Wicked Woods Read Free Page B

aground. It was stuck, hard and fast.
    Unloaded, the ship would have been easy to move, but all attempts to move the vessel, filled with heavy softwood, green and freshly timbered in the New Brunswick woods, failed. Despairing of ever recouping their losses, the Nova Scotian cartel sold off the ship and cargo to Jack and Robert Jardine of Richibucto. The Jardines had been established in the shipbuilding business for several decades. The family firm was responsible for building dozens of ships. I suspect the salvage operation was nothing more than a lucrative side venture for these hard-working salts.
    The first thing the Jardines did was pay off the entire crew of the Amity. The crewmen were more than happy to take their money and get as far as possible from what they’d come to believe was a jinxed ship. Of the entire crew, one man failed to show up to get his pay. It was assumed that he had deserted the foundered ship and taken up work in another port, perhaps under another name.
    The Jardines then set about unloading the Amity, figuring that once it was relieved of its burden, they could easily float it off of the sandbar and patch up its hull, netting a handy profit. However, Mother Nature and Old Man Neptune intervened.
    The winter set in and the harbour froze up. The Amity wasn’t going anywhere.
    The Jardines weren’t worried. They hired a sturdy watchman to keep an eye on the Amity over the winter, for fear of piracy or pilfering. It turned out that there was a lot more to be afraid of than simple larceny. After keeping an eye on the cold and empty ship for very few nights, the watchman walked into the Jardines’s office, demanding that they settle up with him.
    â€œI hear noises every night,” the watchman said.
    The Jardines wanted to know what kind of noises he was hearing.
    â€œFootsteps,” the watchman said. “Slow and heavy, like the sound of a man walking to the gallows.”
    Rats, the Jardines told him. That was nothing but the sound of rats.
    â€œThere isn’t a ship out there without a few rats, especially when they’re harboured. We’ll fetch you a cat.”
    â€œWhat kind of rats can live off of softwood?” the watchman wanted to know. “These are footsteps, I tell you.”
    The watchman refused to go back on board the Amity, and by now word had gotten around that the ship was haunted. The Jardines couldn’t find a replacement so they built a small shack on the shore close to the vessel, where the watchman could sit and keep an eye on things. They weren’t all that happy about this compromise. It was better than nothing, but it wasn’t as safe as having a man living on board.
    The winter passed on as Maritime winters do, moving from a snowy March into a slushy grey April. The Jardines hired a crew of out-of-town boys who hadn’t heard the rumours of the ship’s haunting, and set to work unloading the Amity. Night after night, the crew complained of hearing those eerie heavy footsteps, thump-thump-thump, like nails being driven into a coffin. They searched the ship by day and night and couldn’t find the source of the disturbance.
    â€œIt’s the devil, come looking for the soul of a sailor,” one said.
    â€œIt’s Neptune himself, come up to inspect our vessel,” another theorized. “He fancies it for his own and plans to sink it down under just as soon as we set sail.”
    Fear continued to fester like gangrene in a dirty wound. The men talked of quitting or even burning the ship. The Jardines knew they had to move fast. They did everything they could to hurry the workers on.
    Finally they had unloaded enough of the softwood cargo to float the boat free. If they had only looked a little deeper they might have found what was hidden in the lower levels of the cargo hold. A new crew was sought and brought on board to sail the Amity off that sand–bar. They reloaded the ship and set sail for Britain.