The girl did not answer his remarks. They had set her thinking all the same. There had been strange doings about the bay. And not the least mysterious person who might be connected with them was the man who had taken up his abode in the abandoned cabin among the black clump of firs that cast their dark shadows over Witches Cove.
Many and strange were the thoughts that passed through her mind as they came closer and closer to that dark sea cove about which weird and fantastic tales had been woven.
There were persons who could not be induced to fish there; no, not even at midday, and now it was night.
For this girl whose home had always been on Peak’s Island, this cove had always held a charmed fascination. As a small child, listening to the tales of gray witches that rose from its depths in the dark of the moon, she had time and again begged to be taken there.
As soon as she was old enough to row a punt this far, she had fairly haunted the spot on Saturdays and holidays. The banks of this pool were steep and rocky. There were spots where its depths even at low tide exceeded twenty feet. There were times when the waters were as dark and green as old jade. At such times the movement of the incoming tide seemed caused by some monster disturbed in his slumbers at the pool’s bottom, and the rush of water among the rocks seemed a whispering voice. The very fish she caught there were different. As if touched by the brush of a great artist, they took on fantastic colors—red, deep blue, purple and green. The girl loved the spot. She thrilled now as she neared it.
It had been on one of her Saturday afternoon fishing trips, not two weeks back, as you may remember, that she had first discovered that someone had taken up his abode on this small rocky and hitherto uninhabited island.
She fell to thinking now of the two great cats and the little man with the wide-rimmed glasses.
“There! Right back there!” she said suddenly as the light, swinging clear of the sea, continued to waver backward and forward in a jerky and uncertain manner.
“I know,” the boy answered. “Be there in a minute. It may be some false alarm. Be ready for a sudden start if I need to make it. If it’s smugglers or booze runners we may have to run for it. They don’t love company too well.”
The thing they saw as they rounded the reef and stood close in, astonished them much. Lying on her side, with a gash in her side, was a one time smartly rigged sailboat. Holding to the mast, and waving a lantern around which was wound a red cloth, was a boy a year or two younger than Don. Clinging to him for support as the heavy swell lifted and lowered the wreck was a mere slip of a girl.