“I’ll promise not to scare this time,” Dories hastened to say. “Honest, Gib, I am as eager to hear the story as Nann is, so please tell it.”
Thus urged, the boy began. He did not speak, however, in his usual merry, bantering voice, but in a hollow whisper which he believed better fitted to the tale he had to tell.
“Wall,” he said, as he seated himself on a rock, motioning the girls to do likewise, “I might as well start way back at the beginnin’. Pa says that this here house was built nigh thirty year ago by a fine upstandin’ man as called himself Colonel Wadbury and gave out that he’d come from Virginia for his gal’s health. Pa said the gal was a sad-lookin’ creature as ever he’d set eyes on, an’ bye an’ bye ’twas rumored around Siquaw that she was in love an’ wantin’ to marry some furreigner, an’ that the old Colonel had fetched her to this out-o’-the-way place so that he could keep watch on her. He sure sartin built her a fine mansion to live in.
“Pa said ’twas filled with paintin’s of ancestors, and books an’ queer furreign rugs a hangin’ on the walls, though thar was plenty beside on the floor. Pa’d been to a museum up to Boston onct, an’ he said as ’twas purty much like that inside the place.
“Wall, when ’twas all finished, the two tuk to livin’ in it with a man servant an’ an old woman to keep an eye on the gal, seemed like.
“’Twan’t swamp around here in those days, ’twas sand, and the Colonel had a plant put in that grew all over—sand verbeny he called it, but folks in Siquaw Center shook their heads, knowin’ as how the day would come when the old sea would rise up an’ claim its own, bein’ as that had all been ocean onct on a time.
“Pa says as how he tol’ the Colonel that he was takin’ big chances, buildin’ a house as hefty as that thar one, on nothin’ but sand, but that wan’t all he built either. Furst off ’twas a high sea wall to keep the ocean back off his place, then ’twas a pier wi’ lights along it, and then he fetched a yacht from somewhere.
“Pa says he’d never seen a craft like it, an’ he’d been a sea-farin’ man ever since the North Star tuk to shinin’, or a powerful long time, anyhow. That yacht, Pa says, was the whitest, mos’ glistenin’ thing he’d ever sot eyes on. An’ graceful! When the sailors, as wore white clothes, tuk to sailin’ it up and down, Pa says folks from Siquaw Center tuk a holiday just to come down to the shore to watch the craft. It slid along so silent and was so all-over white, Gus Pilsley, him as was school teacher days and kep’ the poolhall nights, said it looked like a ‘phantom yacht,’ an’ that’s what folks got to callin’ it.
“Pa says it was well named, for, if ever a ghost rode on it, ’twas the gal who went out sailin’ every day. Sometimes the Colonel was with her, but most times ’twas the old woman, but she never was let to go alone. The Colonel’s orders was that the sailors shouldn’t go beyond the three miles that was American. He wasn’t goin’ to have his gal sailin’ in waters that was shared by no furreigners, him bein’ that sot agin them, like as not because the gal wanted to marry one of ’em. So day arter day, early and late, Pa says, she sailed on her ‘Phantom Yacht’ up and down but keepin’ well this side o’ the island over yonder.”
Gibralter had risen and was pointing out to sea. The girls stood at his side shading their eyes. “That’s it!” he told them. “That’s the island. It’s on the three-mile line, but Pa says it’s the mos’ treacherous island on this here coast, bein’ as thar’s hidden shoals fer half a mile all around it, an’ thar’s many a whitenin’ skeleton out thar of fishin’ boats that went too close.” The lad reseated himself and the girls did likewise. Then he resumed the tale. “Wall, so it went on all summer long. Pa says if you’d look out at sunrise like’s not thar’d be that yacht slidin’ silent-like up and down. Pa says it got to hauntin’ him. He’d even come down here on moonlit nights an’, sure nuf, thar’d be that Phantom Yacht glidin’ around, but one night suthin’ happened as Pa says he’ll never forget if he lives to be as old as Methusalah’s grandfather.”