Old Superior is ever ready enough to display his various moods. The girls had not been aboard an hour when a dense fog came sweeping in from the north.
“Never find our way if we were out there now,” Florence said with a shrug of her stout shoulders.
There came a slow, drizzling rain, followed by more and denser fog.
Two hours later a wild storm came sweeping in. Sheets of water, seeming at times to leap from the very lake, dashed against narrow cabin windows. There was a ceaseless wash-wash of waves against the black hull of the wreck. What did this mean to the happy trio? Nothing at all. They were down in their private swimming pool with Dizzy. Such a strange and wonderful swimming pool as it was too! Once the dining saloon of the great ship, it now lacked both chairs and tables, but the decorative railing leading to the floor above made a perfect diving board. A second rail ran slantwise into the water that at the far end must be twenty feet in depth.
“Shoot the shoots!” Greta cried as, sitting astride the rail, she shot downward to hit the water with a splash and to go swimming away. How Dizzy beat the water with his wings and screamed! How they laughed and splashed him! How he dove and swam!
“It—it’s wonderful!” Jeanne bubbled, her mouth half filled with water. “And to think,” she exclaimed as she dragged herself to a place beside Florence on the topmost step of the broad stairway, “to think that only a short time back all this was swarming with people off on a holiday! Some gay, some solemn, some rich, some poor, but all promenading the deck and all coming in here for their dinner. And now look! Here we are, only three. And it is all ours! And look at the cabins! Rows of them on either side, high and dry, half of them. People could sleep in them.”
“But they never will,” Florence said soberly. “We are the old ship’s last passengers, no doubt about that. Next winter ice will form on the bay. It may be a foot thick. Then a storm will come roaring in and break it all up. The ice will come tearing at the old ship and cut her in pieces, if she lasts that long.” Florence had not meant to add this last bit; it just came out.
“Of course the ship will last the summer through.” There was the slightest tremor in Jeanne’s voice. “Everyone says that. S-o-o-o!” she cried in her old merry way, “Let us enjoy it all while we may!” Once again she sat astride the rail to go sliding down and lose herself in a mass of foam.
“Old ships,” Florence thought, “are like old houses. They have secrets to tell. What stories the doors to those cabins could relate!” Her eyes swept the long array of cabin doors.
“Secrets they keep,” she whispered. “And treasures they sometimes hide, these old ships.” She was wondering what the secrets of this old ship were and whether after all there was some treasure hidden here.