Nicky was up and out of the room like a flash. Cliff, losing no time, raced in the other direction. They went scuttling around the house, from front and back, meeting under the dining room window.
“Nobody here—not a sign!” called Cliff reassuringly.
“Nobody in sight,” Nicky agreed. “Tom, who was it—what did the face look like?”
“I don’t know,” quavered Tom. “It looked like—it was white—it was like a—ghost!”
“Pull yourself together,” said Mr. Gray quietly. “There aren’t any ghosts. Your imagination is keyed up. Perhaps you saw some bird fly past with the light on its wings and your excitement made you see the rest.”
“Come in, boys,” called Clarence Neale, “I am sure there was no occasion for fright.”
The two searchers returned.
“Brace up, Tom,” said Cliff, not unkindly. “Nobody was running away and nobody was in sight. You don’t want us to think that you really believe in ghosts!”
“No,” said Tom, sheepishly, “I don’t. I said it looked like one.”
“Well,” laughed Mr. Neale, “we have ‘sort of interrupted’ Captain Kidd, haven’t we?”
“Maybe it was his ghost!” grinned Nicky. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Mr. Neale and Cliff’s father gave warning shakes of their heads and Nicky apologized for joking at Tom’s expense.
“The poor old fellow wasn’t so bad—there’s no reason for his ghost to walk, even if there was such a chance,” Mr. Neale said. “You know he sailed off in the Adventure Galley to execute his commission, but pirates were few and far between, and he sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. You know, that real and terrible pirate, Thomas Tew, was one of those he was sent to capture or to punish—but he never found him. His crew became mutinous because there was so little to do and it was during a fight that Kidd struck his gunner, William Moore, and killed him. It was really for that act that the man was captured when he finally returned to America, and he was sent eventually to England to be tried for the killing of Moore, rather than for piracy, although he did do a little ‘pirating’ on his voyages.”
“It was while he was in prison,” Nicky took up the story, “he sent for one of my ancestors, a New York merchant, and told him about the treasure. He said—it’s all preserved in writing in my family—he said that while cruising in the Gulf, during his trading and before he got his commission from England as a privateersman, he was blown by a heavy wind quite near what we call the Florida Keys. When the weather calmed there was a signal flying from a coral rock and the Captain took off onto his ship several castaways from a wreck. They told him they had been on a Spanish treasure ship, transporting gold and silver bars from the Spanish settlements in Central America when the hurricane wrecked their ship. Captain Kidd said he had looked for the treasure but there was no sign of any, and so he thought they were telling falsehoods.”
“Then why did he draw a map—if that was what the map was about!” Cliff interrupted.
“The man he had saved—one of the survivors—gave him the map when he was injured by a sabre wound and was dying. He said the men had managed to swim ashore to some of the smaller Keys when the ship ran onto some needle-like coral and began to break up. But they got a couple of boats overside too, and when it was calmer, and the ship was breaking apart and falling away into the water, they got many chests of the treasure into the boats and rowed along into the keys and hid the chests on an island that was in the map.”
“I see,” said Mr. Neale. “Probably, by that time, some of the other members of the crew had gone back and found the chests.”
“Maybe,” Nicky said. “You see, when the ancestor was given the map, he took a passage on a ship to come and find the Jamaica governor, but his ship was besieged by pirates and he was taken by them—and it was years before he got off their ship and back to civilization—that’s a story by itself, but I can’t stop to tell it to you now. Anyhow, he got back, but he had no more taste for the sea and when he died he passed on his map and the story, but nobody else ever tried until my uncle got the paper. He made a trip down here and found out just what Sam told us—that the governor’s paper had been stolen. So, of course, he gave it up.”
“Now, what do you propose to do?” asked Clarence Neale.
“Mr. Gray thinks we ought to talk to Sam and offer to share with him fairly for the use of his part of the map. He’s on his way here, or ought to be. I left word with Ma’am Sib to tell him to come.”
“Perhaps he hasn’t returned to get the message,” Mr. Gray said.
“Or,” said Nicky, unable to resist a little malicious prod at Tom’s fears, “or maybe the ghost got him!”
