The boys needed no further urging. They dressed and scrambled out on deck. Not far away from the sloop could be seen plainly that tiny chop-sea which is caused by the breaking of a school of mackerel. The calm surface of the water was broken there by a series of miniature ripples which could not be mistaken. The fish were there, but would they bite?

"They are coming this way," said Arthur. "We can soon reach them with the throw-bait. We shall not have to leave the sloop."

Hastily they got the bait out. It was a bucket filled with sc.r.a.ps of fish and clams, chopped fine and mixed with salt water. Taking a long-handled dipper, Arthur half-filled it with the bait and threw it as far as he could out toward the school of fish.

The mackerel seized upon it greedily. From the sloop the boys could see them dart through the water after it as it slowly sank. The water was fairly alive with fish, ravenously hungry.

"Hurrah!" cried Arthur. "They're hungry as sharks. Get the lines out, quick."

In a twinkling every boy had a line overboard; but, to their disappointment, not a fish would bite. They still seized the throw-bait that was cast out, but not one of them would take a baited hook.

"If that isn't a regular mackerel trick, I'll eat my bait," said George Warren. "Cap'n Sam said mackerel would often act that way, though I never saw them when they wouldn't bite before. He says they will play around a boat for hours and not touch a hook, and, all of a sudden, they'll commence and bite as though they were starving."

The boy's words were unexpectedly verified at this moment by a sudden twitch at his line and by corresponding twitches at all the other lines.

The fish had begun biting in earnest. The next moment the boys had three or four aboard, handsome fellows, striped green and black, changing to a bluish shade, and soon the c.o.c.kpit seemed alive with them.

It was new sport for Tom and Bob, but they soon learned to tend two lines, one in each hand; to drop one and haul the other in at a bite, and to slat the mackerel off the hook with a quick snap, instead of stopping to take them off by hand.

The mackerel bit fiercely, sometimes at the bare hook even, like fish gone crazy. It seemed as though they might go on catching them all day long, for the water was alive with them; but all at once the fish stopped biting as abruptly as they had begun. They still played around the boat, but not a fish would touch a hook.

"We may as well put up our lines, boys. They are through biting for this morning," said Arthur Warren. "Besides, we have more fish now than we know what to do with."

There was no doubt of that. They had caught several hundred of the fish-enough to supply the village.

"We'll make friends with every one in town," said George Warren. "These are the first mackerel of the season, and we will give away all we cannot use."

"I feel as though I could eat about four now," said young Joe.

"I can eat at least six," said Henry Burns.

"We'll try you and see," said Arthur, producing an enormous frying-pan from a locker and a junk of pork from another. "Tom, you're the boss cook of the crowd. You fry the fish while the rest of us clean up the boat, make things shipshape, and get ready to sail."

"Ay, ay, sir," said Tom, rolling up his sleeves. "Let's see, four apiece is how many?"

And soon the appetizing odour of the frying fish, mingled with that of the steaming coffee, saluted most temptingly the nostrils of the six hungry boys.

It was several hours after this, when the yacht was bowling along in the western bay, near the head of the island, before a fresh southerly breeze, that young Joe said:

"I know how we can play a stupendous joke on everybody in the village."

Joe being the youngest of the brothers, and of the party, and it being therefore necessary that he should be occasionally squelched, George merely said:

"You don't think of anything, Joe, but playing jokes."

"All right," retorted Joe, "seeing you are all so wildly enthusiastic, I'll just keep it to myself."

"Nonsense, Joe, don't be huffy," said Arthur, whose curiosity was aroused. "Tell us what it is, and if it is any good we'll try it, won't we, boys?"

There being an unanimously affirmative reply, young Joe proceeded.

"Well," said he, "there's no risk at all about this. You know the old farmhouse on the bluff across the cove? Everybody in the village believes it is haunted. I found that out yesterday, when I was in Cap'n Sam's store. The house hasn't been lived in for two years, and not a soul in the village has dared to go near it at night in all that time. If any of them had to stay over there all night, they would sleep out in the woods rather than go into the house.

"You see, the house belonged to a man by the name of Randall, Captain Randall, who lived there with his wife. This was a little more than two years ago. He owned a little fishing-smack, in which he went short trips down the coast. One night in a storm he drove in on to the bluff; the smack was pounded to pieces, and he was drowned. His wife died not long after.

