by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER IV THE FACE IN THE FIRE
Ruth let out a little half-suppressed scream. A pasteboard tube slippedfrom her grasp and fell to the floor. A purple ball of fire burstingforth from the tube shot across the floor, climbed a stone wall, thensuddenly blinked out. The yellow gleam of a tallow candle shot downward.A tin can struck the floor with a dull thud. The candle blinked out. Thenall about the girl's trembling figure was darkness, darkness so completethat it seemed you might cut it with a knife.
It was terrifying, that darkness, in an underground place at night. Yetit was not the darkness that affected her most. Nor was it the ball offire that had danced about her feet.
There had been another ball of fire, and through that red ball of fireshe had seen a face.
"The face!" she whispered. "The eyes! I must have blinded him. Howperfectly terrible! Whatever am I to do?"
What, indeed? She could not turn and run. Which way should she run? Thecandle was out. She had counted on the candle to show her the way. Theway she had taken was winding, many turns, many corners, and always stonewalls.
"And now," she thought with a sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach."Oh! Why did I come?
"We started out to stage a sham battle. And I have blinded a man."
A man! Her thoughts were sobering now. Questions arose. What was the mandoing here in the heart of the old abandoned fort on House Island? That_was_ a question.
"His face was low down, close to the stone floor, as if he werecrawling."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Perhaps he was crawling. Perhaps I did notinjure him after all. He may be at my very feet now. Crawling!" Thethought drove her overwrought nerves into tremors.
"Matches!" she thought suddenly. There was a penny box of them in herpocket. Until now, in her excitement, she had forgotten them.
The box out, she broke three matches trying to light one. When the fourthflared up, it so startled her that she dropped it.
In time, however, the candle was lit. Then, with bulging eyes she staredbefore her.
"Nothing," she told herself in surprise.
She took three steps forward. Still nothing. She advanced ten yards.Nothing.
"Must have been here," she told herself. "But there is nothing and noone." She began to shudder again. Had the Roman candle she had fired intothe dark revealed a lurking ghost? Surely this ancient fort was spookyenough. But no! Ghosts were nonsense.
"I saw him," she told herself stoutly.
"A man was here," she assured herself. "I saw him. I could not have beenmistaken. He is here for no good purpose--couldn't be. I couldn't haveblinded him, else he could not have found his way to--to wherever he hasgone. He's using this fort without permission--perhaps for illegalpurposes."
No longer able to control herself, she went racing on tip-toe down thenarrow winding corridor.
There came a sudden burst of moonlight, and she found herself standing ina stone archway, looking out upon a sort of open court grown wild withtall grass, brambles and rose bushes.
Old Fort Skammel, built before the Civil War, has been abandoned foryears to the rats and bats that have found a home there. Yet there issomething suggestive of grandeur and protecting power hovering over itstill.
Ruth had felt this as she sat with Betty and Pearl at the foot of itsmassive masonry and ate her Fourth of July evening lunch.
Following out her plan of the morning, they had rowed over here, she andBetty Bronson and Pearl Bracket, for a little picnic. Having been broughtup on the island across the bay, the abandoned fort did not inspire inRuth the awesome fear that it did in some others.
"Rats in there," Ruth had said, munching at a bun.
"Big as cats," said Pearl.
"'Fraid of fire, though," said Ruth. "Won't hurt you if you have alight."
"Betty," said Ruth, changing the subject as she watched the red glow ofthe sunset, "I never see a sunset but I feel like I'd like to get on aship and go and go until I come to where that red begins."
"Yes," said Betty, "I sometimes feel that way myself."
"But you've traveled a lot."
"Not so much."
"But you've lived on the banks of the Chicago River and traveled on theGreat Lakes. And now you're here. That's a great deal. I--why I've onlybeen on the sea."
"The sea is wonderful," said Betty. "It's a little world all its own.When you come to it you feel that you have found something that no oneyou know has ever seen before."
"I suppose so," said Ruth, "but of course I've always known the sea."
"And been everywhere on it."
