Part 17 (1/2)
”No more will I,” spoke up Mike Connell, ”for I'm going to find him, which is what I came to say along with telling the news.”
”And I'll go with you!” exclaimed Tom Trefethen, springing to his feet, as though for an immediate start.
”No, Tom; glad as I'd be of your company, it's best I should go alone, seeing as I know that country well, and one man can get along in it when two couldn't. Besides, you are needed here, while I'm not.”
In spite of young Trefethen's protests, the Irishman remained firm in his decision to set forth alone in search of his friend; and as he left the house Nelly, who with the others accompanied him to the door, managed to give his hand an approving squeeze.
Although Major Arkell gave orders for the tug to return to Laughing Fish in search of the missing loggers the moment her services could be spared, it was not until twenty-four hours after bringing in the raft that it was possible for her to do so.
In the meantime Mike Connell, starting at the break of day, and walking briskly northward, reached the cove that still held Peveril's deserted camp that same afternoon.
Through an intimacy with several of his countrymen who were successful peddlers of Ralph Darrell's smuggled goods, Connell had learned much concerning that section of country, and the various operations conducted within its limits. He had at one time seriously contemplated going into the peddling business himself, and had made so many inquiries in regard to its details that he was even familiar with ”Darrell's Folly,” though it was a place he had never visited.
Knowing it to be a headquarters for smugglers, and believing that, if Peveril had really got himself into trouble, it would be in connection with some of those people, he felt that it was a likely locality in which to search for information. Accordingly he headed directly for it, only going a short distance out of his way to visit Laughing Fish Cove. Having heard that the fisher-folk were in league with the smugglers, he did not care to betray his presence to them, and so did not show himself in the little settlement, but only skirted it, until certain that his friends were not there. Then he proceeded towards his destination by the same trail that Peveril had followed only two nights before.
As he walked slowly along the narrow pathway, trying to invent some plausible excuse for presenting himself before the irascible old man who, he had heard, excluded all strangers from ”Darrell's Folly,” his steps were arrested by the sound of voices approaching from the opposite direction. In another moment he saw three men hurrying towards him, gesticulating wildly and talking loudly in an unknown tongue.
As they drew near he recognized in them the three car-pushers recently driven from the White Pine Mine. It also flashed into his mind that these were the men whom he had urged to make a cowardly attack on the young fellow he had then considered an enemy, but for whom he was now searching as for a dear friend.
The new-comers also recognized him, and, regarding him as of one purpose with themselves in all that concerned Peveril, did not hesitate to advance and speak to him. After an exchange of greetings, Connell broached the business in hand by asking if they had seen anything in those parts of the chap who had driven them from White Pine.
The men glanced at each other hesitatingly for a moment, and then Rothsky answered:
”Yes, my friend, indeed we have seen him, and to our sorrow, since it is but now that he has driven us from another job, better even than that.”
”How so?” inquired Connell, p.r.i.c.king up his ears.
”It is this way: We are working, at good wages, for the old fool over yonder, when that devil of a Per'l comes and tries to steal our timbers. Then the boss compels us to seize him and put him in his boat, which we tow far out in the lake. Then, as he makes a try to escape, the boss, who is like a man crazy, shoots him with a pistol through the head, and we all see him fall without life in the bottom of his boat. He is so very dead that he does not even move, and so is let go to drift, him and his boat, while we return to sh.o.r.e.”
”A fine way of treating trespa.s.sers, bedad!” exclaimed Connell; ”but all the same, there is folks who would call it murder.”
”Yes, was it not? But wait. All that was three days ago; and yet, but one hour since, two of us have seen the ghost of this beast Per'l standing on the black rocks, with the white face of death, the wet hair of the drowned, and his clothing torn by the teeth of fishes. He said not one word, but waited for us, and would have dragged us to the bottom if we had not fled in time. Now, with such things allowed, we can no longer work in this place, and so, for the second time, has he driven us from our good job.”
”It's a cruel shame and an outrage on dacency, nothing less!” cried Connell, in pretended indignation. ”At the same time, Rothsky, man, I'd like to have been with you, for do you know I've never laid eyes on a ghost at all, but would like mightily to have the exparience.
Would ye mind tellin' me now where could I find this one, just for the pleasure of the sensation?”
”No, no, Mist Connell! Don't go near it, for you'll be going to your death if you do.”
”But, if I'm willing to risk it why not?”
So the Irishman insisted that they should permit him to share with them the glory of having seen a ghost, and finally won from them full directions how to discover the place from which they had fled in terror. The sly fellow even made pretence of wis.h.i.+ng them to go back with him, and, when they declined to consider his invitation, declared them to be a set of cowards, and set forth alone.
”It's my belief,” he said to himself, as he made his way towards the place where they had told him he would find a boat, ”that them divils of Dagos have played some dirty trick on Mister Peril. If there'd been but two of them I'd found some way of extorting a confession from their lying mouths, but odds of three to one is too big to risk. So I had to blarney them; but maybe I'll be able to help the lad some way; and, anyhow, here's for the trying.”
It was dusk when Connell, having found the boat, pulled un.o.bserved out of the land-locked basin, and by the time he reached the ledge, where he had been told he would find Peveril's ghost, darkness had so closed in that he could not tell whether it was occupied or not until he had left his craft and explored its limited area.
”Mister Peril!” he called, softly; ”come out, if you're hiding, for it's only me, Mike Connell, come to take you away from this--Oh, bad cess to it, he's not here at all, and it's a great song-and-dance them Dagos give me! Now I'll have to go and beg a night's lodging of the old man, and maybe he'll give me a job in place of them as has just left him. In that case I'll find out something, or me name's not--Holy smoke! where's me boat? Bad luck to the slippery craft! It's gone entirely, and here I am left to spend the cruel night alone on a bit of a rock in the sea. If I was in jail I'd be better off.”
It was only too true. The light skiff, carelessly left to its own devices, had been caught by a gentle breeze and borne without a sound beyond sight or hearing.