The Ghost at the Point Read online

  “Come on, come on,” cried Mr Crickle, jabbing Alonso in the backside. “We haven’t got all night.”

  There was an enormous wobble – Mrs Crickle had tripped, nearly pulling them all down again.

  “Ow!” she shrieked. “What the devil?”

  “Dratted cat,” roared Mr Crickle. He kicked out at Poppy again, who had shot between his wife’s legs. “Go on – git!”

  Dorrie snorted, and Alonso called out something that was obviously words of encouragement to the valiant little cat. They stood there, unsteady, as Mr Crickle glared around in the darkness for his furry adversary.

  The bundle shuffled on.

  “Why don’t we tie ’em to the bumper bar?” wheezed Mrs Crickle as the dark shape of the roadster loomed up.

  All at once there was an almighty roar – human crossed with lion – and a huge dark shape rushed out at them from behind the car. Mrs Crickle shrieked, but the shape had already grabbed her and her open-mouthed husband by the scruffs of their necks. It held them there, helpless, almost dangling.

  “What d’you think you’re doing with my friends, eh?” cried Jacky, giving them a little shake.

  “Jacky!” cried Dorrie. Tears filled her eyes again. “Oh, Jacky – thank you.”

  “Jack-ee!” shouted Alonso at the same time.

  “Unhand us, ruffian,” gasped Mr Crickle, to no avail.

  “We seen your lights, Dorrie,” said Jacky, proudly. “Dad ’n me. When we was out gar fishin’, after the moon went in. We rowed round, lickety-split.”

  Caleb came puffing up behind Jacky from the back beach. He squinted at the children in their net parcel and the Crickles in their Jacky-hold. “Didn’t like the look of yer the first time – there on the road,” he growled. “Knew yer were up to no good.”

  In the gathering light, they could see that Mrs Crickle’s face had gone a shade of tomato. “I told you, Edmund,” she yelled, “we should’ve left when the going was good. But, oh no, as usual you wouldn’t listen.”

  Mr Crickle’s face was even redder as it swung around to her. “Shut up, you fat cow!”

  Dorrie and Alonso burst out laughing.

  Mrs Crickle was speechless; her mouth flapped open and shut like a landed fish. “Well,” she got out finally. “Well!”

  Caleb turned to Dorrie and Alonso. “Let’s get you untied,” he said, his gnarled fingers struggling with a knot. “So you were right about Dorrie’s friend, after all,” he grunted to Jacky.

  “Yep,” said his son, beaming. “His name’s Alonso.”

  Caleb managed to untie the big knot in front, which freed Dorrie’s and Alonso’s arms. He glared at the Crickles. “Righto, let’s give these two a taste of their own medicine.”

  And so the rope and netting were unwound, then retied around the protesting couple, while Dorrie explained what had been going on. But not before Alonso had spied the crinkled, yellowed piece of paper sticking out of Mr Crickle’s pocket. He plucked it out, and waved it in the air.

  Dorrie clapped her hands with glee. “Just what we need.”

  “I beg your pardon,” cried Mr Crickle, his face twisting behind the netting, “that’s our property.”

  “It’s stolen property, actually,” said Dorrie, coldly. “Taken from my great-aunt.”

  “She wasn’t needing it,” said Mrs Crickle, lunging towards Dorrie. Her husband cursed and staggered, almost overbalancing. “What would she do with all the money?” Mrs Crickle went on. “That old woman wouldn’t know the first thing about sophistication and glamour.”

  “Mavis,” spluttered Mr Crickle. It seened as though the top of his head was about to blow off. “Shut – your – trap!”

  Dorrie laughed. “Oh, yes, and I suppose you know all about it?” She wasn’t cruel enough to add, “Being so sophisticated and glamorous yourself!” Instead, she sighed exaggeratedly. “I guess Paris and Monte Carlo are going to have to wait.”

  “For quite a while, I’d say,” said Caleb.

  “What a surprise for Sergeant Tonks when he gets back,” Dorrie added cheerfully.

  There were more snarls and rumbles from the Crickle bundle, which was promptly shuffled into the end bedroom. There, it was tied securely to the bedstead, as Dorrie had been earlier.

  Caleb fetched a chair and sat outside the door.

