Bee Finds A New Clue
For a quarter of a mile there was little conversation aboard the
_Corsair_. Hal, very red in the face, slathered oil right and left, a
certain sign nowadays of mental unrest, while Jack piloted the launch
and Bee, able seaman that he was, sat in the waist, hands in pockets,
and whistled softly. At last, however, Hal burst forth.
“That wasn’t my boat-hook,” he declared angrily, “but he’s got mine,
all right, the old robber!”
Bee smiled. “Do you know, fellows, I’m sort of getting to like Bill.
He’s got a sense of humor, hasn’t he? That was a nice delicate touch of
his when he brought out the wrong boat-hook!”
“Huh!” grunted Hal disgustedly.
When they reached Nobody’s Island Hal insisted on carrying away from
the launch and the dory everything removable and would have taken
the rudder-wheel off had not Jack pointed out the difficulty of
re-attaching the wire rope. When they reached the tent Hal gave an
exclamation of triumph.
“There!” he proclaimed. “I guess I’m not such an idiot as you fellows
think! Somebody’s been here since we left. Look at those boxes. We
didn’t leave them that way.”
“That’s so,” acknowledged Jack.
“Here’s a footmark that doesn’t belong to any of us, either,”
announced Bee, pointing to the imprint at the opening of the tent of a
broad-soled shoe. “Dollars to doughnuts, fellows, it was Honest Bill
again.”
Jack began to laugh. “Well, that’s rather a good one on us, isn’t it?”
he asked. “While we were ransacking Bill’s castle he came and paid us
the same compliment!”
Bee grinned delightedly. “That’s what! Isn’t he the funny old cut-up?”
“I don’t see any fun in it,” grumbled Hal. “Instead of laughing your
fool heads off you’d better see what he’s stolen!”
But after an examination of their belongings it was not apparent that
anything was missing. Hal refused to believe such a thing possible for
awhile, and when convinced declared that their visitor couldn’t have
been Bill Glass. “He’d never have come here and not swiped something,”
insisted Hal with deep conviction. “It wouldn’t be like him.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Jack, “if he laid a trap for us,
fellows. I dare say he wanted to see what we had here and thought that
if we saw him going away we’d go up there to find Hal’s things. Then as
soon as we’d gone he came back here, and overhauled our truck. If he
didn’t take anything it was probably because he didn’t find anything he
wanted.”
“Still,” objected Bee, “he did have some lobster-pots in his dory when
we saw him and they weren’t there when he got back.”
“That’s easy. He might have left them most anywhere. Maybe, for that
matter, he really did put them down somewhere nearby. Anyhow, I’m
pretty sure he meant us to leave camp awhile so that he could look
about.”
“He’s a regular old pirate, that’s what he is,” said Hal. “He must have
robbed a ship-chandler’s to have got all that stuff he had up there.”
“More likely to have picked the things up one at a time, just as he
picked up your things,” said Jack. “Well, the only thing to do is to
see that he doesn’t add any more of our property to his museum of
antiquities. What I don’t understand is why he keeps all that truck.
What does he want of fourteen or fifteen clocks and all those sextants?
Why doesn’t he sell them and get money?”
“Perhaps,” suggested Bee, “he is a collector. That might explain a
lot, for they say that when a man has the collecting bee in his bonnet
he isn’t always too particular how he gets things. Maybe Honest Bill
really is honest――according to his ideas!”
“Well, they’re not mine,” grumbled Hal. “I don’t care about the value
of the things he stole, but it makes me mad to have him get away with
it! And to think of his having the cheek to offer to sell me my own
oars!”
“That was another delicate touch of humor,” laughed Bee. “I thought you
were going to burst right up, Hal, when he said that!”
“I’d like to punch his head,” said Hal.
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t advise you to try it,” replied Jack grimly.
“He could take the three of us and bump our heads together, I guess.
He looks as strong as an ox. What are we going to have for supper,
fellows? I’m getting hungry.”
The next day began uneventfully. Bee insisted on digging, and after
breakfast they started operations again. By eleven o’clock there were
two more trenches along the hillside and the three boys were about
tired out. They went in swimming before dinner, however, and discovered
that they were not too weary to eat. It was a frightfully hot day and
even Bee hadn’t the heart to suggest more labor after the mid-day meal.
Instead, he wandered off by himself on a round of the island. He had
begun to lose faith in the locality he had selected to dig in and was
quite ready to start operations elsewhere if he could only decide on a
new place. But one spot looked as likely to yield buried treasure as
another. He strove to picture the island in Old Verny’s day, but try as
he might he could not convince himself that the cabin had been located
anywhere but on the side of the hill where they had dug. And yet they
had already very thoroughly explored a territory some thirty feet by
fifty without result and two more trenches would bring them as close
to the beach as it seemed advisable to go. After that, then, the next
step appeared to be to lengthen the trenches. But searching for buried
treasure was beginning to lose its lure even for Bee, while as for the
others, they were already exhibiting indications of mutiny. He sighed
as he came back within sight of the camp. If only there was a little
more certainty as to the existence of the treasure!
