It must have been close to a year since Jesse had been lost in the Kingfisher, that my boat went on the ways with a broken rudder. While waiting shipment of parts, I helped Cap’n Ludberry on his boat. We were fishing farther out than usual when a big squall began making up. Ludberry signaled the other boats and we started for shore.
“Course this ain’t no hurricane,” he said to me, “but the weather looks just like it did a year ago when we lost Jesse.”
Funny! Neither of us had mentioned Jesse, but I’d been thinking exactly the same thing.
That squall came up in no time. The wind hit us long before we reached the reef. Inside the reef is shallow water, and three miles of narrow channel with coral bottom on either side. No place to be in a blow, when you can’t see twenty yards through the rain.
The wind had risen to a gale in no time. Ludberry saw the rain would catch us in the channel if we kept on our course, so he circled back out to sea, all the other boats following, and headed into the storm. Better to ride it out in deep water than risk ripping a bottom on the coral.
That was some blow! The wind came straight out of the east, and lasted until after dark.
Then it was over as suddenly as it started. Squalls are like that down here.
We had already run up our lights, and when the rain stopped I spotted the lights of several of our boats. When we crossed the reef and entered the channel it looked like the whole fleet was following us.
“Count ’em up,” said Cap’n Ludberry. “Ought to be twelve boats, counting us.”
I counted as we rounded an elbow in the channel. “Thirteen,” I said.
“Can’t be,” said Ludberry, and he named them off. “Take the wheel while I count ’em.”
“Thirteen’s right!” he said, after a while.
There was something in his voice that made you shiver as hard as knowing there was thirteen boats—and deep down inside you knowing who was steering that extra boat. Though you wouldn’t have said a word about that to save your life. You just knew somehow. That was enough. And it made your tongue stick tight to the roof of your mouth, and feel like you didn’t have anything but water in your veins. It was that spooky.
“Must have picked up a stranger somewheres,” Ludberry said, calmly, but you could tell easy he didn’t feel so calm.
We said no more about it then, for Pelican Key loomed black ahead of us.
Then something caught my eye and I just about stopped breathing. It filled in with this other thing that already had my skin crawling and my heart in my mouth.
First time I’d seen the thing! Along the shore of Pelican Key a light was moving. A light like somebody waving a lantern! Anabelle’s lantern?
I’d laughed at the other fellows for getting scared of a speck of light a mile away. I didn’t laugh now! I had a feeling like a trickle of ice water was running down my back. When Ludberry spoke, right at my elbow, I’d of jumped out of my shoes if I hadn’t been barefooted!
“Do you see what I do?” he asked, and I’d never heard Ludberry’s voice sound so shaky and uncertain, ever before.
I swallowed hard. “Cap’n, it—it’s Anabelle’s light.”
“It’s some darn fool playing a trick on us,” said the old man. He was trying to convince himself—I could see that—but wasn’t making such a good job of it. For from the looks of his eyes, if ever a man was seeing ghosts, Cap’n Ludberry was.
I hoped he was right, though, and said so. Ludberry swallowed hard.
“I’m going to find out who it is,” Ludberry said, kinda tight and anxious, though, “and wring his neck.”
He knew who was holding that lantern just as well as I did—but neither one of us would admit that it was Anabelle. Why, she was lying quiet in her grave over the mainland, and how could she—
As we rounded Pelican Key, the light still waved. I watched it till the mangrove trees on the point of the island hid the beach from sight, and I got an idea that sure enough there was something about that light that sure wasn’t like any light that ever was in this world.
We slipped into the lagoon and tied up in a hurry. The other boats came in close behind us. I counted them again. In fact, I counted them several times. Twelve! Only twelve! Had another boat come in with the fleet, and then somehow disappeared? Because there wasn’t a chance in the world that Cap’n Ludberry and I hadn’t seen and counted thirteen boats outside!
Everybody was talking at once about Anabelle’s light. No laughing now! They had all seen it. Every man in every boat!
“Quick, some of you fellows,” Cap’n Ludberry shouted in the darkness. “Grab flashlights and come with me. We’re going over to the beach and look into this!”
It took some doing, and I’ll admit my own knees were shaking, but anyhow all of us went.
Well, sir, nobody was playing a joke on us! That is, I’m as sure as I ever was of anything in my life that nobody was. We didn’t find anybody on the beach. Or properly speaking, what I mean to say is we didn’t find any living person there!
What we did find was the weather-beaten wreck of a boat. Her paint was peeling. Both masts had been broken off short. The low, forward cabin had its roof blown away. Obviously an old derelict washed ashore in the squall—yet there was something very familiar about the lines of her. Was this the thirteenth boat?
Across the stern we could still make out the name—you guessed it—Kingfisher!
In the open cockpit, half covered by sun-bleached clothing which the birds had torn to ribbons, lay the chalk-white skeleton of Jesse Autrey!
A few yards back on the beach—not buried in the sand, but laying like someone had dropped it there—we found a battered and rusty old lantern. The lantern Anabelle had lost the night of the hurricane!
We buried all that was left of Jesse in a grave beside Anabelle.
A good many months have passed, but no one since then has seen a ghostly light waving on stormy nights along the beach of Pelican Key. I’m pretty certain nobody ever will see it again!
No, I’ve never seen a ghost. Unless a dancing light that might be a firefly could be called a ghost. But as I said before, you’ve got to believe in a lot of things you don’t really see!
THE RETURN OF YEN-TCHIN-KING,
by Lafcadio Hearn
Before me ran, as a herald runneth, the Leader of the Moon;
And the Spirit of the Wind followed after me,—quickening his flight.
In the thirty-eighth chapter of the holy book, Kan-ing-p’ien, wherein the Recompense of Immortality is considered, may be found the legend of Yen-Tchin-King. A thousand years have passed since the passing of the good Tchin-King; for it was in the period of the greatness of Thang that he lived and died.
Now, in those days when Yen-Tchin-King was Supreme Judge of one of the Six August Tribunals, one Li-hi-lié, a soldier mighty for evil, lifted the black banner of revolt, and drew after him, as a tide of destruction, the millions of the northern provinces. And learning of these things, and knowing also that Hi-lié was the most ferocious of men, who respected nothing on earth save fearlessness, the Son of Heaven commanded Tchin-King that he should visit Hi-lié and strive to recall the rebel to duty, and read unto the people who followed after him in revolt the Emperor’s letter of reproof and warning. For Tchin-King was famed throughout the provinces for his wisdom, his rectitude, and his fearlessness; and the Son of Heaven believed that if Hi-lié would listen to the words of any living man steadfast in loyalty and virtue, he would listen to the words of Tchin-King. So Tchin-King arrayed himself in his robes of office, and set his house in order; and, having embraced his wife and his children, mounted his horse and rode away alone to the roaring camp of the rebels, bearing the Emperor’s letter in his bosom. “I shall return; fear not!” were his last words to the gray servant who watched him from the terrace as he rode.