Before Tom could make a reply they heard the patter of swift feet racing along the path to the house; a voice cried out, shrill and excited, “Help—masters—help! De ghost——!”
With a common impulse they all leaped to their feet. In their excitement not one of them stopped to catch up the map. They moved closer together, Tom clutching Nicky’s arm and staring wide-eyed at the door.
Into their midst scampered the ten-year-old colored boy of the morning experience. His face was ashy colored under his dusky skin, and his eyes rolled wildly.
“Masters—masters!” he panted. “Save me—” He lifted a finger, and pointed it shakingly toward the doorway. They all stared in that direction, and even Cliff felt the hair prickling on his head.
“There—there! It’s chased me—it’s coming—” the boy gasped.
Clarence Neale leaped past the frightened child, and on a sudden impulse Nicky, feeling a strange hunch, swung part way around toward the table. He meant to reach for the map, forgotten in the instant of excitement.
In his turn he gave a gasping cry.
Their map was gone!
CHAPTER V
“NOTHING SHALL STOP US!”
Nicky wasted no time going around through the door. He scrambled to the windowsill and leaped out into the darkness. Springing clear of the bushes which were planted close to the house, he landed on his feet and looked hurriedly about him.
Nothing was to be seen!
As soon as his eyes became used to the dark he strained them in every direction. But there was nothing to reward his eager eyes.
Finally, after poking around in the brush just beyond the clearing in which the house stood, he returned to his friends. The colored boy was recovering slowly from the effects of his terror. Tom, too, had regained some of his usual steadiness, though he seemed to be much more excited than either of his chums. The older men had discovered the absence of the map but had thought that Nicky took it.
“No!” he panted, still laboring under his excitement and his exertions in running from one dump of brush to another, “it was gone when I looked around before I jumped through the window.”
“But where did it go?” demanded Cliff.
“That’s the puzzle,” replied Clarence Neale.
“De ghos’ done taken it!” gasped the small colored boy.
“Nothing of the sort! There aren’t any ghosts!” declared Mr. Gray.
The boy stared. “Yes, they is!” he retorted. “I seen it! It was white! It——”
“Where did you see it?” Nicky asked quickly.
“By de window, sar!”
“Was it looking in?”
“It was comin’ to’ds”—toward, he meant—“to’ds me!”
“What is all this?” a new voice spoke. The owner of the plantation, a rough, stocky Englishman with a bronzed face, stood in the doorway. He had been out on another of his many properties for several days and had, apparently, come back in time to discover the excitement without understanding its meaning.
Mr. Gray explained the boy’s fright without mentioning the loss of the map. Nicky, about to speak, saw Cliff make a gesture which unmistakably was the Mystery Boys’ signal for silence; he closed his lips and waited.
“These colored people are afraid of shadows,” said the plantation owner. “Run along home, boy. Nothing will hurt you!”
“No, sar, Mister Coleson, sar, I dassent go in de dark alone!”
“The natives of this island are full of legends and stories about ghosts,” Mr. Coleson explained to the group. “Why, I have even heard them declare that the ghosts and spirits of the old pirates appear at times. Joe, my overseer, here on the plantation, says he once heard where treasure was hidden and he decided to try to get it. But when he got near the place his superstitions got the best of him. The way he tells about it, he saw pirates, in red bandana head cloths, with glittering cutlasses, and smoking pistols, stalking toward him. Naturally, being a coward, he ran. Of course,” he added, “I’m only telling you what he said. Personally, I think the fellow built it all up in his mind!”
“Oh—sar!” broke in the colored boy. “No! I see dem, too! I see Cap’n Kidd in my dream, de odder night. He come and he say ‘Boo!’ an’ wake me up!”
Clarence Neale laughed.
“That shows how easy it is to believe in ghosts if you hear about them and think about them all your life!” he told Tom. “This lad even dreams about them.”
“Captain Kidd, eh?” repeated the Englishman, laughing and then becoming half serious. “Well, if there’s any truth in superstition, the old boy must be watching over some of his treasure that is threatened!” He winked toward Clarence Neale, but neither Tom nor the colored boy saw it and both thought he was quite serious.
