Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island | Page 8

"I'm stuck on the fence!" shouted Jerry in return. "Go ahead. I'll be
along directly."
But he noticed that Dave stood waiting on the shore when he finally
managed to release himself and broke through the thin fringe of
willows. "All right, Dave," he urged. "Let's not be losing any time."
For a while the going was much easier. On Jerry's side a wide reach of
sand lay smooth and firm in the pale moonlight. On Dave's side a few
yards of sand lay between a steep bank and the water's edge, but every
few hundred feet a shallow creek broke through and forced wading.
There was no chance for the boat to have stranded here, and the boys
hurried along. Within a mile the character of the ground changed. Now
the water lapped along under high, steep banks, with tiny,
willow-covered islands alternating with bass-haunted snags of
dislodged trees barricaded with driftwood. The moon cast queer
shadows and more than once Jerry's heart felt a wild thrill as he fancied
he saw a boat hull outlined against the silvered current.
Every few hundred yards the two boys stopped and sent encouraging
shouts across the widening water. It was a lonesome, disheartening task,
with every step making the task all the harder. Deep bays cut into the
shore line; the feeder creeks grew wider and deeper. The night air was
chill on their dripping shoulders. Plum Run was no longer a run--it was
a real river, and Dave's voice sounded far off when he came out on
some bare point to shout his constant:
"Nothing doing--yet."

They were now on a part of the river that was comparatively strange to
them. Jerry had more than once followed the Plum this far south, but it
had always been by boat, or at best on the west bank, Dave's territory,
where a chain of lakes followed the course of the river. Each new twist
and turn sent a shiver of nervous dread through him. Many the story of
rattlers and copperheads he had heard from fishermen and
campers--and the night was filled with unexpected and disturbing
noises, overhead and underfoot. Of course he knew that snakes are not
abroad at night, but the knowledge did not help his nerves.
Moreover, they were drawing near Lost Island, and no boy of
Watertown had ever been known to cast a line within half a mile of that
dreaded spot. For Lost Island was the "haunted castle" of the
neighborhood. It was nothing more than a large, weed-and-willow-
covered five acres, a wrecked dam jutting out from the east bank, and a
great gaunt pile of foundation masonry standing high and dry on a bare
knoll at the north end.
It had a history--never twice told the same. The dam had been
dynamited, that much was sure. By whom, no one knew. The house, if
ever a house had been built over those rain-bleached rocks, had been
struck by lightning, hurricane, blown up by giant powder, rotted
away--a dozen other tragic ends, as the whim of the story-teller dictated.
The owner had been murdered, lynched, had committed suicide--no one
knew, but everyone was positive that there was something fearfully,
terribly wrong with Lost Island.
It was one of the few islands in Plum Run which was not flooded over
by the spring freshets, and the land was fertile, yet no one had ever
been known to live there through a season; this in spite of the fact that
Lost Island was known as "squatter's land," open to settlement by
anyone who desired it.
And Lost Island lay barely half a mile farther down the river. Jerry
fervently hoped that their search would be ended before they were in
the shadow of that forsaken territory. His nerves were not calmed any
by the tremble in Dave's voice as he shouted across:

"Lost Island's just below us, Jerry. Shall we go on?"
"Sure thing, Dave!" called Jerry with a confidence he did not feel. "It
can't be any worse than what we've already gone through--and we've
gone through that all right."
"Supposing," hesitated Dave, "supposing the boat's grounded on Lost
Island itself----"
"It's the boat we're looking for, isn't it?" But Jerry knew as he spoke,
that, hard as the going was, he would be well satisfied to discover the
boat five weary miles farther on.
Once more they plodded along, the dark, forbidding hulk of Lost Island
looming nearer and nearer. Just before passing behind the northern
point Jerry came out to the water's edge and had cupped his hands
about his mouth for a final reassuring shout, when a sudden discovery
made him pause. A shout, that seemed to split in mid-air, convinced
him that Dave too had just then caught sight of the astounding object.
It