The Flying Death by Samuel Hopkins Adams

Author:Samuel Hopkins Adams [Adams, Samuel Hopkins]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aeterna Classics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER ELEVEN—THE BODY ON THE SAND

FOUR days had passed since the schooner came ashore on Graveyard Point. It now was the twentieth of September. The little community in Third House, which had bade fair to be such a happy family, was in rather a split-up state. After their tilt of the day before, Dolly Ravenden and Dick Colton were in a condition of armed neutrality. Dolly was ashamed that her guardian imp had led her to so misrepresent herself to Dick, ashamed too of the warm glow at her heart because he cared so deeply. Thus a double manifestation of her woman’s pride kept her from making amends.

Dick was longing to abase himself, but wisely took Helga’s advice, which he wholly failed to understand. Helga’s beautiful voice rang like an invocation to happiness through the house, but Everard Colton sat in gloom and reviled himself because he had promised Dick to stay several days longer. Haynes was irritable because the puzzle was getting on his nerves. Professor Ravenden brooded over the loss of a fine specimen of Lycona which had proved too agile for him, after a stern chase which developed into a long chase early that morning. Breakfast was not a lively meal.

The morning was thick. A still mist hung over the knolls. It was an ideal day for quiet and secret reconnoissance.

“This is our chance,” said Haynes after breakfast to Dick Colton and Professor Ravenden. “We’ll get the horses and ride out across the point. We may happen on something.”

The others readily agreed, and soon they had disappeared in the greyness. Their tacit purpose was to find some trace of the Wonderful Whalley. All the morning they rode, keeping a keen outlook from every hilltop, but without avail. They lunched late at First House and started back well along in the afternoon.

“He may be in any one of those thousand scrub-oak patches,” said Haynes as they remounted. “It’s like hunting a crook on the Bowery. This fog is thickening. Let’s hustle along.”

To hustle along was not so easy, for presently a fine rain came driving down, involving the whole world in a grey blur. For an hour the three circled about, lost. From the professor came the first suggestion:

“I believe that I hear the surf,” said he. “Guiding our course by the sound, we may gain the cliff, by following the line of which we easily should reach our destination.”

“Bravo, Professor!” said Haynes, and they made for the sea.

As they reached the crest of the sand-cliff some eighty feet above the beach, the rain ceased, a brisk puff of wind blew away the mist, and they found themselves a quarter of a mile west of Graveyard Point.

A short distance toward the point a steep gully debouched upon the shore, and a few rods out from its mouth the riders saw the body of a man stretched on the hard sand.

The face was hidden. Something in the huddled posture struck the eye with a shock as of violence.

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