The Phantom Violin Page 7

  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 inthat bushy mat of hair. The line that held the spoon was strong. What wasshe to do next?

  The aged moose, awakened to his peril by the sound of her voice, threwhis head about, took one startled look, then grunting prodigiously, wentswimming for the other shore.

  Turning angrily, the wolf began snapping at the hook. "Won't do to lethim take more line," the girl told herself. "Got to give the poor oldmoose a chance."

  At that moment Greta rolled from beneath the boat, leaped to her feet tostand 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 shecame 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, shewas determined to finish it.

  "Let him go!" Jeanne's voice dropped to a terrified whisper. "Can't yousee 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 burnedout campfire, seized two smouldering sticks and waved them to a red glow.Rushing forward, she threw one at the gray beast who was indeed swimmingtoward the camping ground.

  The flaming stick struck the water with a vicious sizzle. Black on theinstant, it nevertheless left its imprint on the wolf's brain. Once againhe 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 astonishingthe 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 quiteanother story. He was not looking for a fight, that wolf. He was lookingonly for safety. With a mad dash he was down the sandbar, up the bank andinto the forest.

  Completely unnerved at last, Florence lost all control of the reel. Afterspinning round and round like mad, it came to a jerking halt. For onesplit second there was a tremendous strain on the line, then it felllimp.

  "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 explainedcalmly. "See! Some gray hairs!" She held it out for inspection. "Grayhairs, that's all I get. But the moose got his life back, for a time atleast. 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 fireand fanning them into a blaze, "a moose is practically powerless in deepwater. If you catch up with him when you're in a canoe, you may leap intothe water, climb on his back, and have a ride. He can't hurt you. But onland--that's a different matter."

  The little drama played through, a tragedy of the night averted, Jeanneand Greta crept back among the blankets beneath the boat and, like twosquirrels in a nest of leaves, fell fast asleep.

  Florence remained outside. The wind had dropped, but still the rush ofwaves might be heard on the distant shore. This wild throbbing made herrestless. She thought of the wreck. How was it standing the storm? Wellenough, she was sure of that. But other more terrible storms? Her browwrinkled.

  "Could camp here," she told herself. "Get a tent or have some one buildus 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 whatone wants, things that are different, experiences that are different, awhole life that is different from any other.

  "Well," she laughed a low laugh, "looks as if we were going to get justthat, whether we stay on the wreck or on land."

  Her thoughts were now on the mysterious black schooner that had visitedthe wreck the night before, and now on Greta's phantom violin and thestrange green light.

  "May never happen again," she murmured. "For all that, Greta will go backagain and again, when it is quite dark. People are like that."

  She had turned about and was considering a return to her nest beneath theboat when, of a sudden, she dropped on her knees in the dark shadows of awild 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 suddenshock. Not for long, for as the thing came into clearer view she saw itwas 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 areputting in here for the rest of the night."

  When the schooner had passed on quite out of sight, she made her way tothe overturned boat, crept beneath it and had soon found herself a cozyspot among the blankets. She did not fall asleep at once. In time thesilence lulled her to repose.

  When she awoke there was the odor of coffee and bacon in the air. Gretaand Jeanne were getting breakfast.

  "Boats leave no trail," she assured herself. "Unless they have seen theblack 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 abland 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," Florencedecided.

  "But the barrel of gold?" Greta protested. "Aren't we going to dig forthat?"

  She was thinking of the talk they had had about the campfire, of theIndians, 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 sandysurface.

  "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, awhole barrel of gold!"

  Florence was born to the wilds. High boots, corduroy knickers, a bluechambray shirt, a red necktie, these were her joy. She was as much athome in a boat as a cowboy is in a saddle. Breakfast over, she sent theirlight craft skimming through the narrows and out into the broad stretchof 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 ofblack waters and the fog horn on Passage Island adds its hoarse voice tothe tumult of the waves, it is a terrible thing to hear those waves comeroaring in.

  Florence had accepted the judgment of old time fishermen that for thetime the wreck was a safe place to be. But this morning her browwrinkled. "What if it should be carried out to sea!" she thought with ashudder. "And we, the last passengers, on board!" She said never a wordto her companions who, reflecting the smile of Old Superior, weredeliriously happy.