Doubloons

 Accompanying title illustration omitted.

Doubloons

By Ralph D. Paine

Since the days of Sir Henry Morgan, the most celebrated of the buccaneers, who died in 1688, the legend of treasure buried by pirates and a chart to mark the spot has been a deep-rooted belief in the romantic faith of deep-sea sailormen. The legend reached high tide about eighty years ago when Edgar Allan Poe wrote his famous tale “The Gold Bug.” Slowly the belief in buried pirate treasure has receded, yet even to-day there are thousands who constantly seek for such treasure, and there are few of the older deep-sea men who have not seen, at some time, a “chart” directing the searcher where to find buried treasure, usually upon some lonely island, or some deserted mainland beach. Mr. Paine, in this story, has told the tale of a pirate chart in his clear, convincing style. It reads, to the editors, like a true story with extraordinary happenings.

A COMPLETE NOVEL
(By Request)

CHAPTER I.

CAPTAIN JOSEPH KEMPTON had commanded one of the last of the stately square-rigged ships that flew the Stars and Stripes on blue water. It was the ignoble fate of this Endymion of his to be dismantled and cut down for a coal barge while still in her prime. No more would she lift topsail yards to the breath of the Pacific trades or nobly storm across the Western Ocean. In the battle for trade, she was unable to survive the rivalry of sooty tramp freighters that roamed for cargo everywhere.

In such ships as this had her master learned his trade and served his years. He was left without a calling, a man hale and efficient, but too old to begin again in steam. His savings amounted to a few thousand dollars, not enough to live on, besides which idleness was hateful to contemplate. At length he found a berth as watchman or caretaker in a nautical graveyard on the New England coast, where vessels no longer worth repairing found their last resting place, to rot, or to be burned for the metal in their hulls, or broken up for junk.

It was a rather melancholy haven for one who loved the sea and ships and had briskly lorded it on his own quarter-deck. There were times when Captain Kempton winced and sighed at the sight of the nodding, rusty funnels and shabby deck houses beside the weedy wharves, and the gaunt fabrics of abandoned schooners resting on the mud flats. He was a brooding, disappointed man, but the bright presence of his daughter saved his thoughts from bitterness.

At nineteen, Eudora Kempton viewed life as anything else than a finished chapter, and this nautical graveyard was less sad than romantic, a place for dreaming dreams adventurous or pensive. Gifted with a serene optimism, she found contentment in her duty, which was to make the white cottage by the harbor as pleasant a home as possible for her father. These two comprised the household. There were estimable young men in the port of Falmouth who would have been glad to make other arrangements for Eudora, for they thought her exceeding fair; but she declared that her heart was fancy-free.

This was a feminine evasion, pardonable enough because it would never do to let a certain Dan Sloan think anything else. He was Eudora’s problem, to be handled with care. She dared not reveal too much, by a smile or a glance, for a masterful wooer was this mate of the big seagoing tug Endeavor which fetched the coal-laden barges coastwise from Norfolk. Stalwart, alert, and a native gentleman, he had a fine reputation afloat, but, alas! a some what tempestuous one ashore. Plaintively he recited his troubles to Eudora, but she was not easily persuaded. Other young men of twenty-three were old enough to behave themselves and avoid rows and ructions. It was always Dan Sloan who had whipped three sailors or blackened the eye of a policeman. In short, the impetuous mate was severely on probation, and his footing with Eudora was that of a rather precarious friendship, nothing more.

It was on a day in early summer when a visitor sought this picturesque corner of the harbor and wandered among the untenanted vessels. Curiously he scanned them, halting now and then to scribble in a notebook. His appearance suggested neither a seafaring man nor a dealer in marine junk, and his behavior interested Captain Kempton, who was enjoying a pipe on the porch of the cottage. He was about to saunter to the wharf and accost this harmless trespasser when Eudora, who was plying a hoe in her flower garden, paused to remark:

“You might think he owned the place. Such a grand manner! Please find out who he is and what he wants.”

“A summer boarder from along shore somewhere, most likely,” said her parent. “But I can’t make out why he is so infernally busy with a pencil. An artist, maybe; but they are rigged different.”

Eudora turned to her flowers, which were much more important that a mere man, and the captain moved in the direction of the water front. A closer view disclosed to him that the stranger was thirty or thereabouts, rather heavy-featured, and of a portly figure. His complexion was florid, his taste in dress slightly so. As the shipmaster approached him, he clambered down from the hulk of a river steamer and heartily exclaimed, with hand outstretched:

“Captain Kempton? They told me about you in Falmouth this morning. I want to ask you a lot of questions. Bully stuff, this!”

“An unsightly mess, it seems to me. I get tired of looking at it,” was the friendly reply. “What can I do for you?”

“Tell me the stories of some of these relics, and something about your own career,” smiled the other. “Mannice is my name—William Marmaduke Mannice. You may have seen some of my signed features in the Sunday sheets. I got wind of this salt-water bone yard of yours, and ran up from Boston to look it over for a special story. Color and human interest! I doped it out right. It’s all here.”

Now this happened to be a true statement, but Mr. Mannice had often found it inconvenient to tell the whole truth. Several metropolitan editors could vouch for his talent as a reporter, but they preferred not to discuss him otherwise. Their language was apt to be come heated. In their milder moments, they called him lazy and unreliable and foresaw his finish. So accurate was this prediction that the gifted William Marmaduke Mannice, again dismissed for cause, had been forced into the ranks of the unemployed. His exit from New York had been hastened by the failure of an attempt to raise funds which skirted too near the edge of blackmail, and he uneasily surmised that he had not heard the last of it.

With a very few dollars, he was marooned in Boston, a free lance who had to peddle his stuff from one office to another until he could find a chance to employ his wits to better advantage. The trip to Falmouth was in the nature of a foraging expedition. With photographs, and done in his breezy style, here was a story that ought to sell.

His type of man was unfamiliar to Captain Joseph Kempton, who had the sailor’s fine simplicity of character. Shrewd in his own domain, he had dealt mostly with those who hit straight from the shoulder, whose vices and virtues were plain to read. This affable journalist made a pleasant diversion in the monotony of his existence, and it was flattering to have him display an interest in the career of one of the last of the true-blue Yankee shipmasters.

Vivid were the episodes he was moved to recall, with the tang of briny seas and strong winds, as they lingered upon the wharf, and Mr. Mannice was a sympathetic listener. At length they boarded a forlorn wooden hull whose shapely prow still bore the white figure head of some chaste goddess and whose name, Wanderer, was discernible in a gilded scroll.

“A sister ship to my Endymion," said Captain Kempton. “They were launched from the same yard in Bath, and my uncle sailed this one in the China trade. I raced him from Shanghai to Liverpool once, and we finished six hours apart, for a bet of a thousand dollars. It was a record passage. We both carried away all our spare spars and lost men overboard, several of them.”

Mannice glanced at the well-knit, keen-eyed mariner, so mild of mien and quiet of speech, and found it difficult to realize that he belonged to a vanished era of splendid endeavor. What he had seen and done thrilled one’s fancy, and the reporter was genuinely sincere as he said:

“People have forgotten, and they don’t care whether or not American shipping be crowded off the high seas. To find a man like you, with this back ground and all that—well, there is more of a punch to it than I could dig out of a barrel of statistics.”

“Why not come up to the house and sit down?” said the captain, greatly pleased. “I’ll be glad to have you stay for dinner, Mr. Mannice. It’s quite a walk to a hotel in Falmouth, and we can talk at our leisure.”

Possibly because he had caught a distant glimpse of Eudora, the visitor accepted with instant alacrity. Misfortune had not dulled a belief in his prowess with the ladies. The captain’s daughter was singing in the kitchen, for she was an old-fashioned girl who enjoyed the fine art of cookery, nor did she whisk off the white apron as she went to meet the guest. Courteous was her welcome as a hostess, but Mr. Mannice noted that her gaze was fearlessly direct and that she was trying to appraise him for herself. Always at ease, he made himself agreeable, taking no pains to hide his admiration. Eudora’s lovely color was all her own, and the years of her girlhood at sea in the Endymion had given her fine figure a carriage singularly graceful and reliant.

While the trio sat at dinner, the guest was reminded of a fantastic sea tale which had been going the rounds of the newspapers. It concerned a buried treasure, a lonely Pacific islet, and an expedition fitting out at San Francisco.

“I presume you ran across these legends during your voyages. Captain Kempton,” said Mannice. “Odd that people should take stock in them, don’t you think?”

“I see nothing odd in it.” And the reply was unexpectedly emphatic. The mariner straightened himself in his chair, his strong face glowed with feeling, and he was like a younger man as he continued: “The pirates and the buccaneers hid their hoards, no doubt. Their booty was immense, more than they could have squandered. The Captain Kidd tradition is a myth, exploded long ago; but in many other instances——”

“You have started my father off on a hobby of his, Mr. Mannice,” laughingly interrupted Eudora. “He has been collecting material for years. Perhaps he will show you some of his rare books and prints.”

“A fascinating subject,” replied the reporter, scenting another marketable story. "Do you mind telling me, sir, where some of this plunder is buried?”

“Fourteen millions of it is on Cocos Island, saved from the sack of Lima,” promptly answered the shipmaster. “I once sighted volcanic little Trinidad off the coast of Brazil, where more of the Spanish loot was left, but the sea was too heavy for me to send a boat ashore. Why, in twenty ports, from Manila to Rio, I have heard yarns like these, too circumstantial to be waved aside. They can’t be pure invention, or sane men would not be spending fortunes every year to send out vessels to search for treasure.”

“We are ever so much more sensible,” came from Eudora. “Father and I dream our treasure finding right here at home and then plan how we shall spend it.”

Captain Kempton silenced her with a gesture of annoyance, as though this were a theme too serious for jesting. She regarded him a little anxiously, and would have talked of something else, but Mannice persisted:

“But did those gay old cutthroats really leave any charts with the crosses and compass bearings all marked down? And if they didn’t, how the deuce does anybody know where to look?”

“There are such charts,” seriously affirmed the skipper. “They have been handed down from survivors who were not drowned or hanged. I have heard of one or two perfectly well authenticated. A party that chartered a schooner out of Havana three years ago had one of them. I knew the man they hired as master. He wrote me about it.”

“And did they find the stuff?” queried the incredulous Mannice.

“If they did, they would keep mum. It might be claimed by some government or other as treasure-trove. But if they didn’t, the chart might not have been to blame. Landmarks change or vanish in two or three centuries, and the sea may shift a coast line beyond recognition.”

“And it’s a good gamble that somebody will turn up the jewels and the pieces of eight if they dig long enough?” cried the reporter, who was becoming excited.

“Provided they are equipped with a proper chart,” and Captain Kempton smote the table with his fist. “Why, if I were lucky enough to stumble on a document of this kind, I wouldn’t hesitate a minute to spend some money on it—go take a look, I mean.”

“And put us in the poorhouse?” chided Eudora, who had returned from the kitchen to stand at his elbow like a guardian angel. “There would be a mutiny in his family.”

“I’m not joking,” asserted her father, addressing himself to Mannice. “I know what I am talking about. I have enough laid by to fit out a vessel, and a man might as well stake it all on one throw as to molder his life away with the other hulks in this graveyard.”

Mannice stared, and was silent. He had stirred unsuspected currents of emotion. It was easy to read that the captain was in rebellion against his tragic destiny and hoped to find some way of escape. His mind unoccupied, his normal activity thwarted, he dreamed of treasure and adventure for lack of anything more tangible. This made the story so much the better, reflected William Marmaduke Mannice, whose attitude toward his fellow man was essentially selfish. While Eudora washed the dishes, he sat on the porch and smoked with Captain Kempton, who needed no persuasion to pursue the same subject At his fingers’ ends was an amazing amount of lore and legend, of facts that denoted a profound historical research, of conclusions worked out with the utmost ingenuity.

Reluctantly, at length, the journalist asked the time of day, for a pawn ticket reposed where his own watch should have been. Another half hour and he must think of taking a train to Boston. Eudora was among her flowers, and he desired to know her better before departing. His heart may have been calloused, but there was no denying the fact that it beat a trifle faster whenever he looked at the captain’s winsome daughter. He became aware that he was still capable of an infatuation.

Eudora greeted him with a certain dignified aloofness, and appeared more interested in the weeds in the pansy bed. This he laid to feminine coyness. It was a way the pretty creatures had, but trust a man of the world to play the game with patience and finesse. Blandly, he exclaimed, hat in hand:

“May I beg a few forget-me-nots for remembrance, Miss Kempton? This has been one of those days—well, a sort of inspiration.”

“Yes, my father can be very entertaining,” she crisply replied, disregarding his plea. “Tell me, do you intend to put him in a newspaper?”

“Er—he appeals to me as a striking personality. Yes, I should like to describe him.”

“Oh, I don’t mind what you may say about his life and service. I’m sure it will please him, Mr. Mannice. But about his lost-treasure hobby—I forbid that, you know. He take it too seriously now, and he mustn’t be encouraged.”

The journalist hesitated, and plausibly lied: “Your word is law. I could promise you anything if you would let me come to see you again.”

“Again? You didn’t come to see me to-day,” quoth the unsatisfactory Eudora. “By the way, you are not allowing yourself any too much time to catch that train. You are rather stout for rapid walking.”

This was an insult deliberate and cutting. Mr. Mannice turned quite red, bit his lip, and for once was taken aback. With a low bow and a murmured farewell, he clapped his hat on his head and passed grandly from the garden. Eudora smiled, and overtook her parent, who was pacing the path to the wharf.

“An uncommonly pleasant visitor,” said he. “He woke me up a bit. Able in his own line, I should say. How did you like him?”

“Not as much as he likes himself,” was her analysis. “He impressed me as the least bit gone to seed. His clothes were not really shabby, and I couldn’t call his face dissipated, but—perhaps I’ll have to call if intuition. A cable length would be far enough to trust Mr. William Marmaduke Mannice, I think.”

This seemed to ruffle Captain Kempton, usually so affectionate, and he hastily retorted:

“That sounds critical and unkind, Eudora. I don’t agree with you at all. Really, I have so few pleasures, and——”

“And it is horrid of me,” she penitently broke in. “It was lots of fun. Did you give him your photograph?”

“Yes. My old friends will be glad to see it published. I shall want some extra copies of the paper. I urged Mr. Mannice to drop in again.”

“He will,” was the verdict of Eudora, who had her own private opinion. William Marmaduke was an admirer not easily suppressed.

CHAPTER II.

It was in a Boston lodging house by no means luxurious that the accomplished journalist sat down at once to arrange his notes and write three columns of swinging prose in praise of Yankee ships and sailors that sail the seas no more. The image of Eudora was somewhat distracting but there was no time to waste, for he needed the money. With the untiring facility of long training, he drove at his task until far in the night, and was nearing the end when a brilliant idea occurred to him. He had a fatal weakness for improving on the facts. Putting it more bluntly, he felt no scruples over faking a story when he thought he could get away with it.

In this instance, he hesitated, reluctant to offend Miss Eudora, but he might be adroit enough to explain it away were he to meet her again, and sentiment must yield to necessity. For an extra fifty dollars in his pocket, he was prepared to take chances. He dared not tarry much longer in Boston. It was not far enough away from New York.

Here was this Captain Kempton, he said to himself, with the buried-treasure bee in his bonnet. Why not counterfeit a pirate’s chart, in exact imitation of the real thing, clever enough at least to fool a Sunday editor? There was the old clipper ship Wanderer rotting at the wharf. While poking about in her forecastle, so Mannice swiftly evolved the story, he had dislodged a board that was about to fall from its rusty nails above one of the bunks. Behind the board was a small space in which he discovered what looked to be an ancient, sea-stained document. It proved to be a chart, roughly drawn in ink upon a square of parchment. Some seamen had hidden it there for safe-keeping perhaps half a century ago.

