The Haunted Showboat by Carolyn Keene

meetings when the moon was full.
    Following Charles’s plan, the couples separated, Nancy and Charles walking together, Bess with Frank, and George with Jack. Five minutes later they all met back of the rose garden, jumped into the car, and started off.
    “So far, so good,” Charles remarked, looking in his rear-view mirror. “There’s no sign of anyone following us.”
    Two miles from the house they came to the bayou and he parked. Three canoes were hidden among the trees and bushes that overhung the water. The couples stepped in.
    Bess remarked to Frank, “It’s a good thing there’s moonlight or you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.”
    “S-sh!” Nancy called across from her canoe. “We’d better keep very quiet.”
    The rest of the trip was made in silence. As they neared the area where the showboat was, the young people became aware of the steady beat of a tom-tom. Bess shivered a little, but Nancy, her heart pounding with excitement, sat up straighter.
    A few minutes later they could distinctly hear music coming from the calliope! To herself Nancy said, “But Charles told me the old organ could not possibly be played!”
    Soon the three canoes reached the pond where the River Princess lay. In the moonlight, with shadows playing on her, the old craft looked unreal and spooky indeed. The music stopped at the end of a dismal tune.
    Then, as if the organist had left his bench, a ghostly figure suddenly walked from the interior of the boat onto the deck. It was sheathed from head to toe in white and glided up and down as though it were floating rather than walking.
    Bess clutched the sides of the canoe in which she was riding. A terrified gasp escaped her lips. As if annoyed by the sound the ghost flitted inside the old showboat.
    “Shall we follow it?” Charles whispered to Nancy.
    Before she could decide, a new kind of sound came from the River Princess —hymn chanting!
    “A voodoo meeting must be going on!” Charles said in a low voice.
    There was not a light on the boat and no other signs of activity. Did the strange rites take place in complete darkness with the audience sitting motionless?
    Nancy leaned forward and said to her companion, “I’d like to go aboard.”
    Charles whispered that he thought it would be best not to go across the pond in the canoe.

    A ghostly figure suddenly emerged from
    “There is a stretch of moss sod on our left leading up to the boat. Suppose we find it and walk to the River Princess.”
    The three canoes came together and the directions were given to the others. Then they silently paddled through the shadows to the mossy walk and the girls stepped out. As their feet touched the sod, the chanting on the showboat suddenly ceased.

    the interior of the boat onto the deck
    In the lee of a giant cypress, the girls hesitated. There was complete silence for fully ten seconds, then they became aware of the splash of oars.
    “Someone’s leaving the showboat,” George remarked.
    “Listen!” Nancy commanded. A few moments later she said, “No one’s leaving by canoe. Someone is coming!”
    The young people waited tensely. From another entrance into the pond glided a rowboat. Two figures were in it.
    To the young people’s complete astonishment the couple were dressed in Colonial attire. The man at the oars was elderly. The woman, about the same age, wore a dark-colored velvet dress and a bonnet.
    The watchers were too astounded to comment. The “Colonial gentleman” pulled up to the River Princess. Then he stood up and helped the woman ascend the ladder to the deck!

CHAPTER XV
    A Weird Scene
     
     
    COMPLETELY mystified, Nancy and her companions watched the scene at the old showboat in awe. Why were the elderly woman and the man with her in Colonial costumes? Was she perhaps coming for some secret herbs sold at the voodoo meeting on board? And, for some reason, was the eighteenth-century attire required?
    The three girls huddled together. Bess whispered