“What about gold coins?” Benny asked.
The captain pried open the box lid with a knife.
Benny’s face fell. “Just some old stuff,” he said when he saw the blackened spoons and forks and lots of yellowed bone carvings scattered in the box. There was also a small, rusty piece of pipe that was sealed off at both ends.
Violet picked up one of the many carved objects. “Oooh,” she said. “These are scrimshaw clothespins. The sailors used to carve them from whalebone for their wives. I read that on one of the displays at the Sailors’ Museum.”
“Clothespins? Aw shucks,” Benny said.
Captain Bob couldn’t help smiling. “I guess old clothespins don’t seem too exciting, but I’m sure these have some value.”
“What about that rusty iron pipe?” Henry asked.
The captain picked up the length of iron. “It’s the end of an old cannon barrel. Sometimes sailors used to put documents inside for protection, then close them up.”
“Can I see?” Benny asked.
The captain didn’t answer right away. “Yes, uh, sure. But first I have to oil and sand it off on the boat to see if I get it open. Wait here.”
“May I watch?” Benny asked. “Maybe there are pirate coins in there.”
The captain didn’t answer. He headed back to the boat. He didn’t seem to want anyone to come along.
Fifteen minutes went by. Captain Bob still hadn’t returned with the cannon barrel.
“It’s taking Captain Bob an awfully long time to get that barrel open,” Henry said.
“I know,” Jessie agreed. “We should probably head back. I told Mrs. Pease we’d be back by lunchtime. I don’t want her to get worried.”
Violet carefully wrapped up all the other objects in the box. Henry and Benny carried the box onto the Jonah.
“I’ll go below deck and tell Captain Bob we should go,” Jessie said.
“Captain Bob,” Jessie whispered. “Did you get the cannon barrel apart?”
“Hhhh!” Captain Bob said, when Jessie surprised him. “I didn’t hear you come down. Uh . . . go back up. I’ll be there in a minute.” The captain quickly wrapped a rag around the cannon barrel.
Jessie could tell Captain Bob didn’t seem to want her around. “I’m sorry. It’s just that Mrs. Pease is expecting us back at lunchtime, and we don’t want to worry her. The cannon barrel, did you get it open?”
Captain Bob put the barrel behind him. “Why . . . uh—no, I didn’t. The damp air well . . . uh . . . it just rusted the whole thing shut. Now go on back up.”
“Did he find any coins, Jessie, did he?” Benny asked when Jessie returned.
Captain Bob popped up right behind Jessie. “Sorry, Benny. Nothing to report. The thing is stuck good and tight. I’ll bring it home to work on it some more.”
“Can I take it to the Sailors’ Museum?” Benny asked the captain. “The lady there has lots of things like that.”
“No,” said the captain, his voice suddenly turning unfriendly. “It needs to be cleaned. I know as much about these things as Miss Coffin anyway.”
“Doesn’t something like this belong in the Sailors’ Museum?” Jessie asked.
Seeing how sad Benny looked, Captain Bob softened. “Well, you were the one who found the box,” he said. “So if that’s what you want to do, then there’s nothing else to say. Take it to Miss Coffin.” In a few minutes the captain piloted the Jonah through the nearby rocks and out to the open sea. He seemed to want to be alone with his thoughts and the crying sounds of Howling Cliffs.
CHAPTER 7
A Stranger Disappears
It was lunchtime when the Jonah docked. But the Aldens forgot all about being hungry. They couldn’t wait to show Miss Coffin their discoveries.
“I just know she’ll be happy to see us when we show her these things,” Violet said. “Not like yesterday.”
Henry ran ahead to call Mrs. Pease so they could eat lunch later and go to the museum instead. “She’s going to leave some sandwiches for us in the refrigerator,” Henry told everyone when he came back from making his phone call. “Now we can go straight to the Sailors’ Museum to show Miss Coffin what we found. So let’s unload everything.”
