“Whoo-hoo,” came echoing back from the other shore. After that the woods and waters were still. Only the distant sound of rushing waters against rocky shores beat upon their ears.
“We’ll build a rousing campfire,” Florence said as she sprang ashore. “If she’s lost her way she’ll see the light.”
A small, dead fir tree offered tinder. The scratch of a match, then the fire flamed high. Larger branches of poplar and mountain ash gave a steadier blaze. “She’s sure to see that,” Florence sighed as she settled down upon a log.
There was not long to wait. Greta had indeed caught sight of that bursting flame. She had not, however, been lost. Truth is, she had never been lost in her life. There are those who have the gift of location; they always know where they are. It was so with Greta.
“Girls! Oh, girls!” She came bursting through the bush. “The strangest thing! A violin! A phantom violin! I’m sure it was a phantom. Who else could be playing so divinely up there on that ridge at this hour of the night? Such music!” She drew in a long breath. “Such music you never heard!”
She began a wild dance about the fire that surely must have equaled any performance there in the brave days of long ago when only Indians came to pitch their tents on this narrow camping ground.
“Now,” said Florence as a broad smile overspread her face, “tell us what really happened up there on the ridge.”
Greta did tell them. With the light of the fire playing upon her animated features, she told her story so convincingly that even Florence was more than half convinced that Greenstone Ridge truly was haunted by the ghost of some violinist of enduring fame.
“And after that, one more strange thing,” Greta went on. “I went racing headlong down the trail until I almost pitched myself into the antlers of a giant moose who hadn’t heard me coming. That frightened me. I went head first down the ridge to tumble against a tree. When I picked myself up I was at the top of one more rocky cliff.
“I stood there panting,” she took in a long breath. “I listened for the moose. They don’t chase you, do they?”
“Not often, I guess.” Florence threw fresh fuel on the fire. “Well, this one didn’t. But I was afraid he might. So I waited and listened.” Greta paused.
“It was dark by that time,” she went on at last. “I looked down where you should be, and saw nothing. I looked back at the ridge. It sort of curves there, and—” Again she took a long breath. “I saw a light, thin, pale green light. It seemed to hover on the side of the ridge. I—it—it frightened me. At first it seemed to move. ‘It’s coming this way!’ I told myself. And you’d better believe my heart danced.
“But it didn’t move. Just hung there against the rocks. So, pretty soon I climbed back up to the trail and ran, fast as I dared.
“Now,” she sighed, “what do you think of that?”
“I think,” Florence chuckled, “you have been seeing things!”
“And hearing them,” Jeanne added.
“But you don’t think—” Greta spoke in a sober tone. “You don’t think that music could have been played on the radio? That my ears picked it up?”
“No,” Florence replied at once. “I think that’s nonsense.”
But the little French girl was not sure. She had heard of such things. Why doubt them altogether? Besides, here was a beautiful, glorious mystery. What more could one ask?
“Greta, I envy you!” She threw her arms about the little musician. “You are the discoverer of a great mystery. But we shall unravel this mystery together, you and I. Is it not so? Mais oui! And Florence,” she added, “our big, brave Florence, she shall protect us from all evil.”
In the end Florence was to have a word or two to say about this. If there were mysteries to solve, she must play some more active part than merely that of policeman.
CHAPTER VI
A STRANGE CATCH
In the meantime there were things to do. The boat must be dragged up and turned over, to afford them a shelter for the night. Balsam tips must be gathered. These are nature’s mattresses. Over these their blankets must be spread. This accomplished, they would think of supper.
Three pairs of eager hands accomplished all this in a surprisingly short time. Then, over a fire that had burned down to a bed of glowing coals, they brewed strong tea, toasted bread, broiled bacon, and in the end enjoyed a delicious feast.
After this, with a great log at their backs, they sat staring dreamily at the fire.
“It’s so good to live,” Jeanne murmured.
“Just to live,” Florence echoed.
“And breathe,” Greta added. “You can’t know how it feels to take one long, deep breath of this glorious air, after you have struggled and struggled just for a tiny breath of life.”