So far so good. Mr. Mannice began to feel the satisfaction of an artist. The really dramatic touch, the situation, was to be in the alleged fact that he, a random visitor, should have stumbled upon this strange old chart while the custodian of the Wanderer, Captain Joseph Kempton, was dreaming his days away in the hope of discovering this very thing.

“A Sunday editor ought to fall for it,” thoughtfully reflected the scapegrace, “provided he isn’t wise to my past.”

From his trunk, he brought out several large envelopes filled with newspaper clippings, and dumped them upon the table. They had been saved from time to time as possible suggestions for special articles, grist for the mill, an assortment of odd or striking news paragraphs and the like. Recalling one in particular, he made a hasty search, and was delighted at finding it. Briefly, it referred to a certain industrious pirate, Peleg Peterson by name, who harried the New England coast in the eighteenth century and had buried his treasure on one of the Seven Islands in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, west of Anticosti, and northwest of Cape Gaspe.

“Peleg Peterson is the boy,” cheerfully observed Mr. Mannice. “And now I know where to plant his stuff. Watch me fake a chart to-morrow that will fool Captain Kempton himself when he sees it reproduced.”

The first errand was to procure a piece of genuine parchment in a little shop on Cornhill. Then, with the skill of a born forger, he inked in the crude outline of a very small island, avoiding too much detail. A tree and a big rock and a small bay served as marks, so many paces this way and so many that, according to the compass, all noted in one corner of the chart as set down by the sprawling fist of the illiterate Peleg Peterson.

Then, with candle grease and coffee stains, cobwebs and dust, did William Marmaduke Mannice proceed to age and disguise his handiwork, even to spilling rum on it, as suggested by his boyhood acquaintance with Billy Bones and other literary worthies of this ilk. The result was gratifying. It would not have deceived an expert in old manuscripts, but for the purpose intended it was amazingly clever, and Mr. Mannice virtuously commented that he had the Wanderer and Captain Kempton around which to build the narrative. They actually existed, beyond a doubt.

Plausible, self-assured, with never a pang of conscience, William Marmaduke Mannice swaggered downtown to vend his wares. While crossing Washington Street, he suddenly halted, as if detained by an unseen hand, and was almost run over by an automobile. Retreating to the pavement, he vanished into a café and ordered a cocktail while he wrestled with the inspiration that had come like a bolt from the blue. It was big—something worth while.

“Boob!” he bitterly addressed himself. “A little more and you would have sold this perfectly good chart for a song. And there is a fine old sea dog at Falmouth who yearns to get his hands on it.”

It was the spirit of Broadway that spoke, the spirit that tolerates the man who lives by his wits and regards the easy mark as fair prey. The scheme of hoaxing Captain Kempton with this bogus chart appealed to Mannice for several reasons. He hoped to share the dollars which the father of Eudora had said were ready to be staked on a treasure expedition, and he was exceedingly anxious to disappear somewhere until matters in New York looked less hostile. It was anything to tide over the crisis, to save him from being broke and stranded. Besides, he foolishly sighed to be near Eudora, and if he could not dip into the father’s little fortune by means of the treasure-hunting scheme, he might possibly feather his nest in marrying the daughter.

The plot had this charming feature—it might be full of ethical flaws, but there could be no way of enmeshing Mr. Mannice as obtaining money under false pretenses. This he was careful to elucidate to himself. It was a speculation in which he could not lose, and he saw a chance to win. As for Captain Joseph Kempton, it was doing him a kindness. He would be happy looking for treasure, whether he found it or not. People who went daffy over this sort of thing ought to be given an opportunity to get it out of their systems.

Mr. Mannice drank another cocktail, and carefully counted his cash reserve. He was near the end of his rope, but there was enough for another trip to Falmouth. He moved promptly, taking a train which landed him in that sea port shortly after nightfall of this same day. Cautiously, he made his way on foot to the corner of the harbor where the forsaken vessels lay in a row, and passed wide of the captain’s cottage. The place was unwatched at night, and, unobserved, he stumbled out upon the dilapidated wharf at which the Wanderer was moored.

A pocket flash light enabled him to find his way into the musty forecastle which he had previously explored with Captain Kempton. It was not difficult to pry aside a decayed bit of the boarding behind a tier of bunks and shove therein the crumpled parchment. Assuring himself that it looked as if it had long lain there undisturbed, he replaced the board and hammered it fast. After looking about, to make certain he had left no traces, the guileful intruder stole out of the Wanderer and sought the darkened highway to Falmouth. There a small hotel sheltered him until morning, when he prepared to call at the cottage of Captain Kempton as though just arrived from Boston.

Shortly after breakfast Eudora bethought herself of an errand, and she took the longer road to a neighbor’s house in order that she might overlook the harbor bar and the flashing sea beyond. Perhaps she would not have confessed it as a reason, but the powerful steel tug Endeavor had been reported as passing the cape, inbound from the southward, and Dan Sloan was the mate. Eudora gazed in vain, shrugged a shapely shoulder as if it made no difference whatever, and continued on her way.

Captain Kempton had gone down to the beach to oversee a gang of men who were scrapping the engines of a small steamer when Mr. William Marmaduke Mannice, having found the cottage empty, discovered him and advanced at a gait more hurried than usual. The visitor wore an air of suppressed excitement, rehearsed beforehand, and to the captain’s cordial greeting he replied:

“You’re not half as surprised as I am, my dear sir. I didn’t expect to give myself the pleasure, but a most extraordinary thing has happened—if you are too busy for a chat. I’ll wait, of course.”

The mariner’s curiosity was piqued, and he withdrew a few yards from his workmen as he said:

“I am glad you found an excuse to run down again, Mr. Mannice. Shall we sit down here on the bulwark?”

Mannice glanced to right and left, and lowered his voice. It was enough to give the interview a flavor of mystery.

“It is a matter between us. You will understand when I explain. I would rather not run any risk of being overheard.”

The captain looked puzzled, but nodded, and moved in the direction of the cottage. Mannice made no disclosures, discussing the weather and politely inquiring about Miss Kempton and her health, until they had come to the porch. The shipmaster was a man who had learned to keep his own counsel, and he awaited the import of this second pilgrimage. An ugly customer to hoodwink and be caught at it, even though his hair was silvered, reflected Mannice, as he scanned the resolute profile and glanced at the sinewy hinds. But there was no hint of misgiving in the young man’s demeanor as he smoothly began:

“Your yarns of buried treasure interested me so much that it was hard for me to think of anything else when I returned to Boston. It occurred to me that among my clippings there might be something worth sending to add to your collection. I had saved very little treasure stuff, and could dig up only one item. I must have put it away several years ago, and it was badly torn. But I pieced it together and made a typewritten copy. It’s queer, awfully queer. Captain Kempton, a hundred-to-one shot, but——”

“Perhaps I have heard it from some other source,” was the quick interruption. “Most of those newspaper reports are sheer moonshine.”

“True enough,” handsomely agreed Mannice. “My only reason for paying any attention to this was what you might call a coincidence. It seems that a very old man died in a Liverpool hospital, leaving a rambling statement to the effect that he had sailed before the mast in the deep-water trade. During one of his last voyages, the deuce of a while ago, I presume, he had been laid up with yellow fever in Valparaiso. The man in the next cot, another English sailor, was almost dead, but before he cashed in he gave this chap a little packet wrapped in canvas and told him to keep it for himself. It had come down from his grandfather and was the real goods, said the owner, straight from one of the crew who had sailed with a pirate known as Peleg Peterson.”

“A chart, of course,” exclaimed Captain Kempton, springing from his chair to stride the porch. “The story has a familiar sound, but you can never tell. Please go on. There was a Peleg Peterson, a lively rascal. He was hanged at Execution Dock, with five of his men.”

The narrator felt increasing confidence, and he resumed more weightily: “This sailor lived to get out of Valparaiso in an American clipper ship. His mind weakened in old age, or sickness impaired it. At any rate, he was unable to remember the name of the ship. He did remember, however, that he had tucked the chart away behind the planking over his bunk in the forecastle, hoping some day to go looking for the treasure. He was badly smashed up in a storm on the homeward voyage and lugged ashore with a broken leg. The ship sailed away without him, and he was never able to run across her again. And so he lost his precious chart.”

“The ship may have been lost after that, Mr. Mannice. An American clipper, did you say?”

“Yes. He could recall that she was very fast and quite new at the time.”

“Anything else? What port she hailed from?” came the eager questions. “On one of his last voyages? He may have been afloat until he was sixty or more. Those old shellbacks are hard to kill. It’s not impossible that the ship is still knocking about; there are a few of them left—my old Endymion and——”

“And the Wanderer!” exclaimed Mannice, choosing the right moment to drive the suggestion home. “I thought of her at once. That’s why I came to tell you about it. The odds are all against it, of course.”

Their eyes sought the wharf and the graceful hull of what had once been a queen of all the oceans. Captain Kempton’s hobby made him credulous, ready to expect a coincidence. And every man bred to the sea has beheld impossible things come true.

“Let me find an ax,” cried he. “We’ll rip out that fo’castle in a jiffy.”

He checked himself and put a finger to his lips. Secrecy was the word. Already the lure of pirate’s gold worked in him like a potent poison. Mannice smiled assent. They would keep this fascinating business to themselves. Almost by stealth, they fetched a circuit and gained the wharf from the other side, screened from the men at work on the beach. It was a zestful adventure for the mariner, and Mannice flattered himself that his stage management was excellent. Once in the forecastle of the Wanderer, he so maneuvered it that the search should be prolonged, suggesting an attack on the walls where he knew nothing was hidden. Timbers and planking flew like kindling. The captain was in a mood to hew the ship to pieces. The eager Mannice aided with a bit of iron as a crowbar. In a twinkling, they demolished a row of bunks.

Meanwhile, Eudora had come home, and was absorbed in the daily routine of keeping the cottage so neat and trim that the most exacting shipmaster could find no fault. Broom and dusting cloth were dropped as she descried through an open window her father and the important Mr, Mannice ascending the path. No wonder their aspect amazed her, for they were as battered and disheveled as a brace of tramps, collars wilted, trousers torn, coats begrimed. Some sort of elation made them gesticulate and talk with tremendous gusto. Eudora knew her father too well to suspect the demon rum, unless he had been somehow led astray by this Mannice person, and she waited with lively apprehension.

At sight of her, they paused, put their heads together, and exchanged confidential speech, as though something highly important was to be shared between them. This nettled Eudora, and her unfavorable impression of Mr. Mannice flamed into active dislike. He dropped behind, and permitted the captain to announce to his vigilant daughter:

“An old crank, was I? A rainbow chaser? I have found a pirate’s chart, Eudora, and it was hidden right under my nose. Doubloons, my dear, and rings for your fingers.”

She received the tidings calmly, but her head was in a whirl. Her eyes narrowed a trifle as she surveyed William Marmaduke Mannice, who stepped forward to add, with his jocular suavity:

“A fairy tale right out of a book. Miss Kempton, but they do come true now and then. Luck, pure luck, that couldn’t happen again in a thousand years. I stumbled on the clew, and we ran it out, tucked away in the old Wanderer, the last will and testament of Peleg Peterson, gentleman rover.”

Eudora’s intelligent face expressed a variety of emotions, but those that were uppermost she managed to dissemble. Her father seemed hurt that she failed to display enthusiasm, so she lightly replied:

“How perfectly gorgeous! I choose the rubies and emeralds, if you please, and the tall candlesticks of beaten gold from the cathedrals on the Spanish Main. But you have to find the treasure first, don’t you?”

“Unless somebody else has beat us to it, we are apt to turn up something with the pick and shovel,” declaimed Mannice. “But it’s mightly unlikely that more than one chart was left be hind by this Peleg Peterson.”

“Oh, you are already planning to look for it?” asked Eudora, a reflective finger on her chin. “You take my breath away. May I see the wonderful chart?”

“Not now. It must not be exposed to the strong light,” testily explained her father. “The ink may fade, or the parchment crumble, and then where are we?”

Something told Eudora that he was not wholly frank. They were unwilling to show her the chart for fear she could not keep a secret. She flushed, but held her temper, and demanded, with a laugh:

“You must tell me the whole story, every word. I am dying to hear it. Here I ran away for a little while and missed the most exciting thing that ever happened. Tell me, first, daddy, are you honestly going to sail in search of it? And how far away is it hidden?”

There was a note of anxiety in her voice, for a quick glance had caught Mannice unawares, and she detected on his florid lineaments a look greedy and intent before he could mask it.

“Not so far away but what I can afford to fit out a small schooner,” promptly answered the captain. “Mr. Mannice will go along, naturally, as a partner, and at my expense. This is no more than fair, for the chart really belongs to him.”

“Oh, indeed! He was very honest about it, wasn’t he? He might have sneaked aboard the Wanderer in the night without saying a word to you, and kept the treasure all to himself.”

“He has behaved handsomely,” affirmed the captain.

“But this expedition will cost a great deal of money,” protested Eudora, “and you may have to give up your position as caretaker. It seems like a sort of summer madness to me. What is your opinion, Mr. Mannice?”

“I merely helped Captain Kempton find the chart,” he replied, with a shrug. “The rest of it is up to him.”

“Let’s go into the house,” broke in the mariner. “I will show you to my room, Mr. Mannice. You want to wash and brush up. I’m sure.”

Alone with her father for a few minutes, Eudora plied him with questions blunt and insistent. He had another excuse for withholding the chart from her, and would disclose nothing more than that the treasure was buried in the Seven Islands.

“You are afraid I’ll tell Dan Sloan and he will go after it himself,” she impetuously exclaimed. “I hate the whole idea. It has changed you already. And I distrust this Mannice from the bottom of my heart. I can’t tell you why. A woman’s reasons, I suppose. He didn’t ring true to me when he was here before. Forget this absurd chart and let him keep it and the treasure, if he can find it.”

“You had better leave the decision to me,” he firmly replied. “I have been studying this thing for years. Let this go by, refuse to take a fling? I should never forgive myself. It is for you, my dear girl.”

“I am happy without it. Then, if you are bound to go, leave Mannice behind and give him his share later,” she argued. “I can’t make myself clear, but he has put a sort of spell on you. And if you insist, I go, too, to look after your interests as best I can.”

“I thought of leaving you with your aunt in Portland,” he awkwardly returned. “S-ssh! Mr. Mannice is coming downstairs.”

Eudora promptly fled the room, and scurried across the lawn to the road and led toward the outer harbor. Perhaps she was a goose to interfere and spoil her father’s ardent enjoyment. He was hard-headed and experienced, seldom swayed by impulse. However, her heart leaped for gratitude when, around the southward headland, came into view a red-funneled tug hauling her barges in from sea with a certain quiet and massive strength. Not as a lover, but certainly as a friend in need, she would welcome Dan Sloan, for she knew not where else to turn.

CHAPTER III.

No sooner had the Endeavor passed her hawsers to the wharf at Falmouth than the stalwart young mate leaped ashore and struck out for a white cottage as his journey’s end. His ruddy cheek was freshly shaven, and the blue serge suit was smartly cut. A very proper figure of a sailor and a man to steer clear of in a quarrel, he looked fit to fight Eudora’s battles as well as his own. She had decided to forewarn him of the situation, but to say nothing in prejudice of William Marmaduke Mannice. Let Dan form his own judgment and then advise her.

They therefore met in the road near home, quite by chance, of course, because he must not think she had come to look for him. Wistfulness shadowed his engaging features, for he hoped that absence might have made her fonder, but she gave no sign beyond a gracious friendliness as they shook hand's and moved toward the cottage.

“Yes, I am truly glad to see you, Dan,” said Eudora. “A good run, was it, from Norfolk?”

“Fair. We lost a barge in a squall off Cape Cod, but picked her up again,” said the resonant voice. “Snatched her oft the shoals just before she bumped. A line parted and knocked me overboard. How goes it with you? Whew, but the days do drag when I’m way! It’s worse every voyage, Eudora.”