Captain Bob hadn’t said a word to the Aldens the whole ride back to Ragged Cove. Still silent, he packed up the wooden postbox along with the other discoveries into a small cart. As he covered everything to protect it, he finally spoke to the children again. “I have work to do on the Jonah this afternoon. I can’t come to the museum.”
“But you have to!” Benny cried. “You helped us find everything.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the captain said. “Miss Coffin will know what to do with all of it. Mind you, go slowly with the cart over the cobbled streets. The postbox is about ready to come apart. Everything else should be fine. You can bring the cart back later and leave it at the dock. I’ll find it okay.”
“Are you sure you won’t come?” Violet asked. “You’re the one who made it possible for us to save these things. Wouldn’t you like to see what Miss Coffin says? She’ll be so happy.”
“Not if she sees me,” Captain Bob said in a low voice the children could hardly hear.
The Aldens set out for the museum, pulling the cart slowly down the dock and toward Ragged Cove.
“I can’t figure out why Captain Bob won’t come with us,” Jessie said. “It seems silly to be upset about things that happened so long ago.”
“Well, he is upset, and so is Miss Coffin,” Henry told Jessie. “When I told Mrs. Pease we were going to the Sailors’ Museum with Captain Bob, she seemed surprised. She said Miss Coffin has had nothing good to say about the captain since he came back to Ragged Cove after the Coast Guard.” Henry pulled the cart around the corner carefully. “Mrs. Pease said there’s been a feud between the Coffins and Captain Bob’s family, the Hulls, ever since the Flying Cloud. I guess that’s why he didn’t want us to take these things to Miss Coffin.”
“How sad,” said Violet. “Why can’t people get along with each other?”
As the Aldens walked past the shops on Cod Street, Violet stopped in front of a store called Spooner Cooke’s Scrimshaw Shop. “I just wanted to see if there were any scrimshaw clothespins like the ones we found in the postbox,” Violet said. “But I don’t see any. There are some other pretty things, though, even some carved whalebone toys.”
The other children crowded up to the window to take a look. Benny stood on his tiptoes and pressed his forehead against the window. Just as he did, a man with a sharp beaky nose and a bald head rushed out of the shop.
“Get away from there, you kids!” the man yelled. “You’re smudging my clean windows.”
The children jumped back. Henry took the cloth covering the postbox to clean the window. “Sorry,” he apologized. “We were just looking at the nice antiques you have.”
The man didn’t seem to hear what Henry had just said. Instead, his eyes grew wide when he noticed the postbox in the cart. “Where did you get that?” he asked the Aldens in a loud voice.
“We found it out by Howling Cliffs,” Jessie answered. “Captain Bob took us out there to see if any wreckage washed up after the storm. My brother found this hidden in some rocks.”
Benny peeked out from behind Jessie. “The box was sticking out from the rocks. All it’s got in it are old spoons and clothespins and toys made out of bones.”
The man reached down for the box. “Let me look at this.”
“Sorry, sir,” Henry told the man. “These things belong in a museum. That’s where we’re going right now. An expert needs to look at everything to see if it’s valuable.”
This made the man very angry. “I’ll have you know, young man, that I am an expert. Here’s my card.”
Henry took a business card from the man. On it was an ink drawing of a magnifying glass. The card said: SPOONER COOKE: SCRIMSHAW DEALER.
“All the same,” Henry said after he’d put the card in his pocket, “we?
??re taking these things to the museum. You can check with Miss Coffin.”
“Humph,” said the man. “Prudence and I have known each other since we were born. I happen to be on the museum board, as you will soon find out. Now you’d better mind how you carry those things along these streets. Imagine, an antique postbox in the hands of a bunch of kids!”
“A pod of kids,” Benny said under his breath as the children walked on.
Henry, Jessie, and Violet couldn’t help giggling.
“This time, let’s go in the back, to the delivery entrance,” Jessie advised when they reached the Sailors’ Museum. “Then Miss Coffin will have to open the door right away.”
