The Golden Leg (9 page)

T
here was an elderly gentleman whose
business often took him between cities, and it was his regular habit to take the
train. One night, he took a late-night express train to the city of Bayswater, a
trip he had taken many times before.

At that time of night there were few passengers, and the man found himself
alone in one of the train cars.

“Good evening, sir,” said the conductor with a smile as he came to collect the
man’s ticket. “Cold night tonight.”

“Indeed it is,” said the man. He handed over his ticket. The conductor punched
it, handed it back, and continued on to the next car.

The rhythmic motion of the train as it rolled along had a soothing effect. The
man leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and dozed off for a short
while.

When he opened his eyes, the elderly gentleman was no longer alone in the train
car. Sitting across from him was a slender young girl wearing a small straw hat
decorated with velvet flowers, and with an old-fashioned shawl draped about her
shoulders. She was a lovely girl, about sixteen years of age.
She had large blue eyes and long blonde hair which was pulled back off her
face.

“Does this train go to Bayswater?” the girl asked in a soft, sweet voice.

“Yes,” the man answered, checking his watch. “We should arrive in three
hours.”

“Will the train stop many times before we get there?” asked the girl, in a
worried tone.

“Not once,” said the man. “This is the direct route, with no stops at
all.”

“Oh, good,” sighed the girl in the hat, as if in great relief. She settled
back in her seat, staring out the window at the passing countryside.

“Are you meeting family in Bayswater?” the gentleman asked.

“Oh no,” the girl answered, “I am going to school there.”

“It will be late when we arrive,” he said. “Will you need any assistance when
we get there?”

“Only a taxi,” she replied, “and from there I will be fine.”

The express train thundered on with a steady roar and a constant clatter from
its iron wheels. Suddenly the train whistle screeched out a mournful cry, and
the train started to slow down. The wheels slowly ground to a halt, and looking
out the window, the two passengers could see that they had stopped at a small
station in the middle of the forest.

“Is this Bayswater?” questioned the girl.

“No it is not,” said the man. “I can’t imagine why we’ve stopped here.”

“Does this train stop at every station?” she asked, in a
trembling voice.

“Usually never,” said the man. “They must have gotten a special signal.”

At this the girl drew her shawl closer about her thin frame, and
shivered.

“You are cold,” said the man in a grandfatherly tone, concerned.

“Yes,” said the girl. “I am very cold.”

After only a moment, the train started moving again, and the conductor entered
the car. It was a different conductor from the one who had collected the man’s
ticket. The gentleman stopped the conductor and asked why the journey had been
interrupted.

“We had to pick up a man,” said the second conductor, “a detective. There was
a murder, and he is on the lookout for a suspect.”

“Not on this train, surely!” exclaimed the man.

“Yes, sir,” said the conductor, passing on into the next car.

“Did you hear what he said?” the gentleman asked the girl.

“A murder,” she said. “How horrible.” She looked very pale.

The man told her not to worry, and that he would look out for her until they
arrived in Bayswater. The girl gave a sweet, sad smile, and turned back toward
the window. She looked very much alone as she sat there, fiddling with her hands
and their long, white fingers.

The train continued for some time, and as they drew toward
their final destination, the girl seemed to grow more upset. As they entered the
town, the train ran over a bridge which spanned a wide river. Suddenly the girl
rose, and ran quickly to the nearest doorway. Before the man could stop her, she
wrenched the door open and threw herself from the train. Horrified, the man
watched her fall from the bridge and land with a splash in the river
below.

The old man was so shocked by this that he fainted dead away.

When he regained consciousness, he found that he was back in his seat, alone in
the car. The train was still rumbling along, and he saw that they had not yet
arrived at the outskirts of Bayswater. Shaking his head, the man wondered if
what he had seen had only been a dream. Before long, the conductor came back
through the car. It was the first conductor, the one who had collected his
ticket.

Fully expecting to be laughed at, the gentleman stopped the conductor, and told
him of his strange experience. Instead of laughing, the conductor was very
curious.

“That was no ordinary dream,” said the conductor, when the man had finished
his description. “What you saw took place on this train twenty years ago on this
very night. A girl like you described had committed a terrible murder in the
town we’ve just come from. She tried to escape on the train, but was followed by
a detective. She jumped into the river just outside of Bayswater to avoid being
arrested, but drowned.”

“The conductor who worked this line before me told me the
entire story. You could not have described the events better if you had been
there to see them for yourself.”

T
he
Isle of Skye
was a fishing
schooner, owned by the Mackey brothers. Each summer they would sail to the coast
of Labrador to fish for cod, which were plentiful in the cool waters. They would
fish off the coast for the entire summer, and then return home in the fall of
the year, their hold packed full of dried and salted fish.

