Fireworks and Foggy Farewells

By Mary Schmal

Unexpected events occur in 1885 on Cobblestone Island for the nine Children of the Light. In dense fog, characters leave the island. Lucinda DePere departs for another country. Three beloved characters bid farewell while the rightful owners of Cottage Parakaleó return to the island. The pirates reappear, but one is up to no good. The boys discover a hidden treasure in their hideaway cave. In the General Store, a curious upper room is unlocked. Fireworks light up the island, objects continue to disappear, and children get locked in a cellar. One mystery is solved with startling results. Thomas and his Nektosha friend, Warm Autumn Breeze, hold a secret they dare not share until the time is right. Throughout the adventures, Thomas is reminded that self-control is a Fruit of the Spirit that blesses not only him but all "Children of the Light."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098042912

Book preview

Chapter 1

One Mystery Solved

Cobblestone Island Lighthouse in Lakeshore County, Wisconsin

Monday, May 4, 1885—just before dusk

It was quite shocking, Thomas began. Father and son stood together in the lantern room of Cobblestone Lighthouse. Curtis Bates was making ready to shine the fixed white light through the fourth-order Fresnel lens inside the tower perched upon the keeper’s house. Thomas looked across the water, chunks of ice still lingering in a distant stretch off to one side between Cobblestone and Marble Islands.

I thought perhaps I was mistaken. Wasn’t sure anything was out there, Curtis started the conversation. Wind must have blown the boat around quite a bit. At times, it was within sight and at times not. Sometimes I thought I saw it, and sometimes I thought it was a mirage. Elusive thing. As you know, I went out onto the lake to check it out. More than once. Couldn’t get to it.

Captain Steele found it, ten-year-old Thomas added, even though his father already knew. The boat, I mean…and them. Thomas felt the need to hash over the grizzly facts. He needed to talk. Finally, the puzzling mystery of what lurked far out on Lake Michigan had been solved. Several in the Bates’s household had detected something out on the water, had searched diligently, but had found nothing. Since November, the cryptic scene had come into sight and then vanished. Even Keeper Bates had failed to find what had turned out to be a drifting boat with a couple on board.

That explains why Marble Island Lighthouse was dim for so long…until they checked things out and sent a replacement keeper. Curtis broke the long silence.

They were frozen, Father, Thomas whispered. Sitting upright in the boat. Both looked like marble statues. He looked up suddenly, startled by what he had just said about marble. Oh, I didn’t mean to be funny…

I know you’re not meaning to joke, son.

Their hands were clutched tight. It was hard to pry them open, but I guess Captain Steele can be gentle when he wants to be.

And did they find something? Now Curtis was probing for new information. Thomas had not told him the details, and the keeper sensed his son was holding back, but perhaps wanting to say more.

They did, Father. But I…it’s something that I can’t… I told Captain Steele…

It’s all right, Thomas. Keeper Bates had lit the light. Its great beam shot across the waves and topped off its crests with a sparkly brilliance. Uncharacteristically, he put his arm around Thomas, which the boy did not shun.

In time, Father…

Yes, in time, you’ll share.

They were buried on the island. The new keepers helped us. And some officials from the Lighthouse Board came. I…we…the six of us, that is… Captain Steele, Ross Clow, Charley Skruggs, and the two skinny sailors, and me…were all there. Thomas looked into his father’s eyes, the calmness inside instilling in him the confidence to continue. Have they no family? You said their son had drowned in the lake near their lighthouse on Marble Island. Were there no others to mourn for them?

Keeper Clive Baines and his wife, Ida, kept to themselves, Thomas. I’m afraid they perished as they had lived…alone. Perhaps it was meant to be. May God have mercy on their souls.

I have reason to believe their souls are at peace, Thomas murmured, sounding older than ten. He turned to look again into the eyes of a parent in whom he placed unquestionable trust. Father, I… I want to tell you everything, he agonized, but… His confidence to keep his secret had drained from the strain of holding back. Still, he felt it was best to say little at this time.

