CHAPTER III A PHANTOM OF THE AIR
"It's a phantom, a phantom of the air!" Body aquiver, her black eyesreflecting the light of the setting sun, Greta stood intent, listeningwith all her ears.
A moment before she had been hearing only the goodnight song and twitterof birds. Strange sounds they were to her. Bird songs all the same. Butnow this. "It is celestial music from heaven!" she whispered. Yet as shethought it, she knew that was not true. A musician herself, she hadrecognized at once the notes of a violin.
The sound came from afar. At times a light breeze carried it quite away.
"May be miles away. In this still air sound carries far. But where canthat one be who plays so divinely?"
To this question she could find no answer. She was standing on a narrow,natural platform of stone. Before her, almost straight down two hundredfeet, were the black waters of Duncan's Bay. Miles away, with ridges,tangled jungles and deep ravines between, was the nearest settlement.
She had climbed all the way up Greenstone Ridge from the shore ofDuncan's Bay that she might be alone, that she might think. She was notthinking now. She was listening to such music as one is seldom privilegedto hear.
Yes, she had climbed all that way through the bush that she might think.Greta was an only child. This was her first long journey away from homeand mother. Tears had stood in her mother's eyes as she bade her goodby,yet she had said bravely enough, "You must go, Greta. The doctor says youwill escape from the poison of ragweed. I cannot come with you. You willbe safe and happy with Jeanne and Florence. Goodby, and God bless you!"
There were times when this dark-eyed child recalled those words, whengreat waves of longing swept over her, when her shoulders drooped and allher body was aquiver. At such times as these she wanted nothing so muchas to be alone.
As she had stepped into the still shadows of the evergreen forest at theback of the camping ground on Duncan's Bay that afternoon, she had beencaught in such a wave of homesickness as would seem for the moment mustsweep away her very soul.
"Florence!" she had called, and there was despair in her heart."Florence, I am going to climb the ridge. You and Jeanne go on. I have myflashlight. I--I'll be back after the sun has set."
"All right," Florence had called cheerfully. "Don't go over the ridge. Ifyou do you'll get lost. Keep on this side. If you lose your way, justcome down to the water's edge and call. We'll hear you and come for youin the boat."
"Oh!" the slim black-eyed girl had breathed. "Oh, how good it will be tobe alone--to watch the sun set over the black waters and to know that thesame sun is making long shadows in our own back yard at home, and perhapsplaying hide and seek in mother's hair!"
She turned her face toward the rocky ridge that towered above her andwhispered to herself once more, "Alone, all alone."
Strangely enough, though no one is known to inhabit Greenstone Ridge, andsurely no one at that hour would be found wandering there so far from theregular haunts of men, she had experienced from the first a feeling thaton that ridge she was not quite alone.
"And now," she breathed, "I know I am not alone up here. There is someoneelse somewhere. But who can that person be? And where?"
Here indeed was a mystery. For the moment however, no mystery could holdher attention. Even thoughts of mother and the sunset were forgotten. Itwas enough to stand there, head bare, face all alight, listening to thatmatchless melody.
* * * * * * * *
As Florence had pushed her stout little boat off the sandy shore thatafternoon, she had been tempted to call Greta back. "Perhaps," she saidto Jeanne, "we have made a mistake in allowing her to lose herself inthat forest alone."
"But what can harm her?" Jeanne had reasoned. "Wolves are cowards. Thewild moose will not come near her. There is no one on the ridge. It willdo her good to be alone."
Thus reassured, Florence had straightened the line on her pole, hooked alure to a bar on her reel, and, with Jeanne in the stern of the boat, hadrowed away.
Someone had told Florence that the waters of Duncan's Bay were haunted bygreat dark fish with rows of teeth sharp as a shark's. From that time thebig girl had experienced a compelling desire to try her hand at catchingthese monsters. Now she breathed a sigh of suppressed excitement as sheunwound a fathom of line from her reel.
"You do it this way," she said to Jeanne. Her whole being was filled witha sort of calm excitement. "Cousin Joe told me just how you fish forpike. You put this red and white spoon with its four-pointed hook on theline. Then you let the line out, almost all of it, a hundred and thirtyfeet. Then you row around in curves. You drag that red and white spoonafter the boat. See?"
Jeanne nodded. "And--and what happens then?" She had caught a little ofthe big girl's excitement.
"Why then of course the fish takes the spoon."
"But what does he want with the spoon?" Jeanne's brow wrinkled.
"He thinks--" Florence hesitated, "well, maybe he thinks it's a herringor a perch. Perhaps red makes him mad. He's a wolf, this pike is, thewolf of all dark waters. He eats the other fish. He--but come on!" hervoice changed. "Let's get going. Be dark before long. You let out theline while I row."
For some time after that, only the thump-thump of oars and the click ofthe reel disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness of that black bay, wherethe primeval forest meets the dark water at its banks and only wildcreatures have their homes.
"There!" Jeanne breathed. "It's almost all out." She sat in the back seatand, lips parted, pulse throbbing, waited.
They circled the dark pool. The sun sank behind the fringe of evergreens.A bottle-green shadow fell across the waters. They circled it again. Agiant dragon fly coursed through the sky. From afar came the shrill laughof a loon. A deep sigh rose from nowhere to pass over the waters. Aripple coursed across the glassy surface. And then--
"Florence! Stop! We've hit something! The line! It's burning my fingers!"Jeanne was wild with excitement.
"Here! Give it to me!" Florence sprang up, all but overturning the boat.Gripping the rod, she reeled in frantically. "It's a fish!" Her wordscame short and quick. "I--I feel him flapping his tail. He--he's coming.Must have half the line. Here--here he comes. Two--two-thirds.
"Oh! Oh! There he goes!" The reel screamed. In her wild effort to regaincontrol, Florence felt her knuckles bruised and barked, but shepersisted. Not ten feet of line remained on the reel when the fishreluctantly halted in his wild flight.
"He--he's hooked fair!" she panted. "And the line is stout, stout as acowboy's lariat. We--we'll get him! We'll get him!"
Once again her splendid muscles worked in perfect time as she reeled inyard after yard of the stout line.
This time she fancied she caught a glimpse of a dark shadow in the waterbefore a second mad rush all but tore rod and reel from her grasp.
"Florence! Let the old thing go!" Jeanne's tone was sober, almostpleading. "Think what a monster he must he! Might be a sea-horse or--or acrocodile."
"This," said Florence, laughing grimly, "is Michigan, not Florida. Thereare no alligators here."
Once again she had the fish under control and was reeling in with afierce and savage delight. "He's coming. Got to come. Now! Now! Now!"