For some time after that they sat in silence. Florence was thinking of the wreck, wondering what might be happening to it in their absence. In her short sojourn there she had come to love the old Pilgrim that would sail no more.
“A diver,” she whispered low. “He came in search of something. I wonder what? Will I ever know?”
Jeanne’s thoughts were in far-away France. The glowing coals reminded her of many another campfire that had warmed her on the sloping hillsides of France.
“Bihari,” she thought, “I wonder where he and his gypsy band are tonight?” He had returned to France. She had left him there. But gypsies seldom remain in one place. “He may be back in America.” She listened to the rustle of cottonwood leaves. They seemed to say, “He is in America; you will see him soon.”
“But how could this be?” She smiled at her own fancy. “He is a gypsy. I am on an island. Can he drive his van across miles of water?” But gypsies, she knew right well, went where they chose. Neither wind, storm nor broad waters could stop them.
As for Greta, she was hearing again the magic music of the phantom violin. “Some day,” she told herself, “I shall see that violin and the hands that created that entrancing melody.” But would she? Who could tell?
“Do you know,” Florence at last broke in upon these reveries, “Swen is a fine boy. I wish we could help him with that boat affair he told about.”
“What boat affair?” Jeanne looked at her.
“Don’t you remember? He said it would help the whole island. There are many fishermen living all around the island. A boat comes twice a week for their fish. And the captain pays so very little for their fish! In these hard times money is so scarce the fishermen are being obliged to stay on the island all winter. And some of them have no opportunity to send their children to school.
“Swen says they are trying to charter a boat so they can carry their own fish to market. Not a big boat, but large enough. They’ve got some money pledged. But it is not enough. So there you are.”
Swen was a fine young fisher boy whose nets were set not far from the wrecked Pilgrim.
He it had been, who pointed out to them what a wonderful summer home the wreck might become. For a very little pay he had assisted them in fitting up their rooms. He had rented them a boat and had thrown in much equipment besides.
“He’s a fine boy,” Florence repeated. “When hard times came he was planning to enter college. Now—”
“Now if we only could help him!” Jeanne put in eagerly. “He might go!”
“They live in a lighthouse,” Greta said, “he and his people do. He told me.”
“How romantic!” Jeanne hugged her knees. “We should see him in his lighthouse tower.”
“But most of all I wish we could help him,” Florence said. “All we need—” she prodded the ground with a sharp stick. “All we need is a barrel of gold. Greta wants a fine music teacher. I’d love to travel. Swen wants a boat for his people. And you, Jeanne, what is it you want?”
“I?” Jeanne laughed. “Only happiness for all my good friends.”
“A barrel of gold,” Florence repeated dreamily. “And perhaps it is right beneath us, in this very soil.”
“Beneath us?” Greta stared.
“Why not? A very small barrel, even a tiny keg. This spot, the only level ground on the shores of this bay, has been a camping ground for countless generations. The Indians came to Isle Royale to pound out native copper from the rocks. They built their campfires right here. Swen says if you dig down you will find the remains of those campfires still.”
“How thrilling!” Greta’s eyes were large with wonder. “Suppose we dug down and found some treasure—a barrel of—. But then, Indians didn’t have barrels, not even kegs.” Her dream faded.
“The voyageurs did,” Florence encouraged.
“Who were they?”
“The traders who came after the Indians. They camped here on their way across the lake. Can’t you see them?” With outstretched hands, the big girl stared into the darkness that is Duncan’s Bay at night. “Great, stalwart men, muscles like iron bands, faces browned by the sun, eyes ever looking forward to fresh fields of adventure, the voyageurs!
“Perhaps—” her voice dropped to a low note of mystery, “perhaps they camped here one night with a great bag of gold. Perhaps they were expecting an attack by Indians and, thrusting their gold in their water barrel, buried it here, never to return.”
“Yes,” Jeanne smiled doubtfully, “perhaps they did. Anyway, you are right on one score. It’s a barrel of gold we need.”
“Just now,” Florence laughed, “what we need most is a good night’s sleep.”