Fortunately, he again felt the comfort of an understanding parent. A smile and the light touch of his father’s hand upon his shoulder reassured him that, for now, silence would suffice. Curtis Bates knew that the details of what had happened would eventually come out, and he respectfully conveyed loving trust toward Thomas. Father and son stared ahead in silence, the sun now hidden, having sunk below the long, defined line that marked the horizon. The waves had turned from an intense blue to an icy teal, and now in the growing darkness, to a deep, dark navy blue.

I know you’ve heard this before, son, his father finally broke the quiet, wanting to direct their conversation to something more pleasant. But your contribution to the Christmas Eve service in December was memorable. They’re still talking about how brilliant it was, son. Curtis smiled. Literally, brilliant, and your timing, they say, was impressive. You touched more hearts than you probably realize.

Curtis Bates referred to the big surprise Thomas and his younger twin siblings had planned for the end of the Christmas service. This was a program that had been presented in the newly built island auditorium, a structure that nearly one hundred people filled for the festivities. Thomas’s mother, Iona Bates, had carefully instructed almost thirty children to deliver lines and songs centered on the true Christmas Light.

Thomas and twins Gabriel and Madelaine had managed to find the perfect time to sneak away from the service—in their wise man and angel costumes—to walk up to the old, dark Cobblestone Lighthouse. They then lit the tower for the first time since the old lighthouse had been relocated, stone by stone, from the northern cliff of the island to its southern end near Village Galena. Thomas had set his glowing lantern inside the new sixth-order Fresnel lens, a lens that had been ordered from France and set up inside the empty lantern room just before Christmas. This lens was not as powerful as the fourth-order Fresnel lens where Thomas’s father was keeper at the newer Cobblestone Lighthouse on the north end of the island. Even so, the glass prisms of the sixth-order lens had concentrated a vivid enough beam to shoot out from the tower to create a dazzling effect. The rays from the old, rebuilt Cobblestone Lighthouse had illuminated the DePere Auditorium down the hill during a service that had gone temporarily dark. For weeks to come, the dramatic effect had truly given all those who had attended the Christmas celebration on Cobblestone Island an amazing story to recount.

Yes, Father. Thomas managed a slight smile. I’ll never forget that night.

Chapter 2

Thoughts about the Past

The new owners of the old Cobblestone Lighthouse had been given special permission from the Lighthouse Board to light the tower that December night. The new lens was entirely for show as the building was no longer an actual aid to navigation, nor was it registered with the government as such. Passing steamer ships and wind-powered schooners were not guided by its light, nor was this relocated lighthouse ever intended to do so. Somehow, the Corwin triplets, the influential owners of the cottage and light tower next door, had worked out an agreement with the Lighthouse Board to allow a light to shine only on rare and select occasions.

Old Cobblestone Lighthouse had once stood at the northern tip of Cobblestone Island beside the new lighthouse that was built next to it in 1858, the lighthouse where Curtis Bates was currently keeper. In 1883, the United States government had commissioned the demolition of the original 1839 tower, unless someone would step up to purchase and restore it to ensure its safety. Although the keeper’s children enjoyed it as their personal clubhouse, it had become an eyesore, both crumbling to ruins and potentially dangerous.

The first lighthouse keeper at Cobblestone Island, Felix Corwin and his wife Deborrah, had had triplet daughters. In the mid-1800s, when Deborrah had tragically died in a rescue attempt during a storm, the three motherless, teenaged girls and their widowed father had moved to California. Now, decades later, the triplets heard of the offer to purchase the run-down tower that had been a cherished

part of their youth. They had ample funds to pay for its transport to the south end of the island where it was rebuilt and fortified. Silly as it seemed to some, they were adamant about retaining as many of the original stones as possible so the tower would look like they remembered it. They also paid their hired hands to erect a cute little cottage, which later became known as Cottage Parakaleó, to stand nearby. They did this on a whim for their pleasure and to remember their happy days as children of a lighthouse keeper. Because all three were widows, they also decided to move back to Cobblestone Island to spend their remaining years in Wisconsin. Fortunately, their children and grandchildren lived in various communities along the eastern coast of Wisconsin. Their move from California would give their family the opportunity to visit them at Cobblestone Island and have their grandchildren enjoy their extensive collection of children’s books. For fun, the women also commissioned an underground passageway to be dug between the cottage and lighthouse to mimic the tunnel their father had used in the 1830s and 1840s during inclement weather. During those early days, the original tunnel had helped their father make frequent trips to the lighthouse without being caught in stormy weather.

