It was Sunday morning at the “Point.” And over across the bay the last of the phantoms in “Ghost Hollow” had crept up the lampless posts of the walk through “Spook Grove,” and, vaulting in an uncanny way, reached cover in the branches of the birch trees that were thickly clustered around the cottages lining “Spirit Lane” west to the bowling alley. It was through “Ghost Hollow” that the cottagers living to the westward passed while going to and returning from the boat landing and the hotel over at the Point.

At the misty dawn on this Sunday morning the forlorn spectres of the spirits which frequented the small bay were stalking from the water, answering from the hidden abode among the dark cottages of the lane the homing call of the doleful strains of a “chella.” In obedience to their spirit queen they wafted wearily through the rushes and ferns upon the bank; borne by the receding shades of darkness, they sought their resting places under the rafters and the eaves of the gruesome roof of the bowling alley, which crouched along by the vine-covered wall at the brow of the hill. It was then an Indian, from the tribe of St. Regis, on the mainland, stole unnoticed upon the scene and beached his canoe upon the east shore of the bay. He looked about for signs of the awakening day, then stealthily he dropped on his knees, and from beneath a covering in the bow of his “dug-out” dragged up upon the bank a forty-pound maskinonge.

“Hi! hi!” he cackled in the weird voice of his race. “Hotel man like much Injun.” Then disappearing to the rear of the out buildings, life to him soon became brighter by visions of “fire water” and a warm breakfast—he had sold the fish.

There was an ominous quiet hanging upon the early sunlight. The suppressed calm was something greater than that inspired by the sight of a few devout people starting out upon the yacht for early mass. The guests were appearing singly upon the broad verandas of the hotel. Each in turn as he appeared seemed possessed of the same apprehension, a nervousness of manner. The sleep of this Sunday morning was the closing of a week of wild and reckless dissipation among the guests. Such intense excitement at the island had not been experienced in many summers. From the wharf of the castle across the bay at the other side of “Ghost Hollow” the gramophone had sung “coon songs” and recited at length for several evenings in succession, and a music box in the main corridor of the hotel had given a continuous performance from twelve to twelve, till the nerves of the martyred guests had reached a state fit to be recited in a patent medicine advertisement.

“What’s that I don’t know, a big fish?” And Mr. Hot Water, dressed in his new bicycle suit, strode excitedly a few steps forward on the veranda, then backed up, balanced himself and side-stepped a little to get a fresh start. Then he came on again, with his meerschaum pipe tightly grasped in his right hand.

“By Gum! That’s a terror. If it isn’t a pickerel it’s a maskinonge. It’s either one, anyway, if it isn’t a maskinonge. Who caught it?” Then he looked at the three individuals before him for the first time. What he saw made him change the meerschaum quickly from the right to the left hand, and then he blinked his eyes till recalled by Mr. Du PontÉ. When Mr. Hot Water (a regular patron of the hotel, known to be threatened musically, and also as a local weather authority) comprehended the outfit before him he saw a large fish, of the maskinonge family, strung on an inch pole suspended between two trees eight feet apart. He saw, also, three of his fellow guests at the Point strangely arrayed before him, one dressed in white duck trousers, with a red silk scarf tightly knotted above the knee, another with hand and fore-arm wound with linen handkerchiefs and hung in a sling across his breast, while the third, Mr. Du PontÉ, was, aside from his loquaciousness, apparently in his normal condition, i. e., he had escaped from the terrible catastrophe that had overtaken his friends with no severe injuries to his person.

Mr. Hot Water, being somewhat of a “sport” himself, was led to inquire for the particulars of the landing of the large fish. After stepping cautiously around the group for a few minutes, he placed the meerschaum between his teeth again and began to mutter questions which showed him to be in a credulous state of mind. “By Gum! I don’t know, by Gum! Now, I have been here, and I’ve been down to my club fishin’, fishin’; I’ve been down to Kitskees Island, too. That’s right. My guide—my guide rowed me down there and all the way back, too. I had out a thousand feet of line, but I never caught anything like that.” He looked cunningly out of the corner of his eye toward Mr. Du PontÉ and inquired again what the fish weighed. Three other guests filled with curiosity had now joined the group, and PontÉ began to explain.

