they reached the back porch, Nann whispered that they would have to put out the light as they would be seen if, indeed, there was anyone to see them. “We’ll take it, though. I have matches in my pocket. We’ll light it if we need it.”

Dories clung to her friend’s hand as Nann led the way back of the row of boarded-up cottages. When they reached the seventh, Dories suddenly drew back and whispered, “Nann, why are we doing this? What are you expecting to see? I’m simply scared to death.” Her companion realized that this was true, since Dories’ teeth were chattering. Self-rebukingly, she said, “O, I ought not have brought you. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have come myself, but I am so eager to solve at least one of the mysteries that surround us.” Then she told how she had been sure that she had seen a blind open ever so slightly and close late the afternoon before as though someone had been watching them. “I thought if someone goes every night to the old ruin and returns to the Burton cottage to hide during the day, he probably comes just about this hour, and that if we were watching, we might at least see what the – the – well – whoever it is – looks like.” They had crouched down in the shadow of the seventh cottage as Nann made this explanation.

Slowly the darkness lightened, the stars and moon dimmed and the east became gray; then rosy, but still there had been no sign of anyone entering the Burton cabin. Nann had been sure that an entrance could not be made in the front of the cottage as the lower windows and door on that side were securely boarded up. The back door was not boarded, and so that was where she was watching.

An hour dragged slowly by. The sun rose and was well on its apparent upward way, and still no one appeared.

“Don’t you think that maybe you imagined it all?” Dories inquired at length as she tried to change her position, having become stiffened from crouching so long.

“Why, no, I am sure that I didn’t.” Then, fearless as usual, Nann announced, “I’m going up to the back porch and try the door.”

This she did, and to her surprise it opened, creaking noisily as it swung on rusty hinges.

Dories leaped to her side. “Gracious, Nann, are you going in?” she whispered tragically. “If anyone is in there, he might lock us in or something.”

Nann turned to reply, but instead she exclaimed: “Why, Dories Moore, you’re whiter than any sheet I ever saw. If you’re that scared, we’d better go right home.”

“I am!” Dories nodded miserably. “I wouldn’t any more dare go into this cottage than – than – ”

“Then we won’t.” Nann took her friend by the hand and together they went down the back steps, and Dories said: “I’d rather go home by the front beach if you don’t mind. It’s more open. There’s something so uncanny about the swamps at the back.”

“Anything to please,” was the laughing reply. As they rounded the cottage, Nann looked curiously at the upper windows, and was sure that she saw the same blind open ever so little, then close again. She said nothing of this, and tried to change the trend of her companion’s thoughts by talking about Gibralter Strait and wondering if they would see him during that day which had just dawned. Nann was deciding that she would take Gib into her confidence. A boy as fearless as he was would not mind entering the Burton cottage and finding out why that upper blind had opened and closed as it seemed to do.

As they neared their home cabin, Dories became more like her natural self and even skipped along the hard beach, laughing back at Nann as she called, “Another glorious, sparkling day! I hope something interesting is going to happen.”

“I believe something will,” Nann replied. They were nearing the front steps when Dories stood still, pointing, “Look at that stone lying in the middle of the top step. How do you suppose it ever got there?”

Nann shook her head and, leaping up the steps, she lifted the small rock, then turned back, exclaiming: “Just what I thought! Here is today’s note from your ghost. It’s much too clever for us.” Then she read: “In nine days you shall know all.”

Not wishing to awaken Miss Moore at so early an hour, the girls tiptoed down the steps and went around to the back of the cabin.

“Let’s look in the woodshed by daylight,” Nann suggested as she unbolted the door. “Nothing within, just as I supposed,” she remarked. “Humm-ho. We’re not very good detectives, I guess.”

They started walking toward the kitchen. “But why try to find out what the mysteries are about if every day brings us one nearer to the time when we are to know all?” Dories inquired.

Nann laughed. “O, I’d heaps rather ferret the thing out for myself than be told.” Then she said more seriously: “Honestly, Dori, I don’t think the notes refer to the mystery of the old ruin at all. I think, if that is ever solved, we’ll have to find it out for ourselves.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’d rather not tell quite yet.” They entered the kitchen. “Now,” Nann said, “I’m going to make a fire and get breakfast. We’ve been up so long that I’m ravenously hungry. I’m going to make flapjacks no less.”

“Good!” Dories replied. “I won’t refuse to eat them.” Although consumed with curiosity concerning what her friend had said, Dories decided to bide her time before asking Nann to explain.

