“We’d never think that, I can assure you,” said Mrs. Seymour quickly. “If we had been with you on the schooner probably we should be feeling exactly as you do about her.”
“Perhaps you might, and perhaps you might not. I would think that the trouble was with me if it hadn’t been for the other men, but every one of them down to the cove would back me up in what I say. And I might as well tell you, because if I don’t some one else will, no doubt.
“We had almost finished searching when I got a sort of feeling that some one or something was peering at me. I kept looking around behind me, and then I noticed that the other men were doing the same thing. There was nothin’ there. We kind of looked at each other and laughed at first. But soon it was all I could do to keep from running around the next corner to catch whatever was behind it. We did our search thorough, but I can tell you I was glad when Les Perkins pulled the dory under the stern and I could drop into her. None of us hankered to stay aboard that ship.”
In spite of herself Ann shivered and was glad when her mother hugged her reassuringly.
“Two days after that,” Fred continued, “we picked up four men who had been washed in by the sea. We are God-fearing people up here and I couldn’t understand why the folks in the village wouldn’t put those sailors in the churchyard, but some of the people were foolish and said those men should not be put in consecrated ground, coming out of the sea like that. I didn’t know quite what to do, and I suppose I should have taken them out and put them back into the sea, the way most sailormen are done by when they’re dead. But I didn’t decide to do that way; I buried them with my own people, yonder in the field, and they lie there marked by four bits of sandstone.
“Jo and I have been back on the boat several times, for we felt we had a duty by her, lying at our door as she does, but we can’t find a trace of anything to identify her and we both had that feeling that something there is wrong. Something was watching us all the time we were on her. So I’ve given up trying to think where she came from or who sailed on her, for such things a man like me is not supposed to know. Spirits from the sea no doubt came on board during the storm and threw the crew overside. But if those spirits are there now I don’t understand why the sea don’t claim her and break her up. Sea seems to be shoving her back on the land as though it wanted to be rid of her.”
“That is a great story, Fred,” said Mr. Seymour. “And I can sympathize with the way you felt; it must have taken a great deal of courage to go back to her when you and Jo looked her over. And you have never seen anything move on the boat?”
Ann wanted to tell about the light she had seen there last night, but that was her discovery and she so hoped to be the one to solve the mystery! She said not a word about it.
“Nary a sight of anything have we ever had,” Fred answered.
“Very strange indeed,” said Mr. Seymour. “What about the coast guard? Of course you reported the ship to them. Weren’t they able to discover anything?”