Legends of the Ghost Pirates Page 7

  They keep paddling, and we slowly get closer to the old life-saving station. When we float alongside it, I can see there’s a long set of rails like train tracks on the side of the building that’s protected from rough water. The rails run from inside the garage doors all the way deep into the water. That must be how they launched their lifeboats when the weather was rough.

  Looking at the old life-saving station, it occurs to me we’re moving past it a little faster. It’s strange because the girls don’t seem to be paddling any harder. In fact, they seem to be paddling less. What’s going on? Suddenly, I get it. I know what the nagging feeling was.

  The tide’s coming in and that means the cove is filling up with water; a lot of water. The narrower the channel gets the faster the current is going to run as the water gets squeezed through. I’ve never been in this cove before, so I have no idea what to expect. But the closer we get to the narrow section we pick up speed.

  Sara turns back to look at me, “Fisher?” She’s also just realized what’s happening. We’ve already been swept past the life-saving station. Just past her shoulders I can see what looks to be some sort of an old wharf on the left.

  “Let’s try for the wharf,” I shout. Maybe we can get out of the current and tie up alongside.” Sara nods and they both beginning to dig in harder with their paddles. The thing is, we’re now moving faster than they’re paddling. The closer we get to the narrow section the swifter the current is, and now it seems we have little control.

  The old wharf is approaching fast. I steer the boat hard to the left toward it– but we keep moving sideways up the cove. “Paddle harder!” I shout. The current gets even stronger, and we speed up even more regardless that we’re going sideways. I don’t like not being in control of the boat. It’s like white water rafting with an-out-of-control sailboat. In an instant, we’ve lost all control of the sailboat. Before I realize it, the wharf shoots past our bow, from right to left, and the side of the boat hull is aimed dead-ahead in the narrower part of the channel for large rocks. We’ll be crushed on the side of the rocks.

  Chapter 11

  Face in the Window

  We’re moving rapidly sideways straight for the rocks. If we don’t do anything we’ll be smashed to little pieces! It doesn’t matter how hard they paddle or where I steer, we have little control where we’re headed. Just off to the side of the rocks and more toward the middle of the channel I can see there are several mooring balls for visiting boaters to tie up to. Tied to one of the moorings there’s an old dingy that barely floats. It’s probably been abandoned there for a long time.

  Sara shouts from the bow, “If we could just paddle over to the mooring and grab on, that’d stop us!”

  I’m watching the large rock rapidly getting closer. “We’re moving too fast! Doesn’t matter how hard you paddle, we’ll miss it before we ever get close enough to grab on.”

  “We have to try!” Sara shouts back and begins to paddle even harder toward the mooring balls. But sailboats just don’t move very well with paddles.

  I realize Jo isn’t paddling at all; she’s pulled a coil of rope out of the front locker. As if she’s done it a hundred times, she takes one end of the rope and quickly ties it to the middle of the paddle. Once the rope is secure to the paddle, she stands up on the bow, paddle in hand like a harpoon, and holding the coil in the other. She looks like she’s going after Moby Dick.

  “What are you doing!” I shout.

  Jo doesn’t answer. Her eyes are intensely watching the dingy as we quickly approach it with her arm cocked back ready to hurl off the paddle. The dingy is soon just off our bow about fifteen feet. That’s as close as it’s ever going to get. Jo takes a deep breath, slowly lets it out, then lets the paddle fly right at the dingy. CLUNK! It’s a direct hit, and the paddle lands wedging itself between the seats and the floorboard. In a split second Jo takes the end of the rope, still in her hand, and secures it to the bow cleat. When we go sliding past the old dingy, the rope Jo’s tied on suddenly goes tight, whipping the bow around pointing us right at the dingy. The rope holds us tight and the whole sailboat arcs away from the rocks.

  “Jo, you did it!” Sara shouts and gives her a big hug. I don’t know how she did it, and I’m still looking at the paddle wedged under the seat. Whatever the reason, it worked, we’re safe now and we’ve swung away from the rocks.

