Witches Cove

It was night on Casco Bay off the coast of Maine. There was no moon. Stars were hidden by a fine haze. The distant harbor lights of Portland, eight of them, gleaming faintly in pairs like yellow cat's eyes, served only to intensify the blackness of the water and the night.

Ruth Bracket's arms moved backward and forward in rhythmic motion. She was rowing, yet no sound came from her oarlocks. Oars and oarlocks were padded. She liked it best that way. Why? Mystery-that magic word "mystery." How she loved it!

In the stern of the little punt sat slim, black-haired, dark-eyed Betty Bronson, a city girl from the heart of America who was enjoying her first summer on the coast of Maine.

Betty, too, loved mystery. And into her life and that of her stout seashore girl companion had come a little mystery that day. At this very moment, as Ruth rested on her muffled oar, there came creeping across the silent waters and through the black of night a second bit of mystery.

The first mystery had come to them on shore in the hold of a beached three-masted schooner.

Ruth knew the schooner well enough. She had been on board her a dozen times and thought she knew all about her-but she didn't.

The owner, a dark-skinned foreigner who had purchased the schooner six months before, used her for bringing wood to the islands. There is, so they say, an island in Casco Bay for every day in the year. Each island has its summer colony. These summer folks like an open fire to sit by at night and this requires wood. The schooner had been bringing it in from somewhere-from Canada some said. No one seemed to know for sure.

Being an old schooner the wood-carrying craft must be beached from time to time to have her seams calked. They beached her at high tide. Low tide found her stranded. The return of high tide carried her off again.

In this there is no mystery. The mystery began when Ruth and Betty, along with other girls and boys of the island, swarmed up a rope ladder to the tilted deck of the beached schooner.

Being of a bolder nature than the others, having always a consuming desire to see the hold of so ancient a ship, Ruth had led Betty into the very heart of the schooner and had opened a door to pursue her investigation further when a harsh voice called down to her:

"Here now. Come out'a da sheep!"

It was a foreign skipper.

Startled, the girls had quickly closed the door and bolted up the gangway. Not, however, until they had seen a surprising thing. They had seen three bolts of bright, red cloth in that cabin back of the hold. Were there others? They could not tell. The place had been quite dark.

"Looked like silk," Betty had said a few moments later as they walked down the beach.

"Can't tell," Ruth replied. "Probably only red calico, a present for the wood chopper's wife."

"Three bolts?"

"Three wood choppers' wives with seven children apiece," Ruth laughed.

She had found this hard to believe. There certainly was something strange about those bolts of cloth, and the foreign skipper's desire to get them away from the cabin.

And now, as they listened in the night on the bay with muffled oars at rest, they caught the creak of oarlocks. The schooner had got off the beach with the tide. She was anchored back in the bay. That the dory had come from her they did not doubt.

"Where are they going?" Betty asked in a faint whisper as the sound of rowing grew louder, then began to fade away in the distance.

"House Island, perhaps."

"There's nothing over there."

"Only an abandoned house and the old fort. No one living there. Strange, isn't it?"

"Really mysterious," Betty agreed.

"We'll row around the Black Gull, then we'll go home," said Ruth.

Visiting the Black Gull, an ancient six-master that had lain at anchor in the harbor months on end, was one of Ruth's chief delights.

Steam and gasoline, together with the high price of canvas, high wages and demand for speed, had brought this slow going craft to anchor for good.

So there she stood, black and brooding, her masts reaching like bare arms toward heaven, her keel moving with the tide yet ever chafing at the massive anchor chain that was never drawn.

Night was the time to visit her. Then, looming out of the dark, she seemed to speak of other days, of the glory of Maine's shipping, of fresh cut lumber, of fish and of the boundless sea.

It was then that Ruth could fancy herself standing upon the deck, with wind singing in the rigging and setting the sails snapping as they boomed away over a white-capped sea.

They had rowed to the dark bulk that they knew to be the Black Gull and had moved silently along the larboard side, about the stern and half way down the starboard side, when of a sudden a low exclamation escaped Ruth's lips. Something had brushed against her in the dark.

The next instant a gurgling cry came from the bow of the boat. This was followed by a splash.

"She-she's overboard!" thought Ruth, reversing her strokes and back paddling with all her might.

"Ruth!" came a call from the water. "I'm over here! Some-something pulled me in."

