TREASURE AT LAST
Vincent Stearns and Percy O’Hara bade their young friends farewell at
dawn. With Swen they went gliding away toward Rock Harbor Lodge. They
would wait the coming of a passing steamer that would carry them home.
When the chill damp of morning was gone, the three girls spread blankets
on the sand and fell fast asleep.
It was mid-afternoon when they sat down to the first meal of the day. It
was a regal feast, for Swen had left two large, juicy steaks, and Vincent
had contributed a large box of chocolates.
While they were in the midst of this repast there came from the bay a
piercing scream. It was followed by a most ludicrous laugh.
“That,” exclaimed Florence, jumping up, “is old Dizzy, the dear, crazy
old loon! He survived the storm.”
She threw him a large piece of fresh meat. After swallowing it at a gulp,
he favored her with one more burst of laughter, then went splashing away.
“Do you know,” she said as she resumed her place, “we’ve got a few days
left here? I, for one, am through with mysteries. I’m all for having a
hilarious good time—boating, swimming, fishing, hiking, and never a
care!”
This program was carried out until quite suddenly out of a clear sky
mystery once more caught them. Nor will any of them live to regret it.
It all came about because Florence suggested that they row out to the
reef where the unlucky _Pilgrim_ had gone aground.
To them the reef was a mournful sight. Nothing appeared above the placid
surface. A little way down on the jagged rocks were the boilers and
engines of the _Pilgrim_.
“And look!” Florence exclaimed. “Barrels down there. Three barrels. Not
very far down either. Barrels of oil, Swen said they were. Must have
shaken out of the hull, like peas out of a pod. But barrels of oil. You’d
think they might be worth something.”
Then, like a flash, a thought came to her. “That man on the schooner, the
diver, what was he after? Could it be—?” She dared not trust herself to
think further. Swen was coming that night with supplies. She would tell
him about the barrels.
“Yes,” Swen agreed at once when he had been told of the discovery, “those
barrels of oil are worth quite a little. If it’s linseed oil they’d be
worth fifty dollars apiece. Lubricating oil is cheaper, but would be
worth going after. Dive down and put on grappling hooks. Drag them up on
the reef. That should be easy.”
“Well!” Florence exclaimed. “We’ve been ‘three last passengers’ and
castaways. Now we are about to turn wreckers!”
And wreckers they were. They found it an easy task to attach the
grappling irons, then with a cable attached to Swen’s small power boat to
drag the first two barrels to the dry surface of the jagged reef.
The third barrel presented difficulties. It appeared unusually heavy.
Twice the hooks slipped off. The third time the capstan on the boat gave
way. But in time this third barrel lay beside its two companions on the
reef, well above water.
“There you are!” Swen exulted. “A fine day’s work! We’ll just tie up and
have a look.” He nosed the boat inshore.
“Huh!” he grunted a short time later. “Two barrels of lubricating oil.
Not so good.
“But look!” he exclaimed. “What’s this? This third barrel has rubbed
against the rock until it got a hole in its side. No oil in that.”
Just at that moment Florence caught sight of something that set her heart
racing—a glint of gold from that hole in the barrel.
“Sw-wen!” she said shakily. “Just help me roll that barrel over.”
“Why? What?” Swen complied, and as he did so a golden coin rolled from
the hole in the barrel.
“A barrel of gold!” Florence sat down suddenly. She sat in a puddle of
water on the concave side of a rock and did not know it.
A barrel of gold it was—no less. The head of the steel barrel had been
removed. A great number of gold coins, wrapped in paper, had been packed
inside, then the head had been sealed up by steel welding. When the
barrel had been painted it looked just like any other.
Three hours later when the little fishing boat pulled away she carried a
considerable treasure all in gold coins.
“Of course,” Swen warned, “it’s not our gold. But there’s something in it
for us all the same. Salvage, I guess you would call it.”
The mystery of that barrel of gold was not solved at once. Little by
little it became known that a very rich and stubborn man had refused to
give up his hoarded gold when the United States Government, for the good
of all its people, demanded that he should. Thinking to evade the law, he
had packed his gold in a metal barrel and had attempted to ship it to
Canada, and, as we know, had failed.
Just who the men were on the schooner, with the diver on board, will
probably never be revealed. Were they hired by the rich man to retrieve
the treasure? Were they plain thieves who, having got some knowledge of
the gold, proposed to take it for themselves? Who can say?
Before the girls left the island a rumor was set afloat that there were
bears to be found on the island. It was traced to the mainland. It was
discovered there that a certain man of doubtful character had started the
rumor. As proof of his story he displayed scratched hands and tattered
clothing. He had met the bear, he said, by the old lighthouse at the end
of Rock Harbor.
“That,” Jeanne laughed, “must have been the head hunter. It was my bear
he met. I’m glad, though,” she added, “that he escaped with his life. It
is too terrible to die. The bear punished him quite enough.”
The three girls were back in their city homes when the salvage on their
barrel of gold arrived. Finding it to be quite a tidy sum, they promptly
divided it in two parts and sent one part to Swen to be used for the best
interests of his fisherfolk. That which remained they placed in the bank,
a treasure hoard to be spent, in part at least, on some further
adventure. If you care to know what those adventures might be you are
invited to read the book called _Gypsy Flight_.
Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text
is public domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, italic text is delimited by _underscores_.