The summer spent itself with no further eventfulness except in the matter of ghosts.

Many people, perhaps most, do not believe in ghosts, but Mermaid did and so did her Dad. Uncle Ho was well acquainted with the principal ghosts peopling the beach. Keturah Hand ridiculed the idea of their existence. In general, those who had lived on the beach for any length of time were believers or of open mind; those whose visits to the beach had been confined chiefly to all-day picnics thought the legends nonsense.

“Captain Kidd,” stated Keturah, “may have buried a chest of treasure in the bald-headed dune with the very steep slope. I know my father used to tell of people digging there to recover it. Kidd was certainly round about here in the Quedagh Merchant or the Antonio; and everybody knows that he stopped at Gardiner’s Island and got supplies and presented Mrs. Gardiner with a bolt of—calico, wasn’t it? If he buried[160] a chest in that dune over there, he, or his crew, certainly may have killed a gigantic negro, spilling his blood over the chest so that his wraith would guard the treasure. I think it likely that the crew did it. Seamen are always so superstitious.” Here she looked pointedly at her husband, an ex-sailor. “Hosea here, just because they used to cut a cross in the mast to bring a fair wind, started carving the bedpost the other day so the wind would blow from the southwest instead of the north. Kidd was, or had been, too much of a gentleman to entertain such low ideas; and if his crew killed the negro and spilled his blood I fancy he washed his hands of it.”

“Of the blood?” interpolated Ho Ha, innocently. His wife looked at him sharply and, without answering, went on:

“But when it comes to that negro’s spirit guarding the treasure, and when it comes to dark, swarthy Spanish ghosts with rings in their ears; and drowned sailors in flapping dungaree trousers, and ghosts of old sea captains, lost passengers, and Heaven knows who else, I, for one, don’t take the least stock in them.”

“Don’t you believe in the Duneswoman, Aunt Keturah?” inquired Mermaid.

“No, not in a Dunesman, nor in the Dunes children, unless you mean those eighteen children of old Jacob Biggles that were named after wrecks and ragged as ghosts,” Mrs. Hand retorted.

[161]“But, Aunt, I’ve seen the Duneswoman,” protested Mermaid. “So has Dad.”

“All you’ve seen is a face and an arm,” corrected Mrs. Hand. “And I can’t find any one else who has seen as much as that. A face and an arm are not a ghost. They’re a—I don’t know what,” she finished.

“A hallucination,” Mermaid offered.

“A hallelujah. That’s what you say when you see one. You say ‘Hallelujah!’” came from Ho Ha.

“When I see one I may say something even more remarkable,” his wife responded, grimly.

It was several nights later when she awoke and uttered a long-drawn scream of terror.

“Hosea!” she cried, clutching her pillow. “Hosea, there’s someone at the window!”

Ho Ha leaped up manfully, went to the window, stuck his head through the netting which was tacked on as a screen, and drew it in again.

“Nonsense, Keturah,” he said, gently. “No one in sight except Captain Vanton standing on the dune in front of his house.” The Vanton cottage was a dune away, but a valley lay between. “You—why, you must have seen a ghost. Oh, ho-ho-ho!”

He communicated the nature of the disturbance to Mermaid in the next room, and when Cap’n Smiley, who slept at the station, came over for breakfast next morning, there was some chaffing about the ghost Keturah had seen.<............