Chapter XXVII: A Haunted Bay

As you have guessed, the plane heard by the Red Rover and Berley Todd was Drew Lane’s red racer. And Johnny Thompson was riding in the rear cockpit.

Drew had planned his trip well. They should have reached the island before dark. But misfortune had befallen them. Forced down by a leaky fuel pipe, they had found themselves on the surface of a small lake in the midst of a great forest where there was no one. After two hours of labor with a few tools and scant material, they had managed to repair the leak. This delay had forced them to fly in the night, and here they were approaching an island known to them only by reports and by a map that lay spread out before Drew in the cockpit.

Despite his meager knowledge, he did wonderfully well. Having arrived at the east end of the island, he flew directly across it. Catching the gleams of light that came from three narrow bands of water, he knew them to be Rock Harbor, Tobin’s Harbor and Duncan’s Bay. Choosing the middle one of these, he dropped low to go scooting along less than two hundred feet in air.

As he flew, the gleam of a powerful searchlight, attached to the plane, played upon the water.

Of a sudden that light shot upward, then blinked out.

“Found what he was looking for,” Johnny Thompson told himself. “But what was it?”

To this question he could form no certain answer; perhaps a boat, a cabin or an airplane. In fact, Johnny was almost completely in the dark regarding the purpose and probable outcome of this, the latest of Drew Lane’s adventures.

When he had met the young detective he had said never a word. In silence they had climbed into the plane and flown away. Who had kidnaped the Red Rover and Berley Todd? Johnny did not know. Did Drew Lane know? Were the kidnapers on this island? Was the Red Rover? Was Berley Todd? The boy did not know. All he knew was that he appeared to be right bang up against one more exciting adventure, and that was enough.

Tipping the plane at a rakish angle, Drew Lane sent it over a narrow ridge of land to drop at last upon a narrow stretch of black water. This was Rock Harbor. The scout’s cabin was not half a mile away. Hearing the drum of a motor, he extinguished his light, then sprang to the door just in time to see the plane land.

“Hm!” he breathed. “More kidnapers, officers of the law, or just ordinary folks. I expected to have a dull time at this place, all by myself, but blamed if it ain’t been exciting so far.”

At that he buckled his one remaining “shootin’ iron” about his waist and disappeared into the night.

At that same hour a second plane, all silver and white, circled over a stretch of water black as night, then, graceful as a sea gull, sank to rest.

The body of water was Duncan’s Bay. Two miles long, one quarter as wide, with trees growing to the very edge of its lapping waters and never so much as an abandoned shack standing beside it, this bay at all seasons of the year is a dark and lonesome spot as night falls across the world.

Night was here. So too were the chill winds of November. But the single occupant of the plane appeared to give little heed to all this. Unfolding a curious sort of collapsible rubber boat, he filled it with air, took a short paddle from his fusilage, stepped into the rubber affair and paddled ashore.

The spot upon which he landed had perhaps at one time been a barren stretch of sand. Overgrown now with tangled grass and low bushes, it forms a perfect camping ground. Such it has been for countless generations. From this spot ten thousand camp fires have sent their golden gleams across the black waters of Duncan’s Bay. Each in turn has faded into the darkness of night. Had this strange visitor, a slender person in a long black coat, cared for such things, he might have dug beneath his very feet and found there charcoal and half burned bones from fires that had gleamed a hundred, perhaps two hundred years ago. For, since Isle Royale lifted its rocky head from out the deep and took on a cap of green, this spot has been the camping place of man.

The stranger did not dig. He stood there long as if in silent contemplation.

He might have fished, for in these very waters such great northern pikes (wolves of all fresh water seas) as are not found elsewhere play among the wavering weeds. Had he cared to wait for dawn, then had he put out across the narrow bay to set a silver spoon gleaming through the black waters, he might have experienced such a thrill as is seldom accorded a fisherman.

He did not wait for dawn. Instead, by the gleam of a small flashlight he studied a slip of paper for a moment; then turning abruptly about, lost himself in the dense brush that lines the slope of a high ridge just back of this narrow clearing.

Duncan’s Bay is separated from Tobin’s Harbor—which, as you will recall, was the landing place of first the kidnapers’ plane and after that Drew Lane’s red racer—by a tall and narrow ridge of rocks heavily overgrown with brush.

A half hour after this tall person from the silver plane vanished from the camping grounds of Duncan’s Bay, a strange apparition might have been seen at the very crest of the ridge.

At this spot, known as Lookout Louise, one may stand at a point some hundreds of feet above the water level and look down upon the dark and somber bay that lies below. On this particular night, viewed from this height, the silver plane seemed a giant sea gull with wings outspread.

But the apparition—he wore a long flowing robe of filmy white. As the moon came out to gleam upon him, his head appeared as white as his robe. And his body was bones, just gleaming white bones, or so it would have seemed had some one been there to look. There was no one.

For one full moment he stood gazing down at the black waters and the silver plane. Then, turning slowly about, he gave utterance to a low, hollow chuckle as weird as the song of the wind in the pines of a churchyard at midnight. Then, like the phantom he seemed, he dropped away into the shadows that lay above Tobin’s Harbor where at that very moment the fate of Drew Lane, Johnny Thompson and the kidnapers swung uncertainly in the balance. And even as this strange apparition vanished, he appeared to gallop.