A Mystery Story for Girls

The
PHANTOM VIOLIN

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

COPYRIGHT 1934
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I The Ship’s Ghost] 11 [II Mysteries of Night] 22 [III A Phantom of the Air] 28 [IV Captivating Phantom] 37 [V Pale Green Light] 43 [VI A Strange Catch] 52 [VII The Last Passengers] 63 [VIII Dizzy’s Welcome] 72 [IX The Call of the Gypsies] 80 [X Silent Battle] 90 [XI Song of the Phantom] 99 [XII Gold] 107 [XIII The Head Hunter] 116 [XIV Secret of Greenstone Ridge] 126 [XV A Leap in the Dark] 138 [XVI Greta’s Secret] 146 [XVII The Cavern of Fire] 156 [XVIII At the Bottom of the Ancient Mine] 166 [XIX Mystery from the Sky] 174 [XX Aid from the Unknown] 192 [XXI A Song from the Tree Tops] 201 [XXII The White Flare] 209 [XXIII Musical Enchantment] 219 [XXIV The Little Black Tramp] 233 [XXV Father Superior Takes a Hand] 240 [XXVI Passing of the Pilgrim] 250 [XXVII Green-Eyed Mansion] 262 [XXVIII Treasure at Last] 267

THE PHANTOM VIOLIN

CHAPTER I
THE SHIP’S GHOST

“Flo—Florence! They saw me!”

The little French girl, Petite Jeanne, sprang noiselessly through the cabin door. Then, as if to keep someone out, closed the door and propped herself against it. “They saw me!” she repeated in a whisper. “And they—I believe they thought me a ghost. I’m sure it was so. I heard one of them, he said ‘ghost.’ I heard him!” Jeanne clasped and unclasped her slender fingers.

“Who saw you?” Florence stared at her through the dim light of the moon that came straying through the narrow window.

“Yes. Who saw you?” came from somewhere above them.

“The men.” Jeanne was growing calmer. “There were two of them. They saw me. They had tied their boat to the wreck. They were going to do something. I am sure of that. Then they saw me and acted very much afraid. And then—”

“You do look like a ghost,” Florence broke in. “In that white dressing gown with your golden hair flying in the moonlight, you look just like a ghost. And I suppose you popped right up out of the hatch like a ghost!” She laughed in spite of herself.

“But these men—” her tone sobered. “What were they doing here at this time of the night?”

“That?” said Jeanne. “How is one to know? They rattle chains. They see me, then Old Dizzy lets out one of his terrible screams, and they are gone!”

Closing her eyes, the little French girl saw all that had happened just as if it were being played before her as a drama. She saw dark waters of night, a golden moon, distant shores of an island, black and haunting and, strangest, most mysterious of all, the prow of a great ship rearing itself far above the surface of Lake Superior’s waters.

The ship was a wreck, you would have said a deserted wreck. And yet, even as you said it, you might have felt the hair rise at the back of your neck, for, appearing apparently through the solid deck, a white apparition rose at the prow. Rising higher and higher, it stood at last a wavering ghost-like figure in that eery moonlight. This was her own figure Jeanne was seeing now. Once again, with eyes closed, she seemed to stand there in her wavy gown of filmy white, bathed in the golden moonlight. Once again she looked at the glory of the night, the moon, the stars, the black waters, the distant, mysterious shores where no one lived.

The distant shore line was that of Isle Royale fifteen miles off the shore of Canada, in Lake Superior.

All this was a grand and glorious dream to her.

They had been here three days, she and Florence Huyler, whom you may have met before, and Greta Clara Bronson, whom you are going to love as Petite Jeanne, who had known her for but two months, loved her.

“Tomorrow,” Jeanne had whispered to herself, standing there in the moonlight, “we are going ashore, ashore on that Mystic Isle.”

Ashore? One would have said she must be standing on a ship lying at anchor. This was not true. The old Pilgrim, a three hundred foot pleasure boat, would never sail again. Fast on the rocks, her stern beneath the black waters, her prow high in air, she would rest there a while until—ah, well, until, who could say what or when?

“This,” the little French girl had whispered, “is our summer home.” How the thought had thrilled her! Three girls, the “last passengers,” they had styled themselves, three girls alone on a great wrecked ship for long summer months.

What fun it had been to fit out the captain’s and the first mate’s cabins—what fun and what work! Bunks had been leveled, chairs and tables fitted with two short and two long legs to fit the slanting floors, a score of adjustments had been made. But now they were all done.

“And tomorrow,” she had repeated in a whisper, “tomorrow—”

But what was that? Had she caught a sound? Yes, there it was again, like the purring of a cat, only louder. It came from the dark waters of night. Listening, intent, motionless, she had failed to fathom its meaning.

“Something on shore,” she had tried to assure herself.

“Ashore.” At once her keen young mind was busy conjuring up fantastic pictures of those shores which, though so near, scarcely a half mile away, were utterly strange to her. Wild moose, wandering about like cattle; wolves, tawny gray streaks in the forest; high ridges; great boulders laden with precious green stones; and in the silent waters of narrow bays such monstrous fishes.

“Ah!” she breathed. “Tomorrow!”

But again her mind was caught and held by that strange sound, a very faint put-put-put.

Even as she listened the sound ceased. Then of a sudden she felt a thud that shook the wrecked ship. At the same instant she made out a dark bulk that was, she felt sure, some form of a craft.

“Men!” she thought with a shudder. “Men coming to the wreck in the night! I wonder why?”