Their balsam-scented bed at last called them to rest. They went reluctantly.
Greta and Jeanne were weary. After listening for a time to the constant rush of water against the rocky shores of Blake’s Point and staring at the ribs of their boat just over their heads, they fell asleep.
Florence did not fare so well. Lying there in that narrow bed beneath their boat, she found her mind going over the events of the day and of those days that had gone before.
The adventure with that great pike had excited her beyond belief. Ever a child of nature, she had experienced in this event a return to the wild desires of her early ancestors. They had been wanderers, adventurers, hunters, fishermen, explorers. The world had changed. Her people were now city dwellers.
“And yet—” she felt her splendid muscles swell, “adventure has not passed from the earth. There still are adventures for those who desire them, clean, clear adventures. One—”
She broke short off to sit straight up. The stretch of level land on which they were camped was hardly a hundred feet wide. Back of that was a sloping hillside where the spruce, balsam and pine of a primeval forest battled for a place in the sun. From this forest she had caught some faint sound, the snap of a twig, the click of some hard object against a stone.
“Could be men,” she whispered. “Just over that ridge is Tobin’s Harbor. Many people there. But such a trail! Straight up! And on such a night. They—”
There it was again. She clenched her hands hard to prevent crying out. A loud click had sounded out in the night. “Like the raising of a rifle’s hammer,” she told herself.
But was it a rifle? She must see. Lying flat down, she pushed the covers quietly aside, rolled over twice and found herself beneath the dark night sky.
The moon was still shining. Her eyes soon accustomed themselves to the light. Still lying flat on the damp earth, she listened with all her ears. What she heard set her blood racing. “Footsteps,” she whispered, “in the night.”
They seemed very near, those footsteps. But were they human footsteps? She doubted it. And from this came a sense of relief.
Raising herself on one elbow she peered into the night. At that moment a loud groan sent the chills down her spine.
Next instant she was ready to laugh. A giant old patriarch of his tribe, a moose with wide-spreading antlers had stepped out into the moonlight.
“A moose,” she whispered. “Swen says there are a thousand or more on the island, and that they are harmless. But how old and feeble this one seems!”
She had judged correctly. The moose was nearing the end of his days. His giant antlers were a burden. He walked very slowly and with many a groan. On the island he was known as Old Uncle Ned.
The girl’s lips were parted in a smile when, of a sudden, the blood seemed to freeze in her veins. A second creature had appeared at the edge of the forest—a great, gaunt wolf.
At this instant, with one more groan, Old Uncle Ned stepped into the water prepared to swim across the bay.
The bit of wild life drama witnessed by the girl during the next moment will never leave the walls of her memory. Neither the moose nor the wolf had seen her. The moose, no doubt, smelled fresh water grass on the other side. The wolf was eager for a kill.
Waiting in the shadows, the killer opened his mouth to show his white teeth, his lolling tongue. But the instant the aged moose was well in the water and, for the time, quite defenseless, with one wild spring his pursuer was after him.
“He—he’ll kill that moose!”
Scarcely knowing what she did, in her excitement Florence sprang to her feet, seized the steel casting rod and, racing to the bank, sent the red and white spoon darting toward the swimming wolf.
The first cast fell short. The reel sang and she rolled in for a second try. All this she had done under the impulse of the moment, without truly willing it.
Next instant she was awake to reality, for on a second cast the spoon, striking the wolf on the back, slid down to at last entangle the three-pronged hook in the tangled hair of his bushy tail.
“Jeanne! Greta!” the girl screamed. “Wake up! I’ve caught a wolf!”
“Wake up yourself,” Jeanne replied dreamily. “You are walking in your sleep. You let that fish free long ago.”
“No! No!” Florence, quite beside herself, protested. “Get up! Quick! Quick! I’ve caught a wolf. A real wolf of the forest!”
At the same time she was saying to herself, “Whatever am I to do?”
CHAPTER VII
THE LAST PASSENGERS
Florence had the wolf by the tail, there could be no doubt about that. The three-pronged hook of her trolling spoon was securely entangled in that bushy mat of hair. The line that held the spoon was strong. What was she to do next?
