The gentleman in buff coat and breeches turned from the young woman in
the doorway to the four campers, who as they glanced at their own rough
outing clothes did look like a line of embarrassed schoolboys standing
in front of a teacher.
“Now that you mention it, Penelope,” said Peter Cotterell, “I do note a
difference between the garments of these lads and this gentleman and
those we are accustomed to seeing worn by our neighbors. I understand,
however, that they come from a distance, and one would hardly expect
costumes to be the same in all the colonies. It occurs to me that
possibly my new guests might like to make fresh toilets in one of the
rooms abovestairs. I have a large wardrobe, gentlemen, and it is yours
to choose from.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Tom. “I wonder if you have anything big
enough to fit my friend David Norton?”
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” said Tuckerman. “I’m sure I could
pick out something much better looking than these togs.”
The young woman stepped into the room. Her blue eyes were very merry as
she looked at the awkward row. “I think an apricot coat would suit this
one,” she said, nodding at Ben. “Something in puce this one,” she
indicated Tom. “Lavender for him,” she waved at Tuckerman. “And for the
fourth—let me see—” She squinted her eyes and tilted her head on one
side.
“A beautiful green,” Ben suggested. “The color of seaweed in water.”
Miss Boothby laughed, and David flushed a magnificent scarlet.
“He certainly oughtn’t to wear a red coat,” said Peter Cotterell. “He’d
be too much all of one color.”
“I like these things I’ve got on,” said David. “They mayn’t be very
good-looking, but they suit me first rate.”
“Oh, I like them, too,” agreed Miss Boothby, and her quick smile made
David flush again, this time at the stubbornness of his tone.
“If you care to look at my wardrobe—” Cotterell resumed. “Ah, here is
James Sampson now.”
At the door appeared a man in chocolate-colored coat and breeches, his
brown hair tied in a queue.
“My steward,” stated Cotterell.
“So you’re Sampson, are you?” asked Ben. “I’ve heard of you, and I’m
glad to make your acquaintance. I think I’ve seen some of your
handwriting.”
“He writes a legible hand,” said Cotterell. “He keeps some of my
accounts. Sampson, please show my guests to the rooms upstairs. They
desire to change their attire.”
Miss Boothby touched David’s arm. “For my sake wear a suit of green,”
she whispered.
David blushed. “Oh, very well,” he said awkwardly. “But I guess I’ll
look like a frog.”
They followed Sampson into the hall and up the stairs. As they passed
open doors they saw a number of people in gay, colonial clothes. All
through the house there was the hum of voices.
Sampson conducted them into the attic, where many suits and dresses hung
on pegs along the walls.
“Here is the wardrobe,” he said. “I think you will find everything you
may need. And yonder is a mirror.” With a bow he withdrew.
“Well,” exclaimed David, when the servant was out of earshot, “what do
you make of all this?”
“Sir Peter is certainly much more amiable than I’d been led to suppose,”
mused Tuckerman. “There’s nothing of the hermit about him.”
“He’s a bird!” chuckled Tom. “I’ll bet he gives us a mighty fine
supper.”
“I don’t blame him a bit for wanting to keep those roughnecks over in
Barmouth from melting up his silver,” Ben asserted.
“See here, you fellows,” broke in David, “I want to know what’s the
game.”
“Game?” echoed Ben.
“Game?” said Tom. “What do you mean?”
“Game?” repeated Tuckerman, and his tone was a trifle indignant. “I
don’t call it a game when a gentleman like Sir Peter Cotterell invites
us to his party.”
David sat down on a sofa. “All right, all right. I’m the goat, as usual.
Fetch me a green coat and trousers.”
“I daresay Miss Boothby will dance with you,” Tom cheered him.
“_You_ may like this sort of thing,” said David, “but it’s not in my
line.”
Ben threw a coat at him. “Take that. Hello, here’s a shelf full of wigs.
Want to try a white one, Dave?”
For the next five minutes they looked about the room, at the coats and
the breeches and waistcoats, at the wigs and the other articles that
made up Sir Peter’s wardrobe.
Then they began to try on the costumes, seeking for the proper sizes.
Ben could find nothing that suited him exactly. And while they were
trying on different coats, there came a sound of singing from
downstairs.