“Don’t, sar—please, don’t!” begged the boy, beginning to snivel. “He say ‘Boo’ at me. Den I mus’ have see him, tonight again!”
“Well,” said the Englishman, “I’ll leave you people to argue with this little scare-cat! I’m tired and I think I will turn in!”
He said goodnight and went to the quarters he occupied.
“Wasn’t Sam to come here?” asked Mr. Gray.
“Yes, he was—” began Cliff; he paused, and glanced at Nicky. The latter opened his eyes wider as the thought struck him too.
Could Sam have had anything to do with the “ghost business?” Sam had half a map; he saw Nicky, earlier, displaying his excitement when the map was shown. Maybe he had become suspicious, followed them, overheard something; perhaps he had even listened at the window.
They discussed the strange disappearance of their map, stated their suspicions, brought up the question of Sam’s possible guilt.
The colored boy, not understanding, stood with his eyes rolling, afraid to depart.
“There is an easy way to settle the question, and, at the same time to dispose of this boy’s fears,” suggested Clarence Neale. “I will walk home with him!”
That seemed to be the best course and so Mr. Neale, reassuring their dusky charge, put a hand on his shoulder and gently urged him from the room.
“I don’t care much for this situation,” said Mr. Gray. “It seems to me that some human agency is at work, trying to frighten you lads. I assure you that there is no ghost. Whatever Tom may have seen, and whatever the boy saw, there is a human being behind it. And no ghostly hands took your paper!”
“I think that way too,” Nicky declared, and Cliff nodded his agreement. Tom also gave a rather lame assent.
“Anyhow,” stated Nicky, practically, “if there was a ghost—if Captain Kidd did watch!—he sent part of the map to my own ancestor. He wouldn’t want to scare us! If he scared anybody, or took a map from anywhere, he would go after the colored fellow, Sam. His half of the cipher wasn’t rightfully his, the way mine is.”
“But there is no ghost,” repeated Mr. Gray. “If you ever get the true facts you will see that some person is at the bottom of this.”
“Sam, most likely!” declared Tom, entering into the spirit of the discussion and reassuring himself.
“No,” said Mr. Neale, coming in, his arm around the shoulders of the colored man they had just named, “no—Sam isn’t at the bottom of it.”
They looked at Sam. He was weak and shaken, and slumped down in a chair, rather limp and groggy.
“I found Sam out by the gate,” Mr. Neale explained. “He had been knocked out, actually, by a blow. He was on his way here, he managed to tell me. He thought he saw something light-colored near the house and he stopped by the gate. But whatever—whoever—it was, disappeared behind the house and he stood a moment wondering. Then he heard the voice in the house, here, and wondered whether to come in or to wait. Before he guessed what was happening, some one was behind him and struck him. That is all he remembered.”
“No ghost did that!” exclaimed Nicky.
“I don’t—know,” Sam said, weakly. “They tell, on the island, that ghosts have terrible power. I never did believe much in it, but—I don’t know—now!”
“Well, I do know!” declared Mr. Neale defiantly. “Your part of the map is gone, of course!”
“Yes, sar—yes——”
“Of course! Does that seem like the work of a ghost?”
“It might be!” Sam said uncertainly. He drank the water Nicky had brought him, and seemed to be pulling himself together, but his age-old instinct of fear was beginning to triumph over his education.
“At any rate,” Mr. Gray summed up, “whatever and whoever did these things, the result amounts to this: neither Sam nor we have any clue to the treasure——”
“You wouldn’t let that stop you, would you?” demanded Nicky.
“I wouldn’t, if Father would let us go on,” Cliff stated.
“Nor I,” agreed Clarence Neale. “We can remember the map closely enough—we know the longitude—we could even cable Nicky’s uncle and get the original if necessary——”
“But we don’t remember the latitude on Sam’s half,” said Cliff. “Unless Sam does——”
“When he gets over his bump—it won’t be serious—he will be able to help. Anyway, we know in a general way that the place is somewhere in the Florida Keys, about twenty-five degrees and some minutes of North latitude and we all recall the longitude—and one-half of the map had the phrase ‘dip’ and the other ‘per’—put them together and they mean ‘Dipper.’” Mr. Neale sketched on a bit of envelope the picture of the constellation know as “The Dipper.”
