The stranger did not dig. He stood there long as if in silent contemplation.
He might have fished, for in these very waters such great northern pikes (wolves of all fresh water seas) as are not found elsewhere play among the wavering weeds. Had he cared to wait for dawn, then had he put out across the narrow bay to set a silver spoon gleaming through the black waters, he might have experienced such a thrill as is seldom accorded a fisherman.
He did not wait for dawn. Instead, by the gleam of a small flashlight he studied a slip of paper for a moment; then turning abruptly about, lost himself in the dense brush that lines the slope of a high ridge just back of this narrow clearing.
Duncan’s Bay is separated from Tobin’s Harbor—which, as you will recall, was the landing place of first the kidnapers’ plane and after that Drew Lane’s red racer—by a tall and narrow ridge of rocks heavily overgrown with brush.
A half hour after this tall person from the silver plane vanished from the camping grounds of Duncan’s Bay, a strange apparition might have been seen at the very crest of the ridge.
At this spot, known as Lookout Louise, one may stand at a point some hundreds of feet above the water level and look down upon the dark and somber bay that lies below. On this particular night, viewed from this height, the silver plane seemed a giant sea gull with wings outspread.
But the apparition—he wore a long flowing robe of filmy white. As the moon came out to gleam upon him, his head appeared as white as his robe. And his body was bones, just gleaming white bones, or so it would have seemed had some one been there to look. There was no one.
For one full moment he stood gazing down at the black waters and the silver plane. Then, turning slowly about, he gave utterance to a low, hollow chuckle as weird as the song of the wind in the pines of a churchyard at midnight. Then, like the phantom he seemed, he dropped away into the shadows that lay above Tobin’s Harbor where at that very moment the fate of Drew Lane, Johnny Thompson and the kidnapers swung uncertainly in the balance. And even as this strange apparition vanished, he appeared to gallop.
Chapter XXVIII
THE LIGHT THAT FAILED
“Red! Red! The light is gone!” Berley Todd’s voice rang with tragedy.