Sure enough, as soon as they knocked on the side door marked “Delivery Entrance,” Miss Coffin opened it.
“The museum is closed,” she told the children.
“That’s okay, Miss Coffin,” Jessie said. “We came to give you something special for the museum, not to visit.”
With that, Henry pulled off the cloth covering the postbox. “Look what we found at Howling Cliffs.”
Miss Coffin gasped. “Why it’s a sailors’ postbox! I thought we’d found the last one a few years ago.” She bent down to take a closer look. “I can’t believe it hasn’t rotted away.”
“That’s ’cause it was inside some rocks, nice and dry,” Benny said proudly. “The same place where bird mothers make nests so they’re safe. It’s a good hiding place.”
Miss Coffin smiled then looked away from the children. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said. “It’s just that . . . that Bob Hull, well, I wish he had never come back to Ragged Cove. His family did enough to spread lies about my great-grandfather. Then he goes talking to the tourists and . . .”
Jessie spoke gently to the old woman. “Captain Bob doesn’t spread lies. Truly, Miss Coffin. He’s the one who helped us get this box out in one piece. He even packed it up in this cart so we could bring it to the museum.”
“That may well be.” Miss Coffin paused.
“Let’s take a look at what’s here. Come in.”
The children carefully took the postbox and its wrapped objects inside. They spread them out on a large desk in Miss Coffin’s office.
The old woman put on her glasses and walked back and forth. “My, my,” she repeated several times. “This is quite a find, quite a find.”
The children could see how pleased she was, even with the old banged-up spoons. She showed the children a display case of old dishes and silverware. “Look,” she said, “the spoons have the same design.”
“I wish some coins had the same design as the one in here,” Benny said when he looked into a display case of old money.
“Tsk, tsk,” Miss Coffin said without looking up from what she was doing. “Everything here will be valuable to people who are interested in history. Now, I wonder what’s under this cloth.”
“Just a section of a rusty cannon barrel,” Henry said. “Captain Bob tried to get the top off, but it’s stuck.”
“Oh my! Part of a cannon barrel!” Miss Coffin said, as excited as if the children had brought her a sea chest filled with gold. “We must get it open in case there are any old papers or logbooks inside.”
“Yes, Captain Bob said sailors used the barrels to keep their papers dry,” Jessie said. “But I don’t know if we’ll have any luck with this one. Captain Bob tried to oil it up and even used some of his boat tools. It’s rusted shut.”
Miss Coffin couldn’t resist. She put the cannon barrel on its side and twisted the end. “Why, what do you mean? It comes right off!”
And so it did. In a single twist, the end of the barrel was off, as if someone had barely screwed it on.
“That’s strange,” Jessie said. “Captain Bob said he’d had no luck with it at all.”
Henry scratched his head. “I guess it’s the same as when a strong person tries to untwist a lid and then gives up. The next person hardly has to turn it at all.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Jessie said. She was puzzled about the way Miss Coffin had managed to open the barrel on the first try.
“Oh, my!” Miss Coffin cried again. “There are a few things in here—an old book and some documents.” She pulled them out and began examining them.
Benny never gave up. He shook the barrel to see if anything else was inside. “It’s empty,” he said, disappointed. “Just those old papers.”
Miss Coffin gathered up the old, yellowed papers at one end of the table. “Yes, that’s all there was in there, just old papers, nothing you children would be interested in.”
Jessie stepped forward. “I would like to see some of them, Miss Coffin. May I?”
Miss Coffin seemed a bit nervous. “Well, yes . . . yes, of course. Perhaps tomorrow after I have a chance to look through them. They’re so old, they are extremely delicate.”
“We’ll be careful,” Violet said. “We’ve found old books and papers before, and nothing bad happened to them.”
This didn’t convince Miss Coffin. She pushed the papers and books down to the far end of the table, away from the Aldens. “If you want to help, why don’t you children make a list of all these other things you found? There are toys, scrimshaw clothespins, even these little whalebone pie cutters here. Now those are very special.”