“Pooh! They say you have a girl in every port, Eton.”

“They lie,” exclaimed the mate, “and you know better. I’m making a good record these days. Won’t you give me any credit for it?”

“Indeed I do, and there are times when I’m proud of you,” was her sweetly candid assurance. “But we must talk about something else just now. My sensible father has decided to go roaming off to find a buried treasure, and I am completely upset.”

“He has talked that foolishness until he believes there is something in it?” was the cheerful query. “Well, we’ll just have to talk him out of it. A restless fit, I presume. He wants some excuse to go to sea again. What touched him off?”

“A man named Mannice, who found a pirate’s chart in the old Wanderer, Dan, he is some kind of a newspaper writer. Father ha‘s taken a great fancy to him.”

“A young man, is he?” And Mr. Sloan scowled. This exhibition of temper seemed to please Eudora, who smiled demurely as she replied:

“Fairly young, and quite captivating. Don’t look so wrathy, please. I am only quoting his opinion of himself. I don’t like him, and I wish that father had never laid eyes on him.”

“Some kind of a crooked game in the wind, Eudora?” briskly demanded Dan, who was clearing for action.

“I don’t know. There is nothing that I can put a finger on. But I feel uneasy and helpless. They won’t tell me anything definite. Father and I have always been so chummy. Now he won’t even consult me.”

“About this chart,” slowly remarked Dan. “Have you seen it? Can I get a squint at it? This Mannice rooster knew where to find it?”

“He got on the track of it, yes. I’m sure they will refuse to tell you anything about it. So please ask no questions when you meet them. It would only make it harder for me.”

“I see. I might be able to give you some idea of what the chart amounts to. Your dad is a first-rate navigator, but in a case like this his judgment is befogged. It’s easy for a man to believe a thing when his mind has a slant that way. He actually talks of sailing somewhere?”

“They are planning it now, Dan. In a vessel of their own. It will cost a lot of money.”

“Well, it will take some time to charter and outfit, and all that,” the sailor soothingly suggested. “Meanwhile, the skipper may wake up from this pipe dream. And I can look up this Mannice proposition. I’m acquainted with ship-news reporters from Boston to Baltimore, and if there is anything wrong with the man, they will be glad to run it out for me. I’ll stand by, Eudora.”

“I know you will,” she softly told him, and the intonations moved him beyond words. They seemed to be drawn closer together than he had hitherto dared hope for. His hand sought hers, but she eluded him, and a moment later they were turning into the cottage. Mannice and the captain walked a path arm in arm, as though the little garden were their own quarter-deck. When Eudora appeared with the mate of the Endeavor, the two treasure seekers halted in their tracks and seemed a trifle startled. It amused Eudora, who had never seen her father look so like a naughty boy caught in the act. Evidently he regarded Dan Sloan as an untimely intruder, but he recovered his hearty manner and presented his friend, Mr. William Marmaduke Mannice.

The latter gentleman had a voluble greeting ready, but he inwardly wondered who the devil this Sloan fellow might be and in what relation he stood to Eudora. They disliked each other at sight, and the feeling was more than primitive jealousy. Mannice was afraid of this clean, virile sailor who looked him straight in the eye, while Dan was conscious of a rising contempt. The contrast between them instantly impressed Eudora, and she discerned in Mannice, for all his ingratiating airs, a soul that was flaccid and furtive.

“A newspaper man, I understand,” said Dan, coming to the point at once. “What owners are you signed with at present?”

“Unattached, Mr. Sloan,” smiled Mannice. “It pays me better to write on my own hook. My name has some value, don’t you know.”

“Ah, yes. I haven’t happened to come across it. Have you found any interesting material in Falmouth? Fond of the sea?”

“In a literary way,” replied the other, glancing at Captain Kempton. “Some great stuff here.”

“I have persuaded Mr. Mannice to make us a visit, Eudora,” said the skipper. “We can easily find room for him.”

Dan glowered at this, and yearned to eject the trespasser, but he had promised to live down his cyclonic past. It was obvious that nothing was to be said to him about the treasure quest. He determined to talk with Captain Kempton alone at the first opportunity and beg him to do nothing rash until Mannice could be investigated.

Just then there sounded from the direction of Falmouth six long blasts of a steam whistle, deep and sonorous. An interval and they were repeated. The mate of the Endeavor looked dismayed as he explained to Eudora:

“The recall signal from my boat. Hurry orders to coal up and put to sea. And I expected to have several days in port. Well, it’s good-by. Will you come as far as the road with me, Eudora?”

He turned quickly, with a farewell nod to the others, who showed no signs of sorrow. In fact, William Marmaduke Mannice displayed a beaming countenance which, luckily for him, the sailor failed to observe. Eudora went a little way with him, and he stood, reluctant, as he told her:

“This is hard luck for me. I ought to be on hand. I don’t like the looks of things, but it may clear up without me. Don’t worry any more than you can help, and be sure to write if you need me.”

“But you don’t know where you are going, Dan,” ruefully cried the girl.

“I’ll send you a note from Falmouth to-day before we sail. A letter in care of our agents will find me without much delay. Bless your heart, I’ll jump ship anywhere if you send me a call.”

“Don’t do that, Dan. Duty first. God bless you. I will let you know just what is going on, and you may be back in port to-morrow for all we know.”

His hard, brown hand clasped hers with a lingering caress, and he left her gazing after him as he broke into a swinging trot and hastened to rejoin his vessel. In a low-spirited mood, Eudora turned toward the outer harbor and waited until the Endeavor passed out to sea, trailing a long banner of smoke. At home, she found a brief message, scrawled in pencil and delivered by a boy;

Big steamer in distress with a broken shaft. A hundred miles offshore. Will probably tow to Boston. As always, your faithful ⁠Dan.

The captain and his companion were not to be found, nor did they return until supper had been waiting for some time. Eudora heard her father say as he crossed the porch:

“Much better luck than I expected. The schooner was chartered for the fishing season, but there was some trouble over terms, and she has been lying idle for two months. We are getting her dirt cheap, and she can be made ready for sea in a few days.”

“A crew and provisions, and it’s ‘once aboard the lugger——’” blithely returned Mr. Mannice.

“You had better run into Boston and get your things together. It’s short notice for you, of course, and whatever cash you need, why, we’ll drop into the bank in the morning.”

Eudora, an indignant eavesdropper, perceived that matters were moving much faster than she had anticipated. Dan Sloan was out of reach, and it was futile for her to fight lone-handed. She therefore did the next best thing, which was to announce, in her pleasantest manner:

“Please reserve the most comfortable stateroom for me and a one-third share of the treasure.”

“Delighted, Miss Kempton,” exclaimed Mannice. “A true viking’s daughter. I should refuse to sail without you.”

“If she insists, there’s no stopping her,” said the captain, who comprehended that Eudora had made up her mind.

“I’m sure I can handle a shovel with either of you,” she observed, looking hard at the poorly conditioned figure of Mr. Mannice. “The Seven Islands! You were kind enough to tell me that much. May I ask where they are? If I am to get my clothes ready right away, I should like some idea of the length of the voyage.”

Her father was grimly taciturn, and left it to Mannice to say: “Mum’s the word, Miss Kempton. You know how it is with a treasure expedition. The merest hint, and away they all go after you. As a partner, you are entitled to know all about it, but the captain has put the lid on until we leave port. It will be a short voyage on this side of the Atlantic, say two or three weeks. None of the tropical stuff, palms and coral reefs and brown-skinned natives.”

Eudora picked up spirits at this. Dan Sloan would not seem so hopelessly far away as she had feared. Her father felt relieved that she had turned tractable and made no more effort to dissuade him. For Eudora another ray broke through the cloud when he informed her:

“I crossed the hawse of old Harvey Mattoon in Falmouth this afternoon and coaxed him to join as cook for a sort of yachting cruise, as I called it. He will make it seem like the days gone by in the Endymion”

“Is he still tending his lobster pots? Why, he sailed with you when I was a little girl, and you never had a more faithful man. I’m so glad. And the rest of your crew?”

“Four Falmouth lads will do, fishermen ashore. I’ll round them up to-morrow. I shall carry no mate.”

For three d&ys thereafter, the two adventurers were prodigiously busy and seldom at home. Mannice went to Boston, and was intrusted with the purchase of sundry supplies at a ship chandler’s in that port. Captain Kempton, wrapped in mystery, inspected his schooner, mustered his crew, and looked after a thousand and one details. He enjoyed it all, and was much happier than Eudora had seen him in years. His training came back to him, and he drove the work without bluster or flurry, a man supremely competent at his own trade.

Hearing nothing more from Dan and the Endeavor, Eudora waited until the last day before the schooner was to flit from the harbor. Then she wrote, with a sorely troubled mind:

My Dear Friend Dan: Father is carrying me off to-morrow in the Challenge for parts unknown. It is a coastwise voyage—I know that much. I never got so much as a peep at the chart. Does Seven Islands convey any meaning to you? I am more and more convinced that Mannice is up to something, although I can’t fathom it at all. He had no money. A lot owing to him and no time to collect it, said he, which seemed to satisfy poor dad, who couldn’t sleep for impatience to start. For fear folks might think it queer and ask questions at seeing Captain Kempton fitting out a vessel, he has let Mannice pose as the financier, and, I am afraid, given him some of the funds to handle.

I shall keep my eyes open every minute. Mannice has been courteous enough to me, but he knows I suspect and dislike him, I am sure. I will write again, Dan, if we touch at any port. I wish you were in the party. I should feel ever so much easier about the venture. Please don’t worry. Father will take the best of care of me. My anxiety is on his account. I shall think of you very often. Isn’t it nice of me to say that much? ⁠Eudora.

 

CHAPTER IV.

In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the slim schooner Challenge was standing on a long tack to fetch a group of islets which had lifted from the horizon like tiny dots. Captain Kempton was at the wheel, his gray hair bared to the sun, his shirt sleeves rolled up to disclose the tattooed pattern of a mermaid. Dapperly clad in white flannels, William Marmaduke Mannice stood at the rail and aimed a pair of binoculars at the distant Seven Islands. Eudora was in the cabin. It was confoundedly odd, but whenever he appeared on deck she found something to do below, and vice versa; and he was sure of meeting her only at meals. He had expected to make more headway during the voyage, but for once the irresistible suitor had encountered the immovable maid.

Now, however, he forgot the chilling indifference of Eudora in contemplating a problem even more serious. There were the Seven Islands, right enough, but they seemed to be no more than so many naked rocks. In this event, the skipper might turn about and sail straight home again, which meant that Mr. Mannice would shortly be turned adrift to shift for himself. Anxiously, therefore, he stared at the blue sky line and watched the black dots grow larger. The captain shouted an order. The men shortened sail and dropped the sounding lead as the schooner crept to leeward of the southernmost pinnacle of the group. Eudora came on deck, shaded her eyes with her hand, and exclaimed to her parent:

“I suppose I ought to apologize for being such a horrid little skeptic. The Seven Islands really exist, but they look dreadfully skimpy. We shall have to dig one at a time or crowd each other overboard.”

“We are not close enough to get the lay of the land,” he replied, with a nervous gesture. “The admiralty chart shows one island a mile or so long, but much lower than the others. We shall get a sight of it presently.”

Mannice felt much better. The chart of Peleg Peterson was vague enough to fit almost any island big enough to land on. And Captain Kempton was not apt to be too critical. All he desired was the sand and a shovel. The breeze held until the schooner had picked her course so near the largest island that the party could see a strip of white beach in a notch of coast and the land behind it strewn with boulders and thinly covered with a stunted growth. It was a desolate bit of landscape, but charming to the eyes of Captain Kempton, who ran to the companionway to unfold the chart of Peleg Peterson and jubilantly impart:

“A pocket of a bay, precisely as the rogue set it down, and those thundering big rocks were what he took his bearings from. Hooray! Mannice, my boy, we’re on the right track.”

Mannice matched his enthusiasm, saying to himself that this was his lucky day. He had drawn a bay on the chart, of course, for most islands had them, and how else could a pirate put his boat ashore while his low, rakish craft lay in the offing? Eudora, poor girl, was in a confused state of mind. She was no less mistrustful of the dashing Mannice, but he did seem to know his business when it came to directing this singular voyage. She would suspend judgment for the present.

There was sufficient water in the bay for the schooner to swing at a sheltered anchorage. It was in the afternoon when she rested with canvas furled and a boat was dropped from the davits astern. It had been decided, so long as the weather should be fair, to erect a shelter ashore for use during the day, and to return aboard at night. There was a large amount of material to disembark—tools, tarpaulins, wheelbar rows, and so on, and this preliminary task was lustily undertaken by all hands, barring the cook, Harvey Mattoon. A venerable man was he, gnarled and tough, with despondent views concerning human nature. Confidentially, he croaked to Eudora as they watched the seamen load the yawl:

“I never would ha’ thought it of your old man. Did it take him sudden, or was there any previous spells by way of warnin’?”

“It attacked him all at once, Harvey,” she laughed. “Then you don’t approve?”

“A-racketin’ off at his age to cut up didoes like this? It’s awful. Seems as if he had more sense than to tie up to a human sculpin like this Mannice. I’d pisen his grub if I dared.”

“Then you and I think the same way, and we’ll have to stand together,” said Eudora; “but we must keep very quiet about it.”

The cook went grumbling to the galley, manifesting no interest in the thrilling scene. No sooner had the captain finished his work on the beach than, regardless of the supper hour, he unfolded his precious chart and endeavored to find the marks and bearings as recorded by the wicked Peleg Peterson. Mannice dutifully accompanied him, and kept a straight face while the honest mariner trudged from one boulder to another and painfully studied a pocket compass.

It was a puzzling quest, but your treasure seeker is swayed by his imagination, and the captain steered his course by the precious chart with all the confidence in the world.

“‘From ye Grate Rock forty paces to ye Shoare, S. S. E.’” he solemnly quoted from the dingy parchment which Mannice kindly helped him decipher, for the pirate had been a villainous hand with a pen. “Here we are, my boy. The biggest rock on the island. No doubt of it. Now for ‘ye tall oke tree.’ Gone, confound it, but perhaps we can find the stump. It’s not essential. We’ll turn up every inch of the beach before we quit.”

Breakfast was served at daybreak next morning, and only the cook was left on board the schooner. The sea men had been promised extra wages, and they were eager to make the sand fly. Eudora lent her encouraging presence, deciding to save her energy until later. At the indicated spot, the party opened a trench above high-water mark, while the summer sun climbed higher from a windless sea, and the heat became uncomfortable.

Conscious of Eudora’s scrutiny, Mr. Mannice labored valiantly, an example for the others. Sweat ran from him in rivers, and his unaccustomed muscles ached acutely. He grunted as he raised the shovel, and stifled a curse whenever he straightened himself. He dared not loaf. He had to go through with the thing, or the captain’s daughter might denounce him as a fraud. A day or so of this, however, and the captain’s frenzy would abate. There was no sense in digging themselves to death.

The end of the day found all hands so weary that they crawled into their bunks immediately after supper, Mannice falling asleep at the table. Eudora sat on a bench outside the galley with old Harvey Mattoon and listened to his droning memories of vanished ships and seamen. Soaked with the superstitions of his kind, he told of things incredible, until the listening girl turned to ask: “Then why don’t you believe in pirates’ gold, Harvey? It’s not as wild as this yarn of yours that the ghost of the bos’n swam after the ship for days and days.”

“Pirates there was, and mebbe they hid it,” said he, with a rusty wheeze, “but all the gold we’ll see this voyage comes out of the old man’s pocket. Mannice is a Jonah, I tell ye. He instigated suthin’. I feel it in my bones.”

“He worked like a man in earnest to-day, Harvey. I almost pitied him.”