“Fifty-seven pounds is the weight of this fish. He has just been weighed in the ice-house around there back of the hotel, near the landing.” (Thirty-seven pounds had been the original quotation.) “You see, Mr. Hot Water, this is no ordinary maskinonge. Take, for instance, the back extension from shoulder to shoulder, which denotes a terrible propelling force, and then if you notice these spots (pointing with a twig he had cut for the purpose) they are not the marks of a common fish. This ‘ere fish was a leader of his tribe; a king, so to speak, among his fellows.”

“Perhaps he’s a ‘King Fish’,” suggested Mr. Hot Water, with apparent concern, at the same time winking both eyes at the “cottager” with the red handkerchief tied about the trousers at the knee.

“No,” returned Du PontÉ; “we have looked him up and we find that having those spots, and the second bicuspid tooth being black, prove him to be a regular ‘King Filipino’ maskinonge.”

“By Gum! that’s funny—I wonder how he got here. Must have followed the ‘line boat’ up the Suez Canal, I guess, or p’raps he didn’t. He must weigh more than fifty-seven pounds—though I don’t know. I guess not, though those fish grow, those Filipino fish grow very fast. They say they do, though I couldn’t say myself. I should think he would weigh more, though, being a king. Here’s Mr. Mac, he ought to know a ‘King Filipino,’ he goes to the market every day,” continued Mr. Hot Water. Again he blinked both eyes at the “cottager” with the red handkerchief about the knee, and the laugh didn’t seem to be on Mr. Hot Water.

Mr. Mac was another weekly visitor at the Island, spending the half holiday about the rush beds and channels in quest of the sly “Wall Eye.” For many seasons he had been doing this sort of thing. The distinguishing mark of the pickerel, the pike and the maskinonge were as familiar to him as were the quotations on the Exchange, upon which he was an active operator six days of the week. The responsibility of Mac’s habit of listening courteously to what a fellow had to say, for the time carefully concealing his final verdict, dates back for its origin to the conservative atmosphere of old Glengarry County, where he had spent the days of his boyhood.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Mr. Mac, in a slow, deliberate voice, slightly pitched, as he reached the inner circle surrounding the fish suspended between the two small hickory trees. The peak of his blue yachting cap was pulled well down over his nose, which shielded from the principals in the “fish game” the twinkle in the eye which would have been the only clue detectable upon his imperturbable features to indicate his belief, skeptical or otherwise, concerning the proceedings. “Well, now, that is a pretty good morning’s catch, that one fish is. Where did you get him, might I ask?” and Mac raised his head slowly backward till his eyes from under the shield of his cap rested on the level of the faces of the three bandaged principals guarding the fish. “Must have had some trouble, too, in landing him,” and he indicated with an inclination of the yachting cap toward the red bandage around the white duck trousers at the knee of the “cottager.”

“Yes,” quickly responded Du PontÉ, “I hooked him on a small perch line out there,” indicating the spot near shore, “in front of my friend’s cottage, not more than three rods from shore. He can tell you”—nodding to the “cottager”—“he saw me from his gallery, which is over the small dock near where I was fishing, throw the pole overboard and heard me shout for help. Now, friend,” nodding to the man with the wounded limb, “tell Mr. Mac how we got him ashore.”

“There isn’t much to say about what we did,” began the “cottager,” “but it’s what the fish did to us. Look at Ribbon Gibbon! His hand lacerated to the wrist; Du PontÉ, here, with a dislocated shoulder, while I have a jagged wound at the knee.” Mac viewed them as requested, his features at the time screwed up as though a bright sunlight were shining on his face.

“I had just finished dressing,” the “cottager” continued, “and had stepped out on the balcony to see what the weather was to be, before I went into the tower to run up the flag. Then it was I saw Du PontÉ at his regular trick of fishing the perch bank dry before anybody else was up and stirring. The next instant I heard a despairing yell, and, looking in the direction from whence it came, I saw Du PontÉ making frantic efforts to raise the stone anchor to his boat, and calling at the same time for help to capture his fishing pole, which was making down stream in a zig-zag course at lightning speed. As I watched the pole it came, now and then, to the surface. I saw that its mysterious kidnapper was making for the small bay which lay where you see, there, between my cottage and the hotel here. An idea seized me, and, with swiftness born only of excitement, I sped down the stairs, out into the roadway which leads through ‘Ghost Hollow,’ shouting as I ran to Ribbon Gibbon, who had just emerged from the hotel, to meet me at the bend of the bay in ‘Ghost Hollow.’