“There!” he said, triumphantly. “Doesn’t that show you the same little marks that were on the two maps?”
Nicky, Cliff, Tom and Mr. Gray nodded.
“Well, then, we can find that set of islands,” declared Mr. Neale, “and, if Mr. Gray would carry on my work here, I, for one, would vote to go ahead!”
“Here too!” cried Nicky.
“Same for me!” stated Cliff, giving his father an imploring look.
“I’m with you,” Tom chimed in, not as aggressively, but with his will power overcoming his uncertainty.
“I’d go if you would let me,” said Sam, while Mr. Gray bandaged a lump on his head after it had been disinfected and washed. “I know where I could get a sloop with a little engine to kick it along if the wind failed——”
“That would be fine!” exclaimed Nicky. “I vote we take Sam in!”
“Share and share alike!” cried Cliff eagerly. “That is, our part of whatever we find! Of course we’d give some to the governor’s family if we can find them.”
“We’d have to keep it secret—our plan!” said Nicky, earnestly. “We’d have to pretend to be going——”
“To cruise for Carib relics on smaller islands!” broke in Clarence Neale, as excited as his younger companions.
“Fine!” agreed Nicky. “Is the sloop big enough, Sam? Where is it? What’s it like? Is it seaworthy for a cruise like this?”
Sam said “yes” and described the one-masted, thirty-foot boat with its heavy duty motor. “Maybe close quarters to sleep in,” he said, “but she has shorely got a good name for treasure hunting!”
“What?” demanded all three chums in unison.
“The Treasure Belle——”
“Oh!” cried Nicky. “With a name like that we simply must get her! Mr. Gray, you can’t refuse us permission.”
Three eager youths pleaded. The older man, counseled and reassured by Clarence Neale, finally agreed.
“Hooray!” Nicky exulted. “Treasure bent in the Treasure Belle! Nothing can stop us!”
Tom, a little silent, hoped that nothing could!
CHAPTER VI
ON THE WAY TO THE KEYS
The Treasure Belle, when they inspected her with Sam and Mr. Neale, disappointed the chums. She lay, careening to one side, in a place on the shore of a small ship basin. Her hull, originally painted white, was a mixture of grays and browns, streaked and dirty. Her cabin, when they crawled into it, was musty and cramped, up in the bow, with no head room and with its bunks both narrow and uninviting.
“Quite a difference between her name and her looks,” smiled Clarence Neale. Nicky nodded and Cliff, standing on deck, pointed toward a cluster of boats moored in deeper water.
“Why can’t we charter a boat like that one?” said Cliff, indicating a fairly trim looking cruising launch, about thirty feet long, with a raised cabin whose windows had neat little drapings at each side, whose paint showed little wear. Where the Treasure Belle had no bright work, her hardware being discolored and rusting, the other craft showed signs of constant attention.
“That’s a private boat, and not for hire, sar,” explained Sam. “She belong to a white man. He use her for run to Cuba. I hear it told he is a politician of Cuba, and he stay here because he is not so well liked in his island. But they say he run there by night for some reason and keep that boat only for that.”
“Maybe he would charter her to us if he didn’t need her,” urged Nicky. “She’d be a lot nicer.”
Sam, at Mr. Neale’s suggestion, took them to the office of the ship basin owners but they got no encouragement. The El Libertad was not for hire or charter. He gave the party the address of her owner readily enough but without enthusiasm.
When Mr. Neale returned from an interview with Senor Ortiga, he shook his head.
“El Libertad is not to be ours,” he said. “Senor Ortiga told me that he is having the engine overhauled and is waiting for parts—even if he would let us have her, which he did not seem inclined to do, it would be a month before she would be ready, he said.”
“This Treasure Belle look poorly,” Sam said. “But she is Bahama built, sar, and she’s sturdy, and seaworthy.”
“She looks like a tub with a sail,” said Tom.
“Yes, sar, but she has very light draught,” Sam urged. “She can go in channels between the cays, and if she get aground her hull is strong and not easy to break. That Libertad is very thin hulled, and draws eight inches more water.”