“Don’t do it. Pity is akin to love, and it ’u’d be a dreadful mistake. Yep, he worked, but his heart wa’n’t in it like the rest of ’em. I watched him. And I heard him swearin’ to himself through the skylight when he turned in.”

“Oh, dear, I wish I were home,” sighed Eudora. “This is a blind alley. You are a great comfort, Harvey. I used to tell you my troubles when I was a wee little girl and we were shipmates.”

Next day, the excavating was resumed with unflagging zest, although Mr. Mannice had to ease his blistered palms at frequent intervals. Eudora offered sympathy in which he detected a mocking note, and offered to wield his shovel while he rested. Tiring at length of his company, she walked along the shore, and climbed the rocks beyond the bight of sand. A small schooner was bowling straight toward the islands, with the wind behind her, and the girl gazed, idly interested, expecting to see the craft pass on her way.

Soon, however, the sails were flattened, the course changed, and the schooner appeared to be making for the bay in which Captain Kempton’s Challenge rode at anchor. A quick hope made Eudora’s pulse flutter. It would be like her headstrong knight-errant, Dan Sloan, to come speeding to the rescue as soon as he received her plaintive message of farewell. Bright-eyed and breathless, she watched the schooner veer closer to find the winding passage until the people on deck were plainly visible. Alas, they were all strangers! Not only disappointed, but puzzled, was Eudora, for this vessel could not be on fishing or trading business bound. There were passengers aboard, one of them a woman, and from an open hatch two of the crew were hoisting what looked like rolls of tents and other camping gear.

Eudora tarried no longer, but picked a path down the rocks and ran along the beach to tell her father. He dropped his shovel, and the other toilers joined him to watch the mysterious schooner float gracefully into the entrance of the bay and heave to a few hundred feet from the Challenge. This was an intrusion, resented by all hands, and their mood was far from cordial.

The most conspicuous figure of the schooner’s company was a middle-aged man very accurately clad for roughing it, khaki clothes, leather puttees, campaign hat, a water bottle slung from a strap. He was thin, and stooped a little. His spectacles flashed in the sunlight, and the brown beard was nicely trimmed to a point.

His energy dominated the crew, who continued to drag out of the hold an astonishing amount of equipment. Presently he assisted into a small boat a short-skirted woman of a substantial, more deliberate aspect, and they were rowed ashore by two sailors. Captain Joseph Kempton advanced to meet them at the water’s edge, muttering something about a dashed interloper. The gentleman thus designated appeared rather excited, and his wife was plainly endeavoring to calm him. As the boat grounded in the ripples, he stepped out, took three long strides, and found himself confronted by Captain Kempton, who nodded curtly and exclaimed:

“How do you do? May I ask what it’s all about? Without meaning to be rude, this beach seems to be pretty well occupied.”

The stranger was undaunted. In fact, he smiled in a condescending manner as he wiped his spectacles and replaced them to gaze over the captain’s shoulder at the piles of freshly dug sand and the group of laborers. Carefully modulated were the accents as he replied:

“I am Professor James Hyssop Bodge, of Hemphill University. May I ask who you are, sir? It is easy to perceive what you are doing here. Amusing, very.”

“I don’t see the joke,” said the mariner. “I’m Captain Kempton, retired shipmaster, and I was here first.”

“Permit me to present Mrs. Bodge,” politely returned the professor. Her plain, wholesome features indicated amusement as she spoke up:

“My husband doesn’t seem so awfully pleased to meet you, Captain Kempton, but perhaps we can arrive at some understanding. We have come to find a pirate’s treasure. And you are at this same game? How extraordinary!”

“I am sorry to disappoint you, madam,” said the skipper more graciously, “but there isn’t the slightest use in your bringing your stuff ashore. I have the only authentic information about this treasure, and I propose to keep it to myself.”

“Nonsense! Please let me talk to him, Ellen,” firmly quoth Professor Bodge. “He is laboring under a delusion. We possess the only clew to the whereabouts of Peleg Peterson’s hoard. These other people are merely wasting time and money.”

“And you are wasting your breath,” snapped Captain Kempton. “You propose to land anyhow, do you?”

“Have you any authority to prevent it, sir?” And the spectacles glistened. “Does this island belong to you? If not, have you obtained exclusive permission from the owner?”

“It belongs to nobody, so far as I know,” answered the skipper, who was a bit nonplused. “I don’t think it necessary to look up any owner for this God-forsaken, wind-blown patch of real estate. Have you any papers to show?”

The professor was stumped in his turn, but he logically flung back:

“No, sir, and for the same reason as yours. You have no right, therefore, to dispute my possession.”

“But you haven’t a glimmer of a chance of finding any treasure,” obstinately pursued the other. “You will only be in our way. You’ve been misled somehow.”

“Ridiculous!” cried Professor Bodge, whose ire was rising. “What’s that, Ellen? I am perfectly composed, my dear. This poor man is chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. We shall proceed exactly as was planned.”

He called to one of the sailors, who splashed ashore with a surveyor’s measuring chain, a bundle of stakes, and a sledge hammer. Paying no more heed to the captain. Professor Bodge stalked across the beach and entered the sparse undergrowth among the boulders. Mrs. Bodge considered it her duty to go with him, although she had spied Eudora in the background and desired to make her acquaintance. The professor was seen to be poring over some kind of a document on his hands and knees. Then began a methodical exploration which led him some distance away from the landmarks chosen by Captain Kempton. No more than half an hour passed before he appeared to have found what he sought, for the whack of the hammer was heard as he drove in the first stake by which to guide the measuring chain.

Meanwhile, Captain Kempton had decided to hold a council of war with his partner, the amiable William Marmaduke Mannice, but the latter had strayed to a secluded corner of the beach, leaving word that the sun had given him a severe headache and he needed rest. This was partly true, for his wits were in a scrambled state. While listening to the statements of Professor James Hyssop Bodge, his mouth had hung open for dumb, distracted amazement. There wasn’t any treasure, of course, and he had faked the only chart in existence, yet here was another party with another chart which might be the real thing, after all.

“This guy with the Vandyke beard certainly has me up in the air,” lamented Mannice, who was breathing hard. “Dear, dear, what a tangled web we weave when we try to slip one over. And now what? Bluff it out! Show a firm front, William! You’re living on somebody else’s money, and there’s a pretty girl in sight. You should worry!”

Now, Eudora had beheld the singular effect of the Bodge interview upon Mr. Mannice, and she drew her own conclusions. He was a man far more frightened than surprised. Guilt of some sort had openly betrayed itself. When he returned, and her father began talking with him, she joined the conference as a partner determined to be heard. Summoning his bravado, Mannice said, with a laugh:

“Why not let them amuse themselves? They’ll soon tire of it and go away. Their silly bearings and marks have led them a couple of hundred yards up the beach. They won’t be in our way.”

“I am sorry to see an intelligent man, a college professor, make such an ass of himself,” gravely quoth the father of Eudora. “You may be right Mannice. I want to avoid a clash, if possible. They are harmless lunatics. We’ll mind our own business and watch them break their backs for nothing.”

“Now can’t you see yourself as others see you?” impulsively exclaimed Eudora. “Our expedition is as crazy as Professor Bodge’s. Your chart is as worthless as his. This ought to cure you. Why not sail for home to-morrow and let them have the island to themselves?”

“And leave these infernal trespassers to finish our excavation and find the treasure that belongs to us?” retorted the obdurate mariner. “It’s out of the question, Eudora. There is more reason than ever for us to stick to it if we have to lay here all summer.”

“And you agree to that?” she hotly demanded of Mannice. His eyes wavered and evaded hers as he answered:

“Most certainly. We have the winning dope. This Bodge outfit is a merry jest, pure vaudeville ”

Eudora turned her back on them, sick at heart. Day by day the cost of this folly was eating into her father’s slender fortune, and, worse than this, he was a man changed and warped, as though the ghost of Peleg Peterson had bewitched him. Sadly she went out to the Challenge and watched Professor Bodge send his freight ashore and the white tents rise against the somber background of rock. At supper, the captain announced:

“We shall move ashore to-morrow and stay there. It’s wiser to be right on the ground every minute. That rascally professor may try to steal a march on us. His information is pure buncombe, and, when he finds it out, he’s likely to crowd closer to our diggings and try to beat us to the treasure. And, by Judas, I don’t propose to give an inch!”

“What if he should find the treasure? Would you try to take it away from him?” asked Eudora.

“It belongs to us,” blazed her father. “I’m as mild a man as ever commanded a ship, bu I’ll fight before I’ll let any goggle-eyed shrimp of a professor cheat me out of my lawful rights.”

CHAPTER V.

The situation was strained, but actual hostilities were not foreshadowed until two days later. Captain Kempton’s crew encountered a granite ledge five feet down which barred their progress in one direction. For this reason, they dug more and more toward the part of the beach where the minions of Professor Bodge were creating an immense hole. Unfortunately, he discovered an error in his calculations which caused him to shift operations considerably nearer the captain’s excavation. It was inevitable that, in a short time, the rivals would have shoveled themselves into such close proximity to each other that there must be a clash. The well-known law that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time was bound to apply to treasure seekers. Eminently respectable men at home, Captain Joseph Kempton and Professor James Hyssop Bodge had suffered a sea change. The quest for lawless loot had gone to their heads, and they had broken the bonds of decorous habit. In spirit, they were fast relapsing into buccaneers. If it came to the issue, Kempton would not cringe nor Bodge budge.

Poor Eudora was so thoroughly alarmed that she defied her father, who had forbidden her to become friendly with the enemy. Watching the opportunity, she overtook the professor’s wife, who had rambled some distance away from the camps. The worthy woman greeted Eudora like a long-lost daughter, kissed her on both cheeks, slipped an arm around her waist, and cried:

“I have been simply dying to have a talk with you, my dear child, but the suggestion annoyed my husband.”

“My plight exactly, Mrs. Bodge. It has made me feel forlorn and homesick to look at you from our camp. Perhaps they won’t miss us.”

“I say we walk to the other side of the island, where they can’t possibly see us,” replied the older woman, leading the way. “Tell me, do you enjoy this enterprise? I fancy not. You have appeared rather unhappy.”

“I abominate it,” fiercely exclaimed Eudora.

“And the florid young man who seems to be such an important member of your party? I had an idea at first that I had stumbled on a romance.”

“I detest him. He is at the bottom of all the trouble.”

Mrs. Bodge was pleased as she said:

“I’m so glad he hasn’t taken you in. I put him down as a bounder. A pretty kettle of fish, isn’t it? I was dragged into it, too. I had to come along to look after my husband. Between us, my dear, while we’re talking it out, it’s my money he is spending, and I wouldn’t care a rap for that if I thought it was a proper sort of vacation for him. But his nerves can’t stand excitement, and I’m sure he will go to pieces if I can’t coax him away from here, and he is on the edge of a private war with that stubborn father of yours. There’s no telling what they will do to each other. Gracious! I wish that wretched old pirate of a Peleg Peterson could be hanged over again. How in the world did the red-faced young man get you people into it?”

“He found a chart in an old, abandoned sailing ship, Mrs. Bodge,” sighed Eudora. “And it was all up with father.”

“My deluded husband came home with a chart, but he refused to tell me where and how he had discovered it,” vehemently confided his wife. “And it was all up with James. He teaches mathematics, but he has rested his mind for years by reading about gory pirates and bags of doubloons. Your chart is the only genuine article, I presume. So is ours.”

“I don’t know. It make no difference. Is there anything we can do to cure them?”

“Nothing short of an earthquake or finding the wretched treasure will pry James off this island.”

They were silent for a while, for the walking was rough and awkward, and they had to help each other cross bits of quaking bog and stretches of densely tangled brushwood. Coming at length to an open space and a slight rise, Eudora halted, stared, and rubbed her eyes. Nestled in the lee of a great bare rock by the shore was a little hut, gray, low-roofed, clinging close to the ground, scarcely distinguishable from its surroundings. A thin streamer of smoke curled upward from the chimney.

“But nobody lives on this island,” gasped Mrs. Bodge. “I’m sure I heard my husband say it was deserted.”

“They were all too busy and greedy to look around and make sure,” sensibly observed Eudora. “But it seems strange that nobody saw the smoke. Shall we investigate?”

“Most assuredly. I am very anxious to meet the owner of this island. It is our only hope of escape.”

Unhesitatingly, the robust woman preceded Eudora, and marched down to the weather-beaten dwelling which had been built of wreckage stranded from lost ships. Smartly she rapped on the door, and shuffling feet moved within. Timidity took hold of Eudora, but the professor’s wife grasped her hand, and a moment later they faced an elderly man, who threw up his hands in astonishment and burst into a fit of coughing so violent that Mrs. Bodge pounded him between the shoulders.

“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he sputtered. “I swallered my quid, ladies bein’ unexpected, teetotally so, you might say. Was you blown ashore or hung up on a reef? I’d ask you to walk in, but the sheebang is chuck-full of smoke from that dratted stove.”

“It is very pleasant outside,” said Mrs. Bodge, surveying the hermit’s costume, which consisted of sea boots, ragged overalls, and a shirt patched in many colors. His features were somewhat begrimed, but not in the least forbidding. He led them to a rude bench, explaining;

“I’ve been over to the mainland for a fortnight—had a few kegs o’ salted fish to sell and needed groceries—landed no more’n an hour ago, and ain’t had a chance to look around.”

“There are two parties on your island, Mr.—Mr.——” The professor’s wife hesitated, and he informed her:

“Elmer Stackpole, at your service, ma’am. Two parties on my island? I thought I saw masts in the bay, but my sight’s failin’. And what might they be doin’ of?”

“Seeking buried treasure,” answered Mrs. Bodge. “It was left here by a legendary pirate, Peleg Peterson, although I don’t take the slightest stock in it myself.”

“How interestin’, not to say curious,” drawled Mr. Stackpole, risking a fresh quid. “A pirate called Peterson? Never heard of him. He must ha’ flourished before my time. Diggin’ up his treasure! Well, well! I’ll be scuppered!”

“That expresses my emotions,” said his interviewer. “Now, Mr. Elmer Stackpole, I propose to talk business with you. I am the wife and this lovely young creature is the daughter of the misguided persons responsible for the invasion of your peaceful island. For their own good, they should be evicted at once. I assume you are the owner.”

“I guess so, ma’am. Nobody ever disputed my title. Drive ’em away? How many is there?”

“It is not a question of force. You have only to threaten them with the law and summon the authorities from the mainland.”

“But what harm are they?” he queried, unmoved. “It seems sort o’ sociable to me. And I was just thinkin’ about levyin’ a tax on ’em.”

“But I intend to make it worth your while. I will give you more money than you can extort from them.”

Mrs. Bodge spoke bravely, but her confusion was manifest. It occurred to her that the professor held all the available funds, and she could offer no more than a promise to pay, as good as gold, but difficult to negotiate with Elmer Stackpole.

“How much will you lay down in cash?” said he, and there was a covetous gleam in his faded blue eye.

“I shall have to send it to you. Will five hundred dollars be satisfactory?”

“A bird in the hand is my motto, ma’am. You’re a stranger to me, and wimmen is apt to be fickle about money matters. I’d love to oblige, but I like the notion of collectin’ ten dollars per day as rent from each of them parties of yourn for all rights and full permission to dig ’emselves clean through to Chiny.”

“You are heartless and mercenary, and I’m sure you haven’t washed your face in a week,” indignantly cried Mrs. Bodge, and they left the wretch to gloat over his windfall.

Eudora was quite downhearted, but her vigorous companion asserted that the darkest hour was just before dawn and that such a human being as this unkempt hermit justified woman’s suffrage. Somewhat fatigued, but comforting each other, they recrossed the island, and emerged near the populous beach. The camp of Professor Bodge was in violent commotion, and Eudora for the moment, feared that war had been declared in her absence, but the shouts were those of joy, not anger, and the sailors were brandishing their shovels in a kind of jubiliant dance.