The aged moose, awakened to his peril by the sound of her voice, threw his head about, took one startled look, then grunting prodigiously, went swimming for the other shore.
Turning angrily, the wolf began snapping at the hook. “Won’t do to let him take more line,” the girl told herself. “Got to give the poor old moose a chance.”
At that moment Greta rolled from beneath the boat, leaped to her feet to stand staring, wild eyed, at the scene before her.
“Florence! It’s a wolf!” she cried.
“Yes, and I’ve got him!” Florence laughed in spite of herself.
“Let—let him go! Throw down the rod! Let him go!” Jeanne cried as she came tumbling out from her bed.
But Florence held tight. When the wolf turned about to snap at the line, she reeled in. When he started away, she gave him line, but not too much. There was the venerable moose to consider. Having started the affair, she was determined to finish it.
“Let him go!” Jeanne’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper. “Can’t you see he’s turning? He—he’s coming this way. He’ll eat us!”
Then, calmed by her sense of danger, she rushed back to the half burned out campfire, seized two smouldering sticks and waved them to a red glow. Rushing forward, she threw one at the gray beast who was indeed swimming toward the camping ground.
The flaming stick struck the water with a vicious sizzle. Black on the instant, it nevertheless left its imprint on the wolf’s brain. Once again he wheeled about.
The moose by this time had climbed up the opposite bank and disappeared, as much as to say, “Well, you go ahead and fight it out.”
Strange to say, Florence at this moment began losing her calm assurance. She reeled in when perhaps she should have given line. It was astonishing the way the wolf came in. He had not half the pull of the great fish.
Before she knew it, his feet were on a sandbar. After that it was quite another story. He was not looking for a fight, that wolf. He was looking only for safety. With a mad dash he was down the sandbar, up the bank and into the forest.
Completely unnerved at last, Florence lost all control of the reel. After spinning round and round like mad, it came to a jerking halt. For one split second there was a tremendous strain on the line, then it fell limp.
“He—he’s gone!” Jeanne breathed. “Broke the line.”
“Maybe he did. I’m going to see.” To her companions’ utter consternation, Florence followed the wolf into the dark forest.
She returned some moments later. In her hand was the red and white spoon.
“Went round a tree and tore the hook out of his tail,” she explained calmly. “See! Some gray hairs!” She held it out for inspection. “Gray hairs, that’s all I get. But the moose got his life back, for a time at least. Perhaps he’s learned his lesson and won’t try swimming bays again.
“You see,” she explained, throwing some bits of birch bark on the fire and fanning them into a blaze, “a moose is practically powerless in deep water. If you catch up with him when you’re in a canoe, you may leap into the water, climb on his back, and have a ride. He can’t hurt you. But on land—that’s a different matter.”
The little drama played through, a tragedy of the night averted, Jeanne and Greta crept back among the blankets beneath the boat and, like two squirrels in a nest of leaves, fell fast asleep.
Florence remained outside. The wind had dropped, but still the rush of waves might be heard on the distant shore. This wild throbbing made her restless. She thought of the wreck. How was it standing the storm? Well enough, she was sure of that. But other more terrible storms? Her brow wrinkled.
“Could camp here,” she told herself. “Get a tent or have some one build us a rough cabin. Stay all summer. But then—”
Already she had begun to love their life on the wreck.
“It’s different!” she exclaimed. “Different! And in this life that’s what one wants, things that are different, experiences that are different, a whole life that is different from any other.
“Well,” she laughed a low laugh, “looks as if we were going to get just that, whether we stay on the wreck or on land.”
Her thoughts were now on the mysterious black schooner that had visited the wreck the night before, and now on Greta’s phantom violin and the strange green light.
“May never happen again,” she murmured. “For all that, Greta will go back again and again, when it is quite dark. People are like that.”
She had turned about and was considering a return to her nest beneath the boat when, of a sudden, she dropped on her knees in the dark shadows of a wild cranberry bush.
“Something moving,” she told herself, “moving out there in the channel.”