"Since then, the villagers have thought the house haunted. They hear shrieks from there during the night, and think they see strange lights in the windows. They were discussing it in the store yesterday. Cap'n Sam declared that, only a few nights ago, when he was coming across the cove from Billy Cook's, he saw the ghost of Captain Randall pa.s.s out of the back door of the old house and disappear in the woods.

"Billy Cook, who lives up the cove, was in the store, too. He said he and his wife hear screams come from there often in the night, especially when it is storming; and two other villagers said they had seen lights in the windows long after midnight.

"That new boarder at Colonel Witham's was in there, too, Henry. He said he knew houses were haunted, and told several stories about ghosts, which he said were true. But I believe he knew they were lies, and he was only amusing himself; but that's nothing to do with the matter. The villagers seemed to believe all that he said.

"Now, what I propose is, that we manufacture some brand-new ghosts for them, some they have never seen before. There are some red and green lights up at the cottage, that were left over from the Fourth of July, which we can burn inside the house, after letting out a few screeches that will arouse the village. Then we'll wrap sheets around us and run past the windows, while the lights are burning. We'll have something wrapped in white to fling off the cliff, too, in a flare of light.

"Then we'll run down through the woods and take everything with us. And if we don't have some fun the next day listening to the ghost-stories about the village, why, my name isn't Joe, that's all."

"That's not such a bad scheme, Joe," said George.

"It's a daisy," said Henry Burns, "and easily done. What's to hinder our going up there to-night and taking up the lights and the sheets and looking the place over? I never was inside the old house myself, though I have been close to it at night, and never saw or heard of any ghosts. We can carry a lantern up with us and light it after we get inside. If any one sees the light from the village he will think it's the ghosts walking again."

"I don't like so much of this running around in the night," said Tom, flexing his biceps. "A fellow must have sleep to keep in condition, but I guess they can count on us in this case, can't they, Bob? It's too good to be missed."

"You bet!" replied Bob. "We can turn in and sleep this afternoon. Count me in, for one."

"Then," said George, "suppose we all start from our cottage at ten o'clock to-night. We'll launch the rowboat from the beach and slip across and look things over."

So it was agreed.

The yacht had long turned the head of the island and was beating down alongsh.o.r.e in the eastern bay. Presently they rounded the bluff and came into the cove. It was nearly noon.

High up on the bluff, and several rods back from the edge of the cliffs, was the old farmhouse; it stood out conspicuously, though at some distance from the water-front, for the land rose quite sharply and the house occupied the top of the eminence. Around it, on all sides except that facing the village, was a dark, heavy growth of hemlocks and pines.

It was a mysterious, shadowy place, even by day; but when darkness set in about it, standing off solitary and alone, as it did, from the rest of the village, with the waters lying between, it is little wonder that superst.i.tion inhabited it with ghosts and that it was a spot to be shunned.

At the outermost end of the cliffs that protruded into the bay, a ravine, where the ledge at some time had been rent apart, led from the water up toward the cottage, affording a precarious pathway. There was a natural stairway of rock for some distance from the water's edge, and at the end nearest the old house a series of clumsy wooden stairs led up from the ravine to the surface of the bluff. These were now old and rather rickety; but a light person, at some risk, could still use them.

The villagers, as a rule, avoided the house and this pathway to the bluff. If they had occasion to go ash.o.r.e there, they usually landed farther up the cove at a beach, and walked through the woods at a distance from the house. No one cared to go very near it.

When the sloop had come to anchor in the cove opposite the Warren cottage, the boys took a boatload of mackerel ash.o.r.e, besides a basketful in the canoe. They carried them around to every cottage in the village, and even to the hotel, though, as George Warren remarked, they would have to get Colonel Witham out of bed some night in a hurry to make up for it.

Certainly the village, supping that night on their catch, was inclined to forget and forgive them many a prank that had been stored up for future punishment.

When Henry Burns made his exit across the roof that night, he made a careful survey before climbing out on it to see that the stranger was not there. There were no signs of him, and Henry got away safely. Tom and Bob were at the Warren cottage when he arrived. Everything was in readiness, and they all set out for the sh.o.r.e.

"These clouds in the sky are favourable," said Tom. "If it was as bright as it was last night, we might have to postpone our trip. This mackerel sky, through which the moon shines dimly, is just the thing."

"Everything seems to be favourable," added George, as they hurried down the bank to the beach.

And yet not quite everything, for, when they had reached the sh.o.r.e and came to look for the boat, it was not there.

"That's too bad," cried young Joe. "And we left it here at five o'clock, too, after washing it out thoroughly, because we had brought the mackerel ash.o.r.e in it."