Ben, holding a coat in each hand, went into the hall and leaned over the
banisters. Men and women were singing a quaint, old-fashioned song in
the dining-room. The tune was fascinating, at times it sounded like a
jig, at times there were different parts for the different voices. Ben
listened, nodding his head in rhythm with the music. “You ought to hear
this,” he called over his shoulder to the three in the attic. “It’s a
regular musical show.”
The others came out into the hall. Tuckerman beat time on the banister
with a powdered wig he had been trying to squeeze on his head. Tom,
putting his hands on David’s shoulders, began to dance to the tune.
With a grin, Ben turned and went back to the attic. “I’ll beat them to
it,” he muttered, and flinging down the two coats he was holding he took
a yellow satin coat, embroidered with silver lace, from a peg on the
wall.
This coat was a fine sample of the tailor’s art. But Ben, having taken
it down, stared at the peg from which it had hung, and at the wall
behind it.
He gave an exclamation, a low whistle of surprise. He knocked on the
wall with his knuckles. He glanced through the open door, and saw that
the others were still occupied with the singing. He backed away from the
wall, still keeping his eyes on it. And then he stumbled over a
footstool and sat down with a bump on the floor.
He got up and laid the embroidered coat on a chair by the window. He
looked outdoors. And then for the second time in five minutes he uttered
an exclamation. The fishing-smack was standing close inshore on the
eastern side of the island. He could see her moving slowly to the north,
her canvas plainly visible above the tops of the trees.
“Gee whillikins!” muttered Ben. “I’ll bet my scheme worked!”
Another minute and he was out in the hall. The singing downstairs had
stopped and there was a clapping of hands.
“Come here!” ordered Ben.
The other three followed him into the attic, to the window opening to
the east.
“Is that your fishing-smack, Dave?” Ben demanded.
David looked. “By Jove, I believe it is!”
“Do you want to know where she’s going?” was Ben’s next question.
“Shoot,” said Tom.
“She’s going to the beach where I found the chest in the hiding-place in
the rocks. Her crew are after that chest, I’ll bet you a fiver!”
The three stared at him in surprise. “What makes you so certain?” asked
Tuckerman.
“Because I know. I have reasons for knowing. They’re after that chest.
They think it’s the Cotterell treasure, just as I thought it was.”
“You mean they’re going to land on our beach and carry off our chest
under our very noses?” demanded Tom.
“They are unless we stop them,” nodded Ben.
“Then,” said David, “I’m going to stop them. Seems to me there was an
old musket somewhere around here.”
There was an old musket in the corner of the attic; there were two, in
fact; and a fowling-piece and a couple of antique duelling-pistols. The
boys and Tuckerman seized on all the firearms, regardless of the rust
that came off on their clothes, and hurried into the hall.
Down the stairs they went, making a great noise. And the clatter of
their feet was so loud that the gentleman in buff and all his friends
ran out from the dining-room to see what was the matter.
“Why, it’s an army coming!” cried Peter Cotterell in great surprise.
The four halted in the front hall.
“What’s the meaning of this!” exclaimed Cotterell. “I invited you to
share my wardrobe, not to ransack the house for weapons. Come, will one
of you please explain?” Indignation mingled in his tone with surprise.
“There’s a boat off-shore, and her crew is going to land on the beach at
the northern point and steal your treasure chest,” said Ben.
“My treasure chest! My silver plate!” Cotterell raised his hand,
clenched it into a fist. “Those rascally rebels from Barmouth!”
“I don’t know where they come from,” said Ben. “But we’re going to chase
them away.”
“Chase them away?” Cotterell spurned the suggestion. “No, sir. We’ll
capture them.”
He looked around at his guests. “Gentlemen, what do you say? Would you
like to bag a few robbers?”
There were shouts of approval.
“Not so loud, not so loud,” said Cotterell. He turned to the boys and
Tuckerman. “Can you spare us a few of those extra musquetoons, or
whatever they are, that you found abovestairs? With those, and the
fencing swords in the living-room, and a few other odds and ends, we
should do quite nicely. I have a pistol myself. I never go without it in
these revolutionary days. Let me see. I left it in the kitchen, in a pot
on the shelf, where it would be out of the way.”
The firearms were handed around, and shortly a group of
fantastically-garbed people stood in front of the house. The campers and
Cotterell and Sampson were to lead the expedition, and some of the
ladies insisted on bringing up the rear.
They had not gone far, however, when Sampson suggested a new idea to the
others, and after a few minutes’ talk Cotterell’s steward and two of the
other men left the main party and turned off in the direction of the
creek.