Jack and Hal were fast asleep, stretched out on their beds, Jack
snoring frankly and vigorously. Bee took a seat outside in the shade
where a mere suggestion of breeze crept past him. From there he
looked straight down-hill at the trenches which, with their mounds of
upthrown earth between, looked unpleasantly like a row of graves on a
battle-field! One consolation, he reflected, was that the farther down
the hill they went the easier the digging became, and the next two
trenches would be excavated in sand. His gaze wandered to the left and
fell on the small, grotesquely-shaped tree that stood alone just above
the beach at the beginning of the slope. The few leaves it bore hung
dejectedly in the scorching heat. Bee experienced a feeling very much
like sympathy for the tree when he thought of the winter storms it had
stood up against all these years. “Plucky little thing,” he reflected.
“I wonder what sort of a tree it is.” His vagrant curiosity got the
better of his disinclination to move and he arose and loitered down the
slope through the blazing sunlight. The tree was scarcely four inches
thick at the base of the trunk and its gnarled branches, the highest
of which hardly topped Bee’s head, grew out at all sorts of impossible
angles. The leaves were short and ovate and looked――Bee frowned――yes,
they really did look like apple-tree leaves! He wished he knew more
botany. Of course the tree couldn’t be an apple-tree, for what would an
apple-tree be doing here? Perhaps, though, a bird might have dropped
a seed or――yes, that was it! Jack had said that picnickers sometimes
came to the island. Probably years ago someone had thrown an apple core
away. Bee studied the tree again. Somehow, it looked older than its
size would indicate. Then he kicked away the sand and earth at the foot
and found the remains of a larger trunk, so rotten that it crumbled
into brown fragments under his shoe. So, then, there had been a bigger
tree there at one time, he reflected. Perhaps a gale had blown it
down. At all events, the present tree had grown from the trunk of the
former. But was it really an apple-tree? If so the original tree might
have been standing when Old Verny lived on the island. Perhaps he had
planted it! And in that case――Bee felt a thrill of excitement!――why,
in that case maybe the cabin had stood near the tree! What more likely
than that Old Verny had planted the tree beside his house? Only――_was_
it an apple-tree? Perhaps Jack or Hal would know. He hurried up the
hill and awakened the astonished and protesting boys in the tent.
“Wha――what’s the row?” asked Hal sleepily.
“Do you know an apple-tree when you see one?” demanded Bee eagerly.
“Do I know――Say, what sort of a joke is this? Why don’t you let a
fellow alone?”
“It isn’t a joke at all,” replied Bee earnestly. “Come on, you fellows,
and look at the tree down there. I want to know if it’s an apple-tree.”
“What if it is?” demanded Hal. “Aren’t any apples on it, are there?”
“No, but if it’s really an apple tree it means that we’ve got a clue at
last!”
“A clue? What sort of a clue?” asked Jack. “And suppose it’s a pear
tree?”
“A clue to the location of the treasure. Come on, please!”
They went, Hal mumbling that for his part he couldn’t tell an
apple-tree from a hat-tree. But Jack had more acquaintance with the
subject and only had to look once at the tree to reach a decision.
“It’s an apple-tree,” he declared.
“Hurrah!” said Bee.
“Tiger!” added Hal. “But what difference does it make whether it’s an
apple tree or a pear tree or a――or a cauliflower?”
“None.”
“Then what’s all the shouting about? Why do we have to leave our
perfectly good beds and streak down here in the sun with the
thermometer at a thousand and twenty and look at a silly old tree? Hey?”
“Come back into the shade and I’ll tell you,” replied Bee with a laugh
at his chum’s disgust. “It’s like this,” he continued when they were in
the lee of the tent. “If that’s an apple-tree it’s pretty certain that
it didn’t grow there by accident; I mean without――er――human agency.
Either it was planted or an apple core was tossed there or a seed was
dropped. How old should you say that tree was, Jack?”
“Oh, I don’t know; six years, ten years. It’s hard to say, Bee, because
a tree in an exposed place like this grows very slowly. There’s a cedar
near the old fort that they say is eighty-odd years old and it’s only
about twelve feet high and the trunk is twisted around and around like
a huge big rope.”
“Well, say eight years?”
“That’s safe, I think.”
“All right. But that tree didn’t grow from a seed, fellows; it sprang
up from the trunk of an older tree that was broken off or died down to
the ground. The old tree looks to have been about a foot across. If
you look you’ll find the stump of it yet. Now what I claim is that the
old tree was either planted by Verny or else sprang up from a seed he
dropped there.”
“But why Verny?” asked Hal skeptically. “Why not anyone else? Lots of
people have camped out here before us, Bee.”
“Because the older tree must have been at least thirty years old before
it died, and I don’t believe many people came to this island that long
ago. What do you say, Jack?”
“I don’t believe they did. You think, then, that Old Verny――”
“Planted that tree, or the seed of it, forty years or more ago, and
that he planted it _near his cabin_! And just as soon as it gets a
little cooler, fellows, that’s where we’re going to dig!”