The building and transferring activity had taken place in 1883, but the Corwin women who had funded the undertaking had not shown up to occupy the cottage immediately after construction was completed. A family emergency had urged them to travel to the southeast, to North Carolina, where their husbands had grown up as children of a Cape Hatteras assistant lighthouse keeper. Being temporarily vacant, the new cottage on Cobblestone Island, completely furnished by the Corwins, was available early in 1884 for three nurses to live there and care for Thomas’s sister Lillian Bates who had contracted scarlet fever.

Washburn Island’s resident medical doctor, Dr. Richard Federmann, had been commissioned by Curtis Bates to find a nurse for his oldest child, Lillian, who needed to be cared for in quarantine. Federmann had stumbled upon, not one, but three nurses traveling to Galena, Illinois, to visit relatives. The three Conner sisters had agreed to switch their plans to live instead at the unoccupied Corwin Cottage near a different Galena, what Cobblestone Island called Village Galena.

Iona Bates, Lillian’s mother, had written letters to North Carolina where the Corwin women were staying to ask whether they would agree to rent out their new cottage. Iona assured the Corwins that the renters would be gone before they themselves made their permanent move from California to Cobblestone Island. As it turned out, circumstances in North Carolina kept the Corwin sisters there for over a year, much longer than they had anticipated. Ironically, like the Conner sisters, the three Corwins were also nurses.

As for the Conner nurses, not triplets, but sisters nonetheless, Lillian had give them their distinctive nicknames. In her scarlet fever delirium, Lillian saw them as Miss Garnet, Miss Ruby, and Miss Tourmalina. It had taken Lillian a long time to muster the energy to talk to the three mysterious women. In her grave illness and recovery, Lillian had spent

long hours thinking, observing, and staring at the red jewels they wore. In the long days of silence, she had mentally given her heavenly caretakers the unusual names, one because of her garnet necklace, another because of her ruby brooch, and the third because of her tourmaline ring. All three jewels sparkled red and intrigued the recuperating Lillian whose troubled, sick heart was touched by the women’s immense love and care for her at the cottage. But despite Lillian’s enthusiasm over being treated so tenderly, not everyone on the island agreed that the Three were quite so divine.

Chapter 3

Queen Gwendolyn DePere

The person most curious over the strange relocation procedures of old Cobblestone Lighthouse was Mrs. Gwendolyn DePere, the self-proclaimed Queen of Cobblestone Island. Not only was she inquisitive about the whole operation, but also her probing activities fueled her fierce, wagging tongue. She felt she had a right to know what was happening on the hillside outside of the Village Galena settlement that she and her husband, Bertrand DePere, had started nine years ago.

Gwendolyn and Bertrand DePere owned and operated the lead shot operation on the south side of the island. Pellets of liquid lead dropped from inside the tall DePere Shot Tower to fall a long distance to form into pellets of musket shot, which were eventually bagged and carted by a simple railway to boats that shipped them across the country. The DePere couple also owned and oversaw the management of the General Store and Apothecary, which stood up the hill from the shot tower. Not only had the combined businesses made the DePeres famous in Lakeshore County, but also rich. Gwendolyn liked being both.

Gwendolyn had read the whole story of the purchase of the dilapidated lighthouse and complicated plans to renovate it in the Lakeshore County Advocate newspaper. When, in the early months of 1884, Gwendolyn had witnessed three women sporting glittery red jewelry moving into what became known to the nine Children of the Light as Cottage Parakaleó, she jumped to an entirely wrong conclusion.

She was certain the cottage’s inhabitants were the Corwin triplets whom the newspaper said had bought the lighthouse and were about to move from California to Lakeshore County to live near it. Gwendolyn and her friends had watched in wonder when a crew of men appeared on the island to move the lighthouse, stone by stone, from one end of the island to another. They observed how hired hands built a cottage beside it. The small building boasted a kind of southern flare with its four white plantation-like pillars holding up the front stone porch. With contempt, Gwendolyn watched the workers carry away cartloads of dirt from the construction site. She had no idea, of course, that they were digging an underground tunnel from the cottage to the lighthouse. For all the activity, she feared the workmen were erecting something stately on the hill overlooking the island’s western bluff. Upon completion of the project, however, she glowed with satisfaction and made known to her friends that in her opinion, the two structures had turned out to be mere trifles.