At first she thought it a swimming moose, and laughed at her own sudden shock. Not for long, for as the thing came into clearer view she saw it was a power boat.
Moving along, it glided past her, dark, silent, mysterious in the night.
“The black schooner!” she whispered. “Wonder if it’s been to the wreck!” Her heart sank.
“But no,” came as an afterthought. “It has been too stormy. They are putting in here for the rest of the night.”
When the schooner had passed on quite out of sight, she made her way to the overturned boat, crept beneath it and had soon found herself a cozy spot among the blankets. She did not fall asleep at once. In time the silence lulled her to repose.
When she awoke there was the odor of coffee and bacon in the air. Greta and Jeanne were getting breakfast.
“Boats leave no trail,” she assured herself. “Unless they have seen the black schooner, I will not tell them it passed in the night.”
A bright glitter was on the surface of the bay. Old Superior had put on a bland and smiling face. No trace now of last night’s boisterous roaring.
“We’ll get back to the Pilgrim as soon as breakfast is over,” Florence decided.
“But the barrel of gold?” Greta protested. “Aren’t we going to dig for that?”
She was thinking of the talk they had had about the campfire, of the Indians, trappers and traders who had camped here for hundreds of years. In a flight of fancy she had dug a barrel of gold from beneath the sandy surface.
“No gold digging today,” Florence laughed. “No spade. But you’ll see! There’s another day coming. We’ll find it, don’t you ever doubt it, a whole barrel of gold!”
Florence was born to the wilds. High boots, corduroy knickers, a blue chambray shirt, a red necktie, these were her joy. She was as much at home in a boat as a cowboy is in a saddle. Breakfast over, she sent their light craft skimming through the narrows and out into the broad stretch of water lying between Blake’s Point and the reef that was the Pilgrim’s last resting place.
“Look how he smiles!” she cried, throwing back her head. “Old Superior, the great deceiver! You can’t trust him!”
And indeed you cannot. When a storm comes sweeping in over those miles of black waters and the fog horn on Passage Island adds its hoarse voice to the tumult of the waves, it is a terrible thing to hear those waves come roaring in.
Florence had accepted the judgment of old time fishermen that for the time the wreck was a safe place to be. But this morning her brow wrinkled. “What if it should be carried out to sea!” she thought with a shudder. “And we, the last passengers, on board!” She said never a word to her companions who, reflecting the smile of Old Superior, were deliriously happy.
CHAPTER VIII
DIZZY’S WELCOME
As they neared the wreck, from somewhere inside it came one wild scream, then the maddest laugh one might ever hope to hear. Just such a laugh as on that other night had completed the task of turning Jeanne into a ghost and frightening the mysterious men of the black schooner away.
Had some stranger been present, he might have expected at this moment to see Florence drop her oars in surprise and consternation. Instead, she rowed calmly on, chuckling meanwhile.
“Dizzy’s welcome!” she exclaimed.
“Good old Dizzy!” Jeanne chimed in.
Dizzy, as they had named him, had been aboardship when they arrived. At least they had found him swimming frantically about in the one-time dining room of the ship. He was a large loon. Crippled by some accident so he could not fly, he had somehow got into this place, but had failed to find his way out.
Almost starved, he had appeared to welcome their arrival. They had bought fresh trout and fed him. From this time on, with no apparent desire to leave the place, he had become a devoted pet.
“We’ll be joining you shortly,” Florence cried out to him as the boat bumped the side of the ship. This news was answered by one more delirious burst of mirth.
“One could almost think he was human!” Greta shuddered in spite of herself. For her this old ship had a haunting appearance.
Old Superior is ever ready enough to display his various moods. The girls had not been aboard an hour when a dense fog came sweeping in from the north.
“Never find our way if we were out there now,” Florence said with a shrug of her stout shoulders.
There came a slow, drizzling rain, followed by more and denser fog.
