On a moonless night in Casco Bay, two girls answer the sea's call and stumble onto something that shouldn't exist: a beached three-masted schooner, its cargo hold stuffed with bolts of scarlet cloth. Ruth Bracket and Betty Bronson have spent their summer chasing legends, but this mystery feels different. Dangerous men in a drifting dory shadow their path. Whispers of smuggling curl through the fishing villages. And the pirates they fear turn out to be something stranger still. Roy J. Snell crafted this adventure for readers who believe that curiosity is a kind of courage, and that two girls with a rowboat and a refusal to look away can unravel what grown-ups would rather leave buried. The coast of Maine has never felt more alive than in these pages, where every fog bank might hide a secret and every tide brings the chance of something extraordinary.