“Well, we can’t have her, anyway,” Nicky decided. “We’ll have to make the best of this one and let the name make up for the drawbacks.”
“My cousin own her,” Sam stated. “I have not told him why we charter her, and for the cruise to get relics that I say we use her for, he let her go very cheap, sar.”
They made the necessary arrangements with Sam’s cousin and work was started on the sloop. She was close to thirty-two feet in length, wide in her beam and squatty looking, but her engine, though a heavy duty make and not very fast, was in perfect trim. Her canvas was also neat and complete.
While the paint was scrubbed and the dirty interior of the cabin made presentable and as comfortable as possible, Sam, who was a good sailor and knew the sloop well, gave Nicky, Tom and Cliff many lessons in rope splicing, handling the sails, and, without actual practice in steering he explained the method of holding a small craft on her course. Sam was the only addition to the party, as, with Mr. Neale, who was sufficiently good at navigation to handle a small boat on the comparatively landlocked course they would take, it was felt that the boys would make a sufficient crew, standing watch-and-watch.
Few supplies were put aboard. They did not want people to suppose they were going to be on a desolate series of coral reefs for their cruise; to buy much food would arouse curiosity, because they could get fresh supplies on any of the islands of the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands they were hinting that they would visit.
On a bright, clear morning Cliff bade goodbye to his father, the others shook hands with Mr. Gray, and with the Treasure Belle’s engine thudding away without a skip, they maneuvered the sloop out of the small basin and laid a course for Cuba, steering for the Eastern end of the island rather than to their true course toward the Western end, so as to make it seem that they were bound toward the Eastern group of islands, after touching on the large island for some work Mr. Neale pretended must be done there to verify some reports of Carib relics to be found in the jungles.
But by noon, with the jib and mainsail spread to the steady breeze, they shifted the tiller and brought the Treasure Belle around again on a course that would enable them to round the Western nose of Cuba and then sail Northeast to the coral islets which clustered in a long fringe along the Florida Gulf coast, at its lower portion.
“Without a map we will have to take some chances,” Mr. Neale told Nicky, Tom and Cliff. “But we can come pretty close to a guess at the point where we must anchor.”
“Where our half of the map showed the crossmarked ‘reck,’” Nicky asserted.
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Neale. “We will hunt for a spot where there could be a set of conditions like those we know.”
“You mean that there must be needles of coral deep enough for a Spanish galleon to have gone aground and broken up,” Cliff suggested. “Then two islands with a channel deep enough between for a heavy boat to use.”
“Right,” nodded the captain of the vessel, for that post had been given to their older comrade. The Mystery Boys had given Mr. Neale his initiation into the secret gestures with which they could communicate without letting outsiders guess that they were doing so.
“Then we will work in through the keys with the light-draft, glass-bottomed boat we are towing,” the captain went on. “If we fail to find islands in a formation like the Great Dipper, we can work North and South alternately until we do.”
“And then, the treasure!” exulted Nicky.
“I’m not so sure,” Cliff said. “Centuries have passed since it was put there. The map didn’t show whether the treasure was buried or not.”
“I don’t see how it could have been,” Tom declared. “That coral is too hard to dig in. They’d have had to blast to get a place deep enough to bury it. I imagine they just lowered the chests into the water, maybe in a little cove or where there was a hole deep enough to conceal the chests.”
“We will have to see,” Mr. Neale agreed. “First we must find our Great Dipper.”
They made the end of Cuba without any difficulty, rounded it and set the tiller for the new course, sailing more slowly as they lost the direct force of the steady breeze and had to keep rather close-hauled. They did not use the engine, preferring not to employ it any more than was essential. It might help them off if they ran onto a reef, and they proposed to save their supply of gasoline for such an emergency.
At last, under a glorious sunset, with its rose and coral, its great, vivid bands of green and vivid gold lighting up a few fleecy clouds near the horizon, they sighted the low, long cluster of islets.
