The staid little city of Beaufort had been stirred to its remotest corners with the exciting news brought back from Ichabod's Island by the physician. Doctor Hudson had told the story to little groups here and there as he called upon his patients. Needless to say that a shipwreck, even though it be only that of a medium-sized pleasure craft, was enough to set everyone all agog with excitement. And here, too, there was the added mystery, concerning the young and beautiful woman together with her strange companion, who had been rescued from death only to vanish so inexplicably.
Next day, Ichabod quite forgot to stop at the town in order to secure the fumigating powders from the physician. As a matter of fact, he was accompanied home by a number of the life-saving crew, who were eager to survey the wreck and make investigation on their own account. As he approached the Island, the old fisherman was astonished to see at least a dozen launches and fishing schooners gathered near the wreck. It was low tide, and all those aboard the craft seemed to be staring down into the pellucid waters. It was evident that something of an unusual sort attracted their gaze. As Ichabod drew near, accompanied by the boat from the life-saving station, one of the men, on a launch that had her nose resting on the tiny beach at the oyster rocks was seen to be busy arranging a block and tackle. In answer to Ichabod's hail, he shouted that there was a dead man in the wreck.
This information astonished both Ichabod and those to whom he had told his story, for he had had no least suspicion that there was a third person on the yacht at the time of the wreck. In answer to eager questions, the man with the tackle declared that the body seemed to be chained fast to the engine of the sunken boat.
At this news, the Captain became greatly excited.
"Men!" he exclaimed in accents of dismay. "Hain't it been enough for this old, weather-beaten, storm-tossed hulk of an Ichabod to have gone through more'n most young fellers could stand without now havin' a murder to be investigated at his very door? Didn't ye hear them words o' Sumner Jenkins? He says as how the body is chained to the ingine. It's fitten, boys, as we should go right plumb up thar, an' have a look fer ourselves."
A few minutes later, Ichabod and his companions were lying alongside the wreck, and were leaning over gunwales, looking intently down into the transparent depths of the sea. And there, sure enough, lay the form of a man, with distorted features and wide-open dead eyes gazing back up at them. Around the waist of the corpse there was to be seen distinctly the chain that tightly encircled the body and thence ran to the engine frame, around which it was twisted, and held immovable by a huge padlock. Thus fettered, the unfortunate wretch had been carried down to his doom in the sea.
The gruesome discovery had been made that morning by pure chance on the part of a fisherman who, out of curiosity to view the wreck, had brought his boat up into the wind there. A careless glance over the side had shown him the ghastly face of the corpse beneath the waves. At the sight, the fisherman had let his craft slip off before the wind. He sailed straight to Beaufort, and told the town his news. It was the tidings carried by him that brought the morbid crowd of sightseers.
The combined efforts of those present had been insufficient to raise the engine and the body of the dead man to the surface. Now they were arranging a windlass, with block and fall, to bring the victim up to where the Coroner was impatiently waiting to perform his duty. Presently, then, the energetic workers secured a firm hold with the tackle on the engine frame. It was hauled to the surface, bringing with it the attached body. The padlock was smashed, and the stiffened form released from its iron bonds. Forthwith, the body was removed in one of the small boats to the sandy beach of Captain Ichabod's Island. The Coroner would have preferred that it should be taken into the shack for the holding of the inquest. But when the official made his request to the fisherman, the reply was by no means favorable.
"It seems as how I might be just a leetle accomidatin', but I dunno, Mr. Coroner, I've already got that place to fumigate out on account o' thar havin' been sickness an' a woman present thar. An' now should ye see fitten to carry that poor murdered feller in thar, Uncle Icky would sure have to quit. It 'ould be just a leetle more'n he could stand. Don't think I'm feared o' hants an' sich fer I hain't. It's just this: The thoughts o' the poor devil, how he just lay thar on the bottom with his eyes wide-open, an' him murdered—them thoughts would keep a-comin' back. No, Mr. Coroner, you'd better not take him into the hut—not unless you aim to buy Ichabod's Island."
