The Secret of Saturday Cove

by Barbee Oliver Carleton

  But she seemed to keep on bumping against something. Panicking, she thought again of sea monsters. Which way was the bank?

  She heard a voice calling again and again, “Sally! Sally! Over here!” With a sob of relief, Sally caught at something, an extended oar. She pulled herself up to the side of a boat. How odd that Poke should be here! And what was Poke laughing about at such a time?

  “Sally!” Poke gasped. “Stand up! You’re only in about three feet of water. You’re bumping on the bottom!”

  Gingerly, Sally reached her feet down. Then she was standing by the dory, a miserable figure dripping fire in the darkness. “What makes me so shiny?” she said foolishly.

  Poke smiled. “Phosphorescence. Tiny marine life that glows in the dark,” he explained. “The water is full of it tonight.” He reached out with both hands to help her into the dory.

  Of course, thought Sally. What she had seen were the strokes of Poke’s oars as he rowed toward her into the tunnel. “I thought you were a sea serpent,” she cried, shivering.

  Poke helped her into his jacket. “And I thought you were the ghost of Jonathan Blake, or I would have called out sooner.”

  He shone his flashlight over the walls that closed above them. Then he nodded. “Jonathan’s hiding place, of course. We’ll explore it tomorrow, you and David and I. How did you ever find it, Sally?”

  Sally tossed her wet pigtails and sent a flaming shower over them both. “By detective reasoning,” she told him.

  “Deductive,” Poke corrected. “Now, what happened?”

  It was fun telling Poke about her trip across the sand bar in the storm and her discovery of Jonathan’s tunnel. The approval in Poke’s face made her feel very brave and very important. But in spite of being wrapped in Poke’s warm jacket, Sally shivered as she described her flight from the rising tide.

  Poke nodded thoughtfully. “I’m glad I frightened you back upstream, because the entrance is pretty deep. From the angle of this creek, though, I’d guess you would have been safe and dry a little farther up. Anyway,” he finished, “you learned how to swim.”

  Sally gazed at him in amazement. “Swim! Was I swimming, Poke? In three feet of water?”

  “It was not very graceful swimming. But you were keeping yourself up just as well as if you had had ten feet of water under you.”

  “Swimming!” Sally shook her head with delight. “I was swimming! But if you hadn’t come along in a boat . . . .” She broke off and stared at Poke as if he were a vision. “You, Poke. You came in a boat!”

  Poke stirred uneasily. “You’re shivering. Let’s get you home.” He handed her the flashlight and took up the oars.

  Sally shone the light down the eerie passage ahead, and they began the dark journey back through the heart of the island.

  Then Sally’s eyes narrowed as she studied the boy. “You handle a dory awfully well for someone who never goes near the water. I want to know about it,” she told him bluntly.

  “I thought you might,” Poke said dryly. But the minutes went by as Poke seemed to consider how to begin. Strange shadows moved along the rock walls beyond the flashlight’s beam. The water flowed past them as black as ink.

  When he spoke again, Poke’s voice echoed hollowly around them. “I used to live on the Cape,” he began, “before I came to Saturday Cove. I spent all the time I could around boats. We all loved the water, just as David does — Mom, and Dad, and my sister.”

  His sister! Poke had never spoken of a sister before. Sally nodded, without understanding.

  “We had always owned a sailboat,” Poke continued, “and that year we’d bought a new sloop, a forty-five footer.” Again the look of tragedy touched the boy’s face. Sally waited, saying nothing.

  “She was a beautiful sailor, that boat. It wasn’t her fault. We were caught in a squall that day around sunset. A sail got fouled up and Dad gave me the wheel and went to fix it. He gave me the wheel . . . .”

  Poke had stopped rowing and the dory floated soundlessly on the flood tide. His voice had fallen so low that Sally scarcely breathed lest she miss his words.

  “We were a long way offshore when she went over. So we stayed with the boat. We were out there all night. They found us the next day, Sally. I was the only one left.”

  Sally felt the tears sting into her eyes. She badly wanted to say something, but no words came. So this was the reason for Poke’s hatred and fear of the water.