Not a thing had occurred during the trip to cause uneasiness. Sam had been both courteous and respectful, without being servile. Like most Jamaica colored people he felt himself to be the equal of the race of lighter color, as far as education and morality could be compared. In the matter of his color of skin he felt, with justice, that the teaching of the Bible, and of the United States Constitution, that all men are equal, in the sense of all being created by the same Great Creator, was a true teaching.
Being sensible boys, Nicky, Tom and Cliff made no distinction in the matter of Sam’s color. As long as he preserved the same habits of decency as they did, as long as he “acted white,” as Nicky put it, they were too finely bred to treat him like an ignorant heathen, as so many rather ignorant people do in their relations with men of dark, or yellow skin. They looked at the intelligence and the inner man, and not alone at the tint of the skin.
Sam felt the decent attitude and responded. He never tried to be above his station but he acted as an equal wherever his education enabled him to do so, and accepted gracefully the superiority of Mr. Neale’s training, Nicky’s deftness with a fish spear, Nicky’s eyes having been quickened and trained by archery and other sports. Tom’s superior speed as a runner had been proved on the beach before they sailed, as had Cliff’s supremacy in wrestling. But there was no color line drawn, and that made the cruise more pleasanter.
“The Keys!” cried Nicky from the bow.
They all lined up around the mast, and, just before the twilight and its afterglow left the long reach of islets looking like ghostly shapes on the water, they cast anchor.
CHAPTER VII
AN UNCANNY SUMMONS
The spot where the Treasure Belle came to anchor was just at the lowermost point of the archipelago of coral islets. The solid land which had Cape Sable for its most Southern tip had been passed and lay to their left, while the first of the Keys was dimly visible as they looked off in the opposite direction.
A council was being held on the decked-over top of the stuffy cabin. Sam was not there. He had taken the dinghy, with its glass bottom, and was just out of earshot toward the inner bay, fishing to secure their morning meal.
“I have been thinking a great deal about our next course,” Mr. Neale stated. “One reason that I anchored just here is this: It is a deep enough channel between the mainland and the Key for us to navigate the Belle without danger of grounding or running onto a coral ‘needle.’ My intention has been to sail along the outer side of the archipelago; but I wonder, now, what you think of trying the inside channel, between the mainland and the Keys.”
“We’d miss the place where the wreck was marked, if we go the inside way,” objected Nicky.
“True,” admitted the captain, “but, on the on the other hand, fellows, we would come to a point opposite where we think that should be, and we’d work outward from the inner channel.”
“But we’d miss the route we marked down, from memory, the way it was on our half of the map. That took in at least two of the Dipper islands,” Cliff reminded him.
“Here is my reason for wanting to do something else,” Mr. Neale said quietly. “If we go the outer way there may not be a safe anchorage in case of a storm. You will remember that the old galleon was supposed to have been wrecked on ‘needles’ and I can assure you that those sharp, coral spikes are no pleasant thing to have under your hull in any sea that lifts the sloop and drops her down hard.”
“I know another good reason,” Tom chimed in. “We don’t suspect Sam of having anything to do with stealing our map—because he was hit on the head and his map was taken——”
“So he says!” corrected Nicky. “We haven’t any proof, and he’s the only one we can think of who would have had any reason——”
“But we don’t actually suspect him,” Tom insisted. “He hasn’t made a suspicions move or done a wrong thing since we started out. But what I meant to say was: We don’t suspect him, but we do know that somebody has the maps—both halves, probably.”
“I see what you are driving at,” Cliff declared. “If somebody else is after the treasure, we would be right in sight if we anchored in the outer place; and we’d be a sort of ‘marker’ for them.”
“That was my idea, also,” said Mr. Neale. “And if Sam did have anything to do with the loss of our map, a change in our plans may cause him to betray some emotion. We can’t suspect him, but we can’t exonerate him, either.”
“Not yet,” agreed Nicky, and Tom and Cliff shook their heads.
“I vote for the inside channel,” Nicky added.
“So do I!”
“I do, too,” Cliff completed the vote.
“Then, tomorrow, we will pilot the Belle through by using the dinghy ahead to look out for coral,” Mr. Neale said.