The Coroner yielded to the old man's whim. He ordered the sodden and twisted form laid out decently on the white smoothness of the beach. Then, with the other men grouped about him, the Coroner selected a jury, and a minute later the investigation was under way according to due form of law. The only witnesses who were examined were the man who had discovered the corpse, and Ichabod. There was small need of more. For while the account of the finding of the body was completed within a few minutes, Captain Ichabod's narrative continued for a full hour, during which he told everything he knew concerning the wreck of The Isabel and the subsequent events, including the kidnapping of Shrimp.
Most of the hearers, if not all, had heard previously broken bits of the narrative. But now as they received the account in detail from beginning to end they hung on the old fisherman's words, held by the weird spell of this mystery of the sea.
At the conclusion of the testimony, the Coroner charged the jury briefly, and sent them into the shack to agree upon a verdict. The decision was not long delayed. Within ten minutes, the jury returned to the beach and the foreman announced that they had agreed upon a verdict. This was to the effect that the man had come to his death at the hands of parties unknown, while confined against his will aboard the gasoline yacht Isabel.
The Coroner complimented the jury upon their verdict and then discharged the panel. He next arranged with one of the boatmen present for the removal of the corpse to Beaufort, where he meant to have it embalmed and held for a reasonable length of time before burial, for identification. When these formalities were concluded the crowd quickly scattered. Some hastened away to attend their nets, which had been neglected for many hours, while the others set sail or cranked engines for the voyage home.
Captain Ichabod and his friends from the life-saving station decided that they would run over to Shackleford's Banks, and thence sail along shore to approximately the point where Ichabod had seen the rockets of a ship that doubtless went to pieces in the surf during the night of the gale. Their particular destination was a place where the strip of sand was so narrow that they could easily cross it on foot in the expectation of locating the wreck of the unfortunate vessel. Very soon after the party had set out, Captain Ichabod's spirits lightened. The congenial company of the coast-guard crew, now that he was away from the gruesome association of the Coroner's Court, induced a reaction in his mood, and he was almost cheerful. His companions were anxious to remove the old man's depression and made kindly effort to divert his thoughts into pleasant channels by droll stories and rough banter. When, finally, the party went ashore at Core Banks and walked up the beach along the edge of the breaking surf in search for signs of the wrecked ship, it was Ichabod that walked in the lead with brisk steps and animated face. It seemed scarcely possible in view of his agility and vigor that the old fisherman was indeed living on borrowed time.
It was not long before they began to see huge timbers that had been twisted and rent asunder, which now strewed the beach. They saw, too, others to which were attached sections of the deck and the deck-house, which were lazily riding back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. Now, a wave would drop its bit of flotsam upon the hard sand; then, a moment later, one of greater magnitude would envelop the stranded spar or plank or piece of cargo, and with its backward flow bear away the wreckage, to be again tossed hither and yon, until perhaps finally the tide at its full would leave it on the shore, to become the spoil of beach-combers—those ghouls ever ready to take advantage of the hapless mariner's mischance.
It was a fact that the whole shore line for over a mile was littered with parts torn away from the foundered schooner. Amid the mass were many barrels of rum and of molasses out of the cargo. As the little squad of men from the station, together with Captain Ichabod, drew near the strip of beach, they saw two fellows working with feverish haste to roll a barrel of molasses over the top of a sand dune, and then down on the Sound side. Captain Ichabod scrambled to the pinnacle of a near-by hill of sand. From this vantage point, he beheld a good-sized two-masted sharpie lying near the shore. The sight made him immediately aware that the beach-combers from up the coast were already on the job, and that the boat on the Sound side of the Banks belonged to them. He knew, too, that the pair working so desperately to get the barrel away from the wreckage were thus toiling in haste to get their loot aboard the sharpie.
For certain reasons, Captain Ichabod Jones had taken a strong dislike to the professional beach-combers. He believed that a man who would rush to the wreckage of a ship thrown on a barren shore away from civilization, and would appropriate without investigation the valuable articles thus cast up by the sea, was in very sooth not a good citizen—just a plain thief. More than once, indeed, he had seen fit to report men of this stripe, ............