  Suddenly the rotting old rope that ties the dingy to the mooring ball snaps from the extra weight of our sailboat. Now trailing a dingy, we’re once again at the mercy of the current. Luckily when Jo hooked the dingy it’d swung us well clear of the rocks so now we’re out of danger. We’re still drifting, though, just farther up the cove.

  I notice the farther we drift into the cove the less speed we seem to be moving. We’re slowing down as the current nears the end of its journey. It doesn’t take too long before we’re harmlessly drifting almost at upper end of the cove.

  “We’re safe now,” I call out. “Sara, see if you can paddle us over to one of the other mooring balls.”

  Soon, it only takes a minute or two before we’re safely tied off again to the security of another mooring ball. Now that we’ve stopped moving I begin to relax. It all happened so fast; one minute we’re out of the wind not moving, the next we’re in a crazy current shooting us straight for the rocks. And now here we sit as if nothing had happened at all.

  Before we left Trent Harbor it never occurred to me we’d need a way to get to shore. You can’t just take a sailboat like ours to the embankment; it’ll get stuck on the bottom well before getting close. Looking at the old dingy alongside our boat, I realize we now have an easy way to get in. Maybe. Looking closer at the rotting dingy, before we make it to shore, it may just sink.

  What to do next? “We’ve got about an hour of daylight left,” I call out to the girls. “Do you wanna go to shore and do a little exploring? It’s probably going to take all our time just to figure out what ‘Under the old man’s nose’ means.”

  Jo says, “I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”

  “I’m pretty hungry too,” I say.

  Sara jumps below, and says, “Why don’t I heat up a can of beef stew. We can go to shore after we eat.” She pokes her head back up and looks at me giggling. “And Fisher, just because I’m cooking dinner doesn’t mean I’m the head cook and cleaner.”

  While Sara’s below heating up dinner, Jo and I are sitting in the cockpit. I really don’t have anything to say to her and apparently she’s got nothing to say to me, so we sit in silence looking at the surrounding cove.

  Breaking the silence, I ask, “Can you hand me the binoculars.”

  She pulls them from around her neck and gives them to me.

  I put them to my eyes and have a look around. The fog has cleared enough that I get a good view of the surrounding shore. On this island there’s not too much to look at. As far as I can tell there are no trees. I wonder if that means in really bad storms, ocean swells crash across the island taking trees with them. Who knows. I also notice there are a few old lobster shacks that could be abandoned. Back up the cove from where we came, one of the shacks has a floating dock that, if needed, we could tie the sailboat off to. Farther back toward the entrance, I get a good view of the old Coast Guard life-saving station. That might be fun to check out later. And past that I can see open-ocean with waves crashing on the rocks. Beyond the rocks there are dark thunderheads forming to the west silently approaching toward us. It’s going to be a wet and wild night.

  I put the binoculars down in my lap and look at Jo. She’s also looking at the surrounding shore. “That was a pretty cool trick with the paddle,” I say.

  Not looking at me, just above a whisper, she says, “Thanks.”

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” I ask.

  “I didn’t.” She pauses for a moment. “I’m just good at coming up with stuff like that.”

  Again, we sit in silence a little longer. I can smell the beef stew coming up from the
cabin which makes me even hungrier. A couple of seagulls on shore cry out as they fight over a crab.

  Jo turns and looks at me. “Fisher. Why don’t you like me?”

  Where did that come from? I’m about to say something, but no words come out. I have no idea how to answer her. I feel like I’m frozen in time and all I can do is look at her watching me.

  “Dinners up!” Sara calls from below. Saved. I quickly stand up, taking a quick glance at Jo, then climb down the steps below.

  It’s dark down here in the cabin, so I pull out some matches and light the two oil lamps that are mounted on the sides. With the yellow flickering light it gives a warm glow about the cabin. When I sit down at the little table, Sara hands me a bowl of steaming beef stew. I quickly shovel food into my mouth; I don’t know if it’s because I’m so hungry, or so I don’t have to talk to Jo. Both girls are soon also sitting at the little table eating warm stew. Looking out the side windows I can see it’s quickly getting darker.