  “Think I’ll keep a watch here, till the seargent gets back.”

  “Well,” said Dorrie to Alonso and Jacky, “what’ll we do to fill in the time?”

  Alonso and Dorrie glanced at the map, still clutched in Alonso’s hand.

  “I think,” she said, “a little scouting for treasure might be in order.”

  Alonso didn’t need her to mime any digging. “¡Sí!” He grinned, holding the map aloft. “Tre-sor.”

  It was amazing, she thought, how quickly he was starting to pick up words.

  “Treasure!” cried Jacky, delightedly. “Is there treasure?”

  “Maybe,” said Dorrie. “Come on, let’s go.”

  On the way past the bedroom window, she couldn’t resist leaning in. “Hey, Crickles,” she called. “Thanks so much for bringing the map – awfully kind of you.”

  The noises that came back sounded as though they came from a pigsty. Even though she wouldn’t want to insult pigs.

  “If that’s the cliff, then that must be this tree – here,” said Dorrie. She ran a finger over the map, then frowned. Somehow nothing seemed to fit.

  The three of them crowded over the faded marks and squiggles, which were even harder to make out in the half-light of dawn. There were no words on it, or even an “N” to show where north was.

  Perhaps old Ned couldn’t read or write, Dorrie thought. A lot of people couldn’t, back then. But one thing was certain – there was a definite cross, right in the middle of the page.

  “It’s a puzzle,” said Jacky, scratching his head.

  “Mmm.” How old were the trees? Dorrie wondered. How long did tea-trees last? More than a hundred years?

  Alonso was making his own calculations. He traced the square outline of the house on the map, then glanced back at the real thing, and shook his head.

  “This shows the house how it was then,” said Dorrie. “It was much smaller – only a plain square. The part along the verandah wasn’t built till later.”

  Alonso’s face was blank. Dorrie shrugged – it was impossible to explain.

  “Give it to me,” said Jacky. He took it in both hands, then turned it around. “Better that way.”

  Dorrie and Alonso stared at it, and then everything fell into place.

  “Brilliant, Jacky!” Dorrie cried. “Now it makes sense. This must be the other side of the house – above front beach.”

  They’d only starting searching on the back beach side because that’s where the Crickles had been.

  Followed by Poppy, they hurried around to the top of the path. They stood by the anchor, consulting the map again. Alonso traced the shape of the cliff with his finger. Dorrie joined in. Here was the square of the house, and here the big old stringybarks near the shed.

  Their fingers merged at the X. They looked at one another, and then down at the anchor.

  “¡Ésa es!” cried Alonso, at the same time Dorrie shouted, “Of course!”

  “Why didn’t he simply draw an anchor, instead of a cross?” Dorrie said.

  Though an anchor would have been too obvious if the map fell into the wrong hands. Which, of course, it had.

  They fetched a couple of shovels from the shed, and, with Jacky’s help, heaved the anchor out of the way. Then Jacky and Alonso started digging. The soil was mostly sand, which kept running back into the hole. And they were not helped by the mischievous Poppy, who kept jumping in. After a few minutes, however, there was a distinct clink as Alonso’s shovel hit something metal.

  They all shouted with excitement. They kept digging, but in the end it was easier just to get down and scoop with their hands.

  And finally, there it was. A rusted ti
n box, with the initials EJD still visible on the top.

  “EJD?” Dorrie frowned. “What does that stand for?”

  Alonso was lifting it out. He put it down and undid the latch. On the top lay a folded, musty-smelling blanket. When they took it out, a lump of what appeared to be rock sat in the bottom.

  Except that it wasn’t rock-coloured. Despite the dim light it had a distinct golden gleam.

  Dorrie picked it up.

  “It’s …” She stared at it. “It’s a gold nugget. I’m sure it is! I’ve seen a picture of one.”

  Alonso was quite sure what it was. “¡Oro!” he cried, jabbing at it. “Oro, ¡una pepita grandotota!”

  Jacky leaped up. “Gold!” he hollered at the top of his lungs. “We’ve found gold!”

  Through all the excitement, Dorrie realised that the Crickles would be able to hear him, up at the house. She laughed. They’d be positively spitting with rage.