Two hours later a wild storm came sweeping in. Sheets of water, seeming at times to leap from the very lake, dashed against narrow cabin windows. There was a ceaseless wash-wash of waves against the black hull of the wreck. What did this mean to the happy trio? Nothing at all. They were down in their private swimming pool with Dizzy. Such a strange and wonderful swimming pool as it was too! Once the dining saloon of the great ship, it now lacked both chairs and tables, but the decorative railing leading to the floor above made a perfect diving board. A second rail ran slantwise into the water that at the far end must be twenty feet in depth.
“Shoot the shoots!” Greta cried as, sitting astride the rail, she shot downward to hit the water with a splash and to go swimming away. How Dizzy beat the water with his wings and screamed! How they laughed and splashed him! How he dove and swam!
“It—it’s wonderful!” Jeanne bubbled, her mouth half filled with water. “And to think,” she exclaimed as she dragged herself to a place beside Florence on the topmost step of the broad stairway, “to think that only a short time back all this was swarming with people off on a holiday! Some gay, some solemn, some rich, some poor, but all promenading the deck and all coming in here for their dinner. And now look! Here we are, only three. And it is all ours! And look at the cabins! Rows of them on either side, high and dry, half of them. People could sleep in them.”
“But they never will,” Florence said soberly. “We are the old ship’s last passengers, no doubt about that. Next winter ice will form on the bay. It may be a foot thick. Then a storm will come roaring in and break it all up. The ice will come tearing at the old ship and cut her in pieces, if she lasts that long.” Florence had not meant to add this last bit; it just came out.
“Of course the ship will last the summer through.” There was the slightest tremor in Jeanne’s voice. “Everyone says that. S-o-o-o!” she cried in her old merry way, “Let us enjoy it all while we may!” Once again she sat astride the rail to go sliding down and lose herself in a mass of foam.
“Old ships,” Florence thought, “are like old houses. They have secrets to tell. What stories the doors to those cabins could relate!” Her eyes swept the long array of cabin doors.
“Secrets they keep,” she whispered. “And treasures they sometimes hide, these old ships.” She was wondering what the secrets of this old ship were and whether after all there was some treasure hidden here.
They had set up a small stove in the captain’s cabin. Five minutes later they were all three doing a wild Indian dance round the fire. This ended by a pow-wow in blankets, then a feast of smoked trout, hard crackers and some hot drink only Jeanne knew how to make. And still, outside, the wind drove rain against the windowpanes.
“If she lasts that long,” Jeanne whispered under her breath. She was thinking of Florence’s words about the ship.
For the time it appeared there was nothing to fear. The wind dropped at sunset. Clouds went scudding away and the moon, shining like a newly polished copper kettle, hung over all.
After Greta and Jeanne had crept into their berths, Florence slipped into knickers and mackinaw to climb the steps leading to the bridge. There, while the moon sank lower and lower, she paced slowly back and forth.
In common with all other girls, this big girl had her dreams. Strange dreams they were that night. For her the ship was not a wreck, but a living ship riding on an even keel, plowing its way through the dark night waters. She was the captain on the bridge. From time to time, as if for a word with the wheelman, she paused in her march; at times, too, appeared to jangle a bell. For the most part she paced slowly back and forth.
“Why not?” she murmured at last. “Why should I not some day command a ship? I am strong as a man. There would be things to learn. I could master them as well as any man, I am sure.”
She paused for a moment’s reflection. Had there been other lady captains? Yes, she had read stories of one who commanded a tugboat in Puget Sound.
And there had been the lady of the “Christmas Tree Ship.” The husband of this Christmas tree lady had been lost on his craft while bringing thousands of Christmas trees to Chicago. She had chartered another ship and had carried on his work.
“What a glorious task!” the girl murmured. “Bringing Christmas trees to the people of a great city!
“She’s dead now,” she recollected, “that lady captain is dead. The Christmas tree ship sails no more. But it shall sail. Some day I shall be its captain. And Christmas trees shall be free to all those who are poor.”
Laughing low, she once more resumed her walk on the bridge. This time her thoughts dwelt upon things very near at hand. “This wreck,” she was thinking, “this old Pilgrim—is it a safe place to be?