Although the reconstructed lighthouse was tall enough, Gwendolyn DePere relished how the tower remained dark. At first, no light shone from it. To her liking, the watch tower stayed as lightless at night as it stayed dim by day. And the cottage next to it was tiny and unimpressive. Unimpressive to Gwendolyn, that is. Yet she had found reason to scorn the place, claiming it pretended to be something it was not. In her estimation, it was trying to be a grand southern plantation in miniature. Gwendolyn knew all about pretending. Perhaps she felt threatened because her own mansion, which stood overlooking the southern bluff of the island, up until then, had been the only residence decorated with stately white columns. The new cottage, as small as it was, had suddenly given her competition. No other building in Village Galena dared to claim itself a twin to her own majestic dwelling. She perhaps resented the rivalry, a deep-seated envy that had long overtaken her heart since her move to northern Wisconsin almost a decade ago.

Gwendolyn’s dislike toward the cottage and lighthouse had started out small. She saw that both the lighthouse and cottage stood less grand than the DePere Shot Tower and mansion. However, as soon as a sixth-order Fresnel lens was placed in the lantern room of the old, relocated lighthouse, the seed of Gwendolyn’s resentment began to sprout. Gwendolyn suddenly wanted a lighthouse of her own. She desired for a light to be placed atop the DePere shot tower, a building that already resembled a lighthouse. In her mind, the place begged to shine. She also thought of putting a light on top of her own residence that overlooked the southern bluff. To accomplish that feat, she knew that a lantern room would have to be built on top of her columned house, but with her abundant bank account, she didn’t think that would pose a problem. Some residents of Village Galena believed that such actions meant that Gwendolyn DePere would stop at nothing to maintain her status as Queen of Cobblestone Island. If she wanted a lighthouse of her own, she would figure out how to have one—or two. So far, she hadn’t fulfilled her wish.

Such a fuss about nothing! Gwendolyn had murmured to her neighbors about the cottage and reassembling of the old tower of navigation. What she had failed to realize was that she was the only one making such a fuss. Only she had reacted negatively when the crumbling lighthouse was transferred and fortified on a hill just outside Village Galena to stand high and proud next to the quaint dwelling beside it. In general, no one seemed to care about what had happened or what was continuing to happen on the grassy hill outside Village Galena—except Gwendolyn DePere. Clearly, her concern was for outward appearances, a philosophy her daughter Lucinda was beginning to question more and more each day.

Once the three Conner nurses took residence at Cottage Parakaleó, Gwendolyn made it her business to know what they were up to. To spy on them, she had built a cabin just down from Cottage Parakaleó to prove the three living inside were the Corwin triplets from California. The newspaper had clearly stated that the widowed Corwin girls were leaving their lives of luxury and wealth in California to once again live more simply and humbly on the island of their youthful days before marriage. Their husbands, the article stated, had served the Confederate side of the Civil War, a fact that Gwendolyn made clear was something of which she did not approve.

Gwendolyn DePere’s initial observations seemed to fit the Corwin girls, so she assumed that because the ladies at the cottage had no husbands and wore fancy heart-shaped red jewelry, they were surely the Corwin triplets. Gwendolyn was well known for making casual assumptions without checking the facts. Unfortunately for Gwendolyn, her spy operation had basically failed to prove anything. She had found out little about either the cottage, the lighthouse, or the three women who lived inside. But what she assumed was enough to make her keep her distance, making sure her precious daughter Lucinda stayed far from the place where Lillian Bates had spent the early part of 1884 quarantined with scarlet fever.

Another reason that Gwendolyn assumed the women were the Corwins was that she had read in the newspaper how they were trained nurses. The women had cared for Lillian, so in her mind, they must be nurses and therefore the Corwin nurses. The newspaper stated how the Corwins of California had received medical training, which enabled them to care for injured gold prospectors. Their husbands had built them a guesthouse with a room for them to carry on this necessary