  When Poke took up the oars again, his voice was more normal. “I should have told you and Dave before. But I had asked Uncle Fred not to talk about it around here. I wanted to forget about it.”

  Sally’s eyes darkened with the thought of what this boy had gone through. Poor Poke, she thought. But she did not say it. It would be awful to be pitied all the time.

  “I had to be near the water,” Poke went on, “so Uncle Fred let me work around the Supply. And I wanted to get into a boat again. But somehow I never could, not even when David asked me to be his partner.”

  “What about tonight?” urged Sally.

  “Tonight, when you two followed Roddie without me, I knew what David was thinking. He was thinking I was a coward.”

  “Oh, no, Poke! He wasn’t!” But Poke ignored her.

  “At first I didn’t do anything. I just hung around, thinking about it. It was still light enough to see out on the water, so I went up to the Supply for the field glasses. I know where Willis Greenlaw has his string, and I saw Roddie hauling it.”

  “We saw him, too.”

  “I have an idea that Roddie had quite an audience,” Poke added. “I thought that Uncle Charlie ought to know, so I telephoned the Lobster Pot.”

  Sally agreed eagerly. “Then, what?”

  “Just before the squall hit, I saw Roddie going outside the tide rip toward Little Fox, and David head out after him. So then, of course,” said Poke, “I called the Coast Guard.”

  “You what?” Sally cried in thrilled disbelief.

  “I called the Coast Guard and they agreed to proceed with haste to Little Fox. After that all I could do was wait. It was dark by then and the storm closed in. I couldn’t see what was happening. I could only think.” The old despair touched the boy’s face and Sally looked away.

  “I kept thinking that I was nearer to David than the Coast Guard was. So,” said Poke simply, “I came.”

  “How did you dare to do it, Poke?” she asked him timidly.

  Poke looked at her. “The same way you learned to swim. You thought you had to.”

  Sally nodded, understanding at last. To follow Roddie, to clear David’s name, had not been enough. Only fear for his friend’s life was bigger than Poke’s fear of the sea.

  “By the time I reached Grindstone Point,” Poke was saying, “the Coast Guard cutter was already out by Little Fox. I could see her searchlight through the rain. So I decided to go in at Blake’s or Tub and wait out the storm. That was when I saw the light on the shore.”

  “My light!” Sally exclaimed. “Oh, Poke, I wish I had known you were there. It was scary coming in here all alone.”

  “It was scary for me, too. You looked like a ghost. First you were there, then you weren’t. I had to find out, so I nosed in here after you.”

  “If you hadn’t, I might have been drowned,” Sally told him in a wondering voice. Then she had a thought. “Will it last, Poke? I mean, now that you’re not . . . afraid any more, will you stay that way?”

  Poke said slowly, “I’ll stay that way, Sally.”

  Sally sighed, filled with content. Poke would be all right from now on. And she, at last, had learned to swim. Never again would she be treated like a baby in a boat. Dreamily, she gazed toward the entrance ahead, and her eyes widened. No longer was it the dim circle of light that it had been — it was now a pale arc. “Can we get out?” she asked uneasily.

  Poke threw her an amused glance. “The tide is turning, Sally. It won’t come any higher. We’ll have to duck down, but we’ll make it.”

&n
bsp; Poke shipped the oars and they got down carefully into the bottom. Then, with inches to spare, they moved outward on the current.

  The squall had passed over. The night air was sweet and warm, and a full moon was rising out of the sea beyond Blueberry Island. Poke rowed past the boulders and well beyond The Bite before he shifted to the stern to start up the outboard.

  “Listen,” said Sally. “I heard someone call.”

  Across the water came a long “HALLOOOO.”

  “Blink the flashlight toward them,” Poke ordered.

  Sally did so, and almost immediately they were in the full glare of a searchlight.

  Poke pulled the motor back up onto the stern board. “We’re about to be rescued by the United States Coast Guard,” he chuckled.

  Out of the night came the pale, trim shape of the cutter with the little Lobster Boy in tow. Anxious faces peered down at them.

  “That you, Sally?” It was David’s voice, heavy with worry.

