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The Secret of
Saturday Cove
BARBEE OLIVER CARLETON
ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES GEER
The Secret of Saturday Cove
Copyright © 1961, 1981 by Barbee Oliver Carleton.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
To the boys and girls of Friendshipthis book is fondly dedicatedby their friend, the author
Chapter
1
JONATHAN’S CHART
WITH an explosion of spray the trap struck the water and settled slowly downward.
The boy in the dory paused, his hand on the throttle. After the noisy throb of the motor the long cove lay as quiet as a dream. The bay was brilliant with summer — blue of the water, green of the island spruces, the bright spark of mica flashing from the rocks. Everywhere the fragrance of rockweed and spruce. Nowhere a sound but the white gulls screaming and the lap, lap, of water against the dory’s hull.
This is lobstering, David thought with warm, new pride. “This is the life!” he said aloud.
Sally sniffed deeply. “It smells kind of nice,” she agreed. “But what are we waiting for? I have a feeling we ought to hurry.”
David Blake grinned at his young sister seated in the bow. She looked like a figurehead, he decided, chubby though she was in her hated life jacket. Her hair, like his own, was the pale color of beach grass, and like all the Blakes she had eyes as blue as the sea. As usual, she was bouncing with impatience.
“What’s your hurry?” he asked. “We’re pretty near done.”
“You brought me along to help you haul,” Sally reminded him. “So let’s finish hauling. Then I can tell that stuck-up Poke of yours that I hauled all your traps.”
David laughed. “Tell him what?”
“Well, anyway, I helped.”
David started up the motor and they moved on down the cove toward the bay. The afternoon was strangely still, and the little motor beat like a slow pulse.
“You’re just jealous, Sally,” her brother said. “Poke isn’t stuck-up, and you know it.”
“Well, he’s a sissy, then,” Sally declared. “If he isn’t scared of the water, why doesn’t he ever come hauling with you?”
“He just doesn’t like it,” David said defensively. But he frowned, knowing that she was right. Loving the sea as he did, it was hard to be reminded that his best friend hated it.
Sally pointed suddenly behind him. “Look! Thunderheads!”
David glanced toward the west where the little town of Saturday Cove lay shimmering under the hot July sun. Low over the hills behind the town black clouds boiled up angrily. From the distance came the dull mutter of thunder.
“There are four more traps outside Blake’s Island,” he told her. “We’ll have just about time to finish hauling.” He speeded up the motor. With a staccato roar the little dory fanned her way through the smooth waters of the cove. Beating sturdily into the tide rip where cross-currents roiled and churned, she entered the broad acres of Penobscot Bay. Here the water was choppy, and David tightened his hold on the stick.
“If the going gets rough,” he shouted over the noise of the motor, “we can always go ashore at Blake’s and wait out the storm there.”
Sally bobbed her tallow braids. “Then I hope it’ll be a ripsnorter!” she cried. Perhaps they could even explore the Blake homestead again. Before Poke came to town — that queer and quiet boy that David seemed to like so much — she and her brother had spent wonderful hours together, exploring the islands off Saturday Cove. Secretly, she was glad that Poke had proved to be such a sissy about the water. Now David might see how much fun he could have with her, just the two of them again.
Her brother held the dory steady toward the familiar island that lay off Grindstone Point. As the distance shortened, they caught a glimpse of the house — a proud old pioneer still standing among the wind-twisted spruces on the headland.
David felt a rush of affection for the place. His family still owned Blake’s Island, although the house was now used only as a fishermen’s refuge. But this whole area — these islands, this cove — was the blood and bone of the Blake family. For it was into this very harbor that John Blake sailed on a Saturday long ago, so naming the inlet and the village that later grew from the wilderness on the mainland. And somewhere in these waters the boy, Jonathan, had rowed secretly, alone and afraid. . . .
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sally shouted from the bow. “You’re thinking about the Blake treasure.”
David looked surprised. “Who believes that yarn any more?”
Sally narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “You do. I heard you pumping Dad about it last night.”
David said nothing. He squinted past Sally, on the lookout for the first buoys that lay off the ledges.
“I bet you’ve stumbled onto something, David Blake!” Suspicion grew fast in Sally’s mind, and in no time at all was full-grown.
Silently, David avoided a buoy of Willis Greenlaw’s that bobbed in their course.
“And I bet, when I’m not around, you go ashore at Blake’s a lot.”
David started to whistle to himself.
“And maybe you even dig,” Sally accused him.
He laughed. “You’re wrong there, towhead.”
Sally’s eyes flared. “You’ve found out something, I can tell! And I should think you’d let me in on it.”
“Girls talk too much.”
“Well, when I’m twelve,” snapped Sally, “I hope I’ll know enough to get help when I need it.”
“Why don’t you just settle on learning how to swim?” said her brother. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll be too old to totter down to the beach for your lessons.”
Sally bit her lip and looked away, and David felt ashamed. He had struck Sally’s weak spot. Each summer she spent hours at the beach taking the lessons offered by the Red Cross or practicing strokes in an old inner tube, but never once daring to put her head underwater. Each summer she had given up in defeat