"No, only a little way. Why," Ruth said, sitting up, "right over yonder,not a hundred miles from here, is one of the most interesting islands inthe world. Monhegan they call it. I've never seen it. But I shall someday, I am sure.
"It's sixteen miles from shore, a great rock protruding out of the sea.If there wasn't a smaller rock standing right in front of it and makingsort of a harbor, no one could ever land there, for most of its headlineis bold, a hundred, two hundred feet high. These rocks have strangenames. Burnt Head, White Head, Black Head and Skull Rock, that's thenames they've given them. They say you can catch beefsteak cod right offthe rocks. It's got a history, too. Captain John Smith was there once andGovernor Bradford. I want to go there and watch the breakers cometumbling in. It's wild, fascinating, you've no idea."
"Must be lonesome," said Betty.
"Lonesome? Well, perhaps," Ruth said musingly. "Yes, I guess so. The seaalways makes me feel small and lonesome. Out there almost everything isocean."
That was all they said of Monhegan. Little they dreamed of the part thatbewitching island would play in their lives during the weeks that were tofollow.
Pearl had been timid about taking part in the sham battle. At last theothers talked her over. So, armed each with a bundle of Roman candles anda tallow candle stuck in a tin can, they had made their way silently downthe long corridor that led to the gun room, from which massive cannonshad once looked down upon the bay.
"Spooky in here at night," Pearl had said with a shudder. The sound ofher voice awakened dead echoes and live bats.
Betty felt like turning back, but Ruth plodded on. Down a long, steepstairway, across a circular court, then into a narrow passage they went,until Ruth with a sudden pause whispered:
"There! There! I hear 'em."
"Here," she said, holding out her burning candle. "Get a light from thisand shoot straight ahead."
With trembling fingers Ruth lighted a Roman candle, watched the fusesputter for a second, then jumped as pop-pop-pop, three balls of firewent shooting down between stone walls to send an astonishing number ofrats scurrying for shelter.
It would be difficult indeed to find a more exciting game than the onethat followed. And such a setting! An ancient and abandoned fort. Downthese narrow passageways and resounding corridors had sounded thetramp-tramp-tramp of marching soldiers. Through long night watches intime of peace, in stress of war, weary night guards had patrolled theirsolemn beats. From these narrow windows eyes had scanned the bay, whilelike giant watch dogs, grim cannons loomed at the gunner's side.
In this small room, where chains, lifted and dropped, give out alugubrious sound, some prisoner has sat in solitary confinement tomeditate upon his act of desertion or of treachery against the land thatoffered him food and shelter.
The three girls thought little of these things as they parted to go eachher own way down separate corridors to meet sooner or later with screamsof terror and laughter as one stealing a march upon another set balls offire dancing about her feet.
A move in the dark or the slightest sound called forth a volley of red,blue, green and yellow fire. More often than not it was a rat or a batthat drew the fire, but there is quite as much sport in sending a hugerat scurrying for cover as in surprising a friendly enemy.
So the battle had gone merrily on until Ruth, finding herself alone in aremote corner of the fort and
, hearing a sound, had fired a volley withthe result we have already seen.
"And now, here I am all alone," she told herself. "Wonder where theothers are?"
"They are in there alone with that strange man," she told herself."How--how terrible!"
That she could do nothing about it she knew well enough, and was troubledabout their safety.
"If anything serious should happen to them I never could forgive myself!"she thought with a little tightening at the throat. "They are such goodpals. And it was I who proposed that we go on that wild chase, I whoreally insisted."
She was beginning to feel very uncomfortable indeed about the wholeaffair.
She and Pearl had been pals for a long time. In the same Sunday Schoolclass and the same grade at school, they were always together. At thebeach, swimming, boating and fishing in summer, tramping and skating inwinter, they shared their joys and sorrows.
"And now," she asked herself, "where is she? And where is Betty?"
Relighting her candle, she turned about to go inside and search for them.
"No use," she told herself. "Place is a perfect labyrinth, passagesrunning up and down, this way and that. Never would find them. Have towait. Have--"
She broke short off. Had she caught some sound? Were they coming? Or, wasit some other person, the man of the face in the fire? She shrank backagainst the wall, then called softly:
"Girls! Betty! Pearl! Are you there?" There came no answer. "Have towait," she told herself.
