Legends of the Ghost Pirates (9 page)

Sara says, “Let's keep our eyes peeled; we should be
close to the island. Fisher. Are we still on course?”

I glance at the compass and nod. “Sara. When you
viewed the chart, what did the cove look like?” I ask.

“It's a lot like a long lobster claw. On the south
end, it’s narrow and goes quite a ways into the island. It looks
like we should be able to anchor anywhere in the channel, but it
might be best if we go all the way into the cove.”

There's something she said about the channel that's
nagging at me, but I can't seem to think of it. I suppose we'll
find out soon enough.

Jo is back on look-out standing up by the mast when
she calls out, “I see the island.” Pointing she says, “It's just
off our port bow. Just keep going in the same direction and we
should be good.”

I look where she's pointing and I can just start to
see land materializing out of the fog. The breeze is nice and
steady, not too strong, just enough to push us along at a
reasonable speed. I keep thinking about the narrow channel;
something is still nagging me about it.

I call to Sara and Jo, “Be ready on the halyards to
lower the sails. If the channel is narrow, I doubt we'll be able to
sail all the way in. There are two paddles below under the seat.
Let's have those out and ready to use.” Both girls go below and
rummage around until they're back on deck with two paddles.

As we get closer to the island I can see just to the
right of the entrance white water splashing into the air; rocks. I
point to them and say, “Let's make sure we steer clear of those.
It'll smash us to splinters.”

Jo looks back at me. “You're the one steering.
You
make sure we steer clear.”

I make a face and give her a mocking salute.

After a while, when we're a little less than a
quarter of a mile away, with the rocks now behind us, I can see the
water looks calm in the entrance; the island is blocking the wind.
I do my best to sail us in, but the closer we get, the less wind.
The sailboat moves slower and slower. Soon sitting right at the
entrance to the cove we are stopped dead in the water.

“Looks like I was right,” I say. “Let's drop the
sails and see if we can paddle the boat in.” Sailboats really
aren’t meant to paddle, but this boat is small enough we can get
away with it. Most people never paddle a sailboat, but every now
and then it needs to be done. It'll be slow going, but it's better
than just sitting dead in the water not moving at all.

Both Sara and Jo are on opposite sides of the mast,
and they begin to paddle. I stay at the tiller and keep steering.
It's not fast, but at least we're moving. And as long as it's calm,
paddling's no big deal.

Closer to the entrance, I can see a high-tide
waterline mark across the rocks about ten feet above the water;
that means it's low tide and the water should be coming in. Farther
past the entrance I can see some buildings on the left. The
building is quite large especially being way out here on an island.
It's covered in gray shingles. Above its red roof there's a narrow
look-out tower with windows that go all the way around. That'd be a
cool fort.

Sara calls out and uses the paddle to point, “That
must be the old life-saving station. I read it on the chart. I
believe it's been shut down for a while.”

They keep paddling, and we slowly get closer to the
old life-saving station. When we float alongside it, I can see
there's a long set of rails like train tracks on the side of the
building that's protected from rough water. The rails run from
inside the garage doors all the way deep into the water. That must
be how they launched their lifeboats when the weather was
rough.

Looking at the old life-saving station, it occurs to
me we're moving past it a little faster. It's strange because the
girls don't seem to be paddling any harder. In fact, they seem to
be paddling less. What's going on? Suddenly, I get it. I know what
the nagging feeling was.

The tide's coming in and that means the cove is
filling up with water; a
lot
of water. The narrower the
channel gets the faster the current is going to run as the water
gets squeezed through. I've never been in this cove before, so I
have no idea what to expect. But the closer we get to the narrow
section we pick up speed.

Sara turns back to look at me, “Fisher?” She's also
just realized what's happening. We've already been swept past the
life-saving station. Just past her shoulders I can see what looks
to be some sort of an old wharf on the left.

“Let's try for the wharf,” I shout. Maybe we can get
out of the current and tie up alongside.” Sara nods and they both
beginning to dig in harder with their paddles. The thing is, we're
now moving faster than they're paddling. The closer we get to the
narrow section the swifter the current is, and now it seems we have
little control.

