“Hist!” Ruth whispered. “We are inside the sunken hull of Black Gull. For—for the moment, even in death she has saved us.
“Quick!” she said ten seconds later. “We will leave the Flyaway here and take to our dory.”
As they crept away into the night with muffled oars making no sound, they saw the pencil of light searching the bay for them. It searched in vain.
A half hour later they were on their own beach. At once Don in the Foolemagin was away with three armed men to scour the bay. They found the Flyaway where the girls had left her, inside the scarred hull of Black Gull, but the motor boat with its creeping pencil of white light had vanished off the sea.
“To-morrow,” Ruth said to Pearl as she bade her good night, “shall be the last day. Either we visit the mystery room of old Fort Skammel or we turn the whole affair over to the authorities.”
Before retiring Ruth sat for a long time before her window, looking out into the night, thinking things through.
The night was too dark to see far. In a way, she was thankful for that. Black Gull was gone. She felt a tightening at the throat. When she recalled how the broken and charred skeleton of this once noble boat had saved her from something very terrible, she wanted to cry. Two unruly tears did splash down on her cheek.
“I must be brave,” she told herself. “There is much work to do.”
Work. They would go to old Fort Skammel in the morning. She was sure of that. And then?
The whole affair, or group of affairs, as she looked back upon them, now appeared to be coming together. The old wood ship with the bolts of cloth in her hold, the dory’s creaking oars in the night, their visit to Black Gull, the strange pirate band, the face-in-the-fire, the curious little man at Witches Cove, the mysterious room at the heart of the old fort, their pursuers this very night, it all appeared to be reaching out to join into a solid whole.