The Pirate Princess: Return to the Emerald Isle Read Online Free PDF

sheets in tightly to get the most efficient air movement, steering as closely to the no-go zone as possible without them luffing .
    Race Rock Lighthouse was Meg’s next landmark. It was in the no-go zone, so she had to turn the boat back and forth into the wind in a zigzag motion called tacking . Meg kept the grey stones of the lighthouse in sight as she tacked back and forth towards the most challenging part of their trip: the dangerous channel between Race Point and the Lighthouse.
    Race Rock Light, as it is called, is a nineteenth-century stone building that was constructed on a massive concrete and granite turret-like foundation built on top of a reef. With the help of divers who placed riprap on the underwater ledge to level it off above the water, the foundation itself took seven years to complete. The solid foundation was capped with a beautiful, story-and-a-half, solid stone house where the lighthouse keeper was quartered. The keeper’s house was connected to a tower that held the light. The lighthouse, in comparison to the foundation, took only nine months to complete, a fact which always amazed Meg. No matter how long it took to build, Race Rock Light was needed to guard boats from The Race, that fast and powerful current that moves in two directions, depending on the tide at the opening of Long Island Sound. The lighthouse was placed off Race Point because of the dangerous reef and rocks below the surface in the area of The Race that had sent many boats to a watery grave before the construction of the lighthouse.
    The wind was blowing heavily and the Muirín was on a close haul headed to port. Meg could just make out Race Rock Light over the starboard bow when she heard something she had never before heard in her life.
     

4  
An Old Woman on the Rocks
     
    At first Meg thought the sound she heard was the wind, which can sometimes make a noise when whipping through the rigging of a boat. The sound she heard, however, was not coming from the lines on the Muirín . From somewhere in the distance she heard a high-pitched wail. It started at a very high pitch that slowly went down and back up in a mournful-sounding cry.
    “Do you hear that?” Meg shouted to her family.
    “It’s just the rigging singing, Sweet Pea,” said her father.
    “Meg, you know that sound!” added her mother.
    “No . It’s too loud and it’s not coming from our boat,” Meg said.
    “It is probably coming from that big sloop moored near the shore on the port side ,” Eileen said, pointing to a beautiful boat anchored just off of the island.
    “No. It’s coming from the starboard side where there are no boats , and it sounds like a woman crying.”
    “Meg , honey,” Shay said with a big smile, “sound travels very strangely on the water. It bounces off waves and buoys and other things and can trick a sailor into thinking it is coming from somewhere that it is not. It’s just the lines on that sloop vibrating with the wind.”
    Meg’s father gave her a kind look and added, “Sounds like the rigging singing are what made old sailors come up with all sorts of tales of mermaids, sirens, and sea monsters when it was just their minds playing tricks on them.”
    “I know what I am hearing , guys, and it is a woman crying!” Meg defiantly shot back.
    “Yeah , like the big crash you heard last night that no one else heard,” teased Eileen. The family chuckled. Meg shot her sister a threatening look—she was always teasing her—and Eileen returned the glance by sticking her tongue out at Meg. Eileen wasn’t a bad big sister like the ones you see in the movies, but she never made things easy for Meg. She often taunted her and made sure Meg knew who the oldest child was. These two girls with such different hobbies rarely had anything to share with each other. Meg had no interest in dancing and sports, and Eileen had no interest in the sea. Perhaps because of their differences, they usually got along okay, even if it was because