The old wharf is approaching fast. I steer the boat
hard to the left toward it– but we keep moving sideways up the
cove. “Paddle harder!” I shout. The current gets even stronger, and
we speed up even more regardless that we're going sideways. I don't
like not being in control of the boat. It's like white water
rafting with an-out-of-control sailboat. In an instant, we've lost
all control of the sailboat. Before I realize it, the wharf shoots
past our bow, from right to left, and the side of the boat hull is
aimed dead-ahead in the narrower part of the channel for large
rocks. We'll be crushed on the side of the rocks.

Chapter 11

Face in the Window

We're
moving rapidly sideways
straight for the rocks. If we don't do anything we'll be smashed to
little pieces! It doesn't matter how hard they paddle or where I
steer, we have little control where we're headed. Just off to the
side of the rocks and more toward the middle of the channel I can
see there are several mooring balls for visiting boaters to tie up
to. Tied to one of the moorings there's an old dingy that barely
floats. It's probably been abandoned there for a long time.

Sara shouts from the bow, “If we could just paddle
over to the mooring and grab on, that'd stop us!”

I'm watching the large rock rapidly getting closer.
“We're moving too fast! Doesn't matter how hard you paddle, we'll
miss it before we ever get close enough to grab on.”

“We have to try!” Sara shouts back and begins to
paddle even harder toward the mooring balls. But sailboats just
don't move very well with paddles.

I realize Jo isn't paddling at all; she's pulled a
coil of rope out of the front locker. As if she's done it a hundred
times, she takes one end of the rope and quickly ties it to the
middle of the paddle. Once the rope is secure to the paddle, she
stands up on the bow, paddle in hand like a harpoon, and holding
the coil in the other. She looks like she's going after Moby
Dick.

“What are you doing!” I shout.

Jo doesn't answer. Her eyes are intensely watching
the dingy as we quickly approach it with her arm cocked back ready
to hurl off the paddle. The dingy is soon just off our bow about
fifteen feet. That's as close as it's ever going to get. Jo takes a
deep breath, slowly lets it out, then lets the paddle fly right at
the dingy.
CLUNK!
It's a direct hit, and the paddle lands
wedging itself between the seats and the floorboard. In a split
second Jo takes the end of the rope, still in her hand, and secures
it to the bow cleat. When we go sliding past the old dingy, the
rope Jo's tied on suddenly goes tight, whipping the bow around
pointing us right at the dingy. The rope holds us tight and the
whole sailboat arcs away from the rocks.

“Jo, you did it!” Sara shouts and gives her a big
hug. I don't know how she did it, and I'm still looking at the
paddle wedged under the seat. Whatever the reason, it worked, we're
safe now and we've swung away from the rocks.

Suddenly the rotting old rope that ties the dingy to
the mooring ball snaps from the extra weight of our sailboat. Now
trailing a dingy, we're once again at the mercy of the current.
Luckily when Jo hooked the dingy it'd swung us well clear of the
rocks so now we're out of danger. We're still drifting, though,
just farther up the cove.

I notice the farther we drift into the cove the less
speed we seem to be moving. We're slowing down as the current nears
the end of its journey. It doesn't take too long before we're
harmlessly drifting almost at upper end of the cove.

“We're safe now,” I call out. “Sara, see if you can
paddle us over to one of the other mooring balls.”

Soon, it only takes a minute or two before we're
safely tied off again to the security of another mooring ball. Now
that we've stopped moving I begin to relax. It all happened so
fast; one minute we're out of the wind not moving, the next we're
in a crazy current shooting us straight for the rocks. And now here
we sit as if nothing had happened at all.

Before we left Trent Harbor it never occurred to me
we'd need a way to get to shore. You can't just take a sailboat
like ours to the embankment; it'll get stuck on the bottom well
before getting close. Looking at the old dingy alongside our boat,
I realize we now have an easy way to get in. Maybe. Looking closer
at the rotting dingy, before we make it to shore, it may just
sink.