CHAPTER XVIII

AN AIRPLANE SIGHTED

Miss Moore did not awaken, apparently, until midmorning and the girls did not want to go away until they had served her breakfast. They had been to her door several times and to all appearances the elderly woman had been asleep. When, at length, Miss Moore did awaken, she complained of having been disturbed by noises in the night. “Why did you girls tiptoe around the living-room just before daybreak?”

“Why, we didn’t, Aunt Jane! Truly we didn’t,” Dories replied. She did not like to tell that it would have been a physical impossibility for them to have done so, as they were crouched behind “cabin seven” at that hour watching “cabin eight.”

The old woman looked at the speaker sharply, then continued: “I called your name and for a time the tiptoeing stopped. Then, when I pretended to be asleep, it began again. I was sure that under the crack of the door I could see a fire burning as though you had lighted wood on the grate.”

“Oh, no, Miss Moore, we didn’t, I assure you,” Nann exclaimed. “There wasn’t any wood on it. We swept it clean yesterday afternoon.” A cry from Dories caused the speaker to pause and turn toward her. She was pointing at the fireplace. There was a small charred pile in the center of the grate. The old woman’s thoughts had evidently changed their direction for she asked, querulously, if they were going to keep her waiting all the morning for her breakfast.

While out in the kitchen preparing it, Dories whispered, her eyes wide, “Nann, what do you make of it all? You are smiling to yourself as if you had solved the mystery.”

“I believe I have, one of them; but, Dori, please don’t ask me to explain until I catch the ghost red-handed, so to speak.”

“White-handed, shouldn’t it be?” Dories inquired, her fears lessened by Nann’s evident delight in something she believed she had discovered.

When Miss Moore’s breakfast had been served, the girls, wishing to tidy up the cabin, set to work with a will. Nann was sweeping the porch and Dories was dusting and straightening the living-room when a queer humming noise was heard in the distance. “Dori,” Nann called, “come out here a moment. Can’t you hear a strange buzzing noise? It sounds as though it were high up in the air. What can it be?”

The other girl appeared in the open doorway and they both listened intently.

“Maybe it’s a flock of geese going south for the winter,” Dories ventured, but her friend shook her head. “That noise is coming nearer. Not going farther away,” she said. The buzzing and whizzing sounds increased with great rapidity. Springing down the steps, Nann exclaimed, “Whatever is making that commotion, is now right over our heads.”

Dories bounded to her friend’s side and they both gazed into the gleaming blue sky with shaded eyes.

“There it is!” Nann cried excitedly. “Why, of course, it’s an airplane! We should have guessed that right away. I wonder where it is going to land. There’s nothing but marsh and water around here besides this narrow strip of beach.”

“Oh, look! look!” This from Dories. “It’s dropping right down into the ocean and so it must be one of those combination air and sea planes.”

“Unless it has broken a wing and is falling,” Nann suggested. The airplane, nose downward, had seemed verily to plunge into the sea.

“Let’s run to the Point o’ Rocks.” Dories started as she spoke and Nann, throwing down the broom, raced after her. It was hard to go very rapidly where the sand was deep and dry, and so by the time they had climbed up on the highest boulder out on the rocky point, there was no sign whatever of the airplane either sailing safely on the water nor lying on the shore disabled.

“Hmm! That certainly is puzzling,” Nann said as she half closed her eyes in meditative thought. “Now, where can that huge thing have gone that it has disappeared so entirely?”

“I can’t imagine,” Dories replied. “If only Gibralter were here with his punt, we might be able to find out.” Then she exclaimed merrily, “Nann, there is another mystery added to the twenty and nine that we already have.”

“Not quite that many,” the other maid replied, giving one last long look in the direction they believed the plane had descended or fallen. “I’m inclined to think,” she ventured, “that there is a bay or something beyond the swamp. O, well, let’s go back to our task. It’s lunch time, if nothing else.”

They decided, as the day was unusually warm for that time of the year, to eat a cold lunch, and, as their aunt did not wish anything then, the girls decided to walk along the beach in the opposite direction and see if they could find the cove where Gib kept his punt in hiding. But, just as they reached the spot where the road from town ended at the beach, they heard a merry hallooing, and, turning, they beheld Gibralter Strait riding the white horse that was usually hitched to the coach.

“Oh, good, good!” was Dories’ delighted exclamation. “Now perhaps we will find out about the plane. Of course the people in town saw it and Gib may know – ” She stopped talking to stare at the approaching steed and rider in wide-eyed amazement. “How queer!” she ejaculated. “Nann, am I seeing double? I’m sure that I see four legs and Gib certainly has only two.”