The professor ran to meet his wife, and in his hand was a metal object which age had incrusted and overlaid with verdigris.

“A big brass buckle, Ellen!” he shouted, his voice unsteady. “The pirates used to wear them on their shoes and the knees of their baggy breeches. You’ve seen the pictures.”

“And you think one of them lost it when they were burying the treasure, James?” she commented. “Perhaps he had no wife to sew his buckles on.”

“Either that, or he was knocked on the head by Peleg Peterson,” dramatically suggested the professor. “Dead men tell no tales. His bones would have crumbled by this time.”

“This is very bad for your nerves, James. Your color is bad, and your hands are shaking. Why not lie down for the rest of the afternoon?”

“Never felt finer in my life,” cried he. “We are going to take turns digging by moonlight.”

“You will do no such thing. I shall have you to take care of. Not much! How did you happen to open that trench straight toward Captain Kempton’s hole in the sand? Why, you pushed it yards and yards farther while I was gone.”

“We discovered some fragments of old timber,” he rapidly exclaimed, “and so we drove ahead like fury. Spanish oak, you know, is what they built their treasure chests of. It lasts for hundreds of years under sand and water. Captain Kempton be hanged! What if we do get in his way? We have the chart. We are the heirs of Peleg Peterson, by Jove, and this brass buckle proves it.”

After supper, the obstinate shipmaster mustered his men for a conference. It was time to act. This unscrupulous fool of a Professor Bodge had gone too far. The sailors of the Challenge were hard-fisted lads from the Falmouth water front, as ready for a fight as a frolic, and they were loyal to the last hair on their heads. Their sunburned features expressed the liveliest elation as the captain explained his plans. This day’s work had made it evident that Professor Bodge had no more conscience than a pirate. He must be firmly dealt with. The sailors cheered, but Mr. William Marmaduke Mannice looked anxious, and suggested arbitration. The stratagems of peace were much more to his liking.

His cowardice annoyed the skipper, who told him to mind his own business, and went on to say that, without doubt, they would have discovered the brass buckle and the old timer for themselves. The professor had conducted his operations in such a way as to invade their territory as marked and bounded. And because he was used to bullying a lot of college boys in a class room, he thought he could do as he pleased on the beach. The captain had handled a mutiny or two in his time, and he guessed he could protect his interests against this shameless gang.

“A show of force will be enough,” said he. “We’ll throw up a bank of sand right away to-night, square across the beach from high-water mark to the bushes, like a line of breastworks. That will stop the professor from coming any farther our way. And to prevent his working at night, which he is liable to do from now on, a sentry will stand watch. While I mean to avoid bloodshed, the sight of a shotgun and a rifle and my old pistol that saw service aboard the Endymion may convince the pin-headed professor that he is on the wrong tack.”

“Put me down for sentry duty,” exclaimed one of the sailors. “It sounds like a lark.”

“You lads need your sleep, Tom. You have to dig all day. The cook will bear a hand for one. He has time to snooze between meals.”

The shrinking Mr. Mannice caught the captain’s eye, and he added;

“An easy job for you. Four hours on and four off. You’re too fat to do much with a shovel, and your hands are badly blistered.”

“Thank you, sir,” was the feeble reply. “You don’t honestly expect any rough-house, shooting and all that?”

“Not a bit of it. A display of firmness will be plenty.”

The moon serenely silvered the strip of beach when the willing sailors, refreshed by food and smoke, began to throw up the breastworks at the very brink of the professor’s excavation. They made a speedy job of it and were unmolested, the Bodge forces withdrawing for a conference. Captain Kempton gave the shotgun to his cook, and told him to hold the fort until midnight, when Mr. Mannice would relieve him.

Discipline held old Harvey Mattoon dumb, but he was now convinced that his commander had gone clean daft, and his leathery lineaments were sorrowful as he sat himself down on the rampart of sand, the gun between his knees. Presently he opened the breech and extracted the shells, pensively soliloquizing:

“This dummed play actin’ has gone far enough. Somebody’s liable to get hurt before they finish with it, but they don’t ketch me aidin’ and abettin’.”

From the door of his tent, Professor Bodge spied the dejected figure of the sentinel, and his anger was intense. This was positively the last straw. His emotions may seem preposterous, but family feuds have begun over so trifling a matter as a boundary fence or a stray pig. In a great flurry, he exclaimed to his wife:

“Look yonder, Ellen! An armed man posted to prevent us from working at night. And they will attempt to get into the hole where we found the brass buckle. This Captain Kempton is absolutely lawless.”

“Let the armed man amuse himself by looking at the moon, and please go to sleep, James,” she wearily advised him. “The captain will soon tire of it if you pay no attention.”

“I shall sit up and play at this sentry game, too,” he declared. "Does he think he can bluff me out of my boots, when I am on the very point of finding the treasure? This is not a woman’s affair, Ellen.”

“I wish to Heaven it were, James. The captain’s daughter and I would dispose of it in a jiffy.”

He snorted, dived under his cot, and appeared in the moonlight with a rifle, which he clutched in gingerly fashion.

“Tut, tut, Ellen! Don’t try to hold me back. You will tear my shirt. The weapon isn’t loaded. I merely wish to display it.”

At a loping trot, he made for the bank of sand, intending to take a position near and apposite to the hostile watcher. Harvey Mattoon uttered a dismal cry and scrambled to his feet. He was too steadfast an old salt to retreat without an order from the quarter-deck, but the empty shotgun wabbled in his hands and his wits were at a loss. At this critical instant. Professor Bodge stumbled over a shovel and sprawled headlong. His spectacles flew one way, and the rifle left his hands to fall upon a wheelbarrow. There was a flash, a startling report, and Harvey Mattoon dropped from sight, his hands clasping his right leg.

“I didn’t shoot him,” wildly yelled Professor Bodge. “I tell you I didn’t! The rifle wasn’t loaded.”

“They, never are, James. That is how so many accidents occur,” replied his common-sense wife, as she dragged him to his feet. “Come with me and find out if you have killed him. Oh, if you had only listened to me!”

Wan and speechless, he followed her. The stricken sea cook sat gazing at a patch of blood on his duck trousers, below the knee. Deftly Mrs. Bodge ripped a slit with her husband’s pocketknife, disclosed the wound, and stanched it with her handkerchief.

“Clean through the calf. Nothing serious,” was her verdict. “Stay with him, James, while I run back to the tent for the antiseptic and bandages.”

In both camps there was a great stir by now; and the captain’s crew, who had been sleeping like the dead, came buzzing out like hornets. The row was on, they assured each other, and they picked up whatever weapons were handiest. To the aid of the professor rushed his own gallant men, but he waved them back and hurriedly explained the situation. They were to keep cool while he held a parley with Captain Kempton. It was a deplorable accident, and further bloodshed must be avoided at any cost short of dishonor.

“Winged my cook, did you?” roared the shipmaster, as he advanced to the front.

“It is the unhappiest moment of my life,” faltered Professor Bodge, expecting to be exterminated in his tracks. “I had no idea of potting the poor old duffer, I give you my word.”

“And I wouldn’t believe you under oath. Where did he drill you, Harvey? Hurt bad?”

“Mrs. Bodge says I’ll live, sir. I suppose he’s sorry he didn’t blow my head off.”

“Carry him to camp, boys, as soon as the lady has finished tying him up. Thank you ma’am. You have a kind heart. It’s a great pity you are spliced to this murderous bookworm.”

“I am prepared to offer an apology and pecuniary damages to the victim,” interposed the professor. “And I advise you to keep cool, Captain Kempton, or I shall be unable to restrain my men.”

“A flag of truce? I’m willing. We have to consider the women, for if my lads once jump in they’ll wipe your camp clean off the map.”

A growl from the group behind Professor Bodge implied that this was open to argument. He pacified his followers, and was about to address the captain when Mrs. Bodge stepped between them and laid down the law:

“You are to postpone all this until morning. We two women have received no consideration whatever. My patience is exhausted. If you wish to put these ridiculous sentries on guard, it will do no more harm, so long as you give them no guns. They can stand and makes faces at each other. James, go to bed! Captain Kempton, put your pistol away and march yourself into camp!”

CHAPTER VI.

The big tug Endeavor had encountered trouble and delay in towing the crippled steamer which she was sent out from Falmouth to rescue. Strong head winds kicked up an uncomfortable sea, hawsers parted, and twice the tug was compelled to let go and stand by until the weather moderated. It was all in the day’s work, but the mate grew impatient and was poor company at mess. Dan had left Eudora in trouble, and he yearned for some word. A minor regret was that he had not punched the head of William Marmaduke Mannice, who had so disturbed the peace of the white cottage by the harbor.

A week of battering struggle, and the Endeavor hauled her prize in past the Boston Light. At the agents’ office, Dan Sloan found a letter forwarded from Falmouth, and his frank eyes were suffused as he read Eudora’s message in which she had tried to hide the appeal to his courage and devotion. Wasting no time, he raced back to the Endeavor and interviewed her master as follows:

“I shall have to ask for a month’s leave, if you please, sir. If you can’t hold the berth for me, I’ll have to ship in some other boat when I come back. This is a hurry call.”

“Somebody sick, or have the police caught up with you, Dan?”

“Personal business, sir. And where the dickens are the Seven Islands? Ever hear of them?”

“If I bumped into ’em, I didn’t know it. On the level, are you in trouble again? No, you wouldn’t blush if you were, you hardened young sinner. Well, I hate to lose you. Come back as soon as you can. I’ll find some kind of a mate to fill in with. We’ll be idle, anyhow, for a couple of weeks. This last stunt plumb near jerked the engines out of her.”

Dan thanked him and jumped for a roll of charts in the wheelhouse. Coastwise, said Eudora, and a short voyage. It couldn’t be to the southward, for he knew his way through to the Florida Straits. Nova Scotia? The hasty search was in vain. He would try the hydrographic office and the government charts. Ramming some clothes into a bag, he waved his hand to the amused skipper, who assumed that a girl was at the bottom of it, and the Endeavor saw him no more. As he dashed into the hall of a building familiar to mariners, a spruce chap in a blue uniform hailed him gladly. Dan halted to smite his friend on the back and exclaim:

“Max Leonard, you loafer! How's the navy? Somebody told me battleships were hollow. Have you learned that much?”

“Promoted twice, you roughneck. Gunner’s mate, second class, and eating up the book stuff in the hope of winning out an ensign’s commission. Still in the Endeavor?”

“On and off, Max. Glory, I wish you were foot-loose for a few weeks. I need a pal.”

"I am,” grinned the petty officer. “My enlistment runs out to-morrow, and there’s a furlough coming to me before I take another hitch. Name the proposition.”

“To capture a schooner and a few little things like that. Come into the hydrographic office with me. I’m on a blind course so far.”

“Sure, Dan,” replied the gunner’s mate, who appeared to take life as it came. “The lieutenant in charge is a friend of mine—not one of the chesty kind that tries to put it all over an enlisted man. We were in a destroyer together. I’m on my way to see him now.”

They were affably received; and, better still, the lieutenant showed himself an expert navigator by finding the Seven Islands after pawing over several charts. He suggested:

“Go to Prince Edward Island and pick up some sort of a sailing craft or power boat from there. Drop me a line, will you, Leonard? It’s a safe bet you are up to something. Two of a kind, at a guess.”

“The St. John’s steamer sails to-morrow,” said Dan. “We are much obliged, lieutenant. Come along, Max. We’ll eat and discuss things.”

When the chivalrous mission had been confided to him, the navy man insisted on sharing the expenses of the relief expedition, but confessed that his balance with the paymaster at the Charlestown Yard was painfully small.

“It’s not up to you to spend a solitary cent,” warmly protested Dan. “This is my picnic. The saving habit didn’t take hold of me until lately, but I’m a couple of hundred strong. We’ll go as far as we can and swim the rest of the way.”

A week later, they were bargaining with an amphibious citizen of George town for the hire of a leaky sloop which looked unfit to take to sea. They could afford nothing better after reserving cash enough for provisions. So long as this dilapidated tub could stay afloat and carry sail, they saw no cause for worry. Notwithstanding the verdict of Eudora, a reckless lover had his advantages. A prudent one would have remained at home.

Light-heartedly they hoisted a threadbare jib and a rotten mainsail and filled away in a wind that pelted them with spray. This was sheer romance, and they loved it for its own sake, because they were in the lusty twenties. The sloop had a cabin for shelter, two bunks, and an oil stove. While one man steered, the other struggled with the frying pan and coffeepot; and at night they kept her going watch and watch. When the straining seams took in too much water, they fell to with a hand pump and a bucket. A few days of this, and Max Leonard was haggard and heavy-eyed, for he was of a lighter build than the deep-chested mate of the Endeavor. But there were no complaints, and never a sign of shirking. The sloop held together, thanks to good luck and better seamanship, and they were putting the miles over her stern every day. What more could a man ask?

“It begins to look as if we might really fetch somewhere with this bundle of boards, Dan,” said the gunner, as he sprawled in the cockpit for a brief respite and rolled a cigarette. “Far be it from me to crab the game, but your plans are a bit hazy. If it’s a case of sealed orders, isn’t it about time to pipe all hands aft and loosen up?”

Mr. Sloan rubbed his head and appeared perplexed as he replied: “Eudora wants to see me. That’s the answer. She’s not the kind to borrow trouble. After we get ashore, do you mean, Max? I had no time to size this Mannice up, barring the fact that he left a bad taste in my mouth. Wait till we live with him a day or two.”

“Get his number, eh? Is he bad medicine? Will he start something? How many men are there in the outfit?”

“Enough to make it squally for us if he has fooled them as he did Captain Kempton,” said Dan; “but we’ll drop in pleasant and peaceful for a friendly visit. I don’t propose to queer myself with Eudora by hurting anybody unless I have to. She has a funny idea that I like disturbances. It was this way, Max. Towboat hands are a hard lot, and whenever I disciplined a roustabout, he would think it his duty to muster his friends in the next port and try to give me a trimming.”

“Sure. You’re a peace congress,” scoffed the other, “and we are bound for Seven Islands on a diplomatic mission, all grape juice and kind words.”

While the sloop labored on her course, the embattled treasure seekers were deadlocked in an armed truce. The only sane solution, of course, was for them to join forces and agree to divide the spoils, as suggested by Mrs. Bodge. The professor and Captain Kempton objected because each believed himself to be the possessor of the only genuine document bequeathed to posterity by the red-handed Peleg Peterson. Sentries continued to guard the excavations in which the eager shovels no longer made the sand fly. The sailors from the two schooners were ready to renew hostilities at the drop of the hat.

It was early in this lull that the owner of the island wandered over to pay his respects and transact business. Captain Kempton was in a testy mood, and this complication annoyed him. Elmer Stackpole hitched up his overalls, bit off a sector of plug cut, and pleasantly reiterated:

"Ten dollars a day for each and every day from when you landed. I dunno as I ought to be so liberal. Accordin’ to the laws of this here Dominion of Canady, the treasure belongs to me; but I’m not a graspin’ man and money is the root of all evil.”

“But we’re not digging, and I don’t see any way to tackle it again without killing a few of those other fools,” rapped out the skipper.

“Makes no difference to me, cap’n. Settle your own squabbles. You’re here, and you look like a man that is sot in his ways. Be on my island some time longer, won’t ye?”

“I intend to wear that addle-headed professor out,” declared the mariner.

“Then I’ll collect to date,” cheerfully replied Mr. Stackpole. “No use to fuss. You ought to seen me before you come here and landed. I’m a poor man, but there’s justice for all in the Dominion of Canady.”

“How do I know you own this island?”

“Step across and see my house, and I’ve got papers to prove it. Ten dollars a day is terrible reasonable.”