“It—it just has to be!” she exclaimed after a moment’s reflection. “It’s such a grand place for the summer. Broad deck, sloping a little, but not too terribly much. Cabins without number, a swimming pool that once was a dining hall. Who could ask for more? And yet—” her brow wrinkled. The little breezes that blew across the water seemed to whisper to her of danger.
At last, shaking herself free from all those thoughts, she went down to her cabin and was soon fast asleep.
CHAPTER IX
THE CALL OF THE GYPSIES
The following day was bright and clear. The waters of Old Superior were as blue as the sky. Even the wreck took on a scrubbed and smiling appearance.
“As if we were all prepared to shove off for one more voyage,” Jeanne said with a merry laugh.
As soon as the sun had dried the deck, Jeanne and Greta spread blankets and, stretching themselves out like lazy cats, prepared for a glorious sun bath.
It was a drowsy, dreamy day. In the distance a dark spot against the skyline was Passage Island where on stormy nights a search-light, a hoarse-hooting fog horn and a whispering radio warned ships of danger.
All manner of ships pass between Isle Royale and Passage Island. They were passing now, slowly and, Jeanne thought, almost mournfully. First came a dark old freighter with cabins fore and aft, then a tugboat towing a flat scow with a tall derrick upon it, and after these, all painted white and with many flags flying, an excursion boat. And then, reared over on one side and scooting along before the wind, a sailboat.
Just to lie in the sun and watch this procession was life enough for Jeanne and Greta. Not so Florence. She was for action. Dizzy needed fish. She would row over to the shoals by Blake’s Point. There she would troll for trout.
The water about Blake’s Point is never still. It is as if some great green serpent of the sea lies stretched among the rocks and keeps it in perpetual motion by waving his tail. It was not still when Florence arrived.
“Just right,” she whispered, as if afraid the fishes might hear. “Rough enough for a little excitement, and no real danger.”
Casting a shining lure into the water, she watched the line play out as she rowed.
A big wave lifted her high. Still the line played out. The boat sank low. She checked the line. Then, watching the rocks that she might not come too close and snag them, she rowed away.
For some time she circled out along the shoals, then back again. She had begun to believe there were no fish, and was musing on other things, phantom violins, black schooners, gray wolves, Old Uncle Ned, when, with a suddenness that was startling, her reel began to sing.
Dropping her oars, she seized the pole and began reeling in rapidly. Next moment she tossed a fine three pound trout into her boat. “You get ’em quick or not at all,” Swen had said to her. She had got this one “quick.”
An hour later four fine trout lay in the stern of her boat. “Enough,” she breathed. “We eat tonight, and so does Dizzy.”
The day was still young. She had not meant to visit Duncan’s Bay, but now the place called to her.
Swen’s short, powerful rifle lay in the prow of her boat. Why had she brought it? Perhaps she could not tell. Now she was glad it was there.
“Go ashore on Duncan’s Bay,” she told herself. “Go hunting phantoms and, perhaps, a gray wolf or two. Wouldn’t mind shooting them, the murderers, not a bit!”
It was a strange wolf she was to come upon in the forest that day.
With corduroy knickers tucked in high laced boots, a flannel shirt open wide at the neck, and a small hat crammed well down on her head, this stalwart girl might have been taken for a man as, rifle under arm, she trudged through the deep shadows of the evergreen forest covering the slope of Greenstone Ridge.
That she was in her element was shown by the spring in her footstep, the glad, eager look in her eyes.
“Life!” she breathed more than once. “Life! How marvelous it is!
“‘I love life!’” She hummed the words of a song she had once heard.
“Life! Life!” she whispered. Here indeed was life in its most primitive form. At times through a narrow opening she caught a glimpse of gray gulls soaring like phantom ships over the water. To her ears came the long, low whistle of some strange bird. She was not surprised when she found herself standing face to face with a magnificent broad-antlered moose. She stood quite still.
Great eyed, the moose stared at her. A sound to her right caught her attention. She looked away for an instant. When her gaze returned to the spot where the monarch of the forest had stood, he had vanished.
