CHAPTER XV THE SEARCHING PENCIL OF LIGHT
Early next morning Ruth and Pearl sailed the _Flyaway_ to the scene ofthe night's conflagration. No more mournful sight can be found than thewreck of a great ship, lifting its shattered form above the sea. They didnot linger long. One thing Ruth observed, and that to her advantage inthe future. The explosion had blown a hole in the right side of the ship.This left an open space above the water some ten feet wide. Other thanthis, save at extreme high tide, the ship's hull rose above the water.
"Makes sort of a harbor," said Pearl. "Believe you could sail the_Flyaway_ right inside. Make a grand place to weather a squall."
The three girls, Betty, Ruth and Pearl, fully intended going to old FortSkammel that day. But life on the islands in Casco Bay is a busy one.Fish must be caught, clams dug, crabs and lobsters trapped and boiled.Summer visitors must be served for it is their money that fills the flourbox, and the coal bin, too.
There was to be a great party up at the big hotel. Crabmeat salad was onthe menu. The Brackets and Byrans were to supply the meal. So, all daylong Ruth and Pearl picked away at boiled crabs, heaping up a littlemountain of white meat.
"It's too late to go to the fort now," said Ruth as she straightened upto ease her aching back. "Let's go for a sail instead."
So a sail it was. They dropped down around the island and, skimming alongover a faultless sea, came at last just as the shadows were deepening toWitches Cove.
"Let's drop anchor and have our supper here," suggested Pearl.
"Three gray witches may rise from the water and ask to join us," saidRuth with a low laugh.
"Let them," said Pearl, sending the anchor with a plunk into the sea."There are worse creatures about than gray witches. Here's hoping theydon't come too close to us."
The tide was setting in. The _Flyaway_ which, like some active child,seemed always aching to be away, swung and turned, turned and dragged atanchor until she lay within a few feet of the rocky shore. Lying on thedeck, munching crabmeat sandwiches and whispering of many things, thegirls did not notice this until, with a suddenness that was startling,some dark object came flying through the air to land lightly on the deck.
"Boo!" exclaimed Pearl, springing up.
"Only a black cat," laughed Ruth. "Smelled our crabmeat. There are somecunners in the box by the mast. Give him one."
The girls had settled down once more to quiet murmuring, when from therocks on the shore came a call.
"Ahoy, there! Something tells me you have one of my cats."
"Or he has us," said Pearl.
"Oh! It is you?" It was the little Secret Service man who spoke. "How areyou? Anything new?"
"You should know!" said Ruth. "_Black Gull_ is gone!"
"Yes, that's right. But I don't see----"
"Then you don't see very well. She was blown up. Wasn't supposed to beany explosives in her hold, was there? Who put them there?"
Ruth went on to remind him of her stolen punt and of the explosives shehad found in it. She told him too of the secret meeting of the mockpirates on the _Black Gull_.
"Does look like the work of the man smugglers," he admitted. "Questionis, were they using the old ship as a storehouse for stolen explosives,or did they wish to destroy the meeting place of those who have beenattempting to bring them to justice?"
"Well, at any rate," he said after a moment's silence, "the _Black Gull_is gone, and that's one more loss to charge against them. Something tellsme that their days in this, the Land of the Free and the Home of theBrave, are numbered."
"I hope so," said Ruth fervently.
"Ruth," whispered Pearl, leaning close, "shall we tell him about FortSkammel?"
"No. Not yet," the other girl whispered back.
His lunch finished, the black cat was returned to his master, then in thedarkness the _Flyaway_ edged out to the channel and away toward home.
In order to avoid the deeper channel where larger boats might beencountered, they sailed close to old Fort Skammel. There in the shadowsof those ancient walls they met with further adventure.
As they came very close to the fort that at this point towers straightabove the sea, the night suddenly went dark. It was as if some ghost ofother days, a prisoner perhaps who had died in the fort's dungeon, hadturned off the light of the Universe.
Ruth shuddered and suddenly felt herself grow cold all over.
"Only a very dark cloud before the moon," she told herself. "No danger.Know the way in the dark."
So she did, but there was danger all the same. That she knew well enoughin a moment, for of a sudden there came the pop-pop of a gasoline motorand a boat swinging round the point of the island began following them.
"No one lives on the island," she said to Pearl in a low tone tense withemotion. "They must be following us. They burned _Black Gull_ last night.Now they are after us. Well, if the wind holds they won't get us."