  “It’s both of us,” said Poke.

  “Poke!”

  They heard David’s exclamation of surprise, and a quick question that was lost as one of the seamen tossed them a rope. “Tie up the dory,” they were told. “Then pull her up alongside, and we’ll get you aboard.”

  Soon Sally and Poke crowded into the little cabin, and the cutter got underway for Saturday Gove. But they could not talk freely to David yet. For Roddie sat apart in one corner, sullen-faced and silent, a blanket wrapped tightly about his shoulders in spite of the warm night. And a young seaman looking not much older than Poke, himself, stood grinning at them from the hatchway.

  “Sally, what did you want to leave for?” David demanded. “I told you to wait for me in the house, and all I found when I got back was your life jacket messing up the floor. Not a trace of you anywhere,” her brother went on angrily, “till the Coast Guard spotted that dory.”

  Sally glanced at Roddie. Much as she was longing to tell David of her discovery of the tunnel, she must not speak of it in front of Roddie. She yearned to tell him Poke’s story, too. But not here. Not now.

  “I just thought I’d take a little walk across the bar,” she told him lamely.

  The seaman threw back his head and laughed. “Man! How’s that going to look in the report? ‘Received call to rescue a couple of boys off Little Fox Island. Located them safe and sound on Blake’s. Received information girl is missing off Blake’s. Located girl and boy off Tub. Girl had gone for a little walk across the bar.’ ” The young man wagged his head.

  But a little teasing could not bother Sally now, and she smiled back. She was too pleased to be near David again, to find him safe. “What happened after you went outside?” she asked her brother.

  But David glanced at the seaman, then at Roddie, and slightly shook his head. His look said, Careful. Let’s not tell the Coast Guard about Roddie’s taking lobsters. He’s in trouble enough as it is. Aloud he said, “Roddie and I made a mistake. We were out too far when the squall hit.”

  “Next time,” the seaman said, “you boys better mind your storm warnings. If you’re old enough to go ramming around in a boat, you’re old enough to go by the rules.”

  “I guess that’s right,” said David agreeably.

  Then, as if he had just noticed him, David looked directly at his best friend. “Hello, Poke.”

  Gravely, the two boys regarded each other. Something unpleasant clouded the air between them.

  “This is the worst squall I’ve ever been out in,” David said bluntly. “Yet here you are in the thick of it, in a dory smaller than mine. How come?”

  Poke hesitated a little too long.

  “I guess I wasn’t supposed to believe all that business about you and the water, was I?” David said bitterly. “I guess that was all just kidding.”

  Silently Sally cried out, Oh, David, no! Don’t talk so! Poke lost his whole family in a storm like this!

  After a moment Poke shrugged and looked away. “I thought you might need me.”

  He missed the look that David sent him. It was an intent look of dawning respect, of growing gladness. Then David, ashamed of his outburst, wishing he could take back his words, studied the floor of the cabin.

  Troubled, Sally looked from one to the other. After all that had happened, things ought to be turning out all right. But they weren’t right at all.

  The heavy silence was broken by a shout from one on the men on deck. “Make ready to bring her in!”

  The cutter’s engines slowed, went into reverse. The first to reach the deck, David stared landward in amazement. There, it seemed, was a large part of the town of Saturday Cove gathered at the dock.

  In the moonlight their faces looked strained and worried. But when the children appeared at the deck rail a glad cry of welcome rose from them like a single voice. Some, David saw, were people from the yacht club in evening clothes. Others were townspeople attracted by the activity at the waterfront. All were equally wet and mussed.

  There, too, stood Willis Greenlaw with the Dennetts and several other lobstermen.

  Then he saw his parents. They were waiting anxiously at the ramp, side by side. Near them stood Poke’s Uncle Fred and, yes, Mira Piper, hastily wiping her eyes.

  Mr. and Mrs. Blake were the first to reach them, with a welcome so fervent that David said, embarrassed, “We’re all right, Mom and Dad. We’re okay. Just a little wet.” Sally, calm though she had been aboard the cutter, unaccountably burst into tears. And off at one side, much to Poke’s discomfort, Mira Piper was embracing him with all the affection of her motherly heart while Poke’s Uncle Fred looked proudly on.

