The Ghost Ship Mystery (5 page)

“Me, too,” Benny said. “I’m going to climb those rocks. Maybe that’s where pirates hid their treasures.”

“Go ahead, Benny,” Captain Bob said. “I’ll be up on some of the higher ledges. See you in a while.”

“I think Captain Bob is just shy, that’s all,” Violet said after the captain left.

Henry agreed. “And he’s a very careful pilot. Did you see the way he steered the
Jonah
right around those sharp rocks? I wonder why Miss Coffin thought he wasn’t a safe sailor.”

“Can I climb these rocks, Jessie?” Benny asked. “There may be some treasures up there.”

“Go ahead, Benny,” Jessie said.

Benny climbed up the rocks to a wide ledge. “I like it up here,” he yelled down. “I can see all over.”

Benny explored the ledge. Overhead a sea bird was screaming. Benny soon figured out why. “Hey, there’s a bunch of nests hidden in these big holes in the rocks. They’re like little caves.”

“Well, come down soon, so the mother bird doesn’t get upset,” Violet told Benny.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” Benny said. “I just want to get this piece of wood that’s sticking out from some rocks.”

Benny reached into a hole in the rocks to grab a thick wedge of wood. “Ugh, ugh,” he said, pulling hard. “This old piece of wood is stuck.”

By this time Captain Bob was standing right above Benny on another ledge. “What’ve you got there, Benny?”

“A stuck piece of wood,” Benny said, all red in the face and out of breath. “I want to see what it is. Maybe somebody poked it in here on purpose.”

Captain Bob lowered himself down to Benny’s ledge. “Okay, Benny, you pull that side, and I’ll jiggle this.”

Benny and the captain jiggled the wood back and forth. Finally some dirt and rocks came loose along with a big wooden box.

“It’s a box!” Benny said in amazement.

“Congratulations, Benny!” Captain Bob said. “You’ve got good eyes. This box was so well hidden in the rocks, I probably passed it a dozen times without noticing it. Let’s get it down to the beach.”

“What’s that?” Henry asked when Benny and Captain Bob put the box down on the sand.

“It’s an old postbox,” Captain Bob told the children. “Back in whaling times sailors used to leave mail for each other in boxes they put up around the coastline. Sometimes they sent letters or small scrimshaw carvings for other sailors to send on to their families. A box like this is very rare.”

“What about gold coins?” Benny asked.

The captain pried open the box lid with a knife.

Benny’s face fell. “Just some old stuff,” he said when he saw the blackened spoons and forks and lots of yellowed bone carvings scattered in the box. There was also a small, rusty piece of pipe that was sealed off at both ends.

Violet picked up one of the many carved objects. “Oooh,” she said. “These are scrimshaw clothespins. The sailors used to carve them from whalebone for their wives. I read that on one of the displays at the Sailors’ Museum.”

“Clothespins? Aw shucks,” Benny said.

Captain Bob couldn’t help smiling. “I guess old clothespins don’t seem too exciting, but I’m sure these have some value.”

“What about that rusty iron pipe?” Henry asked.

The captain picked up the length of iron. “It’s the end of an old cannon barrel. Sometimes sailors used to put documents inside for protection, then close them up.”

“Can I see?” Benny asked.

The captain didn’t answer right away. “Yes, uh, sure. But first I have to oil and sand it off on the boat to see if I get it open. Wait here.”

“May I watch?” Benny asked. “Maybe there are pirate coins in there.”

The captain didn’t answer. He headed back to the boat. He didn’t seem to want anyone to come along.

Fifteen minutes went by. Captain Bob still hadn’t returned with the cannon barrel.

“It’s taking Captain Bob an awfully long time to get that barrel open,” Henry said.

“I know,” Jessie agreed. “We should probably head back. I told Mrs. Pease we’d be back by lunchtime. I don’t want her to get worried.”

Violet carefully wrapped up all the other objects in the box. Henry and Benny carried the box onto the
Jonah.

“I’ll go below deck and tell Captain Bob we should go,” Jessie said.

“Captain Bob,” Jessie whispered. “Did you get the cannon barrel apart?”

“Hhhh!” Captain Bob said, when Jessie surprised him. “I didn’t hear you come down. Uh . . . go back up. I’ll be there in a minute.” The captain quickly wrapped a rag around the cannon barrel.

Jessie could tell Captain Bob didn’t seem to want her around. “I’m sorry. It’s just that Mrs. Pease is expecting us back at lunchtime, and we don’t want to worry her. The cannon barrel, did you get it open?”

Captain Bob put the barrel behind him. “Why . . . uh—no, I didn’t. The damp air well . . . uh . . . it just rusted the whole thing shut. Now go on back up.”

“Did he find any coins, Jessie, did he?” Benny asked when Jessie returned.

Captain Bob popped up right behind Jessie. “Sorry, Benny. Nothing to report. The thing is stuck good and tight. I’ll bring it home to work on it some more.”

“Can I take it to the Sailors’ Museum?” Benny asked the captain. “The lady there has lots of things like that.”

“No,” said the captain, his voice suddenly turning unfriendly. “It needs to be cleaned. I know as much about these things as Miss Coffin anyway.”

“Doesn’t something like this belong in the Sailors’ Museum?” Jessie asked.

Seeing how sad Benny looked, Captain Bob softened. “Well, you were the one who found the box,” he said. “So if that’s what you want to do, then there’s nothing else to say. Take it to Miss Coffin.” In a few minutes the captain piloted the
Jonah
through the nearby rocks and out to the open sea. He seemed to want to be alone with his thoughts and the crying sounds of Howling Cliffs.

