returned to work.
That night Kit put a question to his aunt across the red-checkered tablecloth. “What great man is the Glass Works getting a celebration ready for?”
Aunt Thany looked surprised. “My goodness, Christopher! Have you been working there three whole days and don’t know that? ’Tis no other than Dan Webster. He comes here every fall to go duck hunting on the marshes. This time all sorts of contests are to be held in a special program in his honor, and he’s to be presented with a bowl ’tis taking six months to make the mold for. Mr. Webster is well-liked down here. Friendly and common-like, for all he earns three to four dollars a day pleading cases in Boston.”
A question framed itself in Kit’s mind. If Aunt Thany knew so much about a person in whom he wasn’t especially interested, perhaps she would know something about one in whom he was.
He laid down his knife and fork. “Aunt Thany,” he asked earnestly, “do you know anyone around here by the name of Andrew?”
Aunt Thany nodded so vigorously all her little white ringlets bobbed in unison. “Indeed I do, Christopher. Andrew Kern, Andrew Chipman, Andrew Moody, Andrew ——”
“He calls himself just plain ‘Andrew,’ ” said Kit doubtfully, afraid that among so many Andrews that fact would offer little help.
But Aunt Thany, who had started to count on her small thin fingers all the persons named Andrew she knew, dropped her hands to the table. “Oh, that one!” she exclaimed. “He’s a scatterbrain, Christopher. Paints pictures, and not even the sort a body’d hang on the wall. Just sights around home here. Works only when he wants money to buy his painting stuff with.”
“Where does he live, Aunt Thany?” asked Kit, wondering if he and Andrew didn’t have something in common.
It seemed Aunt Thany had the answer to that too. “He’s got a step-uncle right here in town — lives next to the Academy on School Street — but I hear he spends most of his time in a shack he built somewheres near the Great Marshes.”
“At Danger Cove?”
“I expect so, and no good ever came to anyone hanging around the Cove,” added his aunt severely.
Once more, reflected Kit, he was being warned against Danger Cove. First by Skipper Barney, and now by his aunt. Yet the more he heard of its unsavory reputation, the more resolved he was to uncover the cause.
His next remark, however, did not arouse his aunt’s suspicions, as far as Kit could see. “I wish,” he said, “I owned a sailboat.”
“Perhaps,” she replied, “someday you will. Most Cape folks do.”
On pay day Kit turned over and over the silver — to his surprise there had turned out to be three of them — dollars handed him by the paymaster, and wondered just how long it 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
