CHAPTER VI OFF FOR FURTHER ADVENTURE
Pearl returned home that evening to find a door to new and strangeadventure standing wide open before her.
Donald, her brother, was seated before a small fire in the lowold-fashioned fireplace at the back of their living room.
"Don!" she cried joyously. "You home?"
"Yep." Big, broad shouldered, sea tanned, Don turned to smile at her.
"Don, I caught a halibut, a twenty-five pounder!"
"No?"
"I did."
"Let's see it."
"I--I can't. It went out to sea in my dory. But Don! I've got a new doryand a bigger halibut."
"No?" Don rose.
"Come on. I'll show you."
"That," said Don after inspecting the dory fore and aft, and listening toher story, "is a right fine dory, staunch and seaworthy. I'd like to takeit to Monhegan."
"Monhegan?" Pearl's heart gave a great leap. Monhegan! The dream islandof every coast child's heart. Don was going there.
"Yes," said Don. "Swordfishing is played out, and the canners have allthe horse mackeral they can use this season. I've decided to pack mylobster traps on the sloop and go up about there somewhere, mebby onlyBooth Bay Harbor. All depends. They say lobster catches are fine on theshoals up there."
"But Don," Pearl's eyes shone with a new hope, "if you take my dory,you'll take me. You won't spend all your time tending lobster pots.There's fine fishing up there. I caught a halibut. You'll take me, won'tyou?"
"Well," said Don, thoughtfully, "I might. You'd get lonesome, though.Nobody but me and you and the sea; that is, nobody that we know."
"Take Ruth, too," Pearl said quickly. "You should have heard her talkabout Monhegan over there by the old fort. She'll be wild to go. And sheis considerable of a fisherman, good as most men."
Don considered the proposition. Ruth was his cousin. They had been muchtogether on the sea. Unlike his dreamy little sister, she had always beenable and practical.
"Why, yes," he said at last, "I don't see why she shouldn't go, if shewants to."
Ruth was overjoyed at the prospect. She had no trouble in obtainingpermission to go, for, though Don had barely turned twenty, he was knownas one of the ablest seamen on all Casco Bay, and no one feared to sailwith him.
So, one day when the sky was clear and the water a sheet of blue, theyrounded the island and went scudding away toward the island of manydreams.
As old Fort Skammel faded from their sight, Ruth thought of the unsolvedmystery hidden there and resolved to delve more deeply into it as soon asshe returned from this trip.
Someone has said that all of life is closely interwoven, that warp andwoof, it is all one. Certainly this at times appears to be true. Therewas that lurking in the immediate future which was to connect experiencesat Monhegan with the old fort's hidden secret. But this for a time washidden by the veil of the future which ever hangs like a fog just beforeus.