So astonished was the stout fisher girl that for a moment she did not move. Something had taken her companion overboard. What could it have been?

By the time she had come to her senses, Betty had gripped the gunwales of the boat and was calling for help. The next moment, drenched with salt water, but otherwise unharmed, she sat shivering in her place.

"Some-something caught me under the chi-chin," she chattered, "and ov-over I wen-went."

"I felt it," said Ruth. "Let's see what it was."

Slowly, deftly, she brought the punt about and alongside. Then, with both hands she groped in the dark.

"I have it!" she exclaimed. "It's a rope ladder. How queer! There's no one staying out here. There never was a ladder before. It goes up to the deck."

"Let's go up," said Betty. "What a lark!"

"You are drenched. You'll catch your death of cold."

"B-best thing to d-do," said Betty, beginning to chatter again, "to take off my clo-clothes and wring them out."

"Right!" said Ruth, fumbling for the painter. "Guess it's safe enough. Just tie the boat to the ladder."

A moment of feeling about and struggling with ropes, then up they went, like blue-jackets, hand over hand. Another moment on deck and Betty was doing a wild whirling dance in the dark while her companion's strong hands wrung out her clothes.

"Boo-oo, it's cold!" shivered the city girl as she struggled to get back into her sodden and wrinkled garments.

"Come on," said Ruth. "Now we're here, we might as well explore. There's a cabin forward-the Captain's. We'll be out of the wind if we get in there."

They were more than out of wind in that cabin. They found a great round stove set up there. With the aid of two matches Ruth examined its flue, and with a third she lighted the fire that was laid in it. The next moment Betty and her clothes were drying before a roaring fire.

"Think of being in such a place at ten o'clock at night!" Betty said with a delighted shudder.

"Might not be so good," said Ruth. "That ladder wasn't left there accidentally. Someone's been here."

"Tell you what!" she added suddenly. "While you are drying out I'll play I'm the ship's watch, and pace the deck."

"You don't think--"

"Don't think anything," said Ruth as she disappeared through the door. "It isn't safe to take too many chances, that's all."

Ruth had not been on deck three minutes before, lost to all sense of impending danger, she walked the deck, captain of this great sailing craft.

Few girls are more generously endowed with imagination than are the fisher-folk's daughters of the coast of Maine. None are more loyal to their state and their seaboard.

As this girl now paced the deck in the dark, she saw herself in slicker and high boots with a megaphone at her lips shouting commands to nimble seamen who swarmed aloft. Sails fluttered and snapped, chains rattled, rigging creaked as they swept adown the boundless sea.

But now the scene was changed. No longer was she aboard a great shipping boat, but an ancient man-o'-war. An enemy's sloop threatened her harbor. With bold daring she set the prow of her ancient craft to seaward ready to do battle with the approaching foe.

Once more, her craft, half fancied, half real, is a cutter, chasing smugglers and pirates.

Pirates! How her blood raced at the thought. There had been pirates in those half-forgotten days, real, dark-faced pirates with cutlasses in their teeth and pistols at their belts. Not an island on the bay but has its story of buried treasure. And as for smugglers' coves, there was one not a mile from the girl's home.

"Smugglers!" she whispered the word. Rumors had run rife in the bay these last months. Dark craft, plying the waters, were supposed to be smugglers' boats. A bomb had sunk a revenue cutter. "Smugglers!" the people had whispered among themselves.

She thought now of the three bolts of red cloth in the beached schooner's hold, and of the dory that had passed them in the night.

"Smugglers!" she thought. Then, "Probably nothing to it. Only a wood hauler."

Then her heart skipped a beat. She had thought of the rope ladder. What a hiding place for smuggled goods, this deserted six-master, lying alone in the dark waters of the bay!

"What if it were used as a smuggler's store room," she thought as her pulse gave a sudden leap. There was a fire laid in the cabin. The ladder was down. "What if some of them are on board at this very moment."

She thought of the slim city girl sitting alone there in the dark. Turning, she started toward the cabin when a sudden sound from the water arrested her.

The next instant, a few hundred yards from the ship, a light flared up. The sight that struck her eye at that moment froze the blood in her veins.

For a full half moment she stood stock still. Then with a sudden effort she shook herself into action to go tip-toeing down the deck and thrust her head in at the cabin door and whisper:

"Betty! Betty! Quick! Get into your clothes! There's something terrible going to happen. Quick! We must get off the ship!"