Chapter XVII: The Phantom of Superior

“Jeanne,” said Florence, “do you remember that man over at Rock Harbor lodge who was always talking about fishing?”

“Yes. Why?”

“He’s got me all excited. Let’s celebrate our wonderful luck getting that Government contract by going fishing.”

“I—” Jeanne murmured, “I only wish to sit on the rocks and dream the hours away.”

It was the next day. Several hours were at their disposal. They were anchored at Tobin’s Harbor. The _Iroquois_ was due at sunset with a boat-load of supplies for fire-fighters. The _Wanderer_ was to help distribute these, so for the time they were standing by.

“You would desert me?” said Florence with a laugh. “Katie will go. Won’t you, Katie?”

“Fishing?” Katie’s eyes shone. “Absolutely.”

A half hour later the two girls were on their way to the fishing grounds. Florence was in her element. For her there was nothing quite like the “living water” of old Superior. In a rowboat you are so close to it. Each dark blue wave as it lifts you, then pushes you gently forward, seems reluctant to let you go.

“The water is _so_ blue!” she exclaimed. “Must be the copper in these rocks that makes it.”

“Yes,” said Katie.

“Or the blue of the sky.”

“Yes,” Katie agreed once again.

Truth is, Katie had scarcely heard. She, too, was in her element. She was enjoying perfect physical activity, and that, to her, was life. L I F E, spelled with big round letters. With a rhythmic motion, keeping pace with the waves, her strong arms moved slowly back and forth while the oars flashed in the sun.

“Yes,” she repeated as if something more had been said.

“Wait! Stop!” Florence cried. Her line had been given a sudden pull.

“A fish,” said Katie.

“A big one!” Florence enthused, reeling in.

“Not so big,” said Katie.

Katie was right. It was not so big, perhaps three pounds. A fine fish for all that and Florence thrilled at landing it.

“And yet,” she thought, as they rounded a rocky point to cut across a gap to a small rocky island beyond, “there must be a fifteen pounder somewhere, just must be.”

“Yes,” said Katie as if reading her thoughts.

There was not for all that. No fifteen pounder rose to their lure around the far end of Edward’s Island. Six times they worked their way along the point, crossed it and circled back, but only one small fish brought them a moment’s thrill.

“Look!” Florence exclaimed as once more they headed out from the point. “There’s that lone fisherman, the mysterious one who is always there. Jeanne calls him the Phantom.”

“Yes,” said Katie. “He’s out at what the fishermen call Five Foot.”

“How far is it?” Florence’s voice was eager.

“One mile,” said Katie.

Lifting the field glasses to her eyes Florence studied the lone fisherman as he glided across the blue waters, then turned and glided back again. There was something about the waters on this day that seemed to lift him up above the surface.

“Looks as if he were floating through air.”

“Yes,” said Katie, showing all her fine teeth in a smile.

“There! He—he’s got one!” Florence exclaimed, quite forgetting her own line. “Must be a big one. How he pulls!”

The lone fisherman was standing up in his boat. He was pulling in a hand line, yards and yards of it. To Florence, who waited breathlessly, the line seemed endless. And yet, when the end did come it was with sudden shock, for the fish seemed immense.

“A whopper!” she exclaimed. “A regular whale. Katie, we’re going out there! We must!”

“Might be too far,” Katie suggested half-heartedly. She, too, was a born fisherman.

“He’s there,” Florence argued. “His boat is no larger than ours.”

“Motor boat.” Katie suggested. For all her protests she was not turning back. Instead she was heading straight out over the blue-black surface of Superior.

“A mile,” Florence thought with a sudden intake of breath, “a mile from anywhere.”

She thought of the _Wanderer_ tied up there at the dock in Tobin’s Harbor, of Dave and all the rest. All that seemed dreamy and far away. What did it matter today?

Had she but known it, today had but begun and what a day it was to be!

It was with a feeling almost of guilt that she sat there watching the waves pass them one by one. With an all but silent swish, each seemed to whisper a warning.

“I won’t hear,” she told them defiantly. “Five Foot and big fish.”

Ah, yes, Five Foot. How often she had heard fishermen speak of it. There, a mile from anywhere, the rocks rose within five feet of the surface. That was why it was Five Foot. Beneath this giant submerged boulder, a full quarter mile long, scaly monsters lurked.

“We’ll get ’em,” she thought.

Was it conscience that whispered, “Yield not to temptation!” Florence did not believe in conscience, at least, not too much. So Katie rowed on and Florence, watching a bank of beautiful blue and black clouds roll along the horizon, thought, “What a grand old world this is.”

“Soon be at the spar,” Katie broke into her day-dreams.

“Reef begins there.”

“Al-all right,” Florence gripped her rod. “I—I’m ready.

“But look!” she exclaimed. “The Lone Fisherman is gone.”

“Gone?” Katie seemed startled.

“Oh, no!” her face broadened into a smile. “Over there.”

It was true. Out some distance further, perhaps a mile, the same small boat circled and bobbed, bobbed and circled again.

It was then that Florence began to believe in Jeanne’s strange notion, that this Lone Fisherman was no real fisherman at all and his boat no real boat, but that it was a phantom boat manned by a ghostly fisherman.

“More than one small craft has vanished,” she thought with a shudder. “The Flying Dutchman of Superior,” she whispered. She laughed at her own superstitious imagination, but the laugh was followed by a shudder. And at that moment the sun went under a cloud.