“Let’s not mention it to Sam in the dark,” Nicky urged. “His face will show his feelings better in the morning and we will surprise him.” It was agreed to take Nicky’s way.
“Look—over there!” Tom said under his breath; he clutched Cliff’s arm, and pointed. They all turned.
“Do you mean on that little Key—where the single tree is—that bluish light!” Nicky demanded.
“Yes! Isn’t it queer? See—Mr. Neale! It’s—it’s moving!”
Tom’s clutch on Cliff’s arm tightened.
On the small expanse of coral at some distance, countless years had spread a thin upper covering of mold and dust until enough earth was deposited to support a small, stunted palm tree. As the four looked a strange, bluish radiance, seeming to be on the ground itself, showed the lower part of the tree trunk in relief against its faint glow.
The light seemed to move about within a narrow radius.
“It can hardly be phosphorus,” stated Mr. Neale, keeping his voice low and his words calm to prevent any growth of superstitious fear.
“What is it, then?” whispered Tom.
“Sam may be over there,” Nicky gave the logical explanation. But as he spoke they heard the swish of Sam’s oar and the grate of the dinghy coming alongside on the port side.
“Don’t say a word,” cautioned Cliff. “See if he mentions it.”
Sam did mention the light, and at once!
“I don’t like that, sar,” he said to Mr. Neale, as he paid out the dinghy line and looped it over a stern cleat of the sloop. “I tell you, sar, I was educated not to believe in ghosts, sar, but we are right in the place where all the pirates hid gold and laid in wait for ships. If not the English and Spanish and French, then the Bahama buccaneers and the ones that started up their trade from Cuba before they were wiped out for all time.”
“Nonsense!” said Mr. Neale, rather sharply. “Pull up that dinghy, Nicky. Want to come along? We’ll see what it’s all about, eh?”
“No, sar—don’t you!” exclaimed Sam.
Tom also whispered to Nicky. The latter, rather surprised at his formerly cool chum, who had kept his head admirably during their adventures among the Incas, was about to make a retort that would shame Tom, but he shut his lips, for once controlling his impulses.
“There is nothing to fear,” declared the captain and Nicky echoed his words stoutly, as did Cliff. Nicky and Mr. Neale rowed away.
It was a short row to the islet, although they proceeded slowly because of the darkness and the proximity of coral under the water. The light disappeared before they reached the island. They could see quite plainly in the starlight that there was nothing on the small coral Key except the palm tree.
“Strange,” observed Mr. Neale.
“Maybe it was just some odd reflection of light from a star on the coral,” Nicky said. “Only—it moved!”
“Perhaps our imagination helped,” Mr. Neale said, and that was the explanation he insisted upon when they returned to the Treasure Belle. The others accepted it, Cliff calmly, Tom rather silently. Only Sam objected.
“No star, sar!” he declared. “We would still see the light—and no star is blue. But——”
He drew closer to the little riding light which was on the mast and which they used as their only illumination that evening. “Back in my island there is a story, sar, that when a treasure is in danger ghosts appear to scare people away and when a treasure is not being guarded by ghosts there is a light hovering over the spot where it is buried!”
“Well, that is great!” declared Nicky eagerly. “All we have to do then is to go there tomorrow and get the treasure!”
Although neither Tom nor Sam fully agreed that there was nothing to menace their personal welfare, they retired with the others. Sam curled up, as usual, in the cockpit, and the three chums laid themselves on the roof of the cabin, on blankets, their air pillows inflated and under their heads.
They did not discuss the matter of the light. It did not appear again and Nicky and Cliff dropped off to sleep. Tom, lying awake, battling with himself mentally, trying to make his common sense defeat his instinctive apprehension, started and almost thrust Cliff over the low rail with the violence of his motion.
From somewhere about the hull of their sloop came three distinct taps! Rap! Rap! Rap!
“What was that?” whispered Tom.
Mr. Neale, seated near the tiller, half dozing, answered, as Cliff and Nicky stirred and came awake.
“Probably drifting wood or possibly we are almost on a coral reef—or the anchor cable may have rubbed and made the noise. There is not a thing!——”
“Look!” gasped Nicky—“Look! In the water! Light—bluish light, moving away.”