One summer, one of the Mackey brothers fell ill. His siblings waited as long as
they could, but in the end, they had to set sail. The sick son stayed at home
with his mother to look after the family business, and soon made a complete
recovery.

The brothers fished all summer. That season, even without the help of the
brother they had left behind, they took in a remarkable amount of fish. The fish
was salted and dried, packed into barrels, and loaded into the ship until she
was almost awash with fish.

The
Isle of Skye
left Labrador with its load of fish late in
the month of October. As they sailed toward their home, a
terrible storm whipped up on the North Atlantic. Because the schooner was so
deeply laden down, she was unable to weather the storm. As the wind roared
around them, and the giant waves crashed against her timbers, the brothers knew
that they would never see their home again. The ocean's fury pounded the ship to
pieces, and all her crew went down to a watery grave.

Wreckage from the ship washed up along the shore, but there was no way to get a
message back quickly to the one surviving brother and his mother.

A few nights later, the brother looked out to see the lights of a schooner out
on the water. He looked it over carefully as it drew closer, and studying the
cut of the sails, he thought it to be the
Isle of Skye
. He heard the
sails being lowered, and the sound of the anchor chain being run out.

The boy told his mother to put on the kettle to make up a pot of tea, and left
the house. He got into his boat and rowed out toward where he had seen the
lights of the
Isle of Skye
.

When he reached the area there was no schooner. There were no lights to be
seen, and nothing but complete darkness was there to meet him. Terrified, the
boy rowed quickly home, and told his mother what had happened.

Several weeks passed. Eventually, the family got word that the
Isle of
Skye
had been lost in a terrible storm.

From the time of the awful disaster onward, the phantom image of the ghostly
schooner was sighted from time to time,
always displaying her
port and starboard lights. The vessel would appear whenever the wind whipped up
the seas. Those who witnessed the scene thought she was a real ship, about to
run aground, but at the last moment, just before the vessel was smashed against
the rocky shore, the image would disappear, like dust in a storm of wind.

A
soldier was sent home on a month’s
leave from the army. The soldier was young, in his late teens, not yet having
reached twenty years of age. As chance would have it, the soldier had a
sweetheart who lived nearby. The girl’s father did not approve of having a poor
soldier for a son-in-law, and he refused to allow the two of them to see each
other.

The progress of true love, however, is rarely slowed by the words and wishes of
one’s parents.

The homes of the two lovers were separated by a long stretch of fresh water.
But luckily for the would-be couple, the soldier’s leave had been granted toward
the end of a particularly cold winter. Low temperatures had frozen all the local
rivers and ponds, icing over the gulf that kept them apart.

“Ice is so much better than water,” said the young man, “for skating is much
faster than rowing would be, any day.”

He and his sweetheart arranged to meet safely away from the eyes of her father.
Their meeting place was to be a secluded spot known to both of them, where as
children they
and their friends had often gathered to swim
during the warm summer months.

The soldier laced on his skates, and at about seven o’clock in the evening, he
set off to meet his longed-for partner. When he got to their arranged spot, he
gave a long whistle to attract his lover’s attention. When she heard the call,
she answered back, and came out from where she was hiding in the trees.

From that evening on, on those nights when the weather was fine enough to
permit it, the soldier laced on his skates and sped off into the night to meet
his love. Weeks passed, and the time when the soldier would have to report back
to his regiment started to draw closer and closer. At each opportunity they had,
they would meet at their secret spot and exchange sweet words and vows of
undying love.

As the passion between them grew warmer, so too did the weather. On the night
before he was to return to his barracks, the soldier knew he had to make one
last journey to see his heart’s desire. The sun had been pouring out its warmth
all day long, and the soldier’s friends warned him that the ice was no longer
safe for skating.

The soldier would not listen. For the last time, he laced on his skates, and
sped off to meet his love. Somewhere along the way, his friends’ fears about the
safety of the ice proved to be well-founded. The ice cracked underneath his
flashing blades, and the soldier fell down and through. The shock of the cold
water knocked the air out of his lungs almost at
once, and after
only the shortest of struggles, the soldier perished in the frigid water.

When the soldier did not return home that night, an alarm was raised. A great
search was organized, but by then the ice was too thin to walk upon, yet still
too thick to row through in a boat. As a result, the frozen body of the dead
soldier was not found for several days.

All of this happened many years ago. Today, it is said that on crisp, clear
nights toward the end of winter you can still see the ghostly figure of the
drowned soldier. If you time your search right, early in the evening, at about
seven o’clock, you may just see him careening across the ice at full speed. He
skates this way and that, blades flashing, forever looking for his love, a love
whom he is fated to never meet again in this world. As he skates along he
whistles to attract her attention, but she, long since dead and buried herself,
never answers his call.