Through the woods went the expedition, a long line of people following
Ben, who had a musket almost as long as himself stuck over his shoulder,
which necessitated his constantly ducking and dodging to avoid
overhanging branches.
When they reached the northern edge of the woods they divided into three
bands. One was headed by Ben and David, the second by Tom and Cotterell,
and the third by Tuckerman. Each band was to make its way down to the
beach in front of the rocks by a different path, but not to come out
from the shelter of the bushes in the ravines until its leader was sure
that the crew from the fishing-smack had landed and were looking for the
chest. The ladies were to stay in the woods. To this Miss Penelope
Boothby objected. She said that with the riding-crop she had picked up
in the house she could easily defend herself against a dozen pirates.
Cotterell said, “I’m sure you could, my dear Penelope. But the bright
colors of your gown might give us away. And if we have to crawl through
the brambles, what would happen to your light silk dress?”
Ben and David, with two men, threaded their way down a ravine to a
network of bushes that fringed the edge of the beach. From here, without
being seen themselves, they could see what was going on. The
fishing-smack had come to anchor a hundred yards off shore, four men had
rowed to the island and were now on the beach. Pointing to one of these
men, David whispered in Ben’s ear, “That’s my friend Sam. I’d know his
ugly mug anywhere.”
“They’re after the chest,” Ben returned. “Yes, they’ve found the right
place. See, one of them’s crawling in, with a rope in his hand.”
Three bands of watchers, at three places along the beach, saw the crew
of the smack haul the chest out from the crevice. As soon as they had it
out they threw open the top. And as they all bent over, eager to lay
hands on the Cotterell treasure, a voice hailed them from a clump of
bushes not fifty feet away.
“Throw up your hands!” cried the voice. “Throw them up quick!”
The crew stood up. They saw a man in buff coat and breeches facing them,
a pistol in his hand.
“Up with your hands!” cried another voice from a bush on the other side.
The crew hesitated a second. One of them glanced over his shoulder.
“They’ve got us cornered!” he muttered, and stuck his hands up over his
head.
The three scouting parties marched out on to the beach. The muskets and
firearms were leveled at the four men round the chest.
“It’s a regular army!” exclaimed one of the crew. And putting on as much
of an air of bravado as he could with his hands above his head, he
demanded, “What do you want of us? We’re not stealing anything. We found
that chest here.”
“Keep your hands up!” cautioned Cotterell, as he walked forward. “As you
say, you’re surrounded by an army. And while your hands are up, I’ll ask
some of my friends to see if you have weapons in your pockets.”
The search was quickly made, and each man relieved of a pistol.
“Now,” said Cotterell, “you may ease your muscles. But let me tell you
the first one who tries to get away will be knocked down and
handcuffed.”
“All right. We’ll go easy,” said the man who was known to David as Sam.
“But I don’t know what you’re after. We came ashore and saw this box in
that crack in the rocks.”
“It’s my box,” said Cotterell. “I own everything on this island.”
“Well, take it if it’s yours,” growled Sam. “We don’t want it. I thought
a box on the beach was public property.”
“You think a good many things are public property,” Cotterell retorted.
He looked at Ben and David. “Have either of you seen this man anywhere
before?”
“I have,” said David. “He’s the fellow who carried me off in that boat
out there.”
“Has anybody here seen any of these other men?” Cotterell asked next.
Tom spoke up. “I’m pretty sure they’re the fellows Lanky Larry and I
followed from the cove to the house called the Gables.”
“And what are they suspected of having done at the Gables?” continued
Cotterell.
“Of stealing some jewels,” said Tom.
The man in the buff coat nodded. “In other words, they are probably not
very desirable citizens to have at large. I think it’s my duty to give
them into custody.”
“Oh, come now,” said Sam. “You don’t really know anything about us.
There’s your chest. You see we haven’t taken anything from it. We were
sailing along the coast and we came ashore to have a look at the island.
That’s a reasonable thing to do.”
“You haven’t any right to arrest us!” exclaimed one of the other men.
“You haven’t got a warrant. And who’s going to believe what that young
fellow said about seeing us somewhere else?”
“Perhaps we can supply the authorities with further proof,” said
Cotterell with a smile.
There came a shout from someone on board the fishing-smack, and all
those on the beach looked in that direction. A man was waving a
handkerchief over the side of the boat.