She was frightened, dreadfully afraid. She wanted to escape, to drop through the hatch-way, to go where her friends were in the cabin below. Her feet would not move. So there she stood, white-faced, tossing gold-white hair, waving white robe, a pale ghost in the moonlight.

What did the men on that boat think of her? Of course there were men, two of them, on the deck of that small, black power boat. For the moment they did not see her.

“Why are they here?” Jeanne asked herself. “What will they do?”

This indeed was a problem. The ship had been relieved of her cargo, all but a few barrels of oil in the hold that could not be reached. Even the brass fittings had been removed.

“There is nothing they could want,” she assured herself, “absolutely nothing. And yet—”

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.

The boat had not gone far when a curious animate thing that seemed neither man nor beast burst from the narrow cabin. The thing began roaring and dancing about the deck like a baboon attacked by hornets. On the creature’s shoulders was something four times the size of a man’s head. The upright body was quite as strange as the head. As the boat continued its course the great round head rolled off and a smaller one appeared. This small head bobbed about and roared prodigiously, but all to no purpose. The little black boat had moved straight on to pass at last from sight into the night.

Then, and not until then, did the wisp of white, which, as you know, was Petite Jeanne, glide forward and vanish. She burst excitedly into a dark cabin.

“I heard chains rattle,” Jeanne repeated, standing still in the cabin doorway. “One of the men spoke. They looked up at me. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. My—my feet wouldn’t budge!”

She began dancing around the small cabin in her excitement.

“What happened then?” Florence, a large, ruddy-cheeked girl in knickers, demanded. “What did they do?”

“They—why, it was queer! They seemed in an awful hurry. They untied their boat and—

“Of course,” she added as an afterthought, “there was Dizzy. He let out a most terrible scream, and laughed. How he did scream and laugh! Three times—one, two, three. They shoved off, those men did, as if their very life depended on it!”

“Thought you were a ghost,” Florence chuckled. “Can’t be any question about that. Who’d blame them? Look at you!”

“And then,” Jeanne went on, “then some queer thing with two legs came out and danced wildly about the deck. He had an enormous head. Bye and bye his head tumbled off, at least the awful big part, and I heard him roaring at the other men.”

“Him?”

“Yes. It was a man in a diving rig. He’d taken off the helmet. Now, what do you think of that?”

Quite out of breath, the blonde haired little French girl dropped down upon a berth at the side of the cabin.

“Man in a diving suit.” Florence spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “Going to dive, of course.”

“But why?”

“That’s right. Why?” Florence’s brow wrinkled.

“I wish—” she said slowly after a period of silence, “wish they hadn’t come.”

She was to wish this many times in the days that were to follow. And then she was to change her mind.

CHAPTER II
MYSTERIES OF NIGHT

As Florence and Jeanne sat there in the dark, whispering and wondering about the strange black schooner and its purpose in these waters, wondering too whether they dared light a candle and heat water for tea, something moved in the berth above their heads, and they became once more conscious of the third member of their party, Greta Clara Bronson.

You have been wondering perhaps how it came about that Jeanne and Florence, who spent so much of their time in great cities, were to be found living on this wreck off the primeval shores of Isle Royale. You will find the answer in the third girl, Greta Clara Bronson, who now slid her bare feet over the edge of the berth and prepared to descend.

Greta was slender, rather tall, with black hair, snapping black eyes, and a body that was a fine example of perpetual motion. At this moment she was recovering from an attack of hay fever and asthma. That is why she was here, why they were all here. Isle Royale is a rare retreat for hay fever victims.

Two months before Jeanne had met Greta and had fallen in love with her. Greta could dance almost as well as Jeanne. She played the violin “divinely,” as Jeanne expressed it. So when, one midsummer day, Jeanne found her friend sitting up in bed panting for breath, and was told that only a summer on Isle Royale could bring back to her the joy of life, she had hurried away to find Florence. Together they had plotted and planned. And now, here they were.

But why on a wrecked ship? Are there no hotels on the island? Yes, there are four small hotels on Isle Royale. But what trio of happy, energetic, adventure-loving girls would choose a hotel rather than the deck of a wrecked ship for a summer outing? Some might, but not Florence, Greta, and Jeanne.

The only fear, expressed by them a half hour later over their tea, was that some unforeseen event might drive them from their strange retreat.

“Who’s afraid?” Florence swung her stout arms wide. And who indeed could be, with Florence as her protector? Strong as a man, a physical director and a gymnast, tipping the scale at one hundred and sixty pounds, she could swim a mile, row a boat through tireless hours, and handle a gun with the best of men. Nor was the gun lacking, a short, business-like rifle hung above her berth.

“Not that you’ll ever need it,” Swen Petersen, a fine young fisherman who had loaned it to her, had said. “All us fisher folks are simple and honest. And you’re not allowed to shoot animals on the Island. It’s a game preserve. But you will like to look at my rifle sometimes.” So he had left it.

Florence smiled as she recalled his words. She was enjoying “looking at it” this very moment. More than once she had taken it down to handle it lovingly. Once, on seeing a bit of wood bobbing in the water, she had taken aim and fired. The short, stout rifle had a great roar to it. And Florence had a steady aim; she had split the wood in two, first shot.

“All the same,” she thought to herself, “I wish people would not prowl around the boat at night. And what would one dive for?” she asked herself. “Three or four barrels of oil in the hold—surely they are not worth all that trouble.”

Then it struck her all of a heap that here was a mystery and perhaps some great secret.