What to do next? “We've got about an hour of
daylight left,” I call out to the girls. “Do you wanna go to shore
and do a little exploring? It's probably going to take all our time
just to figure out what 'Under the old man's nose' means.”

Jo says, “I don't know about you, but I'm
starved.”

“I'm pretty hungry too,” I say.

Sara jumps below, and says, “Why don't I heat up a
can of beef stew. We can go to shore after we eat.” She pokes her
head back up and looks at me giggling. “And Fisher, just because
I'm cooking dinner doesn't mean I'm the head cook and cleaner.”

While Sara's below heating up dinner, Jo and I are
sitting in the cockpit. I really don't have anything to say to her
and apparently she's got nothing to say to me, so we sit in silence
looking at the surrounding cove.

Breaking the silence, I ask, “Can you hand me the
binoculars.”

She pulls them from around her neck and gives them
to me.

I put them to my eyes and have a look around. The
fog has cleared enough that I get a good view of the surrounding
shore. On this island there's not too much to look at. As far as I
can tell there are no trees. I wonder if that means in really bad
storms, ocean swells crash across the island taking trees with
them. Who knows. I also notice there are a few old lobster shacks
that could be abandoned. Back up the cove from where we came, one
of the shacks has a floating dock that, if needed, we could tie the
sailboat off to. Farther back toward the entrance, I get a good
view of the old Coast Guard life-saving station. That might be fun
to check out later. And past that I can see open-ocean with waves
crashing on the rocks. Beyond the rocks there are dark thunderheads
forming to the west silently approaching toward us. It's going to
be a wet and wild night.

I put the binoculars down in my lap and look at Jo.
She's also looking at the surrounding shore. “That was a pretty
cool trick with the paddle,” I say.

Not looking at me, just above a whisper, she says,
“Thanks.”

“Where'd you learn to do that?” I ask.

“I didn't.” She pauses for a moment. “I'm just good
at coming up with stuff like that.”

Again, we sit in silence a little longer. I can
smell the beef stew coming up from the cabin which makes me even
hungrier. A couple of seagulls on shore cry out as they fight over
a crab.

Jo turns and looks at me. “Fisher. Why don't you
like me?”

Where did that come from? I'm about to say
something, but no words come out. I have no idea how to answer her.
I feel like I'm frozen in time and all I can do is look at her
watching me.

“Dinners up!” Sara calls from below. Saved. I
quickly stand up, taking a quick glance at Jo, then climb down the
steps below.

It's dark down here in the cabin, so I pull out some
matches and light the two oil lamps that are mounted on the sides.
With the yellow flickering light it gives a warm glow about the
cabin. When I sit down at the little table, Sara hands me a bowl of
steaming beef stew. I quickly shovel food into my mouth; I don't
know if it's because I'm so hungry, or so I don't have to talk to
Jo. Both girls are soon also sitting at the little table eating
warm stew. Looking out the side windows I can see it's quickly
getting darker.

With a mouthful of stew, I say, “I think we're in
for a good storm tonight.” Just as I say that, with the approaching
front the wind begins to blow harder. As the boat swings around
tied to the mooring ball, we can feel the movement. Down here in
the cabin it'll be warm and dry, and it can rain and storm as hard
as it likes, but we'll be fine.

I like watching a good summer storm, so after I take
my last bite of stew, I poke my head up out of the cabin to watch.
There's lightning exploding far to the west. In the twilight the
few abandoned shacks are silhouetted against the flat landscape.
Looking toward the south at the life-saving station, it is too dark
and its look-out tower pokes up against the twilight sky.

Suddenly I see something. I blink and look again.
Did I really see a faint light coming from the tower? Probably the
distant lightning’s messing with my eyes. But now that I'm looking
harder, it's completely dark. I'm about to go back below when I see
the dim glow again. But this time it stays on, not like a flash of
lightening.

I keep my eyes fixed to the flickering light. At
times I think my eyes are just playing tricks on me, but other
times I'm certain I'm seeing light coming out of the top windows.
“Can someone hand me the binoculars?”