“‘Who’s drowning?’ said Ribbon.

“‘Nobody,’ said I, all out of breath with excitement; ‘Du PontÉ has hooked a sturgeon, and he made off into the bay here with his pole and line. Look!’ says I. ‘There it goes again,’ and the bamboo pole shot inward a couple of rods nearer shore. Ribbon saw the pole this time, and we set out together to capture the fish.

“‘Let’s take that boat lying over there on the other shore,’ said he, and we made a run for it. I jumped at once into the boat in my haste to reach the runaways, but Ribbon stopped to push off from the rocks. I lost my balance and fell over the sharp end of the oar-lock, and that’s how I cut my leg. Before I had got righted up again I heard a terrible splashing, and, looking over the end of the boat into the bay, I saw Ribbon with an oar striking wildly at something in the water, a boat length from shore. ‘We’ve got him, we’ve got him!’ he wailed, hysterically, but suddenly losing his footing he fell full length upon the monster as he lay struggling to free himself from the maze of twisted fishlines with which he found himself securely tied. Immediately a cry of pain came from the water, and Ribbon held up a bleeding hand. In his fall he had encountered the sharp teeth of the fish you see here before you in full view.”

At this point in the narrative Ribbon groaned, and, holding his injured arm at the elbow, turned slowly away. “Stunned by the beating he had received from Ribbon with the oar,” continued the “cottager,” “and exhausted by his efforts to free himself from the coils of the line, Mr. Fish gave up the struggle, and with the aid of PontÉ, who had now reached the shore, we rolled him up upon the beach. We have weighed him over at the ice-house, and he tips the scales at exactly eighty-seven pounds and one-quarter.”

The “cottager” then limped to the side of Du PontÉ, Ribbon Gibbon edged up beside the “cottager,”then Mac, after placing his thumbs in the sleeve-holes of his vest and elevating his head till his eyes had a chance from under the peak of his cap, a cunning smile o’erspreading his face, spoke quietly and deliberately.

“Well, gentlemen,” said he, “it is remarkable, and only that I have the honor of knowing you three chaps, and know you to be absolutely truthful, I might say to you that you are the best trio of liars I have ever met.” Then he made a catlike grin at the “cottager,” and, keeping his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, he turned and sauntered out of the group.

The number of people who now stood gaping with undisguised wonder pictured on their faces edged in closer, forming a compact circle surrounding the terrible monster of the deep, and viewing the disabled subjects of his vicious attack.

Du PontÉ was about to order the fish returned to the ice-house, when he espied emerging from the doorway of the stairs leading to the sleeping apartments in the annex the tall, graceful figure of Harry Weiner Sneitzel. “Here is a rare chance,” thought Du PontÉ to himself. “Why, boys,” in an undertone, aside, “the fun is only beginning; now, Ribbon, it’s your turn. Give it to him good.”

Harry Weiner Sneitzel was a general favorite at the “Point.” He was endowed with a liberal share of good looks, a fine form, with graceful movements, and possessed of a rare interpretation of what a courteous manner should be. His bearing, too, was further dignified by a three years’ course at a medical college. When Harry stepped out upon the gravel walk in front of the hotel that Sunday morning, his white canvas shoes shining with a fresh coat of pipe clay, and his tall, erect figure swaying to his easy strides, he truly looked “a winner.”

As he turned toward the group surrounding the suspended fish and saw his friends in such evident distress, he hastened his steps in their direction. An expression of deep sympathy and concern had o’erspread his classic features, and he elbowed himself quickly to the side of his companions. “By Jove, old man, it’s pretty tough! Where have you been?” Ribbon was speaking in an accusing tone, holding his bandaged arm tenderly to his breast. Harry quickly looked from Du PontÉ to the “cottager” for an explanation. “Well, it’s pretty bad,” said Du PontÉ, “but Ribbon needs you the worst of any of us; his hand is in a bad shape.”

“Oh, you don’t tell me!” replied Harry, sorrowfully. “Can I do anything for you?” he eagerly inquired.