She put her boat exactly before the wind. Her deck tipped till it dippedwater. Yet the staunch-hearted girl did not alter the course by so muchas an inch.
"Show 'em, _Flyaway_. Show 'em!" She spoke in tender tones as if theschooner were a child.
They were gliding silently up the bay when a pencil of light like a hotfinger reached forward to touch them, then blinked out.
"Powerful electric torch," the girl told herself.
A moment, two, three passed. The pop-popping grew louder.
"Gaining," she said with a sigh that was a sob. "Should have told all.Had the customs officials, Civil Service, Captain O'Connor and all afterthem," she said to Pearl. "But that room in the old fort. I wanted to seeit. Silks, dresses, such things as she'd never seen, that's what Bettysaid."
The pencil of light felt for them again out of the dark, found them, thenswung away.
"Nearer," said Ruth. "Much nearer. Get us. And then?"
She leaned far forward, trying to see into the night. Fort Georges wasahead there somewhere, and----
The sudden reach of the white finger of light showed her something--adark bulk straight ahead.
Quick as a flash she shot a line free, gripped a yardarm, reefed thesail, reached out into the dark, felt something, braced herself againstit, held the schooner away, but allowed her to move forward until with asigh she lost the touch of that hard bulk and all but fell into the sea.
The schooner swerved to the right, then glided forward once more.
"Hist!" Ruth whispered. "We are inside the sunken hull of _Black Gull_.For--for the moment, even in death she has saved us.
"Quick!" she said ten seconds later. "We will leave the _Flyaway_ hereand take to our dory."
As they crept away into the night with muffled oars making no sound, theysaw the pencil of light searching the bay for them. It searched in vain.
A half hour later they were on their own beach. At once Don in the_Foolemagin_ was away with three armed men to scour the bay. They foundthe _Flyaway_ where the girls had left her, inside the scarred hull of_Black Gull_, but the motor boat with its creeping pencil of white lighthad vanished off the sea.
"To-morrow," Ruth said to Pearl as she bade her good night, "shall be thelast day. Either we visit the mystery room of old Fort Skammel or we turnthe whole affair over to the authorities."
Before retiring Ruth sat for a long time before her window, looking outinto the night, thinking things through.
The night was too dark to see far. In a way, she was thankful for that._Black Gull_ was gone. She felt a tightening at the throat. When sherecalled how the broken and charred skeleton of this once noble boat hadsaved her from something very terrible, she wanted to cry. Two unrulytears did splash down on her cheek.
"I must be brave," she told herself. "There is much work to do."
Work. They would go to old Fort Skammel in the morning. She was sure ofthat. And then?
The whole affair, or group of affairs, as she looked back upon them, nowappeared to be coming together. The old wood s
hip with the bolts of clothin her hold, the dory's creaking oars in the night, their visit to _BlackGull_, the strange pirate band, the face-in-the-fire, the curious littleman at Witches Cove, the mysterious room at the heart of the old fort,their pursuers this very night, it all appeared to be reaching out tojoin into a solid whole.
"It wouldn't surprise me at all if Betty's experience off Green Islandwith the big guns and the seaplane might prove to be a part of the drama,though how I can't see."
A sound from off the bay reminded her of the great dark seaplane Pearlhad seen off Monhegan.
"Monhegan and the girl I saved from the sea," she said to herself. "Howdo they work in? Well, perhaps they don't. As life is built up, somestones must be thrown aside.
"Life," she said quite suddenly, "life is a joke."
Somehow the words did not seem to ring true. She was tempted to wonderhow she had come to believe that at all.
"It was the way that boy said it, I suppose," she told herself. "Somepeople have a way about them. They are hard to resist."
Stepping to the chest of drawers in one corner of her room, she took outthe figured taffeta dress. It was a very attractive dress--pink rosesover a background of pale gray. She had never worn it. To wear it wouldbe to declare to her little world that she believed life was a joke. Atleast that was the way she felt about it. So, as yet, she did not feelready to put it on.
Spreading it out on the bed, she looked at it for a long time. Then,carefully folding it up again, she put it back in the drawer.
After that, with all the realization of what to-morrow might bring forth,she did something she had not done since she was a little child. Shedropped on her knees beside her humble bed, and placed her palms togetherin prayer.