“Oh,” Violet said, delighted with the delicate object with the little wheel. “Mrs. McGregor has one to cut pie dough. Only hers is wooden and not as pretty as these.”
“Yes, they are pretty,” said Miss Coffin. “The sailors carved many useful items for their families at home—all kinds of kitchen things, toys for their children. See if any of the pieces you found match what’s in those cabinets. Then maybe we can get some idea of who might have carved them. Here’s the key to unlock some of the display cases.”
Jessie didn’t feel right about taking the key. “Don’t you want to show us what to do?” she asked Miss Coffin. “Not that we won’t be careful. We just want to make sure we take things out properly and know what to look for.”
Miss Coffin seemed impatient. “Go. Just lay the pieces from the cabinet at one end of the table out there and the pieces you found at Howling Cliffs at the other end. Here’s a magnifying glass, so you can compare the pieces. Now go!”
The children stood there for a moment without moving. Why was Miss Coffin rushing them?
“Let’s go to the main room,” Henry said. “We might as well get started.”
Henry and Jessie unlocked the first scrimshaw cabinet and carefully took out a tray of carvings. Benny and Violet laid out the pieces they had found on a felt-covered table.
“I guess we should just do what she says,” Jessie whispered. “I did want to see what some of those papers were, though. I was hoping there might be some new information about what happened to Captain Coffin and the Flying Cloud.”
Violet defended the old woman. “Maybe since the papers might have something to do with her great-grandfather, she just wants to look at them by herself first.”
The children sat down to work. Violet especially enjoyed handling the delicate little whalebone pictures, tools, and toys. “Look,” she cried, holding up a small whalebone picture carved with a parrot. “I bet this is another picture of Gabby. These pieces must be from the Flying Cloud!”
Jessie studied the small, flat carving they had found in the postbox. She compared it to the museum’s whale tooth carving of the parrot. “The parrot has the same markings. Let’s go show this to Miss Coffin.”
The Aldens raced into Miss Coffin’s office without even bothering to knock. The old woman jumped up when the children burst in all excited.
“We found a picture of Gabby, look!” Violet cried. “See they’re the same.”
If the children were expecting Miss Coffin to be thrilled, they were disappointed. Miss Coffin didn’t seem at all curious about the carvings. She hardly seemed to realize the Aldens had all crowded into her office.
“Yes, I see,” she said. She barely lo
oked at what Violet was showing her.
Jessie stared at Miss Coffin’s desk then checked under it. “Is something missing here, Miss Coffin?” she asked the old woman. “Wasn’t there an old leather book with all these other papers?”
Miss Coffin looked away from the children. After taking a deep breath she finally answered Jessie’s question. “This is everything. There wasn’t any book, just these letters and such.”
“But, but—” Jessie began until Miss Coffin shushed her.
“Now come out to the front room and show me what you children have found,” Miss Coffin said, rushing the children from her office.
The Aldens could hardly keep up with the old woman. Jessie turned around to make sure there wasn’t a small book somewhere in all the papers. She didn’t see a thing.
Miss Coffin looked over the pieces on the table. The children hoped she would be happy to see how closely the pieces matched. But the old woman barely seemed interested.
“Put everything away now,” she told the children.
At that moment, everyone felt a draft of sea air blow through the museum. The door to the delivery area banged.
“Hey, I think you got a delivery, Miss Coffin,” Henry said. “I just saw someone in a blue sailor hat go by.”
Miss Coffin went to the back office again. The old documents and papers were scattered on the table along with some of the other pieces from the postbox.
“Did the wind blow these things around?” Jessie asked. “Is anything missing?”
Miss Coffin looked terribly upset. “You see, there’s too much confusion with everyone here. I simply must ask you to leave so I can organize these things without distraction.”
Benny swallowed hard. “We’ll be quiet.”
“Yes, we will,” Jessie said. “We would just like to get a closer look at all the things Benny found, that’s all.”