LITMIR.BIZ

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would be before he had enough of them to go boat hunting. Not that he knew either where to go or even how much a boat would cost!

      He had urged his aunt to accept a part of his wages in return for his board, but she would have none of it. “You’re still a-visiting me, Christopher, and when the visiting is over, the chores you do and the errands you run are enough to pay for your keep.”

      So Kit hoarded his money against the day when it would amount to a worthwhile sum, and meanwhile waited for the free afternoon which would be his with which to do as he liked. When it came at last he lost no time in setting out for Danger Cove.

      The day was warm, and the sunshine shimmered above the vivid green of the marshes. Meandering creeks, slack in full tide, wound toward the Bay. Seagulls screeched overhead, and once Kit fancied he heard a pair of quawks, although their breeding season was over.

      His road wound toward the Great Marshes and West Barnstable village, some seven or eight miles away. Long before he came to the village, however, Kit turned toward the head of the Cove, following a dim trail that disappeared once the scrub pines vanished and the dunes were reached. From that point on he made his way through valleys and over hills of clear white sand spotted with thin wisps of beach grass.

      Not until he came to the highest of all the dunes did he eat the lunch Aunt Thany had packed for him that morning, not knowing, as Kit himself had not known until he reached the factory, that he was to be given his free afternoon that very day. Scrambling to the top of the dune, he sat down and went to work on bread and cheese and raspberry tarts.

      As he ate he gazed about him. As far as he could see stretched dunes, scrub pines, and the blue waters of the Bay. The slender white steeple of the Meeting House looked very far away, as did the curling smoke from the Glass Works chimneys. There was no sign of life anywhere, save for a few screaming gulls and a sail that cut the horizon of the Bay.

      Below him, the surface of the Cove lay with scarcely a ripple, the harbor itself looking smaller to Kit than when he had stood on the beach at its edge. What could those deep waters hold of menace to any who ventured on them? Did they really hold anything at all? Had Skipper Barney with his serious manner and tall tale of three damaged craft merely been playing on his eagerness to swallow a mystery made especially fascinating by its aroma of piracy, lawlessness, and the supernatural?

      Wondering if he had been a victim, both of an old man’s idea of a joke and his own gullibility, Kit descended the dune and headed toward what he supposed could be considered the farther end of this dune barrier. It was slow, disagreeable plodding through the heavy sand and as going around or between the dunes was easier than going over them, the distance was twice or three times as long.

      There was no definite break in the line of dunes until Kit had reached a much farther point on the eastern shore of the Cove than he had ever reached before. Gradually, however, although he could see more dunes beyond, those about him decreased in height until they came to at least a temporary stop at the beginning of the long curving sandy spit which formed one tip of the crescent that was the Cove.

      It was not until then that Kit turned and looked over the way he had come. As he did so, he caught the first glimpse he had ever had of anything connected with a human being near the Cove. It was unmistakably a small, weathered, wooden shack, backed tipsily against a dune. Its foundations were buried in drifted sand, and something resembling a porch extended across the front. On that porch stood a fingure.

      Kit was not near enough to see exactly what the figure was doing, but it seemed to be painting at an easel.

      “Andrew!” said Kit to himself, uncertain whether to be glad or sorry he had found him.

       Chapter IV

      UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

      Two hours later, knowing that Aunt Thany would be alarmed if he were not home at the usual time, Kit tore himself away from Andrew, and especially from Andrew’s shack, with greatest reluctance. Not that Andrew had proved an especially cordial host, although he had seemed friendlier toward the end of Kit’s visit. At his first glimpse of Kit, he had merely grunted a gruff, “Can’t stop to talk now. Got to catch that shadow!” and had gone on sketching.

      Kit had stood watching him for a long time, remembering what his great-aunt had said about the sort of thing Andrew painted. For the moment he seemed to be doing nothing but drawing the circular swirls made on a nearby dune slope by spears of beach grass which had been moved back and forth by the wind. Again and again he frowned, erased what he had done, tried again. When he finally let what he had drawn stand, Kit could not tell whether he was satisfied with it or merely tired of trying.

      From that moment, however, Andrew was somewhat more approachable. Sitting down on the edge of the porch, his back against a crude upright, he motioned to Kit to do likewise.

      “Why are you always hanging around this place?” he asked curiously, lifting a handful of sand to let it slide through his open fingers. “I have seen you any number of times, although I doubt if you ever did see me.”

      “No,” admitted Kit. “I never did see you. I didn’t think anyone ever came here, much less lived here.” Kit was deliberately ignoring Andrew’s question. He had no intention of sharing with another his plan to unearth the Cove’s mystery.

      Andrew gave a superior little laugh. “That is rather a good one, you know. Because, at least in the past, this region has been pretty well populated. It’s the sand that does it. Hides everything. My footprints. Yours. Sooner or later even this shack. There’ve been at different times more persons a-roaming around here than you’d see herring in the Mashpee run.”

      At Kit’s incredulous expression Andrew shrugged his shoulders. “So you don’t believe me. Very well. Just take a look inside.” With a careless wave of his hand, he indicated the partly opened door. “All that stuff you see there was picked up by me within a hundred yards of here, and there’s a thousand times as much will never be uncovered.”

      Kit rose and entered the shack. There was little actual furnishing within, but Kit hardly saw the low cot with its rumpled blanket, the table with a dish or two on it, the chair, the cupboard, the lantern hung on a wooden peg. His whole attention was fixed on a great heap of objects of every description piled in one corner and, on several wooden shelves, a number of smaller items arranged with some degree of order.

      Arrowheads, spearpoints, knives, bits of pottery, wampum shell, a tommyhawk — these first caught Kit’s eye. But there were other than Indian relics. Strange, salt-crusted coins were side by side with rusted cooking utensils and implements whose use he did not know. Huge bleached bones and a swordfish spear leaned against one wall. A length of chain with enormous links, a bit of frayed hawser, a scrap of sailcloth, a compass, a grappling iron ——

      “You see,” said Andrew, “this was where the Mashpees as well as other tribes held their pow-wows, and after them ’twas a try-yard for whalers. Before that — well, anyhow, d’ye wonder I claim it’s had its share of occupants?”

      Kit pricked up his ears at the word “try-yard.” If whalers had once used the Cove — and before his very eyes was proof a-plenty that they had — then the waters of the Cove must have been reasonably safe at one time and whatever had pinned the warning word “danger” to it must have come afterwards. Was this a clue of a sort?

      Suddenly, quite without any deliberate intention of doing so, and much as he had done in the case of both Skipper Barney and Aunt Thany, Kit blurted out to Andrew the question forever hovering on the tip of his tongue. “Why do you suppose folks call this ‘Danger Cove’?”

      Andrew sifted half-a-dozen handfuls of sand before he spoke. Then he drew up his lanky knees to his chin, folded his long arms about them and, instead of looking at Kit, stared at the very blue sky. “I’ve a theory about that,” he said gravely. “I’ll give it to you for what it is worth. I believe it is because the water in the Cove is more than six feet deep and if a fellow jumped overboard and couldn’t swim, he’d drown for sure.”

      Kit knew when he was being laughed

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