Everyone was fully awake and staring in every direction. Cliff located Nicky’s indicating finger, followed the direction, saw a swirl of phosphorescence in the water.
“Maybe a shark!” he declared, “a shark came up to investigate us, looking for food, I’ll bet!”
“That was it!” declared Mr. Neale. “Go back to sleep.”
“There’s the light again!” Tom quavered. Even Cliff and Nicky felt chilling prickles run up and down their spines at Tom’s tone. Sam looked and slumped down, hiding his face in the cockpit.
“Hit’s—hit’s—ghos’es!” he shuddered, forgetting his educated diction in his terror.
“Mr. Neale, let’s go and see—” begged Nicky.
“Let me go too?” urged Cliff, “Nicky went last time.”
“Wait till mornin’—please, sar, wait!” pleaded Sam. “Doan’ leave us here for the ghos’es to git us, sar!”
“Now—right now, we go!” stated Nicky. “We’ll settle this thing once and for all. If you aren’t strong enough to fight off a ghost, Sam, I’m sorry for you.”
He had the dinghy alongside. Cliff and Mr. Neale clambered in and held the rail of the sloop until Nicky slipped into the dinghy’s bow. Tom, knowing the small boat had its full complement of passengers, and realizing that his own timidity had made him an enforced companion of a terrified Negro on the sloop, strove to drive away his fear.
“Can you whistle, sar?” urged Sam. “Dey says whistlin’ keeps off ghos’es!”
“Then you try, too,” ordered Tom.
Both puckered their lips and essayed a shrill whistle. It came out each a quavery, hissing failure that the ones in the boat, pushing away from the sloop, peered and chuckled.
“Get yourself a tin whistle,” laughed Cliff, and even Tom had to chuckle at his own tremulous muscles.
It seemed as though the dinghy was away a long time; the queer light shone for awhile but suddenly vanished.
After a wait there came a hail.
“What do you think we found?” called Nicky, excitedly.
Tom couldn’t guess. When they all assembled and the riding lantern was hauled down to show their discovery better, Tom gasped.
“Right where the light had been, we found this!” stated Nicky, showing a rusted, broken and almost completely disintegrated old can, such as vegetables are preserved in. From it he drew an old, torn slip of some sort of thin leather or parchment. Time seemed to have eaten into it, or else the washing of the water had rotted it.
Nevertheless, faint, distinguishable marks were on it.
“Why, it’s a message or something!” exclaimed Tom.
“Dat’s what the light was for,” said Sam, his teeth chattering. “It marked where the can was, sars.”
“Well, it did us a good turn,” Nicky stated joyfully. “Read it, will you, Mr. Neale?”
Their captain put the parchment very close to the light.
They almost held their breath, waiting in a thrill of eagerness.
“I declare!” he cried, “it looks as old as the can—and yet—and yet—this is a message to us!”
“It is?” shouted Nicky.
“Listen!” He bent closer, holding the dim lettering almost against the lantern globe.
“This is what it says. ‘Treasure—found—long ago. Dig under tallest of three trees on Crocodile Key in Card Bay for more!”
“Hooray!” Nicky exulted, “one treasure gone and another to be found!”
“Where did it come from?” Cliff asked. “I know how we found it, but I mean, how did it get there?”
“Maybe it was left here for some buccaneers who knew about the other treasure,” Tom hazarded a guess.
“I know the answer,” Nicky cried, “this isn’t meant for us. There may have been a treasure hidden on that key; somebody got it and either took it where this says, or else knew of another one and left this word for the ones who would come for the original one.”
“But—the light!—” began Tom.
“Well,” laughed Nicky, “if ghosts want to be as friendly as to light a beacon, I’m their friend! Thank you, ghosties!”
“Sh-h-h!” whispered Sam. “Please, sar—don’t!”
“But they did us a favor,” said Nicky. “They gave us a much better ‘lead’ than the one we had. I say it again.”
He faced the little key and cupping his hands, sent out a hail.
“Ghosties—thank you!”
Even Nicky was electrified in the next instant.
From somewhere—they could not say where—came a sephulchral, gurgling answer.
“You—welcome!”