  It was a moving scene in the moonlight. But David had a strange feeling that the people on the dock were waiting for something else. Something was unfinished. Something seemed to hang heavily in the warm night air.

  Then Uncle Charlie pressed volubly toward them. “Whole durn town’s been worried fit to bust,” he shouted in a bellow that reached easily to Main Street. Only it seemed to David that the hearty voice was shaking a little.

  The old lobsterman turned to the people. “Folks,” he bugled, “thanks to the Coast Guard, these young’uns seem to be alive and kicking. Roddie McNeill, too, there inside the cabin.”

  He glanced over at Poke. “It was young Elijah Stokes called out the Coast Guard. I did, too, but he beat me to it. Then durn if that boy didn’t head out there himself in a dory to see if he could help. Now that takes courage for anybody, and Poke never did like the water.” Here cheers and applause interrupted Uncle Charlie. Poke stared hard at his shoes, greatly wishing to be elsewhere.

  “But I got something else to say, ’fore we all go home, and this is the time and place to say it.” Uncle Charlie cleared his throat and thought for a moment.

  David saw Mr. McNeill push his way to the edge of the dock beside the cutter and then hesitate, waiting for his son to leave the cabin.

  Uncle Charlie continued. “They’s been some funny business going on around Sat’d’y Cove this summer. Seems someone ain’t too particular about whose traps he’s been haulin’.” He glanced toward the lobstermen. “Sometimes folks who ought to know better make pretty bad mistakes. We made one about David Blake, some of us.”

  Startled, David muttered, “Please, Uncle Charlie.”

  Without flicking an eyelash, Uncle Charlie went on. “We told Dave he better quit haulin’, ’fore he lost his license. But he knew he was innocent, and tonight he and his kid sister went out and got their proof.” The old man ran a nervous finger inside his collar. Then he kept doggedly on.

  “Just before the squall hit, Poke called me up over to the antique shop. He says, ‘If you want to know who’s hauling illegally, take a look at the cove through one of those antique spy glasses of yours.’ “

  Then Uncle Charlie looked at Mr. McNeill and for a moment seemed to talk directly to him. “Now, I ain’t saying who ’twas. Mebbe I don’t need to. He won’t even lose his license because the warden didn’t catch him. But
whoever ’twas, it wa’n’t Dave Blake!”

  Mr. McNeill glared at Uncle Charlie for a moment. Then without a word he stepped over onto the deck of the cutter and disappeared into the cabin.

  Uncle Charlie took a deep breath, wrung David’s hand, and made his way slowly across the dock to where his old car was waiting. It was getting along toward his bedtime.

  A sigh, a murmur of talk, swept over the crowd. They began to break up into small groups, to move homeward, or to stop for a moment and congratulate the children on their safe return. Finally, as David and Sally and Poke started toward the parking lot with their families, Willis Greenlaw and the Dennett brothers caught up with them.

  It was not easy for these men to make apologies.

  “Things looked to be against you, Dave,” Willis said uncomfortably. “You wouldn’t speak up, you know.”

  “We don’t feel very proud of ourselves,” Foggy added, “and we’d somehow like to make it up. Perce, for instance, aims to keep you in bait, Dave, free for nothin’, rest of the season.”

  “Why, Perce, you don’t have to do that,” said David.

  “I know I don’t,” said Perce. “But I aim to do it just the same. So don’t go spoiling my fun.”

  “I tied up your dory for you, down to the float,” Willis added practically.

  “Why, thanks, Willis.” David wondered how he could have forgotten the Lobster Boy.

  “Only,” asked Willis, “how come the cutter didn’t tow in Roddie’s boat along with your dory?”

  David hesitated.

  “She must of got stove up, we’re thinking,” said Willis, “out there in that squall.”

  “What did you do, Dave,” said Foggy after a moment, “pull that smart alec of a Roddie McNeill out the bay?” He stared at the boy wonderingly.

  David nodded, and caught from his parents such a look of pride and love that he felt the color burn into his face.