“Does this broken hulk of a ship hide some rich treasure?” she asked herself.

She laughed the thought down, but it bobbed up like a cork in water, more buoyant than ever.

“The ship’s ghost is gone!” she exclaimed, springing up. “I wonder if those men will come back. I’m going to see.”

“And leave us here?” Greta, too, was on her feet. Youngest of the trio, she was unaccustomed to wild, out-of-the-way places.

“Come along,” Florence invited. “No ghost costumes though! Get into your long coats.”

A moment later three dark shadows stole out upon the slanting deck of the wrecked ship.

“Boo!” Greta gripped Florence’s stout arm. “How spooky it all is in the moonlight!”

“And just think!” Jeanne whispered. “Thousands of people have walked this deck, thousands upon thousands! The ship’s more than forty years old. Thousands of those passengers will never walk any deck again. They are gone from this world forever.”

“Oh—oh! Jeanne, don’t talk like that!” dark-eyed Greta implored.

“But where’s your black schooner?” Florence demanded.

“Gone for good, I guess,” Jeanne said after scanning the dark waters.

“For good?” Florence murmured. “I wonder.”

For a full half hour they marched arm in arm up and down the broad deck. During all that time not a dozen words were spoken. It was a time for thought, not for speech. Here they were, three girls alone on the deck of a wrecked ship. They hoped to make it their summer home. Were intruders to bring all this to an end?

“Not if I can help it!” Florence told herself.

“Swen told us we would not be disturbed,” she thought. “No one lives near. The Tobin’s Harbor settlement is five miles away. Blake’s Point with its rugged reefs and wild waves lies between. Few small crafts pass that way.

“Ah well,” she whispered to herself, “tomorrow we will row over to Duncan’s Bay. Perhaps we shall find some trace of the black schooner there.”

After that, for many long moments she gave herself over to contemplation of the scene of wild beauty that lay before her. The golden moon, dark waters, a shore line that was like a ghostly shadow, the wink and blink of a distant lighthouse, all this seemed a picture taken down from an art museum wall.

“Come!” she said at last, giving two slender arms a squeeze. “Come, we must go in. Tomorrow is another day.”

CHAPTER III
A PHANTOM OF THE AIR

“It’s a phantom, a phantom of the air!” Body aquiver, her black eyes reflecting the light of the setting sun, Greta stood intent, listening with all her ears.

A moment before she had been hearing only the goodnight song and twitter of birds. Strange sounds they were to her. Bird songs all the same. But now this. “It is celestial music from heaven!” she whispered. Yet as she thought it, she knew that was not true. A musician herself, she had recognized at once the notes of a violin.

The sound came from afar. At times a light breeze carried it quite away.

“May be miles away. In this still air sound carries far. But where can that one be who plays so divinely?”

To this question she could find no answer. She was standing on a narrow, natural platform of stone. Before her, almost straight down two hundred feet, were the black waters of Duncan’s Bay. Miles away, with ridges, tangled jungles and deep ravines between, was the nearest settlement.

She had climbed all the way up Greenstone Ridge from the shore of Duncan’s Bay that she might be alone, that she might think. She was not thinking now. She was listening to such music as one is seldom privileged to hear.

Yes, she had climbed all that way through the bush that she might think. Greta was an only child. This was her first long journey away from home and mother. Tears had stood in her mother’s eyes as she bade her goodby, yet she had said bravely enough, “You must go, Greta. The doctor says you will escape from the poison of ragweed. I cannot come with you. You will be safe and happy with Jeanne and Florence. Goodby, and God bless you!”

There were times when this dark-eyed child recalled those words, when great waves of longing swept over her, when her shoulders drooped and all her body was aquiver. At such times as these she wanted nothing so much as to be alone.

As she had stepped into the still shadows of the evergreen forest at the back of the camping ground on Duncan’s Bay that afternoon, she had been caught in such a wave of homesickness as would seem for the moment must sweep away her very soul.

“Florence!” she had called, and there was despair in her heart. “Florence, I am going to climb the ridge. You and Jeanne go on. I have my flashlight. I—I’ll be back after the sun has set.”

“All right,” Florence had called cheerfully. “Don’t go over the ridge. If you do you’ll get lost. Keep on this side. If you lose your way, just come down to the water’s edge and call. We’ll hear you and come for you in the boat.”

“Oh!” the slim black-eyed girl had breathed. “Oh, how good it will be to be alone—to watch the sun set over the black waters and to know that the same sun is making long shadows in our own back yard at home, and perhaps playing hide and seek in mother’s hair!”

She turned her face toward the rocky ridge that towered above her and whispered to herself once more, “Alone, all alone.”

Strangely enough, though no one is known to inhabit Greenstone Ridge, and surely no one at that hour would be found wandering there so far from the regular haunts of men, she had experienced from the first a feeling that on that ridge she was not quite alone.

“And now,” she breathed, “I know I am not alone up here. There is someone else somewhere. But who can that person be? And where?”

Here indeed was a mystery. For the moment however, no mystery could hold her attention. Even thoughts of mother and the sunset were forgotten. It was enough to stand there, head bare, face all alight, listening to that matchless melody.

* * * * * * * *

As Florence had pushed her stout little boat off the sandy shore that afternoon, she had been tempted to call Greta back. “Perhaps,” she said to Jeanne, “we have made a mistake in allowing her to lose herself in that forest alone.”

