“Wait till we hear it again.”
They listened. For a long time they did not hear the mysterious sound. Then, with a suddenness that made them all jump convulsively, the wailing was resumed.
“Owoooooo!”
This time, the noise lasted a good ten seconds, rising to a shriek of terror, then dying away to a dismal moaning.
“It’s right in this cabin!” Chet said, in a muffled voice which indicated that he had hidden his head beneath the blankets. “It’s ghosts—I know it.”
“Ghosts, my foot!” exclaimed Frank, scrambling out of bed. “I’m going to find out what is making that racket.”
“Be careful,” warned Joe nervously.
“I’ll help you,” declared Biff. He, too, got out of bed, and then there was a yelp of pain, followed by a crash.
“Ow!” yelled Biff.
“What happened?” demanded the others in chorus.
“I barged into a chair. Stubbed my big toe. Ow!”
This relieved the tension a trifle. The others snickered at Biff’s predicament. Frank lit the lamp and in its glow the boys were revealed, shivering in their pajamas. Chet’s round face peeped out above a heap of blankets.
“Owoooooo!”
The dreadful sound broke out again. Chet dived beneath the blankets.
“That’s the queerest howl I ever heard,” declared Biff, rubbing his injured toe. “It certainly isn’t the wind.”
“It certainly isn’t a human being,” said Frank.
“It can’t be a dog,” volunteered Joe.
“Nor a cat.”
“Then what is it?”
“Ghosts!” bellowed Chet, from beneath the blankets. “Put out that lamp.”
Frank, however, raised the lamp on high and began to prowl about the cabin.
“The noise seemed to come from over this way,” he said, moving toward one of the big windows near the front.
Even as he spoke, the sound broke out afresh, immediately above his head.
Frank looked up. He could see nothing, yet that mournful wailing continued, and at last died away again.
“There’s certainly nothing up there,” he announced, peering into the shadows.
“There must be!” exclaimed Biff, close at his heels.
“Hold the lamp. I’ll soon find out.”
Biff took the lamp, and Frank dragged a chair over to the wall. He stood on the chair and began examining the surface of the logs. At last, just when the sound broke out again, he gave vent to a howl of laughter.
“I’ve found it!”
“What was it?”
Biff raised the lamp.
“Here’s your ghost. Come and see it, Chet. A glass ghost.”
Frank was pointing to an object embedded between two logs. Chet, his fears laid at rest, emerged from beneath the blankets and came over.
There was a small hole between the logs where the plaster had fallen away. Someone, for some unknown reason, had placed the neck of a bottle in this hole in order to plug it up. On the floor below lay the cork, which had somehow worked its way loose from the bottle neck. The wind, whistling through the glass tube, had created the doleful, fearful sounds the boys had heard.
“Ghosts!” said Frank significantly, as he stepped down, picked up the cork and replaced it in the neck of the bottle.
“I didn’t really think it was a ghost,” murmured Chet lamely.
Then the boys began to laugh. Although they had refused to admit it, all had been puzzled and more or less frightened by the uncanny wailings, and their relief was now expended in shrieks of laughter at their own expense. But the brave Chet, who had even refused to search for the cause of the sound, came in for his full share of ridicule.
The ghost was not heard again that night. But it was another hour before the boys finally fell asleep, snickering to themselves.
X
Stolen Supplies
A complete recital of the boys’ doings on Cabin Island during their first two days would be of small interest to any but themselves. Suffice it to say that they enjoyed themselves just as any other group of boys of the same age would in similar circumstances.
Cabin Island was located in a lonely cove, and, as it was some distance away from Bayport, few iceboats ever ventured so far down the bay. However, this isolation did not mar the holiday. On the contrary, as Joe expressed it, they could easily imagine that they were having their outing in the remote Canadian wilderness, instead of but a few miles from their own homes.
The storm that had welcomed them to the island, died down during the night and when they awakened the next morning they found that there had been a heavy snowfall, with deep drifts. To get down to the iceboats they had to break trail in real Northern fashion.
“This will spoil the iceboating,” predicted Joe. But, to their delight, they found that the high wind had swept clear great expanses of the bay, and although there were certain areas where the snow was piled high, by dexterous steering they could skirt these patches and keep to the open ice.
The first morning, they spent clearing a path from the cabin to the iceboats in the little cove. In the afternoon, they went out in the boats for a while, then returned to the cabin for a piping hot supper. That evening, they sat about the fire, telling stories and chaffing one another. They found that the keen winter air and the wholesome outdoor exercise rendered them sleepy long before their accustomed bedtime and they were glad to turn in shortly after nine o’clock.
“At home I’d raise a rare kick if anyone tried to get me to go to bed at this hour,” said Biff. “Now I’m mighty glad to hit the hay. Boy, I’m tired!”
The next morning they explored the lower reaches of Barmet Bay, going as far as a little village that nestled in a cove on the southern shore, about three miles to the east of the island. After lunch, they decided to make an exploration of the country along the shore. Leaving the island, they went inshore by iceboat, then donned snowshoes and went up on to the mainland.
This country was heavily wooded in spots, and they spent an enjoyable afternoon snowshoeing far up on the