  With a mouthful of stew, I say, “I think we’re in for a good storm tonight.” Just as I say that, with the approaching front the wind begins to blow harder. As the boat swings around tied to the mooring ball, we can feel the movement. Down here in the cabin it’ll be warm and dry, and it can rain and storm as hard as it likes, but we’ll be fine.

  I like watching a good summer storm, so after I take my last bite of stew, I poke my head up out of the cabin to watch. There’s lightning exploding far to the west. In the twilight the few abandoned shacks are silhouetted against the flat landscape. Looking toward the south at the life-saving station, it is too dark and its look-out tower pokes up against the twilight sky.

  Suddenly I see something. I blink and look again. Did I really see a faint light coming from the tower? Probably the distant lightning’s messing with my eyes. But now that I’m looking harder, it’s completely dark. I’m about to go back below when I see the dim glow again. But this time it stays on, not like a flash of lightening.

  I keep my eyes fixed to the flickering light. At times I think my eyes are just playing tricks on me, but other times I’m certain I’m seeing light coming out of the top windows. “Can someone hand me the binoculars?”

  Jo hands them to me. “What’d you see?”

  “Dunno.” I put the binoculars tight to my eyes and aim them straight for the windows. But just as I do that, the light goes out. “I thought I saw a light, but now it’s not there anymore.”

  I hand them to Jo, and she points them where I was looking. After a few seconds she hands them back. “Are you sure? I didn’t see anything.”

  “No, I’m not sure.” I put them back to my eyes. Still dark in the tower. The binoculars are powerful, and I can look really closely at each window. Suddenly there’s a crack of lightning that turns the night sky into a flash of daylight. In that instant I see it. A shadowed face in the window!

  Chapter 12

  Graveyard

  “AH!” I scream falling off the steps into the cabin.

  “What happened?” Sara asks, as she grabs my arm to pick me up off the cabin floor.

  “A face! There was a face in the tower window.”

  “Blarney Bart,” Jo says under her breath.

  Sara stops and looks hard at Jo shaking her head.

  “Believe me! I saw a face!” My heart rate’s instantly doubled. Quickly grabbing the binoculars off the floor, I stand up again poking my head out of the cabin. Rain has started to come down in sheets. When I put them to my eyes the lenses quickly streak with water. I can’t see a thing. I try looking with just my eyes, but it’s no use. I’m getting soaked. I go back below sliding the hatch closed behind me to keep the rain out.

  When I’m seated, Sara tosses me a towel. “Here. You’re soaking wet.”

  Nobody says what we are all thinking; Blarney Bart the ghost pirate. There’s an awkward silence in the cabin as we each avoid eye contact. I made an idiot out of myself when the Adelaide sailed past, so I don’t want to look like an idiot again. But I’m positive I saw a face in the window. What if it really was a ghost? I wish one of the others had seen it too besides me.

  Finally Sara asks, “Do you really think you saw a face? Maybe it was just an owl or something. Owls like living in abandoned buildings, you know.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “Probably just an owl.” But that’s not at all what I saw—I saw a face! I can hardly stand it. The growing tension feels like it’s trying to suffocate me. And, there’s still Jo’s question. I don’t actually not like her; she’s just… oh, I don’t know. This little cabin is suddenly feeling way too small. If we were at the old wharf I’d jump off and get the heck away from these two girls.

  After I dry my head, I look at my watch. Close enough. “There’s not much to do, so I’m going to turn in.”

  “Just like that, you’re going to bed? What about what you just saw?” Sara asks. “How can you think about sleeping if you just saw a face in the window?”

  “With all this talk about Blarney Bart and ghost pirates, I’m probably just imagining things,” I say trying to convince myself more than anyone else. “It’s nothing. In the morning we’ll probably all have a good laugh.” Sara shakes her head with her arms crossed.

  I’m not going to be able to sleep, though, that’s for sure. But I don’t want to talk to them anymore, so I make my way forward to the V-berth. Jo looks at me with a raised eyebrow as I move past her. Message received; her question hasn’t been forgotten.

