Roy J. Snell

“ Few girls are more generously endowed with imagination than are the fisher-folk’s daughters of the coast of Maine. None are more loyal to their state and their seaboard.
As this girl now paced the deck in the dark, she saw herself in slicker and high boots with a megaphone at her lips shouting commands to nimble seamen who swarmed aloft. Sails fluttered and snapped, chains rattled, rigging creaked as they swept adown the boundless sea.
But now the scene was changed. No longer was she aboard a great shipping boat, but an ancient man-o’-war. An enemy’s sloop threatened her harbor. ”

“ At eleven o’clock of a moonless, starlit night Pearl lay on the deck of the boat, her own first sailing boat. The work of repair was done. The Flyaway, as they had rechristened her, had gone on her maiden trip ’round the island and down the bay. She had proven herself a thing of unspeakable joy. Speed, quick to pick up, with a keel of lead that held her steady in a heavy blow, responsive to the lightest touch on rudder or sail, she was all that mind might ask or heart desire. ”

“ There, when the tide was coming in, water rushed over half submerged rocks to go booming against the granite wall, then to return murmuring and whispering of many things.
Pearl sat in the stern of her dory on this particular afternoon and recalled all the strange tales that had been woven about the cove.
At one time, so the story ran, it had been a smugglers’ cove. Here in the days of long ago, dark gray, low lying crafts came to anchor at dead of night to bring ashore cargoes of rich silks, tea, coffee and spices. ”

“ That a thirty-foot sailing vessel, as staunch a craft as ever sailed the rock-ribbed sea, with a mast twice the required thickness, should be drifting helpless with mast and sail cast off and lost from sight, should lie helpless in a calm sea while a storm came tearing in from off the land was, in time of peace, you might say, impossible. Yet all this was just what was happening. The Flyaway was hopelessly adrift. What was more, Pearl Bracket, the golden-haired, freckle-faced girl of Peak’s Island, and Ruth with her city friends, twelve-year-old Jessie Hilton and Betty, were aboard. ”

“ As he said this a curly-haired girl of eight and a brown-faced boy of six came to kneel by their mother’s knee to say their goodnight prayers.
As he bowed his head with them, something very like a stab ran through Don’s heart and a voice seemed to whisper:
“You are a thief. You are robbing these little ones and their honest parents of their bread. They endure all the hardships of the year. You come to reap a golden harvest from their lobster fields while their backs are turned.” ”

“ The little motor pop-popped away, doing its best, but they made little progress until toward night, when a brisk breeze came up from the east. Then, setting all sail, and shutting off the motor, they bent to the wind and went gliding along before it.
There is nothing quite like a seaworthy sail boat, a fair wind and a gently rippling sea. At night, with the sea all black about you and the stars glimmering above, you appear to drift through a faultless sky toward worlds unknown. ”

“ Ruth’s eyes and thoughts drifted away from the boy and girl on the rocks. She joyed in the beauty and power of nature revealed in that long line of thundering surf. Nowhere in all her life had she seen such surf as came beating in at the back of Monhegan.
Great men have felt the charm of it in all ages. ”

“ Like many another girl born and bred on the rugged coast of Maine, Pearl was fond of hand-line fishing. Time and again she had begged her big brother, Don, to take her deep-sea fishing in his sloop.
“Why, little girl,” he would laugh, “look at you! You’re no bigger than a fair-sized beefsteak cod yourself. If you got one on a line he’d pull you overboard. Then we’d have an awful time telling which was you and which the fish, one or t’other. You just stay and wash your dishes, sister. We’ll catch the fish.” ”

“ The great fog horn still sent out its message from Manana.
“Hoo-who-ee-Whoo-oo!” Sometimes rising, sometimes falling, it seemed a measureless human voice shouting in the night. The sound of it was haunting.
Rising and wrapping a blanket about her, the girl went to the low window sill, to drop upon the floor and sit there staring into the night.
There was little enough to see. The night was black. But across the crest of that great rock, the spot of light played incessantly.
“Fifteen miles out to sea,” she thought. “Seems strange. One does not feel that this house rested on land. ”

“ Early next morning Ruth and Pearl sailed the Flyaway to the scene of the night’s conflagration. No more mournful sight can be found than the wreck of a great ship, lifting its shattered form above the sea. ”

“ When you hear something move you know it is an enemy who has broken into the fort, and you shoot a candle at him, shoot low at his feet. Be dangerous if you didn’t.
“But think what fun!” she enthused. “You’re creeping along between stone walls, all damp and old. Just a little light. Dark all around. All of a sudden down the long passage a little stir, and like a flash your fuse sputters. Bang-pop-pop-pop-bang! Red, blue, green, yellow, orange, five balls of fire leap away at the enemy and he is shot, defeated, routed into wild retreat.”
“I should think he might be,” said Betty. ”

“ A fog, however, be it ever so dense, cannot shut out all signs of progress. A moment had passed when the ding-dong of a bell reached her ears.
“There!” she exclaimed, shaking her fist at the bell buoy which, however invisible through the fog, kept up its steady ding-dong. “There now! You’ve gone and spoiled it all. I’d like to tie my sweater about your noisy tongue!
“But of course that won’t do. The boat from Booth Bay Harbor will be passing in an hour or two. If this fog keeps up, the pilot will need your noisy voice to guide him through.” ”

“ Being an old schooner the wood-carrying craft must be beached from time to time to have her seams calked. They beached her at high tide. Low tide found her stranded. The return of high tide carried her off again.
In this there is no mystery. The mystery began when Ruth and Betty, along with other girls and boys of the island, swarmed up a rope ladder to the tilted deck of the beached schooner. ”

“ Away to the beach they went. There on the golden sand with the dark waters murmuring at their feet, with the lights of Portland Harbor winking and blinking at them, and the moon looking down upon them like some benevolent old grandfather, the two girls listened while Betty unfolded the story of her two visits to old Fort Skammel.
“A warm room,” she said at the end in a voice that was husky with excitement, “a warm room, all glowing with a weird yellow light, and full of silk things, dresses and dresses, all pink and gold, and blue and green. ”

“ The end came with a suddenness that was startling. The masts had fallen, one at a time. Slowly, regularly, like seamen dropping from a ladder into a dory, they fell to send sparks shooting skyward. Then, with a thunder that was deafening, there came the shock of a terrific explosion.
For a space of seconds all the fire at the center of the earth seemed to be shooting skyward. Then darkness and silence, such as the girl had never known, settled over all. ”

“ The stars were shining when their punt touched the sandy beach of the island that had always been Ruth’s home.
[38]
A half hour later that same moon, looking down upon a brown and weather-beaten fisherman’s cottage, beamed through narrow panes of glass upon two girls sleeping side by side. One was large and strong and ruddy. Her arms, thrown clear of the covers, showed the muscular lines of an athlete. Endless miles of rowing, clam digging in the early morning, hauling away at the float line of lobster traps, had done this. ”

“ She had seen this boy and girl twice before. There had been the painful swordfishing episode. Then once, as she had guided her motor boat into the tiny harbor at Monhegan, a cry had struck her ear. She had taken it for a cry of distress. Surf had been rushing in masses of gray foam over the shoals before Monhegan. There had been something of a fog. Having caught the outlines of a green punt there in the foam, she had exclaimed:
“They have lost their oars. Their boat will be smashed on the rocks!” ”