“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.”
“How do you know so much about ghosts, since you say there are no such things?” Dori flared.
“Well, nothing can’t carry a lantern, can it?” was the unruffled reply. Then the two girls were silent, watching the light which seemed now and then to be held high as though whoever carried it paused at times to look about him and then continued to search on the rocks.
Slowly, slowly the light approached the row of boarded-up cabins. The girls crept from bed and knelt at the window on the seaward side. Nann, because she was interested, and Dori because she did not want to be left alone.
“Do you think it’s coming this far?” came the anxious whisper. Nann shook her head. “No,” she said, “it’s going back toward the point and so I’m going back to bed. I’m chilled through as it is.”
They were soon under the covers and when they again glanced toward the window the light had disappeared. “Seems to have been swallowed up,” Nann remarked.
“Maybe it’s fallen over the cliff. I almost hope that it has, and been swept out to sea.”
“Meaning the lantern, I suppose, or do you mean the carrier thereof?”
“Nann Sibbett, I don’t see how you can help being just as afraid of whatever it is, or, rather of whoever it is, as I am.”
“Because I am convinced that since it, or he, doesn’t know of my existence, I am not the object of the search, so why should I be afraid? Now, Miss Dories Moore, if you wish to stay awake speculating as to what became of that light, you may, but I’m going to sleep, and, if this loft bedroom of ours is just swarming with ghosts and mysterious lights, don’t you waken me to look at them until morning.”
So saying, Nann curled up and went to sleep. Dories, fearing that she would again be awakened by a light, drew the quilt up over her head so that she could not see it.
Although she was nearly smothered, like an ostrich, she felt safer, and in time she too slept, but she dreamed of headless horsemen and hollow-eyed skeletons that walked out on the rocky point at midnight carrying lanterns.
It was nearing dawn when a low whistle outside awakened the girls.
“It’s Gibralter Strait, I do believe,” Nann declared, at once alert. Then, as she sprang up, she whispered, “Do hurry, Dori. I feel ever so sure that we are this day starting on a thrilling adventure.”
CHAPTER VII
THE PHANTOM YACHT
The girls dressed hurriedly and silently, then crept down the boarded-in stairway and emerged upon the back porch of the cottage. It was not yet dawn, but a rosy glow in the east assured them that the day was near.
The waiting lad knew that the girls had something to tell, nor was he wrong.
“Oh, Gibralter, what do you think?” Dories began at once in an excited whisper that they might not disturb Great-Aunt Jane, who, without doubt, was still asleep.
“I dunno. What?” the boy was frankly curious.
“We saw it last night. We saw it with our very own eyes! Didn’t we, Nann?” The other maiden agreed.
“You saw what?” asked the mystified boy, looking from one to the other. Then, comprehendingly, he added: “Gee, you don’ mean as you saw the spook from the old ruin, do you?”
Dories nodded, but Nann modified: “Not that, Gibralter. Since there is no such thing as a ghost, how could we see it? But we did see the light you were telling about. Someone was walking along the rocks out on the point carrying a lighted lantern.”
“Wall,” the boy announced triumphantly, “that proves ’twas a spook, ’cause human beings couldn’t get a foothold out there, the rocks are so jagged and irregular like. But come along, maybe we can find footprints or suthin’.”
The sun was just rising out of the sea when the three young people stole back of the boarded-up cottages that stood in a silent row, and emerged upon the wide stretch of sandy beach that led toward the point.
The tide was low and the waves small and far out. The wet sand glistened with myriad colors as the sun rose higher. The air was tinglingly cold and, once out of hearing of the aunt, the girls, no longer fearful, ran along on the hard sand, laughing and shouting joyfully, while the boy, to express the exuberance of his feelings, occasionally turned a hand-spring just ahead of them.
“Oh, what a wonderful morning!” Nann exclaimed, throwing out her arms toward the sea and taking a deep breath. “It’s good just to be alive.”
Dories agreed. “It’s hard to believe in ghosts on a day like this,” she declared.
“Then why try?” Nan merrily questioned.
They had reached the high headland of jagged rocks that stretched out into the sea, and Gibralter, bounding ahead, climbed from one rock to another, sure-footed as a goat but the girls remained on the sand.
When he turned, they called up to him: “Do you see anything suspicious looking?”
“Nixy!” was the boy’s reply. Then anxiously: “D’ye think yo’ girls can climb on the tip-top rock?” Then, noting Dories’ anxious expression as she viewed the jagged cliff-like mass ahead of her, he concluded with. “O, course yo’ can’t. Hold on, I’ll give yo’ a hand.”
Very carefully the boy selected crevices that made stairs on which to climb, and the girls, delighted with the adventure, soon arrived on the highest rock, which they were glad to find was so huge and flat that they could all stand there without fear of falling.
“This is a dizzy height,” Dories said, looking down at the waves that were lazily breaking on the lowest rocks. “But there’s one thing that puzzles me and makes me think more than ever that what we saw last night was a ghost.”
“I