The captain shook his head. “No, we haven’t. There is quite some room up in the bow, and it doesn’t connect with this section of the ship. That ghost, or whatever it was, is up in the bow, and we want to find it right away. If we don’t it may run off with our dinghy and then we’ll be marooned for fair. Jim, step in the galley and get that axe by the stove, will you?”
Jim procured the axe and joined the other two in the hold. Captain Blow led the way up the companionway ladder, and after making sure that the dinghy was still tied to the after rail, led the way forward.
“Now we’ll find out whether the ghost belongs to this ship, or the ship belongs to this ghost,” he said.
18. The Ghost of the “Alaskan”
The stretch from the forward to the center mast was one waste of wreckage and the captain and the boys picked their way with care. At the time of the wreck and since then the waves had beaten that portion of the old schooner into a mass of tangled wood and rope, with hideous clusters of seaweed flapping over the rail. The captain played his flashlight over the planks and they arrived safely.
“Now,” said Captain Blow. “It was right about here that that spook was performin’. Let’s look this place over.”
He flashed the light all around and up the mast. What he found there seemed to interest him, for he stepped forward and looked more closely. Then he grunted.
“Look,” he said. “Here is a wire, running from this mast. Where’s it go to, I wonder?”
The wire was just above the level of his head and he followed its course, to find that it ran from the forward mast to the center. It had evidently been hastily hung there, for it was simply twisted around the shattered poles. It passed directly over the forward hatch, which was flush with the deck, and that seemed to give the captain an idea.
“We’ll heave up that hatch,” he announced.