“But what can harm her?” Jeanne had reasoned. “Wolves are cowards. The wild moose will not come near her. There is no one on the ridge. It will do her good to be alone.”

Thus reassured, Florence had straightened the line on her pole, hooked a lure to a bar on her reel, and, with Jeanne in the stern of the boat, had rowed away.

Someone had told Florence that the waters of Duncan’s Bay were haunted by great dark fish with rows of teeth sharp as a shark’s. From that time the big girl had experienced a compelling desire to try her hand at catching these monsters. Now she breathed a sigh of suppressed excitement as she unwound a fathom of line from her reel.

“You do it this way,” she said to Jeanne. Her whole being was filled with a sort of calm excitement. “Cousin Joe told me just how you fish for pike. You put this red and white spoon with its four-pointed hook on the line. Then you let the line out, almost all of it, a hundred and thirty feet. Then you row around in curves. You drag that red and white spoon after the boat. See?”

Jeanne nodded. “And—and what happens then?” She had caught a little of the big girl’s excitement.

“Why then of course the fish takes the spoon.”

“But what does he want with the spoon?” Jeanne’s brow wrinkled.

“He thinks—” Florence hesitated, “well, maybe he thinks it’s a herring or a perch. Perhaps red makes him mad. He’s a wolf, this pike is, the wolf of all dark waters. He eats the other fish. He—but come on!” her voice changed. “Let’s get going. Be dark before long. You let out the line while I row.”

For some time after that, only the thump-thump of oars and the click of the reel disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness of that black bay, where the primeval forest meets the dark water at its banks and only wild creatures have their homes.

“There!” Jeanne breathed. “It’s almost all out.” She sat in the back seat and, lips parted, pulse throbbing, waited.

They circled the dark pool. The sun sank behind the fringe of evergreens. A bottle-green shadow fell across the waters. They circled it again. A giant dragon fly coursed through the sky. From afar came the shrill laugh of a loon. A deep sigh rose from nowhere to pass over the waters. A ripple coursed across the glassy surface. And then—

“Florence! Stop! We’ve hit something! The line! It’s burning my fingers!” Jeanne was wild with excitement.

“Here! Give it to me!” Florence sprang up, all but overturning the boat. Gripping the rod, she reeled in frantically. “It’s a fish!” Her words came short and quick. “I—I feel him flapping his tail. He—he’s coming. Must have half the line. Here—here he comes. Two—two-thirds.

“Oh! Oh! There he goes!” The reel screamed. In her wild effort to regain control, Florence felt her knuckles bruised and barked, but she persisted. Not ten feet of line remained on the reel when the fish reluctantly halted in his wild flight.

“He—he’s hooked fair!” she panted. “And the line is stout, stout as a cowboy’s lariat. We—we’ll get him! We’ll get him!”

Once again her splendid muscles worked in perfect time as she reeled in yard after yard of the stout line.

This time she fancied she caught a glimpse of a dark shadow in the water before a second mad rush all but tore rod and reel from her grasp.

“Florence! Let the old thing go!” Jeanne’s tone was sober, almost pleading. “Think what a monster he must he! Might be a sea-horse or—or a crocodile.”

“This,” said Florence, laughing grimly, “is Michigan, not Florida. There are no alligators here.”

Once again she had the fish under control and was reeling in with a fierce and savage delight. “He’s coming. Got to come. Now! Now! Now!”

CHAPTER IV
CAPTIVATING PHANTOM

The music to which Greta listened was unfamiliar. “Is it a song?” she whispered, “or an evening prayer? Who can have written it? Perhaps no one. It may have come direct from heaven.”

She could not believe it. Someone was playing that violin. Real fingers touched those strings. She longed to search them out, to come before that mysterious person of great enchantment and whisper, “Teach me!”

Ah yes, but which way should she go? Already the shades of night were falling.

“No! No!” she cried as the music ended. “Don’t stop! Go on, please go on!” It was as if the phantom violin were at her very side.

The music did not go on, at least not at once. Emerging from its spell as one wakes from a dream, she became once more conscious of the goodnight song of birds, the dull put-put-put of a distant motor, the cold black rocks beneath her feet, the dark waters far below where some object, probably Florence and Jeanne in the boat, moved slowly forward.

And then her lips parted, her eyes shone, for the phantom had resumed his song of the strings.

* * * * * * * *

In strange contrast to all this, Florence continued her battle with the big fish. In this struggle she was meeting with uncertain fortune. Now she had him, and now he was gone. She reeled in frantically, only to lose her grip on the reel and to see her catch disappear in a swirl of foam. At last, when her muscles ached from the strain, the fish appeared to give up and come in quite readily.

“There! There he is!” Jeanne all but fell from the boat when she caught one good look at the monster. He was fearsome beyond belief, a great head like that of a wolf, two rows of gleaming teeth, a pair of small, snake-like eyes. And, to complete the picture at that moment over the bottle-green waters a long ripple ran like a long green serpent.

“Florence!” she screamed. “Let go! It’s a snake! A forty-foot long snake!” The slight little girl hid her eyes in her hands.

No need for this appeal. In a wild whirl of foam the thing was gone again. But still fastened to his bone-like jaw was the three-barbed hook. And the line, as Florence had said, was “stout as a cowboy’s lariat.” She had him. Did she want him? Who, at that moment, could tell?

Strangely enough, at that moment one of those thoughts that come to us all uninvited, entered the big girl’s mind. “What did that diver on the black boat want on our wreck?”