She fell to wondering about that mysterious face, and what in time sheshould do about it.
She and Pearl were fortunate in having as a day teacher a splendidpatriotic woman. That very day they had come upon her sitting on thegrassy bank of their island that overlooks Portland harbor. They haddropped to places beside her, and together for a time they had listenedto the _bang-bang_ of fireworks and the _boom-boom_ of cannons, hadwatched flags on ships and forts and towers flapping in the breeze. ThenPearl, who was at times very thoughtful, had said:
"It makes me feel all thrilly inside and somehow I think we should beable to do something for our country, something as brave and useful asBetsy Ross, Martha Washington and Barbara Fletcher did."
"You can," the teacher had said quietly. "You can honor these by helpingto make this the finest land in the world in which to live.
"One thing more you can do, wherever there is an old fort, a soldiers'home, or a monument dedicated to our hallowed dead, you can help preventtheir being defaced or defiled or used for any purpose that would bring areproach upon the memory of those who lived and died that we might befree."
"I wonder," Ruth said to herself, "what sort of den I came upon just nowin this grand old fort?"
Then, very quietly, very solemnly, she made the resolve that, come whatmight, the whole affair should be gone into, the mystery solved.
"If only they would come!" she whispered impatiently.
"Ruth! Ruth! Is that you?" sounded out in a shrill whisper from theright.
"Yes! Yes! Here I am."
"Shsh! Don't talk," she warned as Pearl began to babble excitedly. "Wemust get out of here at once."
"Why? Wha--"
"Don't talk. Come on!"
A moment later a punt with three dark forms in it crept away from theshadowy shore.
They rowed across the bay in awed silence. Having reached the shore oftheir own island, they breathed with greater freedom; but even here, asthey climbed the steep board stairway that led from the beach to thestreet above, they found themselves casting apprehensive backwardglances.
Once in the main street of their straggling village, with house lightsblinking at them from here and there, they paused for a moment to whispertogether, then to talk in low tones of the probable outcome of theirrecent mysterious adventure.
"I fully expected to see the _Black Gull_ gone when I looked out of thewindow this morning," said Ruth. "But she wasn't."
"Still chafing at her chains. Poor old _Black Gull_!" Pearl always feltthis way about the discarded ship of other days.
"What did you think?" said Ruth. "You wouldn't expect the owner of theboat to steal it himself. And he was a member of that terrifying band."
"But the old wood-hauling boat and the silks in her hold, (they were allsure the bolts of cloth were silk by this time) and the dory from herthat passed us in the night," said Betty. "They're different."
"And the face I saw in the fire," said Ruth with a shudder. "Such astrange face it was, dark and hairy and eyes that gleamed sort of red andblack. Oh! I tell you it was terrible! I am glad we're all here!"
"You--you wouldn't go back," said Pearl. "Not for worlds."
"Yes," Ruth said slowly, "I think I would, but in the daytime. Daytimewould be different. And someone should go. If that grand old fort isbeing used by rascals they should be found out."
"And there's been _so_ many whispers about smugglers this summer," saidPearl. "Smuggling in goods and men, they say. All sorts of men thatshouldn't be allowed to come to America at all."
"That's it!" said Pearl excitedly. "That's what he was! One of them, oneof the men America don't want."
"Who?"
"That man, the face in the fire!"
"You can't be sure," said Betty.
"No," said Ruth, "not until we go back there. Then perhaps we won't."
They parted a moment later, Ruth to go to her cottage on the slope, Pearlto her home on the water front, and Betty to the big summer cottage thattops the hill.
As Ruth lay in her bed by the window, looking out over the bay thatnight, she felt that the cozy and comfortable little world she knew, thebay, the cluster of little islands, the all enclosing sea, had suddenlybecome greatly agitated.
"It's as if a great storm had come sweeping down upon us," she toldherself.
"Mystery, thrills, adventure," she said a moment later. "I have alwayslonged for these, but now they have begun to come I--I somehow feel thatI should like to put out my two hands and push them away."
With that she fell asleep.