In 1898, twelve-year-old Ben rescues a near-drowned girl from a shipwreck off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Although the girl, named Teetoncey, becomes part of his family, she will not utter a single word. "A rousing adventure."-- Los Angeles Times "Taylor has us walking the beaches, smelling the salt air and watching the sky for storm signals."-- The New York Times Book Review THEODORE TAYLOR (1921-2006), an award-winning author of many books for young people, was particularly known for fast-paced, exciting adventure novels. His books include the bestseller The Cay, Timothy of the Cay, The Bomb, Air Raid--Pearl Harbor!, Ice Drift, The Maldonado Miracle, and The Weirdo, an Edgar Award winner for Best Young Adult Mystery. AFTER DARK, about six, the driving rain stopped. Then the wind slackened off a bit, dropping its whine. The gale was going inland at last to rake the autumn cornfield stubble on the mainland and then dwindle out against the far-off Blue Ridge peaks. The brown-eyed boy in faded overalls and a blue shirt, dark hair atangle-Ben O'Neal-stood by the window, looking out through beads of water, seeing nothing, but somehow glad that the storm was over. A gale such as this had taken his father, John, a surfman. A squall in the sound had taken his youngest brother, Guthrie. Of certainty, the O'Neals had already paid their dues to the sea, and it was not likely they would have to pay again. His oldest brother, Reuben, second mate on the coasting brig Elnora Langhans, was somewhere between Carolina and Trinidad, but Ben was sure he was safe. Reuben was a fine sailor. Rachel, his mother, was at the living-room table, behind him, sewing silently in the orange glow of the lamp, deep in her own thoughts. Boo Dog, a mound of gold Labrador, slept peacefully by her feet, a familiar position. So, aside from the tick of the ship's clock, a precise Seth Thomas, which had been salvaged off a wreck in 1889, it was very quiet in the small house, silvered by sand and wind, nestled in a hammock-high ground in a marshy region-over by the sound side, south and west of Heron Head Lifesaving Station. But Ben knew that the surf was still pounding in, ten or twelve feet high, slamming against the Banks as if to destroy them. Probably churning Diamond Shoals into a mantrap; making seamen caught anywhere near Hatteras, just to south, wish they were snug in port, sipping beer. This wild night, Ben was thinking, there likely wasn't a sane man, woman, or child on the barrier islands who wouldn't have wagered that a ship would crunch in and die. It was a fair bet in any nor'easter. They were always out there, schooners or brigantines or barks, edging around Hatteras respectfully or skirting Diamond's long sand fingers, full sails bellied nicely in fair weather; main topsail and foresail reefed in foul, everything else furled away. Steamers plodded by, too; wrecked, too. More of them every year. Ben often watched the constant parade, wishing he was aboard for the Caribbean or headed north to New York or Boston. Anywhere would have been better than these lonely islands. Anywhere. And while the storms sent his mother into a gloom, he didn't really mind them if they didn't last long. In fact, the fury excited him. But his mother never failed to mention, once the wind began calling, that more than four hundred ships had crashed on these sands. She'd always find a way to bring up John O'Neal and Guthrie, sometimes without even mentioning their names. She'd done it earlier this day and he'd groaned. It wasn't that he didn't respect them. He did. Especially his father. But he'd never really known them. He was only two when John O'Neal was lost down at Hatteras; only four when Guthrie, who was then thirteen and money fishing for Old Man Spencer, had been swept overboard in Pamlico Sound. He knew them by photographs and stories. John O'Neal was a legend on the Banks. But many times Ben had been told by others that if all the sailors and fishermen who'd been drowned here would suddenly come back, dating from Sir Walter Raleigh's ships on, two thousand ghosts would be walking the sands. Some nights, in bed, he thought about the ghosts. Those men walking along the beach, hair all matted and clothes ripped up, staring straight ahead; mouths open and walking, walking. Once, he dreamed of seeing his father and Guthrie. Yet, in daylight, it made no sense. "Stopped rainin', Ben. Fetch some more wood," Rachel said. Her voice took his mind off the beach. The stove, an iron hot-box made in Cincinnati, could chase them out when it glowed cherry red, devouring wood almost as fast as Ben could get it, even with the damper at short choke. "Ben," she said again. He nodded and turned away from the window to sweater-up; get his coat and boots. He was only too happy to leave the room. Aside from dashing to the outhouse twice, he'd had to look at Chicago catalogs and do odd jobs while the frame house, tucked at the end of a short lan