No answer to this disturbing question entered her mind. They had left the ship unguarded. They had come to Duncan’s Bay prepared to stay at least for the night. That they would stay she knew well, for the wind was rising again. To face those dark, turbulent waters at night would be perilous. “What may happen to the ship while we are gone?” she asked herself. Again, no answer.

* * * * * * * *

The melody, faint, coming from afar, indistinct yet unbelievably beautiful, having reached Greta’s ears once more and entered into her very soul, she stood as before, entranced, while the light faded. She was, however, thinking hard.

“Where can it be, that violin?” she whispered.

Where indeed? On that end of Isle Royale there are two small settlements. To reach the nearest one from that spot would require three hours of struggling through bushes, down precipices and over bogs. The traveler would be doing very well indeed if he did not completely lose his way in the bargain. It was unthinkable that any skilled violinist would undertake such a journey only that he might fling his glorious music to the empty air about the Greenstone Ridge. It was even more unthinkable that anyone could have taken up his abode somewhere among the crags of that ridge. On Isle Royale there are summer homes only along the shore line, and there are very few of these. The three hundred and more square miles of the island are for the most part as wild and uninhabited as they must have been before the coming of Columbus.

“It is a phantom!” Greta whispered, “A phantom of the air, a phantom violin.”

Had she willed it strongly enough, she might have gone racing away in fear. She did not will it. The music was too divine for that. It held her charmed.

What piece was it the mysterious one played? She did not know or care; enough that it was played. So she stood there drinking it in while twilight faded into night. Only once had she heard such music. In a crowded hall a young musician had stood up and, all unaccompanied, had played like that.

Could it be he? “No! No!” she murmured. “It cannot be. He is far, far away.”

Then a thought all but fantastic entered her mind. “Perhaps I have radio-perfect ears.” She had heard of people, read of them in some magazine, she believed, whose ears were so attuned to certain radio sounds that they could receive messages, listen to music with their unassisted ears.

“It has never been so before,” she protested. “Yet I never before have been in a place of perfect peace and silence.” The thought pleased her.

And then, as it had begun, the marvelous music died away into silence.

For ten minutes the girl stood motionless. Then, seeming to awake with a shudder to the darkness all about her, she snapped on her flashlight and went racing over the narrow moose trail leading away to the distant camping grounds of Duncan’s Bay.

CHAPTER V
PALE GREEN LIGHT

The little drama, in which Florence and Jeanne played major roles, continued.

Duncan’s Bay is primeval. Not an abandoned shack marks its shores, not a tree has been cut down. When darkness “falls from the wings of night” this bottle-green bay, reflecting the trees, shut in by the gloom of the forest, casts a spell over every soul who chooses to linger there.

It is a solitary spot. Six miles away, around a wind-blown, wave-washed point there are human habitations, none nearer. Little wonder, then, that the frail, blond-haired Jeanne should renew her pleading.

“Florence, let that thing go!”

The “thing” of course was a living creature caught on Florence’s hook at the end of the stout line.

“But Jeanne,” the big girl remonstrated, “I can’t let him go!”

“Cut the line!” Jeanne was insistent.

“It cost two dollars. And that red and white spoon cost another dollar. Shall I throw three dollars into the lake?

“Besides,” Florence began reeling in once more, “the thing’s a fish, not a snake. There are no boa constrictors in America. He’s just a big, old northern pike. Looks like a snake, that’s all.

“I—I’ll bring him in,” she panted. “You just take a good look.”

She reeled in fast. The fish, at last weary of battle, came in without a struggle and, for one full moment lay there upon the surface of the water. A magnificent specimen of his kind, he must have measured close to four feet from tip to tail. His eyes and cruel teeth gave him a savage look, but in that failing light his sleek, mottled sides were truly beautiful.

“Wolf of the waters,” Florence murmured. “Truly you do not deserve to live! If a herring, gorgeous flash of silver, passes your way, there is a mad swirl and his favorite pool knows him no more. The beautiful speckled trout and the perch fare no better. Even little baby ducklings that sport about on the surface are not safe from your cruel jaws. A swirl, a frantic quack, qua-a-ack, and he is gone forever. And yet,” she mused, “who am I that I should set myself up as a judge of wild life?”

“Florence,” Jeanne pleaded, “let him go! What do we want with him?”

“Why! Come to think of it, we couldn’t really make much use of him.” Florence laughed a merry laugh. “Must weigh twenty pounds.”

“And if you put him in the boat he might bite you,” Jeanne argued.

“Or break a leg with his tail.” Florence laughed once more.

She flipped the line. The red and white spoon shot to right and left. She did it again. The fish turned. A third time the spoon rattled. There was a swirl of white waters, then darkness closed in upon the spot where the fish had been.

“He—he’s gone!” Jeanne gasped.

“Yes. I gave him his freedom.” Florence lifted the red and white spoon from the water to send it rattling to the bottom of the boat. “But think of the picture he would have made! ‘Pike caught by girl in Duncan’s Bay on Isle Royale.’ Can’t you just see it?

“But after all,” she mused as the darkness deepened, “I don’t think so much of that kind of publicity. If we could only have our pictures taken with some innocent wild creature we have saved from destruction, how much better that would be.”

There was about this last remark an element of prophecy. But unconscious of all this, Florence took up the oars and prepared for a moonlit row back to the camping grounds.

“Listen!” She suddenly held up a hand for silence.

Across the narrow bay there ran a whisper. Next moment the glassy surface was broken by ten million ripples. At the same time a cloud covered the moon, and the world went inky black.