  “But where would old Ned have got a gold nugget from?” She turned it over. “It’s huge! There are no gold mines on the island.” Putting it down on the sand, she lifted out the faded, yellowed papers it was sitting on. She leafed through them for a second.

  The writing was all in a foreign language.

  Alonso was leaning forwards, gesturing to the words excitedly. “¡Castellano!” he cried. He beamed at the other two. “Yo,” he said, pointing at himself. “Mi idioma!”

  “Your language?” cried Dorrie. She ventured a guess. “Italian?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Castellano … Chile.”

  She understood this last word. “Ah, Chile. You’re from South America. So you speak Spanish.”

  But Alonso was still staring at the paper. He gave a little shout, his finger on one of the words.

  “¡Copiapó! Mi pueblo. Ése es mi pueblo en Chile.”

  “W-what?” Dorrie scanned the document again. It seemed like it was a birth certificate. It was similar to her own birth certificate, which was kept in a box in the sitting room.

  Alonso was reading the name on it, tracing it with his finger, “Eduardo José Donoso.” He jabbed at the middle name, his face flushed with excitement.

  “José,” he said, pronouncing it the Spanish way – Hos-ay. “¡Ése es mi nombre! ¡mi nombre!” he repeated.

  Dorrie understood that. “Your name?”

  “¡Sí! Alonso José. En Castellano, el primer apellido, ‘José’ es el apellido del padre,” he said slowly, indicating the word. “‘Donoso’ es el apellido de la madre.”

  Because he emphasised them so strongly, she could understand the words padre and madre. They sounded like “pa” and “ma”.

  “Ah,” said Dorrie, scratching her head. “I think I see. In Chile do you use two surnames, and ‘José’ is the father’s name?”

  Suddenly, she could hardly breathe. “But … my name is Jose.” She pointed to herself and then to the printed name. “Dorrie Hos-ay,” she said, pronouncing the “J” as an “H”, as Alonso would. “Like your name, but in English!”

  They dived into several other papers. These seemed to be mainly letters, all written in Spanish. Then, right at the bottom, they found a drawing done in pen and ink. It was a portrait of three brothers – aged about sixteen, thirteen and nine or ten. Felipe José Donoso was written underneath the oldest brother, Eduardo José Donoso under the next, and Tomás José Donoso under the youngest.

  There was no mistaking the resemblance between them, but it was the middle boy, Eduardo, whose face leaped out at Dorrie. His features somehow seemed so familiar. She stared at him, wondering where she’d seen him before. And suddenly she knew.

  “That’s old Ned!” she cried, jabbing at his likeness. She waved a hand towards the house. “My great-great-great-grandfather – in the picture, in the sitting room.”

  Even though this was a young man, and the sitting room sketch of Ned was drawn when he was old, the sharp gaze and hooked nose were unmistakable.

  “Ah, sí.” Alonso seemed to understand her. It was as though all the night’s excitement had broken down the language barrier.

  “But, how?” Dorrie was thinking out loud. Then she remembered the only other Ned she knew – Ned Brown at school.

  His real name was Edward.

  The English version of Eduardo.

  She spun around to the other two, clapping her hands with excitement.

  “Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Ned came from America all right,” she cried. “But it was South America, not North America! He came from your town, Alonso. He came from Copiapó, in Chile.”

  But why had he changed his name from Eduardo José Donso, to plain Ned Jose? And why all the secrecy about his origins – all the evidence buried for all those years?

  Alonso lifted up the gold nugget.

  “Copiapó,” he told them, “tiene minas de oro. Hay mucho oro.” He mimed digging. “Mis parientes son mineros.”

  “You – dig for gold?” asked Jacky.

  “No.” Alonso shook his head. “Mi papá.”

  The light in his eyes faded; his smile was gone. Dorrie felt a surge of pity for him. She felt sure his father was dead. She touched his arm.

  “Your father – papá – was a gold miner?” she asked, also miming digging.

  “Sí, todos los hombres de mi familia,” he replied, spreading his arms, then repeating the shovelling action.

  Had Ned been a miner too, she wondered, back in Copiapó?

  “But why,” she asked Alonso, trying to gesture her meaning, “did you come here, to the island, all the way from Chile?”

  His expression still miserable, Alonso pantomimed a series of gestures which seemed to show fighting, killing and being killed.

  “Cowboys and indians!” cried Jacky.