With a sigh, Captain Kempton counted out the money. When not led astray by the glitter of pirates’ gold, he had an instinctive respect for the rights of property. And he had troubles enough. He chuckled as Elmer Stackpole trudged along the beach to collect tribute from Professor Bodge.

Toward nightfall of this same day, a shabby sloop, her sails torn, crept toward the island. A gale had almost finished her, but no distress signal flew from the mast. Slowly she drifted into the bay and came to anchor between the two schooners. Two men jumped into a dory and pulled for the beach. Eudora’s glad cry of recognition startled her father, who roughly exclaimed:

“I wasn’t quite sure of it. Dan Sloan? What’s he doing here? You told him, did you? He is after the treasure.”

“How absurd! He—he never dared to call me a treasure,” and she colored vividly, for her thoughts had betrayed her.

“I don’t trust him,” returned the captain, who was a man of one idea. “He may have half a dozen men hiding in the cabin of that sloop. I have heard some hard things said of Dan Sloan. He wouldn’t stop at a thing like this. He must have figured that he could get here ahead of us.”

William Marmaduke Mannice, uneasily hovering within earshot, had been smitten with a sense of panic. He took no stock in the captain’s mad and foolish surmise, for he knew better. This formidable Dan Sloan had come to square accounts with him. Eudora had sent him some word, before leaving home, that she was unhappy and afraid and suspicious of the voyage. The island was not large enough to hide Mr. Mannice, and he therefore summoned his wits to aid him. The captain’s outburst gave him a cue. Slipping away from the group, he hastened along the beach, crossed the barrier, and sought an interview with Professor Bodge.

The latter gentleman backed away as though expecting to be assaulted, but Mannice flourished a white handkerchief and explained;

“It’s for your interests as well as ours. If we allow the men from that sloop to come ashore, there will be hell to pay and more of it. I know one of them. He got the tip before we sailed. Do you want another party in this quarrel?”

“God forbid!” the professor ejaculated. “Are you sure of this? They look like tough customers.”

“No doubt of it. Captain Kempton thinks there are more of them aboard the sloop. This Dan Sloan, the leader, would rather scrap than eat. He comes from Falmouth, the captain’s home town. Do you get me?”

“And your advice is to bury the hatchet and act together in the face of this mutual danger?”

“You’re on. If they need food or repairs, all right. Our sailors can fit them out to make the next port. But they mustn’t set foot on the island, understand?”

“I quite agree with you,” assented Professor Bodge, who saw no reason to doubt the word of the enemy.

Mannice turned to look at the dory which had halted at some distance from the beach and was lifting on the small swells that rolled in from outside. Dan Sloan rested on his oars, and his fond vision searched out Eudora, who stood apart from the others.

“I came as fast as the wind would let me,” he shouted to her across the water. “Are you all safe and sound?”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Dan!” the dearly remembered voice came back to him. “I didn’t expect you to——”

Captain Kempton waved an impatient arm and interrupted: “It won’t do, Sloan. Go back to your vessel. This place is overcrowded.”

“Well, you have turned pirate for fair,” was the reply. “And the other bunch of outlaws is swarming over to join you. Warned off, am I?”

“You are welcome to stay anchored in the bay. And I’ll send whatever you need.”

“Lend a man, then, to pump the old coffin out. Our backs are broken. A dozen of you against us? We seem to be outvoted.”

Ingloriously Dan whirled the dory about, and, with unhurried stroke, rowed back to the forlorn sloop. It was an anticlimax, but Max Leonard accepted it like a philosopher, observing, as he scrubbed the frying pan:

“No landing party is supposed to storm a position against odds like that. What’s the other outfit, the lanky gent with the gold glims? Who opened the door of his cage, I wonder? All bug-house, Dan. Here’s this Captain Joseph Kempton. A lovely father-in-law he’ll make, unless he comes to. He treats you like a burglar.”

“Captain Kidd sounds more like it,” said Dan, with a trace of resentment. “I was never any too popular with him, but this is the limit. They intend to patrol the island to keep us from sneaking ashore anywhere. Mannice will look after that. He is scared to death.”

“Do we beat it, or do we stand pat?”

“We take the dory after dark, and we run the blockade, Max. Do you expect me to sit out here and twiddle my thumbs while the finest girl in the world is no farther away than that? Shame on you! Beat it? Is that what they teach you in the navy?”

CHAPTER VII.

A black shadow of foreboding enveloped William Marmaduke Mannice. It might be possible to postpone the crisis, but sooner or later the implacable and muscular lover of Eudora would get him if he didn’t watch out. As a profitable holiday season, life on the island had lost its charms. It behooved him to have other plans in readiness. At a pinch, he might pretend illness and persuade Captain Kempton, who could not be deaf to the dictates of humanity, to send him to the mainland in the schooner. And, while he warily awaited the turn of events, and kept one eye on the menacing sloop in the bay, he would endeavor to increase his emergency funds. He had done fairly well before leaving Falmouth, thanks to the captain’s high regard, what with padding expense bills and extracting loans. But every little bit helped, and a modern gentleman of fortune could not afford to overlook the humble opportunities.

The moon rose late, and he therefore made an unostentatious exit from the camp while the night was still obscure. Blundering with difficulty across the island, barking his shins and swearing often, he discerned at length a lighted window of Elmer Stackpole’s hut which served him as a beacon. The ragged lord of the isle was mending a net and contentedly humming that salt water classic, “Whisky Johnny.” At the entrance of Mr. Mannice, he produced a bottle of the same and two teacups.

“I was comin’ over after supper, but my rheumatics is bad again,” said he. “Fetched it to me, did ye? Ten dollars lawful money for your crew? Pay as you go is my motto.”

“Guess again,” sociably smiled the visitor, as he let three fingers gurgle into the teacup. “Happy days, old top. It occurred to me to talk a little business to you. We are both practical men. With a proper start, you would have made a high-class grafter.”

“Meanin' to say I charge ’em more’n I ought for ransackin’ my premises?” protested Mr. Stackpole.

“Twenty dollars a day is too much,” he was earnestly informed. “You never knew there was so much money in the world. Let me see. That first haul of yours amounted to a hundred, didn’t it? And every twenty-four hours you ring the bell again. It won’t do, Elmer.”

“It was all settled with the cap’n and the perfesser, an’ they didn’t kick no more’n was natural, Mr. Mannice. You are wastin’ your breath.”

“Not much. We split it fifty-fifty. That means the roll in your jeans and the daily holdup hereafter. I shall stroll over in the evening and collect.”

The businesslike announcement staggered the honest fisherman. He pinched his nose with a pair of tarry fingers, then solemnly gulped down another drink and querulously declaimed:

“A pirate couldn’t use no awfuller language. Jokin’, be ye? Red licker affects you that way? It was all settled an’ agreed. I’ll report this to the cap’n, that’s what I’ll do, as sure as guns.”

“You will look pleasant and shut up,” briskly replied Mannice. “And you will also put up now at once.”

“What if I don’t?” And there was an ugly note in the other man’s voice.

“That’s easy. The captain’s pirate’s chart is a fake. If he finds it out, he will quit the island. In that case, the professor will soon dig up the rest of the beach and pass up the job in disgust. Then you lose both parties. With my arrangement, you can still get your rake-off of twenty per, and net half of it.”

“His pirate’s chart is a fake—it don’t amount to nothin’?” demanded Mr. Stackpole. “You’re afraid to tell him so.”

“I’ll find a way to get out from under. That’s my affair. It’s safe to be frank with you, for you won’t peep. Spill the secret, and it’s all off.”

Cupidity blinded the fisherman, and, besides, he was impressed by Mannice’s air of importance. Even ten dollars a day was affluence. Reluctantly he reached for his wallet, but paused to say:

“It’s to your interest to keep ’em all here as long as you can. S’posin’ we call it an understandin’ by which you use your influence to patch up the quarrel between ’em, so as all hands go on diggin’ a few weeks longer. An’ I’m payin’ you as a kind o’ silent partner.”

“It sounds a bit less raw,” agreed the young man. “Thank you. The amount is correct. The drinks are on you.”

During the course of this interesting interview, a dory moved out from the sloop in the bay and vanished behind a promontory with no more noise than a ghost. Like a gray shadow, it slid seaward, safe from the observation of a shore patrol, and then drifted while the two occupants looked and listened. Again the oars dipped gently in the muffled tholepins. The dory was guided among the submerged rocks by a kind of sixth sense, the quick ear detecting the murmuring wash of the tide where the eye failed to see through the gloom. The keel grated at length, and Dan Sloan waded to land, Leonard at his heels. Straight for the camp they headed, to approach it in the rear. There was no misadventure until they had drawn near enough to glimpse the flicker of a fire on the beach.

Dan halted and peered at something which moved in the undergrowth. Three strides, and he collided with the sailor who had been detailed to watch this landward side. The tussle was silent and exceedingly brief. The back of the man’s neck smote the earth as his heels flew up, and a hand was clapped across his mouth.

“Stay with him and sit on his head, Max,” whispered the victor. “If he acts fussy, poke him in the stomach.”

“Leave me your necktie, you dude,” replied the willing shipmate. “I’ll rig a stopper for his jaw tackle. Good luck! Give her my regards.”

That wounded sea cook, Harvey Mattoon, had been given a tent to himself. It stood at one end of the camp, a little removed from the others. He was sitting in a canvas chair with his leg propped up on a box, thinking his own thoughts, which were more distressful than ever. Another crew of treasure seekers to snarl the situation! Apart from this, he had nothing against Dan Sloan, a good-natured lad who had often tossed him a line and towed him into Falmouth with his lobster pots. Just then Harvey’s sleeve was twitched, and he knew it was Dan himself that said;

“Steady! I made you out by the light of the fire. They can’t see me through the wall of the tent.”

“Jerusalem the Golden!” was the old man’s epithet as he twisted himself in the chair. “The devil himself couldn’t surprise me worse.”

“I am a man of peace, Harvey, so don’t yell for help. I want to see Miss Eudora. Will you pass her the word to slip out of the camp and—— But what’s wrong with your leg? Docked for repairs? Gout, you rascal?”

“I was durned near assassinated, Dan—smack through this poor old leg of mine. The lunatic professor done it. Miss Eudora has had to take charge of the cookin’. Don’t get mixed up in this mess, whatever you do. It’s discouragin’ enough now.”

“A squabble over a treasure they haven’t found?” grinned Dan. “It’s high time I took a hand and discouraged them some more. And so you can’t take a message to Miss Eudora?”

“I can call her over here,” answered the cook, groping for a wooden potato masher beside the cot. “She hung a tin pan close by me, so I could whack it when I needed her. A clever girl, and kind as can be.”

“The wisest ever,” promptly agreed the infatuated young man. “And wisdom seems to be at a premium in this ship’s company. Sound the alarm, Harvey. I’m pressed for time.”

The cook struck the tin pan, and Dan Sloan could have sworn that his heart was beating even louder. A graceful figure detached itself from the group seated upon logs around the fire and came swiftly toward the tent. In the eyes of old Harvey, she was a ministering angel, but the mate of the Endeavor saw the maid of his desire, very human, warm, and true and tender but not yet won.

“Are you uncomfortable? What can I do to cheer you up?” she said, outside the tent.

“S-ssh! Steady it is!” chuckled the cook. “If you want to do me a favor, take this worthless roustabout of a Dan Sloan off somewhere and lose him.”

Eudora’s hand flew to her breast; she swayed a little and stared into the shadowy tent. Dan murmured a greeting. No explanation was needed. Without a word, she followed him until they were safely away from the beach, among the gray boulders and the twisted firs. Too much the gentleman was this bold sailor of hers to demand a hearing for himself. Eudora’s sense of obligation he felt to be a barrier, and it was unfair to take advantage of her gratitude. Let his presence speak for itself, his service plead bis cause. Her arm brushed his sleeve, and her face was turned up to his as they halted. Her nearness troubled him, but his honor was strong to withstand temptation, and he fought down the words he longed to say.

“Oh, Dan! Did you really come because I needed you?” whispered Eudora, with a sigh like that of a contented child.

“Of course you thought I would light my pipe with your letter and promptly forget it?” he asked, in his masterful way. “It found me in Boston, and I made two jumps, one to say good-by to the skipper and the other to reach the dock.”

“I didn’t imagine you would linger very long,” she honestly confessed. “Whom did you bring with you?”

“An old pal, Max Leonard. We used to sail out of Falmouth together as boys in a four-master. He volunteered for this cruise, on leave from the navy. I’d introduce him, Eudora, but he is busy sitting on the head of one of your father’s crew, out here in the bushes somewhere.”

“How awkward for both of them, Dan! Then I must stay only a minute.”

“Oh, don’t worry about us,” was the careless reply. “We enjoy it. Now tell me about your troubles.”

“They have all flown away,” said Eudora, with a low, happy laugh. “I feel as though you had taken command.”

“That’s my humble intention, as soon as I get my bearings,” he declared, not in a boasting manner. “You see, my dear, Leonard and I have come too far to loaf and look on. He is strong for kidnaping this swab of a Mannice and dumping him where the walking is poor. Would that help?”

“I don’t know, Dan. He deserves it, but the mischief is done. My father is determined to stay here. This ridiculous Professor Bodge has a pirate’s chart which I am quite sure is genuine. At least he found an old brass shoe buckle in the sand. And there is no reason to suspect his chart, while I am more and more skeptical about ours. But father flies off the handle if I dare hint at it.”

“Then why not shanghai your father?” hopefully ventured the briny cavalier. “Snatch him away from the island, and he may get over these delusions. Max and I can turn the trick as easy as falling overboard. Wait until he happens to be in your schooner. He goes off to her every day, I presume. We’ll lay alongside in our dory, slam the companion hatch shut while the skipper is below, cut the cable, and make sail for Halifax. You can be with him, Eudora, and if you’ll tend the wheel now and then we can handle the schooner after a fashion.”

“But that is out-and-out piracy,” mirthfully objected the girl. “And what becomes of the crew?”

“Let Professor Bodge fetch them away in his vessel. It’s in a good cause, and what’s another pirate more or less?”

“If you could only convince him that Mannice is a fraud! I am sure of it because he acts like one. Father is so honest that if this could be proved he would think he had no right to interfere with Professor Bodge. But what about you, Dan? It is so selfish of me to talk about our troubles when you and your splendid friend, Mr. Leonard, are even worse off.”

“How do you figure that?” he blithely demanded. “We are busy and happy.”

“They are bound to keep you off the island, and your boat looks as if she had made her last voyage.”

“Oh, that frigate of ours has a few kicks left in her. We passed a sand bank a little to the west of here. We can beach her at low water and calk the seams.”

Dan wheeled and stood listening, his head up, his tall figure tautly poised. There was a noise of floundering in the bushes and the rattle of loose stones. Surmising that Max was in difficulties with his prisoner, Dan begged Eudora to wait for him, and ran to the rescue. To his great surprise, he found the twain precisely where he had left them, and, instead of pounding each other’s countenances, they sat amicably side by side, and two cigarettes glowed like sparks.

“Ahoy, there! Is that you, Dan?” queried the naval aid. “It’s all right. I’ve met this lad before. I put a kink in his windpipe, but he managed to cuss a few, and I guessed him as Tom Fallon. He owes me money.”

“Out of Falmouth, is he? The red-headed dock rat! Wasn’t he a deck hand in the Dauntless tug three years ago?”

“Sure I was, Mr. Sloan,” huskily muttered the captive, rubbing his throat. “Why didn’t you tell me you had come to call on a young lady? I’d ha’ kept clear.”

“He has to, Dan,” said Leonard, “until he pays me that fourteen dollars,” said Leonard. “I’ve got him sewed up. There’s a spark of decency in him.”

“Then what was the racket I heard? Listen! Somebody is coming from the other side of the island, and he's making heavy weather of it. Shut up, you two, and let me investigate!”