Directing her course more by instinct than sight, Florence sent her boat gliding right to the bottle necked entrance to the bay. Then the moon came out.

For some time they sat in their tiny craft and stared in amazement. Beyond the entrance to Duncan’s Bay lies a mile of jagged, rock-walled shore line. Against this wall waves were now breaking. As the two girls watched, they saw white sheets of foam rise thirty feet in air to spray one section of rocky wall only to rush on and on out to sea until it ended in a final burst of fury far away.

“Well,” Florence sighed, “we’re here for the night, whether we like it or not.

“I wonder—” her tone changed. “Wonder if Greta’s back.”

Greta was not back. As they grounded their boat on the sandy beach, no dancing sprite came to meet them. Florence cupped her hand for a loud “Whoo-hoo!”

“Whoo-hoo,” came echoing back from the other shore. After that the woods and waters were still. Only the distant sound of rushing waters against rocky shores beat upon their ears.

“We’ll build a rousing campfire,” Florence said as she sprang ashore. “If she’s lost her way she’ll see the light.”

A small, dead fir tree offered tinder. The scratch of a match, then the fire flamed high. Larger branches of poplar and mountain ash gave a steadier blaze. “She’s sure to see that,” Florence sighed as she settled down upon a log.

There was not long to wait. Greta had indeed caught sight of that bursting flame. She had not, however, been lost. Truth is, she had never been lost in her life. There are those who have the gift of location; they always know where they are. It was so with Greta.

“Girls! Oh, girls!” She came bursting through the bush. “The strangest thing! A violin! A phantom violin! I’m sure it was a phantom. Who else could be playing so divinely up there on that ridge at this hour of the night? Such music!” She drew in a long breath. “Such music you never heard!”

She began a wild dance about the fire that surely must have equaled any performance there in the brave days of long ago when only Indians came to pitch their tents on this narrow camping ground.

“Now,” said Florence as a broad smile overspread her face, “tell us what really happened up there on the ridge.”

Greta did tell them. With the light of the fire playing upon her animated features, she told her story so convincingly that even Florence was more than half convinced that Greenstone Ridge truly was haunted by the ghost of some violinist of enduring fame.

“And after that, one more strange thing,” Greta went on. “I went racing headlong down the trail until I almost pitched myself into the antlers of a giant moose who hadn’t heard me coming. That frightened me. I went head first down the ridge to tumble against a tree. When I picked myself up I was at the top of one more rocky cliff.

“I stood there panting,” she took in a long breath. “I listened for the moose. They don’t chase you, do they?”

“Not often, I guess.” Florence threw fresh fuel on the fire. “Well, this one didn’t. But I was afraid he might. So I waited and listened.” Greta paused.

“It was dark by that time,” she went on at last. “I looked down where you should be, and saw nothing. I looked back at the ridge. It sort of curves there, and—” Again she took a long breath. “I saw a light, thin, pale green light. It seemed to hover on the side of the ridge. I—it—it frightened me. At first it seemed to move. ‘It’s coming this way!’ I told myself. And you’d better believe my heart danced.

“But it didn’t move. Just hung there against the rocks. So, pretty soon I climbed back up to the trail and ran, fast as I dared.

“Now,” she sighed, “what do you think of that?”

“I think,” Florence chuckled, “you have been seeing things!”

“And hearing them,” Jeanne added.

“But you don’t think—” Greta spoke in a sober tone. “You don’t think that music could have been played on the radio? That my ears picked it up?”

“No,” Florence replied at once. “I think that’s nonsense.”

But the little French girl was not sure. She had heard of such things. Why doubt them altogether? Besides, here was a beautiful, glorious mystery. What more could one ask?

“Greta, I envy you!” She threw her arms about the little musician. “You are the discoverer of a great mystery. But we shall unravel this mystery together, you and I. Is it not so? Mais oui! And Florence,” she added, “our big, brave Florence, she shall protect us from all evil.”

In the end Florence was to have a word or two to say about this. If there were mysteries to solve, she must play some more active part than merely that of policeman.

CHAPTER VI
A STRANGE CATCH

In the meantime there were things to do. The boat must be dragged up and turned over, to afford them a shelter for the night. Balsam tips must be gathered. These are nature’s mattresses. Over these their blankets must be spread. This accomplished, they would think of supper.

Three pairs of eager hands accomplished all this in a surprisingly short time. Then, over a fire that had burned down to a bed of glowing coals, they brewed strong tea, toasted bread, broiled bacon, and in the end enjoyed a delicious feast.

After this, with a great log at their backs, they sat staring dreamily at the fire.

“It’s so good to live,” Jeanne murmured.

“Just to live,” Florence echoed.

“And breathe,” Greta added. “You can’t know how it feels to take one long, deep breath of this glorious air, after you have struggled and struggled just for a tiny breath of life.”

For some time after that they sat in silence. Florence was thinking of the wreck, wondering what might be happening to it in their absence. In her short sojourn there she had come to love the old Pilgrim that would sail no more.

“A diver,” she whispered low. “He came in search of something. I wonder what? Will I ever know?”

Jeanne’s thoughts were in far-away France. The glowing coals reminded her of many another campfire that had warmed her on the sloping hillsides of France.

“Bihari,” she thought, “I wonder where he and his gypsy band are tonight?” He had returned to France. She had left him there. But gypsies seldom remain in one place. “He may be back in America.” She listened to the rustle of cottonwood leaves. They seemed to say, “He is in America; you will see him soon.”

