Jeanne was gifted with a most vivid imagination. This old ship had sailed the seas for more than forty years. What unlawful deeds might not have been done within this grim old hull! There had been smuggling, no doubt of that. The ship had visited the ports of Canada a thousand times. What secret treasure might still be hidden within this hopeless hulk? She shuddered at the thought.
“All we want,” she breathed, “is peace, peace and an opportunity to explore that most beautiful island.”
Strange to say, the little French girl was not the only person who at that moment felt a cold chill run up his spine. One of the men, the tall one on the little schooner, had caught sight of a patch of wavering white far up on the prow.
“Mart!” he was saying to his companion, and there was fear in his voice, “Do you think anyone ever died on this old ship?”
“Of course. Why not?” His companion’s voice was gruff. “What do you think? She’s sailed the lakes for forty years, this old Pilgrim has, and why wouldn’t people die on her, same as they die on other ships?”
“Then,” the other man’s words came with a little shudder, “then it was a lady that died, for look! Yonder in the prow is her ghost a-hoverin’ still.”
The other man looked at the drifting, swaying figure all in white, and he too began to sway. It seemed he might drop.
Seeming to collect his strength with great effort, he seized the line that held his own tiny craft to the wrecked ship, then grasping a pike pole, was prepared to give it a mighty shove that would send it far out.
At this very moment a strange and terrible sound smote the air; a wild scream, a shrill laugh, all in one it rent the still night air three times, then all was still.
The man with the pike pole shuddered from head to foot. Then, regaining control of his senses, he gave a mighty heave that set his small craft quite free of the apparently haunted ship.