  *

  It’s now the next morning, and after a good breakfast, the three of us are rowing to shore. So far the weather’s starting off as a sunny day without a cloud in the sky. Nobody’s talked about the face I saw, and I think Jo’s forgotten about the question she asked me. That makes my morning even better.

  The little dingy is so old I’m surprised it floats us. I’m rowing, Sara’s in front and Jo’s in back. But the trick to this old dingy is both Jo and Sara, who have plastic pails, have to bail the water out as fast as it’s coming in. They’re not tired—yet, so it’s lucky we don’t have far to go. My feet are good and wet, but that’s why I’m waiting to put my shoes on when we get to shore.

  When we hit the little pebbly beach, Sara jumps out then holds it steady for us while we step out. I sit on a rock to put my shoes on. “Before we start searching for treasure let’s take a look at the old life-saving station.”

  “Maybe we’ll see the owl,” Jo says with a hint of sarcasm.

  Sara pulls the dingy far up on shore past the high-tide mark, and says, “You don’t think it was an owl?”

  Jo turns to start hiking toward the life-saving station, and calls back, “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Sara turns to me and shrugs.

  “She’s your cousin. Don’t look at me like that.” But honestly, I know we’re not going to see any owl. I know what I saw last night. I’m just glad the sun is shining, or I might not be so eager to have a look.

  The three of us follow a path south to the life-saving station, and before long we’re standing in front of it. The morning sun’s warm, but suddenly there’s a chill that runs up the back of my spine. I can’t stop thinking of the face I saw last night; what if it were to appear suddenly again this morning? Sara’s arms are crossed and her face has a look like she’d rather be someplace else.

  At the big double doors I grab hold of the rusty padlock and turn it over in my hands. It’s doesn’t look like it’s been open in years. Stepping back and looking up at the tower, all the windows are in place and none are broken or cracked.

  “I’m not sure how an owl could get in there,” I say as I put a hand over my forehead blocking the sun out of my eyes.

  “But a ghost pirate would have no problem getting in,” Jo says stepping back a little farther. “This place gives me the willies.”

  “If you mean, the creeps, yeah me too,” I say still squinting up into the sun. Sara moves to her right while also looking up at the tower, but doesn’t see a
nything unusual. All those late night movies I’ve watched keep popping into my head—the ones where the teens look into an empty window and suddenly an ax murderer shatters the glass.

  Looking up at the window, I say, “We’ve got a lot of island to explore so we’d better get going. Nothing to see here. The chart shows it’s about two miles long, but really narrow; maybe only two or three hundred yards wide.”

  Just a little past the abandoned life-saving station, Jo walks ahead of us. “Hey! Check this out.” She’s pointing to a little area that’s almost impossible to notice. It’s a small wall of rocks, maybe only shin high, that’s been laid out in a large rectangle area like a small yard. The rectangle wall is so old and crumbly that it blends in with the rest of the rocky land. But without a doubt, someone a long time ago stacked all the rocks forming this little yard.

  Sara stands with her hands on her hips. “What do you suppose it is? It’s been here a long time. Probably longer than the life-saving station.”

  Jo slowly walks the perimeter never taking her eyes off the middle. Since we’ve left on this trip this is the most serious I’ve seen her. When she’s standing next to us again, she says in a soft whisper, “I know what it is.” Jo takes two steps away from the stone wall as a cool wind whips her red hair across her face. “It’s a graveyard.”

  Chapter 13

  View from the Dead

  Sara puts her hands to her mouth. “A graveyard? Fisher, she’s right.”

  It’s hard to tell, but it does seem like there are headstones lying flat to the ground rather than upright. The stones are so old they blend in with all the other rocks on this small island, but there’s an unmistakable pattern to the way they’re laid out; it’s clearly just like a small graveyard.

  I move closer about to step over when Jo grabs my elbow. “What in God’s name do ya think you’re doing!”

  There’s a whip of wind that blows through causing me to look away for a moment. There are no birds singing or gulls calling out. It’s quiet except for the wind whistling past. I shake my elbow loose from her grip. “I’m having a closer look.”