Carol Norton - The Phantom Yacht

“I guess it’s the only thing to do,” Dori acknowledged dolefully. “O goodie,” she added more cheerfully as she held up a box of crackers. “These, with butter and some sardines, ought to keep us from starving.”

“Great!” Nann seemed determined to be appreciative. “And for a drink let’s have cambric tea with canned milk and sugar. Now the next thing, where is a can opener?”

She opened a drawer in the kitchen table and squealed exultingly, “Dories Moore, see what I’ve found.” She was holding something up. “It’s a little candle end, but it will be just the thing if we need a light in the night when our oil is gone.”

“Goodness!” Dories shuddered. “I hope we’ll sleep so tight we won’t know it is night until after it’s over.”

Nann had also found a can opener and they were soon hungrily eating the supper Dories had suggested. “I call this a great lark!” the older girl said brightly. They were sitting on straight wooden chairs, drawn close to the bright fire, and their viands were on another chair between them.

“The kitchen is so nice and warm now that I hate plunging out into the fog to go upstairs,” Dori shudderingly remarked. “I presume that is where Aunt Jane’s maid used to sleep. Mumsie said she had one named Maggie who had been with her forever, almost. But she died last June. That must be why Aunt Jane didn’t come here this summer.”

When the girls had eaten all of the sardines and crackers and had been refreshed with cambric tea, they rose and looked at each other almost tragically. Then Nann smiled. “Don’t let’s give ourselves time to think,” she suggested. “Let’s take a box of matches. You get one while I relight the lantern. I have the candle end in my pocket. Now, bolster up your courage and open the door while I shelter our flickering flame from the cold night air that might blow it out.”

Dories had her hand on the knob of the door which led out upon the back porch, but before opening it, she whispered, “Nann, you don’t suppose that ghost over in the ruin ever prowls around anywhere else, do you?”

“Of course not, silly!” Nann’s tone was reassuring. “There isn’t a ghost in the old ruin, or anywhere else for that matter. Now open the door and let’s ascend to our chamber.”

The fog on the back porch was so dense that it was difficult for the girls to find the entrance to their boarded-in stairway. As they started the ascent, Nann in the lead, they were both wondering what they would find when they reached their loft bedroom.

The girls cautiously crept up the back stairway which was sheltered from fog and wind only by rough boards between which were often wide cracks. Time and again a puff of air threatened to put out the flickering flame in the lantern. With one hand Nann guarded it, lest it suddenly sputter out and leave them in darkness. There was a closed door at the top of the stairs, and of course, it was locked, but the key was in it.

“Doesn’t that seem sort of queer?” Dories asked as her friend unlocked the door, removed the key and placed it on the inside.

“Well, it does, sort of,” Nann had to acknowledge, “but I’m mighty glad it was there, or how else could we have entered?”

Dories said nothing, but, deep in her heart, she was wishing that she and Nann were safely back in Elmwood, where there were electric lights and other comforts of civilization.

Holding the lantern high, the girls stood in the middle of the loft room and looked around. It was unfinished after the fashion of attics, and though it was quite high at the peak, the sloping roof made a tent-like effect. There were two windows. One opened out toward the rocky point, above which a continuous inward rush of white breakers could be seen, and the other, at the opposite side, opened toward swampy meadows, a mile across which on clear nights could be seen the lights of Siquaw Center.

A big, old-fashioned high posted bed, an equally old-fashioned mahogany bureau and two chairs were all of the furnishings.

They found bedding in the bureau drawers, as Miss Moore had told them. Placing the lantern on the bureau, Nann said: “If we wish to have light on the subject, we’d better make the bed in a hurry. You take that side and I’ll take this, and we’ll have these quilts spread in a twinkling.”

Dories did as she was told and the bed was soon ready for occupancy. Then the girls scrambled out of their dresses, and, just as they leaped in between the quilts, the flame in the lantern sputtered and went out.

Dories clutched her friend fearfully. “Oh, Nann,” she said, “we never looked under the bed nor behind that curtained-off corner. I don’t dare go to sleep unless I know what’s there.”

Her companion laughed. “What do you ’spose is there?” she inquired.

“How can I tell?” Dories retorted. “That’s why I wish we had looked and then I would know.”

Her friend’s voice, merry even in the darkness, was reassuring. “I can tell you just as well as if I had looked,” she announced with confidence. “Back of these curtains, you would find nothing but a row of nails or hooks on which to hang our garments when we unpack our suitcases, and under the bed there is only dust in little rolled-up heaps – like as not. Now, dear, let’s see who can go to sleep first, for you know we have an engagement with our friend, Gibralter Strait, at sunrise tomorrow morning.”

“You say that as though you were pleased with the prospect,” Dories complained.

“Pleased fails to express the joy with which I anticipate the – ” Nann said no more, for Dories had clutched her, whispering excitedly, “Hark! What was that noise? It sounds far off, maybe where the haunted ruin is.”

Nann listened and then calmly replied: “More than likely it’s the fog horn about which Gib told us, and that other noise is the muffled roar of the surf crashing over the rocks out on the point. If there are any more noises that you wish me to explain, please produce them now. If not, I’m going to sleep.”

After that Dories lay very still for a time, confident that she wouldn’t sleep a wink. Nann, however, was soon deep in slumber and Dories soon followed her example. It was midnight when she awakened with a start, sat up and looked about her. She felt sure that a light had awakened her. At first she couldn’t recall where she was. She turned toward the window. The fog had lifted and the night was clear. For a moment she sat watching the white, rushing line of the surf, then, farther along, she saw a dark looming object.

Suddenly she clutched her companion. “Nann,” she whispered dramatically, “there it is! There’s a light moving over by the point. Do you suppose that’s the ghost from the old ruin?”

“The what?” Nann sat up, dazed from being so suddenly awakened. Then, when Dories repeated her remark, her companion gazed out of the window toward the point.

“H’m-m!” she said, “It’s a light all right. A lantern, I should say, and its moving slowly along as though it were being carried by someone who is searching for something among the rocks.”

Dori’s hold on her friend’s arm became tighter. “It’s coming this way! I’m just ever so sure that it is. Oh, Nann, why did we come to this dreadful place? What if that light came right up to this cottage and saw that it wasn’t boarded up and knew someone was here and – ”

Nann chuckled. “Aren’t you getting rather mixed in your figures of speech?” she teased. “A lantern can’t see or know, but of course I understand that you mean the-well-er-person carrying the lantern. I suppose you will agree that it is a person, for ghosts don’t have to carry lanterns, you know.”