“Gone!” she exclaimed low. “Gone! He was taller than a man, yet he vanished without a sound! How strange! How sort of wonderful! But I wonder—”
But there was that sound from below. Snapping of twigs and swishing of branches. No moose that. She would see what was down there.
She did see, and that almost at once. A few silent steps, and she came upon him—a man. He was standing at a spot where a break in the evergreens left a view of Duncan’s Bay.
He was looking straight ahead. On his face was a savage, hungry look. Only the night before the girl had seen that same look in the eyes of a wolf.
She was not long in learning the reason. In plain view through that narrow gap was the patriarch of his tribe, the moose she had saved from the wolf.
“But why that look?” She was puzzled, but not for long. In the hands of that man was a rifle. An ugly smile overspread his face. His teeth shone out like fangs as he lifted the rifle and took deliberate aim at the moose.
She recalled Swen’s words: “Isle Royale is a game preserve. You will not be allowed to kill even a rabbit.”
“This man is a poacher.” Her mind, always keen, worked quickly. “I can save the moose, and I will!”
Swinging her own rifle into position, she fired well over the heads of man and moose. The shot rang out. The startled moose fled.
And the man? She did not pause to see. Like a startled rabbit she went dodging and gliding back and forth among the evergreens. In her mind, repeated over and over, was the question, “Did he see me? Did he see me?”
* * * * * * * *
After a long and glorious sun bath followed by a delicious lunch served on deck, Jeanne and Greta sat for a long time staring dreamily at the sea. Then Jeanne, throwing off her velvet robe, stood up, slim and straight, on the planked deck.
“Wonder if I can have forgotten,” she murmured. Then, seizing a tambourine, she began a slow, gliding and weaving motion that, like some beautiful work evolved from nothing by the painter’s skillful hand, became a fantastic and wonderful dance.
For a full quarter hour Greta sat spellbound. She had seen dancing, but none like this. Now the tambourine was rattling and whirling over the little French girl’s head, and now it lay soundless on the deck. Now the dancer whirled so fast she was but a gleam of white and gold. And now her arms moved so slowly, her body turned so little, she might have seemed asleep.
“Bravo! Bravo!” cried Greta. “That was marvelous! Where did you learn it?”
“The gypsies taught me.” Dropping upon the deck, Jeanne rolled herself in a blanket like a mummy.
“People,” she said slowly, “believe that all gypsies are bad. That is not so. One of the very great preachers was a gypsy—not a converted gypsy—just a gypsy.
“Bihari and his wife were my godparents in France. They were wandering gypsies, but such wonderful people! They took me when I had no home. They gave me shelter. I learned to dance with my bear, such a wonderful bear. He is dead now, and Bihari is gone. I wish they were here!”
Next moment she went rolling over and over on the deck. Springing like a beautiful butterfly from a cocoon, she whirled away in one more riotous dance.
It was in the midst of this that a strange thing happened. Music came to them from across the waters—wild, delirious music.
Jeanne paused in her wild dance. For a space of seconds she stood there drinking in that wild glory of sound.
Then, as if caught by some spell, she began once more to dance. And her dance, as Greta expressed it later, was “like the dance of the angels.”
“Greta,” Jeanne whispered hoarsely when at last the music ceased and she threw herself panting on the deck, “that is gypsy music! No others can make music like that. There is a boat load of gypsies out there by Duncan’s Bay.”
“Yes, yes!” Greta sprang to her feet. “See! It is a white boat. It is just about to enter the Narrows. Perhaps Florence will see it.”
“Florence—” There was a note of pain in Jeanne’s voice. “Florence has the boat. I cannot go to them. Perhaps I shall not see them—my friends, the gypsies. And they make music, such divine music!”
“Music—divine music,” Greta whispered with sudden shock. “Can one of these have been my phantom violinist?
“No,” she decided after a moment’s contemplation, “that was different. None of these could have played like that.”
“It is the call!” Jeanne cried, springing to her feet and stretching her arms toward the distant shore. Fainter, more indistinct now the music reached their ears. “The gypsies’ call! I have no boat. I cannot go.”