It was lunchtime when the
Jonah
docked. But the Aldens forgot all about being hungry. They couldn’t wait to show Miss Coffin their discoveries.

“I just know she’ll be happy to see us when we show her these things,” Violet said. “Not like yesterday.”

Henry ran ahead to call Mrs. Pease so they could eat lunch later and go to the museum instead. “She’s going to leave some sandwiches for us in the refrigerator,” Henry told everyone when he came back from making his phone call. “Now we can go straight to the Sailors’ Museum to show Miss Coffin what we found. So let’s unload everything.”

Captain Bob hadn’t said a word to the Aldens the whole ride back to Ragged Cove. Still silent, he packed up the wooden postbox along with the other discoveries into a small cart. As he covered everything to protect it, he finally spoke to the children again. “I have work to do on the
Jonah
this afternoon. I can’t come to the museum.”

“But you have to!” Benny cried. “You helped us find everything.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the captain said. “Miss Coffin will know what to do with all of it. Mind you, go slowly with the cart over the cobbled streets. The postbox is about ready to come apart. Everything else should be fine. You can bring the cart back later and leave it at the dock. I’ll find it okay.”

“Are you sure you won’t come?” Violet asked. “You’re the one who made it possible for us to save these things. Wouldn’t you like to see what Miss Coffin says? She’ll be so happy.”

“Not if she sees me,” Captain Bob said in a low voice the children could hardly hear.

The Aldens set out for the museum, pulling the cart slowly down the dock and toward Ragged Cove.

“I can’t figure out why Captain Bob won’t come with us,” Jessie said. “It seems silly to be upset about things that happened so long ago.”

“Well, he
is
upset, and so is Miss Coffin,” Henry told Jessie. “When I told Mrs. Pease we were going to the Sailors’ Museum with Captain Bob, she seemed surprised. She said Miss Coffin has had nothing good to say about the captain since he came back to Ragged Cove after the Coast Guard.” Henry pulled the cart around the corner carefully. “Mrs. Pease said there’s been a feud between the Coffins and Captain Bob’s family, the Hulls, ever since the
Flying Cloud.
I guess that’s why he didn’t want us to take these things to Miss Coffin.”

“How sad,” said Violet. “Why can’t people get along with each other?”

As the Aldens walked past the shops on Cod Street, Violet stopped in front of a store called Spooner Cooke’s Scrimshaw Shop. “I just wanted to see if there were any scrimshaw clothespins like the ones we found in the postbox,” Violet said. “But I don’t see any. There are some other pretty things, though, even some carved whalebone toys.”

The other children crowded up to the window to take a look. Benny stood on his tiptoes and pressed his forehead against the window. Just as he did, a man with a sharp beaky nose and a bald head rushed out of the shop.

“Get away from there, you kids!” the man yelled. “You’re smudging my clean windows.”

The children jumped back. Henry took the cloth covering the postbox to clean the window. “Sorry,” he apologized. “We were just looking at the nice antiques you have.”

The man didn’t seem to hear what Henry had just said. Instead, his eyes grew wide when he noticed the postbox in the cart. “Where did you get that?” he asked the Aldens in a loud voice.

“We found it out by Howling Cliffs,” Jessie answered. “Captain Bob took us out there to see if any wreckage washed up after the storm. My brother found this hidden in some rocks.”

Benny peeked out from behind Jessie. “The box was sticking out from the rocks. All it’s got in it are old spoons and clothespins and toys made out of bones.”

The man reached down for the box. “Let me look at this.”

“Sorry, sir,” Henry told the man. “These things belong in a museum. That’s where we’re going right now. An expert needs to look at everything to see if it’s valuable.”

This made the man very angry. “I’ll have you know, young man, that I am an expert. Here’s my card.”

Henry took a business card from the man. On it was an ink drawing of a magnifying glass. The card said:
SPOONER COOKE: SCRIMSHAW DEALER
.

“All the same,” Henry said after he’d put the card in his pocket, “we’re taking these things to the museum. You can check with Miss Coffin.”

“Humph,” said the man. “Prudence and I have known each other since we were born. I happen to be on the museum board, as you will soon find out. Now you’d better mind how you carry those things along these streets. Imagine, an antique postbox in the hands of a bunch of kids!”

“A pod of kids,” Benny said under his breath as the children walked on.

Henry, Jessie, and Violet couldn’t help giggling.

“This time, let’s go in the back, to the delivery entrance,” Jessie advised when they reached the Sailors’ Museum. “Then Miss Coffin will have to open the door right away.”

Sure enough, as soon as they knocked on the side door marked “Delivery Entrance,” Miss Coffin opened it.

“The museum is closed,” she told the children.

“That’s okay, Miss Coffin,” Jessie said. “We came to give you something special for the museum, not to visit.”

With that, Henry pulled off the cloth covering the postbox. “Look what we found at Howling Cliffs.”

Miss Coffin gasped. “Why it’s a sailors’ postbox! I thought we’d found the last one a few years ago.” She bent down to take a closer look. “I can’t believe it hasn’t rotted away.”

“That’s ’cause it was inside some rocks, nice and dry,” Benny said proudly. “The same place where bird mothers make nests so they’re safe. It’s a good hiding place.”

Miss Coffin smiled then looked away from the children. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said. “It’s just that . . . that Bob Hull, well, I wish he had never come back to Ragged Cove. His family did enough to spread lies about my great-grandfather. Then he goes talking to the tourists and . . .”

Jessie spoke gently to the old woman. “Captain Bob doesn’t spread lies. Truly, Miss Coffin. He’s the one who helped us get this box out in one piece. He even packed it up in this cart so we could bring it to the museum.”

“That may well be.” Miss Coffin paused.