Mr. William Marmaduke Mannice had set out on the return journey after the business interview with Elmer Stackpole, and was indeed finding progress arduous. Once he wandered into a bog, and again the darkness so confused him that he mistook the direction and all but fell down a steep slope into the sea. Clumsily he trudged and groped until voices were heard; and, with a grunt of relief, he believed himself almost within sight of camp. Then a towering shape, of the dimensions of a giant to his affrighted vision, appeared athwart his path. Mannice stood as if petrified for a moment, remembered the sentry, and nervously exclaimed:

“It’s all right, Tom. By Jove, you loomed up as big as a house. Spooky out here.”

The apparation scratched a match to make sure of the fact. He had a distasteful recollection of that blandly patronizing voice. The flare illumined one face, florid, heavy, a little flabby, the other intrepid, candid, and humorous. Mannice yelped and dodged, his arm upraised. It was enough to upset a chap’s nerves, this meddlesome sailor being positively the last person in the world whom he desired to meet alone in the dark. He tried to shout for reënforcements, but Dan Sloan was too quick for him. The mate of the Endeavor had been trained to action instantaneous and efficient. In his pocket was the wooden potato masher which he had thoughtfully purloined from the tent of Harvey Mattoon in the event of collision with more sentries. It was beneath his dignity to offer Mannice a fair fight. The slippery blackguard didn’t deserve it. Deftly, therefore, he jumped to meet the awkward lunge and swung the humble potato masher. It tapped Mr. Mannice just behind the right ear, as intended, and he sat down violently. His eyes were full of stars, comets, and asteroids, not to mention rockets and pinwheels.

“If I have to do it again, I am liable to crack your crust,” he heard young Mr. Sloan remark in a matter-of-fact manner, and the voice seemed to come from a great distance. “If I wasn’t making a record for peace and order. I’d jolt the head clean off shoulders.”

The dizzy William Marmaduke put his hands to his head, as if to assure himself that it was still there. He was under the impression that nothing less weighty than a boulder had hit him. The sailor stopped to prod him in the ribs with the handle of the potato masher, suggesting that he set his engines going as they must be starting for the beach.

“Me? Go with you? What the——” Mannice expostulated.

“Not so loud, my boy. Please don’t give me an excuse to put your friends in mourning.”

Mightily jerked to his feet, Mr. Mannice tottered in the direction indicated by the grip of calloused fingers which were using his left ear in the fashion of a rudder. A twinge more acute, and he obediently veered to starboard, the fear of death in his heart. It was far worse than humiliating. Max Leonard called out cautiously to discover whether these were friends or foes, and Dan informed him:

“Great luck! It’s the fat villain of the piece. I stopped his flow of language, and he is coming along with us. Go back to your camp, Tom Fallon, or parade up and down and earn your pay. This is no business of yours.”

“Tom is neutral, fourteen dollars’ worth,” said the gunner. “And he loves this Mannice.”

“I’m a cross-eyed Finn if I don’t hope you murder him,” devoutly exclaimed Fallon, with which he showed a nice tact and withdrew from the scene.

“Forward march!” commanded Dan. “Give me a lift, Max. His knees have begun to sag, the big kettle of mush! We’ll throw him into the dory.”

“Aye, aye, admiral. Do we tie a weight to his feet, or does he walk the plank?”

“He would look ornamental hanged at the yardarm, Max. Let’s get him aboard the sloop first. Then we shall have to sail out of the bay with what wind there is and find another anchorage. We want no interference while we are prying the truth out of this festive beach comber.”

CHAPTER VIII.

As a man who had hitherto trusted to his powers of persuasion, Mannice was unfitted to cope with this cruel emergency. He was a liar himself, but he sadly feared that this brute of a Dan Sloan had a habit of keeping his word. Moreover, it would be no trouble at all to dispose of a corpse and leave never a trace behind. It was a piratical game from start to finish, and he had fallen into the hands of the most desperate freebooter of the lot. If jealousy were a motive, the abduction was a bad joke because Eudora, in spite of his ardent efforts to win her regard, had shown an increasing dislike for him—to the utter surprise of Mannice, whose vanity was great.

“I came here partly to win the little spitfire,” thought Mannice, as they hustled him toward the dory. “But, confound her, I believe she would be mean enough to give me the laugh if she saw me now. I’m in the devil of a fix unless Captain Kempton pulls off some kind of a rescue stunt.”

This was a hope to cling to. Meanwhile, the wise course was to be docile and irritate his captors no more than possible. Meekly, therefore, he suffered himself to be shoved down the rocks and dumped into the dory; nor did he have anything to say. Dan began to fear he had swung the potato masher too hard and inflicted some real injury.

“Piffle! You didn’t dent his bean,” said the unfeeling Max, as the dory moved seaward. “He’s playing possum or scared stiff. I’ll bet I could bring him to with a rope’s end.”

“No violence! I’m opposed to it,” declared Dan. “At least, not till we have held a proper court-martial.”

They steered for the bay, but drifted outside, for the moon was climbing from the sea, and already a soft radiance etched in dark relief the rugged contour of the island and trembled on the rippling water. This made it difficult to put Mannice aboard the sloop and smuggle him into the cabin without arousing the attention of those on the beach.

“Leave him in the dory with me, then,” suggested Max. “I’ll make him lie flat and stay put, if I have to fan him with the butt end of an oar.”

“I get you. Slip me alongside the sloop, and I’ll work her out with the jib until she is clear of the bay. They’ll be glad enough to see us go. The old man will think we have chucked it up.”

“Not if he knows you as well as his daughter does.”

Most of the people in the camps went early to bed, and no alarm was raised when a windlass creaked and the unwelcome sloop moved slowly toward open water until her dory appeared to take her in tow. Harvey Mattoon still sat in the door of his tent, with his leg propped upon a box. The forced inaction made him restless, and this had been an exciting evening, what with the visit of Dan Sloan and the stolen tryst with Eudora. She, too, was wakeful and disinclined to leave the beach. When the sloop began to slide away so silently, she hastened to confer with the cook, who vouchsafed:

“He wouldn’t run off and desert you, no, not for a million dollars’ worth of Peleg Peterson’s gold and diamonds. Mebbe he cal’ates it’s rash to lay too close to a hostile coast, and I told him how dreadful careless the professor was with a rifle.”

“And he will come back, you are sure, Harvey? He told me to wait for him, but I heard a scrimmage and that was the last of Dan. Tom Fallon said not to worry, but he wouldn’t explain.”

“Dan is maneuverin’,” confidently replied the cook. “He may ha’ been free with his fists in times past, but he knows when strategy is the winnin’ card in the deck. You’ve steadied him, Eudora, and afore we left Falmouth I heard his uncle was mighty well pleased with him—Henry F. Bowers, the big man of the Blue Star Towin’ and Transportation Company. If Dan gets out of this without landin’ in jail, he’s more’n likely to get a boat of his own. Cap’n Sloan, hey?”

“It’s good news, and you do know how to cheer me up,” smiled Eudora, “but poor Dan is not yet out of this. Neither are we.”

“You can sleep easier than you have in weeks,” said old Harvey. “Dan is maneuverin’, I tell ye.”

With a languid breeze, the sloop crept away from the reefs and then coasted along the western side of the island until her crew felt secure in anchoring so long as the weather should hold fair. William Marmaduke Mannice, who had been rudely flung into the cabin, was invited to present himself on deck and be sociable. His asspect was disconsolate, and he tenderly caressed his left ear. Courteously Dan waved him to a seat and observed:

“Tell a funny story. Make us laugh. Show us how your entertaining ways made such a hit with Captain Kempton.”

“Nothing doing,” was the sulky reply. “It’s your move. Supposing you explain this outrage.”

“Right you are,” briskly spoke Dan. “Straight talk, eh? I’ll put the questions, and you are the lad to give the answers. Here, Max, drop that potato masher! Don’t intimidate the witness. Now, Mr. Mannice, are you a newspaper man in good standing? I left port too quick to overhaul your record, but I have a hunch that you were fired as a crook and were shy a job when you turned up at Falmouth.”

“I found a story there that I could sell,” muttered the other. “Anything wrong in that?”

“But you sized the captain up as an easy mark and better graft?” persisted the inquisitor. “You discovered that he was daffy on this pirate’s treasure proposition before you found the chart in the Wanderer?”

“You accuse me of planting it?” hotly exclaimed Mannice. “You’re thick-headed enough to believe anything.”

“Anything good of you? Wrong again. So you prefer to turn nasty and spar for time. Lead him to the pump, Max, and give him a two-hour turn at it. I didn’t see anything of the man the captain offered to lend us. Make this sundowner sweat, understand?”

“Fine! Turn in for a nap, Dan. Where did I lay that potato masher? Come along, William. Make yourself useful.”

There was no refusal. It suggested itself to Mannice that these scoundrels were stupidly playing into his hands. If he could manage to keep a stiff upper lip until daylight, his friends would miss him and at once search for the sloop. This was his chance of salvation, to avert summary justice on the heels of an enforced confession. This Dan Sloan was only guessing. He hadn’t caught him with the goods. Obediently Mannice bent over the handle of the pump and began to lift the Gulf of St. Lawrence out of this leaky basket of a sloop. At first the motion seemed absurdly easy, this slow swaying up and down with so little weight to lift. He endured the first hour of it without protest while Max Leonard, the taskmaster, lounged with his back against the mast. Then, quite unexpectedly, the labor became a torture. He faltered, tried to stand erect, and was sternly exhorted:

“Pump, you beggar, pump, or tell me the truth, so help you! Man, I’m ashamed of you, so grand and handsome, and curling up like a yellow dog. I had to stand one spell of four hours with that pump yesterday. Great exercise! Go to it!”

They were alone on deck, and Dan’s snores were audible. Mannice was taller and heavier than his lithe, sinewy tormentor, and the dory trailed along side. Overpower him, and freedom beckoned. Mannice considered it, shook his head, and knew he was a physical coward. Doggedly he resumed pumping, hating himself for his fear, and miserably conscious that he must collapse long before daylight. The gush of water from the spout became an intermittent trickle, the strokes feebly irregular. Max yawned, berated him for a worthless lubber, and invented dire threats. Mannice let the handle drop, slumped to the deck in an unsightly heap, and buried his face in his hands. He was weeping with exhaustion, pain, chagrin.

Max was profoundly disgusted, and yet he could not banish an impulse of pity. Instead of kicking the object in the ribs, he aroused Dan and announced:

“He’s all in. You were too harsh with little Willie. On the level, he is a total loss, and no insurance.”

“What! Did you break his proud spirit so soon? Is he ready to tell his right name?”

“Not to-night, Dan. He’s fast asleep by now. It has been one of those nights for Mr. Mannice. This last stunt broke him.”

This was the fact. They found him inert, wrapped in soothing slumber. By his head and his heels they carried him into the cabin, and Dan returned to the deck to stand his lonely watch. The sun had risen when Max poked a drowsy head from the hatch to say:

“Not a drop of water in the tank. I just drank the last cup. No coffee for breakfast? I can’t stand for that.”

“Then we’ll have to go ashore and look for it. It’s safe to leave Mannice. Lock him in. He is still pounding his sprained ear in earnest slumber.”

“It is wiser for the two of us to land. If they are as fond of Mannice as we are, the whole beach will be turning out to find him.”

So unobtrusive was the driftwood shack of Elmer Stackpole that they had failed to sight it from seaward, and therefore assumed that the treasure seekers were the only tenants, nor in this hasty quest for fresh water did they delay to explore the island. At random they walked inland until a patch of greener vegetation caught Dan’s eye. It was a bog surrounding a small pond of water which, although brackish, was fit for use. Bemired to the knees, after a long time for so short a distance to traverse, they filled two pails and toiled back to the shore and the carefully hidden dory.

It was very shortly after they left the sloop that Mannice had awakened with sundry groans and a dismal countenance. It would have been difficult to identify him as the debonair adventurer who had so beguiled Captain Joseph Kempton. He wondered what new disaster awaited him. The sloop was curiously silent; no voices, not a footfall on deck. He found that he had been locked in. Through the small, round windows, he was able to view the little vessel from bow to stern. Neither of his captors was visible. Waiting and listening a few minutes longer, he concluded that they had gone ashore on some errand.

In their absence, Captain Kempton might be searching along the coast and think the sloop deserted. This slender hope inspired Mannice to shout with all his might. If there had been a welkin in the neighborhood, indubitably he would have made it ring. He set up a frantic clamor like a foghorn. It rolled across the water and startled an elderly solitary in ragged overalls who just then paddled a skiff around a near-by point of land. The tide was right for catching bait, and Elmer Stackpole had crawled early out of bed. The sloop puzzled him, and the uproar proceeding from her cabin was worth looking into.

Sedately he rowed out, made fast to the stern, and hauled himself aboard. On hands and knees, he squinted into a window and was able to discern the lone occupant.

“Blazin’ bilge water!” cried the hermit, by way of profanity. “What are you a-doin’ of here? I thought you was several, jedgin’ by the sounds. Serves you right. If you want to get out, hand up my fifty dollars that was unlawfully took.”

“Will you promise to take me to my camp?” stipulated the prisoner, in no position to haggle. “Quick, now, or they’ll catch you here and——”

“Not very popular with the crew?” grinned Elmer. “Tried to hold ’em up for ten dollars a day? I’m in no hurry. I’ve done nothin’ to be shet up in a cabin for. Poke my money through the window and swear you won’t make no more collections, and I dunno but what I may bust the padlock on this hatch and turn you loose. For the general good of humanity, I ought to leave you be and scuttle the sloop.”

A roll of bills was shoved through the window, and Elmer made sure the amount was correct before he bestirred himself. With an iron belaying pin, he twisted the hasp of the lock and permitted William Marmaduke to emerge. The tousled young man lowered himself into the skiff with never a word of thanks, and Elmer pulled vigorously in the direction of the camps.

“Steer in behind the rocks as soon as you can,” exhorted Mannice. “Those two fellows will chase us if they get a look at me.”

“Interestin’, not to say curious,” was the reply. “And who might they be? High-handed, ain’t they?”

“Another outfit after the treasure. They took me to be the leader of our party, and decoyed me aboard their rotten sloop.”

“Well, now, I call that quite gratifyin’ news,” beamed the thrifty fisherman. “It’ll cost ’em ten dollars a day, same as the others, and I don’t have to divide it with you any more.”

“Take my tip and don’t try to collect it,” bitterly advised Mannice. “They will make you wish you hadn’t.”

“Perhaps I’d better wait and look ’em over. They sound kind o’ different from the cap’n and the perfesser.”

The skiff had disappeared beyond the nearest point of land to the southward when Dan Sloan and his comrade returned to their dory. As they put out for the sloop, Max said contritely;

“I felt almost sorry for the big stiff when he dropped in his tracks last night. Let’s go easier with him and treat him more like a man. He is pretty near ready to tell all he knows.”

“I agree with you,” good-humoredly returned Dan.

In this praiseworthy mood, they leaped aboard the sloop, discovered that the cabin hatch had been slid back, stared into the empty cabin, and then looked at each other.

“Flown the coop!” said Max. “Who let him out?”

“Captain Kempton, of course. We bungled it. Honestly, I never dreamed they would be up and doing as soon as this.”

“Nor I. Well, we have spilled the beans. Next orders, please. Do we march against the camp?”

“Breakfast first,” decidedly replied Dan, whose expression was rueful. “This Mannice bird has certainly put it up to us.”

CHAPTER IX.

Before undertaking another campaign, it was necessary to pay some attention to the battered sloop which displayed more and more unwillingness to stay afloat. Accordingly they shifted her to the sand bank which lay a little farther out to sea and let the falling tide leave her resting on the gently shelving bottom. As boys, they had built and patched, and tinkered with boats of their own, and they went to work with the handiness of sailors who knew how to make the best of the tools at hand. With strips of canvas soaked in a pail of old paint, they plugged the seams that needed it most. Then with block and tackle rigged to the mast-head, they canted her over and stopped the worst of the cracks on the other side of the hull.