  “No.” Dorrie looked at Alonso, sadly shaking her head. “I think he means a war. I think they were lucky to escape from Chile with their lives.”

  In the little silence that followed, she had another thought. They’d escaped from unimaginable horrors. No wonder he didn’t want to reveal who he was, or give himself up to the authorities. After all that, he wouldn’t know who to trust.

  And he’d survived everything, only to have to be pitched into another nightmare.

  A terrifying, deadly shipwreck, on one of the wildest stretches of coastline in Australia.

  Sergeant Tonks and Mr Jennings soon came back, complete with a search party of about a dozen men in another truck. Everyone was delighted and highly relieved at the turn of events, and the newly recruited searchers were sent home again.

  Alonso had at first seemed wary at the sight of all these adults, especially Sergeant Tonks. But Dorrie had taken a firm hold on his elbow, determined her new-found cousin wasn’t suddenly going to bolt off into the bush again.

  “It’s all right, Alonso, it’s going to be all right,” she said soothingly, patting him as though he was a frightened pony.

  He was further calmed by the sergeant’s obvious delight at seeing him. For the police officer seemed to know exactly who he was.

  “You came off the wreck, didn’t you, son?” Sergeant Tonks asked. He put a sympathetic hand on Alonso’s shoulder.

  Alonso stared at him blankly, but Dorrie answered for him. “Yep, I’m sure he did. But he only speaks Spanish – he comes from Chile.”

  “I know.” The sergeant had folded his arms and was rocking back and forth, pleased as punch with the information he was about to reveal.

  “We’ve got his mum in Redcliff,” he said. “She was found clinging to some wreckage, a bit further down the coast.”

  “Oh!” cried Dorrie. She swung around to Alonso. “Alonso, your madre!” She pointed in the direction of Redcliff. “They’ve found your madre – alive!”

  The expression on her friend’s face as the news sunk in was unforgettable.

  “¿Mamá?” he whispered, the light dawning in his eyes. “¿Mi madre?”

  “¡Sí!” Dorrie knew the word for “yes” now. “She’s safe, in town.�
��

  Alonso’s eyes filled with tears. He grabbed Sergeant Tonks by the arms.

  “Gracias, señor. Gracias.”

  “Don’t thank me, mate – she saved herself,” said the sergeant. “Sheer ruddy pluck, I’d say – in the water all that time. Lucky she didn’t get taken by a shark.” Then the smile faded from his face. “The others weren’t so lucky. Seems as though her and the boy here were the only survivors of the wreck. Her husband was killed in some civil unrest back in Chile.”

  Dorrie nodded, her fears confirmed.

  “Anyway, by sheer chance we found someone who speaks Spanish,” the sergeant went on. “Bloke crewing on a trawler that’s docked here for a spell, for repairs. So we’ve been able to get the whole story. Apparently, the boy here and his mum were part of a group fleeing the fighting. There’s been terrible massacres and things going on there, Señora José said, on and off for more than a century. The ship was making for Redcliff, but somehow it missed entering the strait and ended up on the south coast. Not surprised it got wrecked,” he added, shaking his head. “It was a complete rust bucket.”

  “But,” put in Mr Jennings, “why were they heading for the island, of all places?”

  “Well, now that’s the really interesting part,” Sergeant Tonks said. “Señora José reckons she has relatives here. She said her husband’s great-great-uncle arrived here from Chile over a hundred years ago, and settled on the island.”

  Dorrie laughed. “Yes, we already know. He was my great-great-great-grandfather Ned. And,” she added, clapping Alonso on the shoulder and smiling at him, “Alonso’s,” she paused, thinking about it, “great-great-great-uncle, I s’pose! And he was shipwrecked as well, off Black Cape – the very same spot where Alonso was wrecked.”

  Sergeant Tonks shook his head again. “You wouldn’t credit it.”

  “It’s not that surprising, really,” said Mr Jennings, “considering the reefs along that section of coast. They wouldn’t be the only ships wrecked there, over the years.”

  But the sergeant hadn’t finished. “And Señora José said that he – your old ancestor – was also escaping from a civil war, way back then.”

  They all were silent for a moment.

  “Gee,” said Mr Jennings, finally, “Chile doesn’t sound like a very nice place to live.”