“Look how he smiles!” she cried, throwing back her head. “Old Superior, the great deceiver! You can’t trust him!”
And indeed you cannot. When a storm comes sweeping in over those miles of black waters and the fog horn on Passage Island adds its hoarse voice to the tumult of the waves, it is a terrible thing to hear those waves come roaring in.
Florence had accepted the judgment of old time fishermen that for the time the wreck was a safe place to be. But this morning her brow wrinkled. “What if it should be carried out to sea!” she thought with a shudder. “And we, the last passengers, on board!” She said never a word to her companions who, reflecting the smile of Old Superior, were deliriously happy.
As they neared the wreck, from somewhere inside it came one wild scream, then the maddest laugh one might ever hope to hear. Just such a laugh as on that other night had completed the task of turning Jeanne into a ghost and frightening the mysterious men of the black schooner away.
Had some stranger been present, he might have expected at this moment to see Florence drop her oars in surprise and consternation. Instead, she rowed calmly on, chuckling meanwhile.
Dizzy, as they had named him, had been aboardship when they arrived. At least they had found him swimming frantically about in the one-time dining room of the ship. He was a large loon. Crippled by some accident so he could not fly, he had somehow got into this place, but had failed to find his way out.
Almost starved, he had appeared to welcome their arrival. They had bought fresh trout and fed him. From this time on, with no apparent desire to leave the place, he had become a devoted pet.
“We’ll be joining you shortly,” Florence cried out to him as the boat bumped the side of the ship. This news was answered by one more delirious burst of mirth.
“One could almost think he was human!” Greta shuddered in spite of herself. For her this old ship had a haunting appearance.
Old Superior is ever ready enough to display his various moods. The girls had not been aboard an hour when a dense fog came sweeping in from the north.
“Never find our way if we were out there now,” Florence said with a shrug of her stout shoulders.
There came a slow, drizzling rain, followed by more and denser fog.