“But how could this be?” She smiled at her own fancy. “He is a gypsy. I am on an island. Can he drive his van across miles of water?” But gypsies, she knew right well, went where they chose. Neither wind, storm nor broad waters could stop them.

As for Greta, she was hearing again the magic music of the phantom violin. “Some day,” she told herself, “I shall see that violin and the hands that created that entrancing melody.” But would she? Who could tell?

“Do you know,” Florence at last broke in upon these reveries, “Swen is a fine boy. I wish we could help him with that boat affair he told about.”

“What boat affair?” Jeanne looked at her.

“Don’t you remember? He said it would help the whole island. There are many fishermen living all around the island. A boat comes twice a week for their fish. And the captain pays so very little for their fish! In these hard times money is so scarce the fishermen are being obliged to stay on the island all winter. And some of them have no opportunity to send their children to school.

“Swen says they are trying to charter a boat so they can carry their own fish to market. Not a big boat, but large enough. They’ve got some money pledged. But it is not enough. So there you are.”

Swen was a fine young fisher boy whose nets were set not far from the wrecked Pilgrim.

He it had been, who pointed out to them what a wonderful summer home the wreck might become. For a very little pay he had assisted them in fitting up their rooms. He had rented them a boat and had thrown in much equipment besides.

“He’s a fine boy,” Florence repeated. “When hard times came he was planning to enter college. Now—”

“Now if we only could help him!” Jeanne put in eagerly. “He might go!”

“They live in a lighthouse,” Greta said, “he and his people do. He told me.”

“How romantic!” Jeanne hugged her knees. “We should see him in his lighthouse tower.”

“But most of all I wish we could help him,” Florence said. “All we need—” she prodded the ground with a sharp stick. “All we need is a barrel of gold. Greta wants a fine music teacher. I’d love to travel. Swen wants a boat for his people. And you, Jeanne, what is it you want?”

“I?” Jeanne laughed. “Only happiness for all my good friends.”

“A barrel of gold,” Florence repeated dreamily. “And perhaps it is right beneath us, in this very soil.”

“Beneath us?” Greta stared.

“Why not? A very small barrel, even a tiny keg. This spot, the only level ground on the shores of this bay, has been a camping ground for countless generations. The Indians came to Isle Royale to pound out native copper from the rocks. They built their campfires right here. Swen says if you dig down you will find the remains of those campfires still.”

“How thrilling!” Greta’s eyes were large with wonder. “Suppose we dug down and found some treasure—a barrel of—. But then, Indians didn’t have barrels, not even kegs.” Her dream faded.

“The voyageurs did,” Florence encouraged.

“Who were they?”

“The traders who came after the Indians. They camped here on their way across the lake. Can’t you see them?” With outstretched hands, the big girl stared into the darkness that is Duncan’s Bay at night. “Great, stalwart men, muscles like iron bands, faces browned by the sun, eyes ever looking forward to fresh fields of adventure, the voyageurs!

“Perhaps—” her voice dropped to a low note of mystery, “perhaps they camped here one night with a great bag of gold. Perhaps they were expecting an attack by Indians and, thrusting their gold in their water barrel, buried it here, never to return.”

“Yes,” Jeanne smiled doubtfully, “perhaps they did. Anyway, you are right on one score. It’s a barrel of gold we need.”

“Just now,” Florence laughed, “what we need most is a good night’s sleep.”

Their balsam-scented bed at last called them to rest. They went reluctantly.

Greta and Jeanne were weary. After listening for a time to the constant rush of water against the rocky shores of Blake’s Point and staring at the ribs of their boat just over their heads, they fell asleep.

Florence did not fare so well. Lying there in that narrow bed beneath their boat, she found her mind going over the events of the day and of those days that had gone before.

The adventure with that great pike had excited her beyond belief. Ever a child of nature, she had experienced in this event a return to the wild desires of her early ancestors. They had been wanderers, adventurers, hunters, fishermen, explorers. The world had changed. Her people were now city dwellers.

“And yet—” she felt her splendid muscles swell, “adventure has not passed from the earth. There still are adventures for those who desire them, clean, clear adventures. One—”

She broke short off to sit straight up. The stretch of level land on which they were camped was hardly a hundred feet wide. Back of that was a sloping hillside where the spruce, balsam and pine of a primeval forest battled for a place in the sun. From this forest she had caught some faint sound, the snap of a twig, the click of some hard object against a stone.

“Could be men,” she whispered. “Just over that ridge is Tobin’s Harbor. Many people there. But such a trail! Straight up! And on such a night. They—”

There it was again. She clenched her hands hard to prevent crying out. A loud click had sounded out in the night. “Like the raising of a rifle’s hammer,” she told herself.

But was it a rifle? She must see. Lying flat down, she pushed the covers quietly aside, rolled over twice and found herself beneath the dark night sky.

The moon was still shining. Her eyes soon accustomed themselves to the light. Still lying flat on the damp earth, she listened with all her ears. What she heard set her blood racing. “Footsteps,” she whispered, “in the night.”

They seemed very near, those footsteps. But were they human footsteps? She doubted it. And from this came a sense of relief.

Raising herself on one elbow she peered into the night. At that moment a loud groan sent the chills down her spine.

Next instant she was ready to laugh. A giant old patriarch of his tribe, a moose with wide-spreading antlers had stepped out into the moonlight.

“A moose,” she whispered. “Swen says there are a thousand or more on the island, and that they are harmless. But how old and feeble this one seems!”

