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Pocket Island

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<div> <h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2><h3>BIG SPOON ISLAND.</h3></div> The next morning our young friends prepared for a three days' trip on their little sloop. For a week they had discussed it and had carefully considered when it was best to go. "I want to wait till the moon fulls," Frank had said, "for then the weather will be better, and as our friend Manson is in a romantic frame of mind, he will enjoy it all the more." Everything likely to be needed was put on board their boat; provisions, water, extra clothing, guns, fishing gear, and also, it must be said, a bottle of good old whiskey, for on such a trip it might be even more needful than food. "We will take along the banjo," Obed said, for he was quite an expert with that cheerful instrument, "and evenings we can have some darkey songs." "What is the program?" asked Manson, when everything was stowed, the sails set, and with Frank at the helm they were gliding out of the little island harbor. "Where are we going?" "Well," replied Frank, "I think we will run to Big Spoon Island first and try for mackerel. There is a nice little harbor there if it comes on to blow, and two miles out are some good cod grounds. I suppose you would like to visit Pocket Island?" "I would like to just call there," said Manson, "for you have excited my curiosity. I have a weakness for ghost hunting, you told me once, and now you must gratify it, you see." There is, perhaps, no pleasanter way for three or four young men to spend a day or two than to have a tidy little yacht all to themselves, and sail her away off among the Maine coast islands, with a summer day breeze and clear skies to cheer them. To feel themselves just lifted over the broad ground swells, ruffled by a light wind that smells sweet and crisp; to watch some distant green island gradually coming nearer, or the seagulls lighting on the water just ahead, or the white clouds in the blue sky, and with no sense of danger, but only the care-free buoyancy of youth and good spirits, is to many the very acme of enjoyment. At least, it was to Manson, to whom such an experience was entirely new. When they reached Spoon Island he went into raptures over it, for it was a rarity, even among the many beautiful ones he had visited. As its name implied, it was shaped like a spoon, about five hundreds rods long and formed of white sand, with a growth of green sedge grass all over it. On the broadest part was a cluster of spruce forming a little thicket and beside this, and entered by a narrow inlet the tiniest bit of a harbor, just large enough to shelter a small sloop. The seagulls had also discovered its beauty, for thousands hovered about it, and the small harbor was alive with them. The island was a favorite nesting-place for them as well, and their shrill cries at being disturbed almost obliterated the voice of the ocean. "We will anchor under the lee," said Frank, as they drew near, "and try for mackerel, and then run into the harbor, make everything snug, and stay here to-night, or"—with a droll look at Manson—"perhaps you would prefer to go to Pocket Island and have ghosts for company!" "This is good enough for me," replied Manson, "and I guess the gulls will be the more cheerful companions!" When the sloop was at anchor, sails furled, and they were all waiting for mackerel bites, he said: "What is there so mysterious about this Pocket Island, and why are people afraid to go there? Tell me all about it! You have got me so worked up over it, I dreamed I heard a bull bellowing last night." "Well," replied Frank, "it's like all ghost stories and spook spots in the world; all imagination, I guess. I do not take any stock in them, and dad laughs at the entire batch. The only reality about it is that the island itself is the most forbidding pile of rock, covered with the worst tangle of scrub spruce you ever saw, and the shore is full of deep fissures and cracks. The one mysterious fact is, that strange bellowing noise that you can't locate anywhere. You may clamber all over the island and all around the shores and it seems to be just ahead of you, or just behind; so far as the stories go, well; the queer harbor inside is said to have been a smuggler's hiding-place years ago, and there are all kinds of yarns connected with the island, from bloody murders down to strange sea monsters seen crawling over the rocks. It has a bad name and is seldom visited; for one reason, I think, because it's impossible to land there except in a small boat, and then only when the sea is smooth. The bellowing noise, I believe, is made by the waves entering some cavern below high-water mark. There is also an odd sort of a story linked with it about a little Jew who was known to be a smuggler and who played a sharp trick on a few people ten or twelve years ago. I do not think he had any connection with the island, however, although some say he had. I fancy it's because any ghost-haunted spot always attracts all the mysterious stories told in its neighborhood." All this was interesting to Manson, and not only added a charm to all the islands he had visited, but made him especially anxious to explore this one. "Do not laugh at me," he said when Frank had finished his recital, "for expecting to see Indians paddling canoes among your islands when your people down here believe all the ghost stories they do. My fancy is only the shadow of what was certainly a reality not so very long ago; while your stories are spook yarns of the most hobgoblin shape. I want to go to Pocket Island, however," he added a little later, reflectively, "and hear that mysterious bellowing anyhow." That evening when the sloop was riding quietly at anchor in the little Spoon Island harbor and the full moon just rising, round and red, out of the sea, Obed brought his banjo on deck and away out there, miles from any other island, and mingling with the murmur of the ocean's voice about this one, there came the strains of old, familiar plantation songs sung by those three young friends, at peace with all the world and happy in their seclusion. The gulls had gone to rest, the sea almost so, for the ground swell only washed the island's sandy shore and idly rocked the sloop as she rode secure at anchor. The moon and the man in it both smiled, and when Manson and Frank, wearied of singing, lived over once more the battle scenes they had passed through, feeling that never again could they or would they be called upon to face such danger, it may be said that they were as near contentment as often comes in life. And if the droll look of the man in the moon brought back to one a certain night years before, when, as a bashful boy, he could hardly find courage to kiss a blue-eyed girl whom he had walked home with, and who had since become very dear to him, it is not surprising. Neither was it at all strange, if, when looking seaward, that night, he could see far away in the broadening path of silvery sheen, a small, dark island; that he should feel it held a mystery; and that some occult influence had linked that uncanny place, in some way not as yet understood, with his own past and future; that it was some link, some tangible spot, some queer connection between dreams and hopes that might develop into real facts. While not what is usually called superstitious, Manson could not understand why he had from the very first mention of this island, felt an unaccountable influence attracting him toward it. What it was he could not tell, and yet every hour seemed to bind this influence all the closer, and as it were, cast its spell over him. When they all turned in for the night, he could not go to sleep. His thoughts would go back to that horrible night on the battlefield when he, in his agonies, fancied himself wading down a cool, clear brook; then to the strange influence Liddy had said she felt when, in keeping a foolish promise, she had all alone paid a visit to Blue Hill, and now this weird spell of enchantment that was growing upon him. Was there some mysterious plot in his life that was being unfolded step by step, and one that was far beyond his comprehension? Was his chance meeting with this friend, Frank, on the picket line, a part of it? Was the imperative inclination to always take Liddy away to the top of Blue Hill when he wished to speak to her very soul, also due to some incomprehensible power that was shaping and bending their lives together? That they were, and must be as one in the future—as long as life lasted, he believed as firmly as he believed he lived, and yet beyond that belief there was—and here he met an impassable barrier and could go no further, only realizing that he was being led by an unseen force. Was it a power that was pushing him toward Pocket Island? He could not tell. <hr class="major" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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