"Well," replied Frank, "it's like all ghost stories and spook spots in the world; all imagination, I guess. I do not take any stock in them, and dad laughs at the entire batch. The only reality about it is that the island itself is the most forbidding pile of rock, covered with the worst tangle of scrub spruce you ever saw, and the shore is full of deep fissures and cracks. The one mysterious fact is, that strange bellowing noise that you can't locate anywhere. You may clamber all over the island and all around the shores and it seems to be just ahead of you, or just behind; so far as the stories go, well; the queer harbor inside is said to have been a smuggler's hiding-place years ago, and there are all kinds of yarns connected with the island, from bloody murders down to strange sea monsters seen crawling over the rocks. It has a bad name and is seldom visited; for one reason, I think, because it's impossible to land there except in a small boat, and then only when the sea is smooth. The bellowing noise, I believe, is made by the waves entering some cavern below high-water mark. There is also an odd sort of a story linked with it about a little Jew who was known to be a smuggler and who played a sharp trick on a few people ten or twelve years ago. I do not think he had any connection with the island, however, although some say he had. I fancy it's because any ghost-haunted spot always attracts all the mysterious stories told in its neighborhood." All this was interesting to Manson, and not only added a charm to all the islands he had visited, but made him especially anxious to explore this one. "Do not laugh at me," he said when Frank had finished his recital, "for expecting to see Indians paddling canoes among your islands when your people down here believe all the ghost stories they do. My fancy is only the shadow of what was certainly a reality not so very long ago; while your stories are spook yarns of the most hobgoblin shape. I want to go to Pocket Island, however," he added a little later, reflectively, "and hear that mysterious bellowing anyhow."