She had judged correctly. The moose was nearing the end of his days. His giant antlers were a burden. He walked very slowly and with many a groan. On the island he was known as Old Uncle Ned.

The girl’s lips were parted in a smile when, of a sudden, the blood seemed to freeze in her veins. A second creature had appeared at the edge of the forest—a great, gaunt wolf.

At this instant, with one more groan, Old Uncle Ned stepped into the water prepared to swim across the bay.

The bit of wild life drama witnessed by the girl during the next moment will never leave the walls of her memory. Neither the moose nor the wolf had seen her. The moose, no doubt, smelled fresh water grass on the other side. The wolf was eager for a kill.

Waiting in the shadows, the killer opened his mouth to show his white teeth, his lolling tongue. But the instant the aged moose was well in the water and, for the time, quite defenseless, with one wild spring his pursuer was after him.

“He—he’ll kill that moose!”

Scarcely knowing what she did, in her excitement Florence sprang to her feet, seized the steel casting rod and, racing to the bank, sent the red and white spoon darting toward the swimming wolf.

The first cast fell short. The reel sang and she rolled in for a second try. All this she had done under the impulse of the moment, without truly willing it.

Next instant she was awake to reality, for on a second cast the spoon, striking the wolf on the back, slid down to at last entangle the three-pronged hook in the tangled hair of his bushy tail.

“Jeanne! Greta!” the girl screamed. “Wake up! I’ve caught a wolf!”

“Wake up yourself,” Jeanne replied dreamily. “You are walking in your sleep. You let that fish free long ago.”

“No! No!” Florence, quite beside herself, protested. “Get up! Quick! Quick! I’ve caught a wolf. A real wolf of the forest!”

At the same time she was saying to herself, “Whatever am I to do?”

CHAPTER VII
THE LAST PASSENGERS

Florence had the wolf by the tail, there could be no doubt about that. The three-pronged hook of her trolling spoon was securely entangled in that bushy mat of hair. The line that held the spoon was strong. What was she to do next?

The aged moose, awakened to his peril by the sound of her voice, threw his head about, took one startled look, then grunting prodigiously, went swimming for the other shore.

Turning angrily, the wolf began snapping at the hook. “Won’t do to let him take more line,” the girl told herself. “Got to give the poor old moose a chance.”

At that moment Greta rolled from beneath the boat, leaped to her feet to stand staring, wild eyed, at the scene before her.

“Florence! It’s a wolf!” she cried.

“Yes, and I’ve got him!” Florence laughed in spite of herself.

“Let—let him go! Throw down the rod! Let him go!” Jeanne cried as she came tumbling out from her bed.

But Florence held tight. When the wolf turned about to snap at the line, she reeled in. When he started away, she gave him line, but not too much. There was the venerable moose to consider. Having started the affair, she was determined to finish it.

“Let him go!” Jeanne’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper. “Can’t you see he’s turning? He—he’s coming this way. He’ll eat us!”

Then, calmed by her sense of danger, she rushed back to the half burned out campfire, seized two smouldering sticks and waved them to a red glow. Rushing forward, she threw one at the gray beast who was indeed swimming toward the camping ground.

The flaming stick struck the water with a vicious sizzle. Black on the instant, it nevertheless left its imprint on the wolf’s brain. Once again he wheeled about.

The moose by this time had climbed up the opposite bank and disappeared, as much as to say, “Well, you go ahead and fight it out.”

Strange to say, Florence at this moment began losing her calm assurance. She reeled in when perhaps she should have given line. It was astonishing the way the wolf came in. He had not half the pull of the great fish.

Before she knew it, his feet were on a sandbar. After that it was quite another story. He was not looking for a fight, that wolf. He was looking only for safety. With a mad dash he was down the sandbar, up the bank and into the forest.

Completely unnerved at last, Florence lost all control of the reel. After spinning round and round like mad, it came to a jerking halt. For one split second there was a tremendous strain on the line, then it fell limp.

“He—he’s gone!” Jeanne breathed. “Broke the line.”

“Maybe he did. I’m going to see.” To her companions’ utter consternation, Florence followed the wolf into the dark forest.

She returned some moments later. In her hand was the red and white spoon.

“Went round a tree and tore the hook out of his tail,” she explained calmly. “See! Some gray hairs!” She held it out for inspection. “Gray hairs, that’s all I get. But the moose got his life back, for a time at least. Perhaps he’s learned his lesson and won’t try swimming bays again.

“You see,” she explained, throwing some bits of birch bark on the fire and fanning them into a blaze, “a moose is practically powerless in deep water. If you catch up with him when you’re in a canoe, you may leap into the water, climb on his back, and have a ride. He can’t hurt you. But on land—that’s a different matter.”

The little drama played through, a tragedy of the night averted, Jeanne and Greta crept back among the blankets beneath the boat and, like two squirrels in a nest of leaves, fell fast asleep.

Florence remained outside. The wind had dropped, but still the rush of waves might be heard on the distant shore. This wild throbbing made her restless. She thought of the wreck. How was it standing the storm? Well enough, she was sure of that. But other more terrible storms? Her brow wrinkled.

“Could camp here,” she told herself. “Get a tent or have some one build us a rough cabin. Stay all summer. But then—”

Already she had begun to love their life on the wreck.

“It’s different!” she exclaimed. “Different! And in this life that’s what one wants, things that are different, experiences that are different, a whole life that is different from any other.