“By Jove, old chap,” went on Ribbon, with apparent difficulty, “I thought you had gone away last night on the ‘liner,’ or I would have been after you sooner. I’m all done up. My hand is in a bad way. This confounded fish has chewed me up. The fellows here tied this bandage all about, but it hurts like the deuce, and I’m afraid of blood poisoning.” “Better do something for him,” muttered Du PontÉ. Harry was deeply impressed with the responsibility that was being heaped upon him. He placed the palms of his hands over his hips and drew up his shoulders till they rested akimbo, and then he was completely confused by the suddenness of the call upon his professional skill. “Quick, Harry,” snapped the “cottager,” “that hand needs to be dressed immediately, then afterward you can take a look at the cut in my leg.” “Say, old chap,” complained Ribbon, “mother will be down here in a minute; then there will be a deuced row if she sees this.” And he gingerly handled the bandaged arm for effect. “But I have no—no medicines,” stammered Harry, just recovering his composure. “Medicine!” shouted Du PontÉ. “Don’t need medicines; get some cotton batting, get lint, get any old thing—but hustle; there’ll be trouble here soon!” “That’s right, Harry,” spoke the “cottager” assuringly. “Find the cotton batting; then we’ll get to work.” “Cotton batting will be good for that—first rate for a wound,” replied Harry, suddenly awakening. “Why, we had some yesterday over at your cottage, fixing up your rig for the masquerade. It’s in the extension; I know where to get it,” and he bolted through the crowd over the side hill and down through “Ghost Hollow,” up again on the opposite rise of ground, and fled through the white birch grove, disappearing into the grounds of the castle across the bay. Before the arch conspirators could hold a conference as to their further conduct of the “fish case,” which was now assuming an alarming aspect, Harry was flying back through “Spirit Lane,” his arms flapping up and down, his long legs dangling, in his haste resembling the flight of a water crane startled from a reed bank.

“Spread it out here,” suggested Du PontÉ, and he guided Harry to the edge of the veranda, where he unfolded the roll of cotton. The “cottager” had limped to the veranda and seated himself. Ribbon followed him reluctantly. “Go lightly now, old chap; I am afraid it’s pretty bad,” said Ribbon. “Better dampen that cotton in witch hazel or Pond’s extract,” suggested the “cottager,” “for, if it’s blood poison you need an antiseptic.” “Excuse me, old chap, won’t you,” interrupted Ribbon; “this is quite serious, I fear. Would you mind getting that bottle of Pond’s extract up on your dresser? It would be safer for you to use it, don’t you know.” “Oh, of course, I never thought of that.” And Harry was off again, up the stairway this time, four steps at a bound, out again on the gravel walk, the bottle of extract clinched in his excited grasp. As Harry hurried to the side of his suffering patient to proceed with the bandaging, Mr. Mac had quietly reached the front. “If you will allow me to offer a suggestion,” he began, in his cautious, convincing way, “my family physician will arrive here in half an hour from the city; he will have all the necessaries, which I believe you require for this job, and it might be safer all around to postpone this operation till he comes.” “Quite right, quite right,” Du PontÉ replied at once. “Mind you,” continued Mac, “I only wish to suggest; I am not interfering with your case, Harry.” “Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Mac,” said Harry; “the doctor probably has antiseptics, and that will be very necessary in this case.” “You had better go in to your breakfast, Harry,” suggested Ribbon; “I can stand this for half an hour, and the other doctor will need you when he comes.” Harry, still under the mesmeric spell, obeying orders, hurried into the hotel for breakfast.

The principals fell back, again surrounding the maskinonge, which was now stiffening in the sun. They were considering the plan of their escape from the Island in whispered consultation. In the meantime Harry Weiner Sneitzel had swallowed his first cup of coffee, and began to think. At the second thought he looked out of the window toward the suspended fish, then he sank back in his chair; an expression of fear and incredulity was forming upon his countenance.

“Scamps,” he was heard to remark, as he gazed for the second time out through the window at the group upon the lawn. Then, quickly rising, he headed for the office. Hatless he sprang out upon the veranda. Grabbing up a sabre which was thrown aside by a masquerader of the night before, he bore down upon the three conspirators who had made him the victim of their practical joke. As he leaped in one mad stride from the piazza to the ground his long, thin front locks stood straight up in the wind like the scalp feathers of an Indian.

“Sneak!” yelled Du PontÉ. In a flash the conspirators were out of the crowd which surrounded the fish. Over the side hill they scampered, Harry in pursuit, swinging the flashing sabre in the air. Down through the Hollow they sped, and in their flight, as did the ghost spirits of the bay, they mysteriously disappeared into the mazes of the dark cottages, amidst the white birch grove in “Spirit Lane.”