The flooding tide compelled them to knock off in the afternoon, and the sloop was towed to her anchorage. In Dan’s opinion, after careful deliberation, it was advisable to attempt another meeting with Eudora and ask her advice. By this time, she might have persuaded her misguided parent to declare an armistice. If he would consent to an interview, these two unselfish argonauts were confident of their ability to adjust the absurd misunderstanding. They had come to help, not to hinder him.

With this pacific intention, they started ashore after an early supper, but sought a landing place at the extreme end of the island in order to avoid being intercepted. It surprised them to sight a half-decked power boat idly rocking offshore, and Leonard exclaimed:

“What do you know about that! Has she been here all the time, or did she come up from the east’ard to-day?”

“More treasure hunters. This is the original madhouse,” replied Dan.

They beached the dory, and had walked a short distance when a blue thread of smoke above the rocks caused one of them to say:

“Does anybody live here, or is that a camp that we overlooked? Let’s reconnoiter.”

Laying a course by the wisp of smoke, they came upon the lonely dwelling of Elmer Stackpole. On the chance of information, and hoping to bargain for provisions, Dan approached the closed door, but halted and motioned to his companion. Inside could be heard two voices in earnest dialogue. A snatch or two, and Dan comprehended that it was no sin to wait and listen. Elmer’s intonations were peevish, and he was interrupted by a younger man who waxed impatient.

“It’s this way, Johnny,” said the hermit. “You’re bright and enterprisin’, and I give you credit. I ought to be proud of a nephew like you. But I never did agree to give you that much money.”

“That was my share last year,” protested the nephew. “And this Professor Bodge was a lot harder to fool. He’s a pretty sharp coot. It was a month before I got a nibble. And then I had to work it through a man in an old bookstore where Bodge used to rummage around.”

“I set here drawin’ them pirates’ charts in the winter, an’ buryin’ brass buckles and rusty cutlasses in the sand every spring,” complained the uncle, “and it was my scheme in the fust place.”

“Didn’t I write that piece about the old sailor that had Peleg Peterson’s chart handed down in his family and was robbed of it in Nova Scotia? And didn’t I get it printed in a newspaper and stir up a lot of talk about it?”

“That was last summer’s party,” corrected Uncle Elmer. “An’ you was paid for that.”

“But you are raking in extra money from this Captain Kempton,” persisted Johnny. “He is all velvet.”

“You can’t claim no credit for him. He just accidentally happened,” was the fretful response. “And he’s liable to quit any day. There’s two men come in a sloop to make a fuss and interfere with my business that’s been regular established for several seasons.”

“Yes, I’ve placed four of your charts for you, and now you squeal about a few dollars,” cried the nephew. “What brought this Captain Kempton to the island? I never sawed one of ’em off on him.”

“Somebody else stole your patent,” grinned the old man. “Interestin’, not to say curious. There’s a smooth, fat rascal with the cap’n, and his name is Mannice. He told me their chart was a fake, and he knew all about it.”

“Why did he give it away? Did he put up the job?”

“He was inclined to brag about it, Johnny. He bullied me into givin’ him half my profits, but I got ’em back again. Naturally I wasn’t liable to tell the cap’n on him.”

Dan Sloan opened the door and walked in without apology. Elmer’s dingy features were contorted, and the nephew turned pale. A clock ticked loudly on a shelf. There was no other sound. Then Max Leonard snickered. The tableau appealed to him as immensely ludicrous. Dan scowled ferociously, but his eyes twinkled as he said:

“Write it down and sign your names, both of you. Then we’ll all pay a visit to Professor Bodge and Captain Kempton.”

“Write w-what?” stammered the uncle.

“Get out of here!” declaimed the quaking nephew.

“With pen and ink, and we’ll sign as witnesses,” explained Dan, stepping nearer. “Make it short. You hatched one scheme, and Mannice confessed he was responsible for the other. Say, but you are a talented bunch. Peleg Peterson was a greenhorn.”

“You are desprite men, and there’s weapons in your clothes, no doubt of it,” sighed Elmer. “An’ your manners are dreadful bad, or you wouldn’ ha’ snooped outside. The law can’t tech us. I’m owner of this island and entitled to charge rent to landin’ parties.”

“Not this summer. Give up the coin you grafted from the professor and the skipper.”

Sorrowfully Elmer disgorged, after which Dan dictated while the nephew plied a tremulous pen. Their surrender was unconditional. Gloomily they affixed their signatures, and Dan pocketed the document. Escorting Mr. Stackpole by the arm, he led the procession while Max grasped Johnny by the collar and propelled him onward. In this manner, they crossed the island and marched out on the tented beach.

Eudora was first to meet them, and her triumphant champion rapidly explained matters. Her father was aboard his schooner, said she, and was there any way of breaking it to him gently? It would be a severe shock. Dan cogitated, and meanwhile William Marmaduke Mannice had approached, not too near, but close enough to become aware that the fat was in the fire. He cared to hear no more than mention of a confession and something about birds of a feather. And Dan Sloan was inquiring for him. He concluded that he had best absent himself from the excitement. Without delay he faded into the interior of the island.

“I just knew you couldn’t fail, Dan,” was Eudora’s eulogy. “Now let me help. I have been perfectly useless so far. You can tell father that you have all the evidence, but don’t show him the written confession, and say nothing about his chart. Let him think that Professor Bodge has been hoaxed——”

“And you will inform the professor that the joke is on your dad?”

“Exactly. I’ll run right over to see Mrs. Bodge. She’s a trump. And then, when these two dear, deluded men get together——”

“You have it, Eudora. I do want to let them down easy.”

The tidings spread to the faithful followers of Captain Kempton, and there were no signs of grief. All hands had tired of this bootless, tangled enterprise. Dan Sloan sculled out to the schooner and boldly climbed over the side. The skipper met him at the rail and signified that he was prepared to repel boarders. From the beach, the pantomime was both vigorous and eloquent, the young man explanatory, the older one expostulating and incredulous. The victory was with Dan, for he was permitted to walk aft and linger beneath the awning. Gradually the shipmaster’s gusty anger subsided. He found a chair and chewed a cigar while the narrator finished.

Wonderful to witness. Captain Kempton threw back his head and slapped his knee, while to those ashore was borne his hearty guffaw. He turned to glance at the professor’s camp, and again his mellow laugh carried joy to the heart of Eudora.

Simultaneously Mrs. Bodge was telling her gleeful husband: “Miss Kempton suspected it all along, but she had no proof. Oh, yes, it’s absolutely true. This sailor sweetheart of hers has the signed confession in his pocket. That odious Mannice deliberately deceived her father——”

“I knew his chart was bogus,” shouted Professor James Hyssop Bodge, “but you couldn’t tell him anything. Stubborn as a mule. Now he will clear out and let us alone, Ellen. He ought to have taken my word for it that our information was genuine. Can you imagine me being tricked as easily as that? Ha, ha, the joke is on Kempton, poor soul! He will feel badly cut up. But I mustn’t rub it in.”

Presently Captain Kempton disembarked, and Dan Sloan rowed him to the beach. The skipper was still jovial, but he managed to pull a sober face as he confided:

“Bodge will be a comical sight when you break the news. It would be indecent for me to crow over him. He was wrong and I was right, but you couldn’t beat any common sense into him with a capstan bar. And so this old rip of a Stackpole and his precious nephew palmed off a homemade chart on him, and he swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker! And a college professor, at that! He had no business meddling with it.”

“I know, sir,” demurely replied Dan, “but don’t be too hard on him. He is a landlubber. It would do no harm to sympathize with him. There’s no fun in hitting a man when he’s down.” .

“Right you are, my boy. I shall go over to see him at once.” Professor Bodge was already striding from his tent, and he met the captain halfway, at the rampart of sand which separated the rival excavations. Dan and Eudora followed, and Mrs. Bodge joined them. Smilingly the two leaders shook hands, and exchanged sentiments as follows:

“It is tough luck, Professor Bodge. You stood by your guns like a man, but those rogues had misled you.”

“What a pity, Captain Kempton, that Mannice was so untrustworthy and carried you off on this wild-goose chase after——”

They paused, gazed rather wildly at each other, and began again:

“There appears to be some misunderstanding, Captain Kempton.”

“Your language sounds hindside foremost, Professor Bodge.”

“I was referring to your unfortunate fiasco, sir.”

“And I was soft-hearted enough to want to express my regrets for your disappointment.”

The skipper’s face was growing scarlet, and he mopped it with a handkerchief. The professor’s spectacles flashed ominously, and he stood stiffly erect. This was the precise moment for the intervention of Eudora and Mrs. Bodge. They bade the bewildered disputants be silent. Dan fished out the confession and read it aloud slowly, with convincing emphasis. A signal to Max Leonard, and the drooping hermit and his pallid nephew were moved into the foreground. There ensued an interval of trying suspense while the spectators awaited an explosion on the rampart. The captain glared and the professor frowned. They were too flabbergasted for speech. Soon the meaning of the situation began to dawn on them. They were tarred with the same brush, two idiots who should have known better, and the joke was colossal.

"And so Mannice told that old scalawag that my chart was a fraud?” thundered the skipper. “Mannice made it himself, did he?”

“And the old scalawag made mine?” cried the professor. “And he buried the brass buckle? My dear man, if we permit ourselves to be sorry or angry, we shall make the greatest mistake in the world.”

“There is something in that,” admitted the skipper. “Every time I think of you and your chart, I shall laugh to the day of my death.”

“And you won’t mind, captain, if I enjoy my recollections of you?”

“I am older than you, Professor Bodge, and I should have known better.”

CHAPTER X.

There was no enmity between the treasure camps. The ghost of Peleg Peterson was laid, and no more would the dreams of his bloodstained booty trouble the minds and spoil the tempers of these estimable men. They were themselves again.

Cheerily the sailors began to pull down the tents and other shelters and bundle them aboard the two schooners. Harvey Mattoon had whittled himself a crutch and tried to help pack the kitchen gear. He bore the professor no more ill will. In his simple philosophy, all was well that ended well, and he would have a thrilling yarn to spin and a scar to show. He was the hero of the expedition, whatever Eudora might think of Dan Sloan.

With so many willing hands, a few hours sufficed to clear the beach. A calm was on the sea, and through the afternoon the trim schooners waited for a breeze. Twilight came, and the air was still warm and breathless. Dan and Eudora sauntered along the deserted beach, and she was pleading with him;

“But you mustn’t take the risk of sailing back in that wretched little sloop. Haven’t I been worried enough? Father has begged you to go with us in the Challenge, and you act so queer about it.”

“Max is game to make the return voyage if I say so,” he replied, after a pause. “Of course, if we abandoned the sloop, it wouldn’t cost much to square it with the owner. He said as much. But I couldn’t stand it to be in the same vessel with you and—and—well, you know why.”

“I want you to be happy, Dan. You have earned happiness.” And the girl’s voice was thrilling. “If you only knew how grateful I am——”

“I was afraid of that. I must have a tremendous lot more than thanks. I sail home with you on one condition.”

“Tell me, Dan, I shall be glad to hear it.”

“That the treasure belongs to me; the treasure I came to find.”

They were standing at the edge of the pit in the sand where Captain Kempton had dug in vain. What Eudora might have replied was postponed because the loose stuff gave way beneath her feet and she slid to the bottom, Dan plunging after her. It seemed quite the fitting place in which to claim a treasure, and he was about to say as much when Eudora caught a glimpse of a small object which the shifting sand had disclosed.

“Another brass buckle?” she exclaimed, stooping to pick it up.

“No,” said Dan. “The real thing this time.”

He held it to the failing light. Tarnished and incrusted, it was recognizable as a bracelet, and the pure gold gleamed dully when he scraped it with his knife. Small but massy, to fit a slender wrist, it was studded with stones, and as he rubbed them in the sand they glowed one by one like blood.

“Rubies!” gasped Eudora. “I never saw anything so gorgeous. And they are real? Oh, they must be!”

“Not much doubt of that. This bracelet was made long, long ago. And Elmer Stackpole planted no imitation jewelry, only buckles and rusty cutlasses. I heard him say so.”

“Then the pirate buried it, Dan? Shall I run and call father ashore? Perhaps Peleg Peterson did come here, after all.”

Unheeding his reply, she sped along the beach. Her lover sighed and began to clear away the sand with a broken shovel which had been left at the brink of the pit. The schooner awoke with sudden noise and stir, and her company filled the yawl in a twinkling, Captain Kempton standing in the stern with a lantern in his fist. Aboard the other schooner, the professor and his wife observed the excitement and followed in excited haste. Harvey Mattoon, left behind, stumped aft on his crutch and sadly exclaimed:

“They’re all off again to a good start, durn ’em!”

Eudora was waiting to display the bracelet, and her parent delayed only to glance at it as he sped to the excavation. Dan Sloan raised a warning hand and bade him descend carefully. The others held back while the captain lowered himself and the lantern. The shovel had by this time revealed the bones of a skeleton which had been scattered almost not at all. Blackened and fragile, ready to break and crumble at a touch, the pitiful relics possessed a certain dignity of repose, as though it were unkind to disturb this lonely resting place. So small and slender were the bones that Captain Kempten, said, his gray head uncovered:

“A woman, and this bracelet was on her wrist! Washed ashore from a wreck, perhaps from a ship that struck on one of these Seven Islands. Some grand lady of France in the days of the seigneurs? God knows.”

It was agreed, without dissension, to wait for daylight before digging in quest of more jewels. Dan and Eudora lingered behind the others, and she told him;

“I should like to keep just one ruby for myself. Would you like to have it mounted in a ring for me? Now will you sail home with me? Faithful and true, Dan. I am sure of it.”

There was no need to announce the tidings of this betrothal. Captain Kempton was aware of it as soon as they went on board. It made him young at heart. Luckier than he, his daughter had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Eudora and her bold young seafarer possessed a treasure of greater value than all the doubloons ever buried, and they viewed the voyage as brilliantly successful; but their shipmates, less fortunate, were eager to wield their shovels anew where the bones of the poor lost lady of the bracelet had been covered by the shifting sand of centuries. Another day they toiled without result, while Professor Bodge looked on and made no attempt to interfere. When they finally abandoned the excavation, he announced, in his most impressive manner:

“You fail to realize, Captain Kempton, that in discovering that bracelet you have made yourself and your daughter and your prospective son-in-law more than comfortably well off. My researches in organic chemistry have given me some acquaintance with precious stones. These rubies, probably Burmese, are genuine, I am ready to swear to that, and they are also of the true pigeon’s blood color and marvelously matched. They are worth a fortune. I doubt if the sea chest of Peleg Peterson would have contained booty as valuable.”

The shipmaster looked amazed, and then, like, the gentleman that he was at heart, he exclaimed with gusto:

“Share and share alike, my dear sir. It’s the only proper wind-up of the cruise. As a pair of fools, there was nothing to choose between us, and I don’t propose to see you sail home empty-handed. My daughter and Dan Sloan agree with me. We divide the rubies,”

The professor protested, but the mariner was as stubborn as usual. Soon a cool breeze stole in from the south, the white sails climbed the masts, and the anchors were lifted to a musical chorus. On the beach, in the light of the moon, appeared the figure of a solitary man who raised his arms beseechingly and shouted to attract attention.

Captain Kempton called to him from the taffrail:

“Good-by, and fare you well, Mr. William Marmaduke Mannice. We didn’t forget you. We left you behind because we remembered you.”

“Marooned!” observed Dan Sloan. “If he is really anxious to quit the island, he is welcome to our sloop.”

“Homeward bound!” cried Captain Kempton, as his schooner slid out to meet the open sea.

“And the Bodges have promised to come to the wedding,” exclaimed his winsome daughter, which summed up the whole matter.

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 Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the 
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