"IF I WAS SUPERSTITIOUS-----"
"What is this?"
"An earthquake!"
"The island is sinking!"
"We'll have to get out of this!"
Such were some of the cries of the treasure hunters as the earth
trembled beneath them.
For perhaps twenty seconds the sickening vibration continued. Then it
stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The swaying trees finished their
dizzy dance, and the rocks that had seemed to be bowing to each other
like so many mummers resumed their impassive attitudes. Their lawless
frolic had ended!
Drew had caught Ruth by the arm as she went down, and thus had broken
the violence of her fall. But all were jarred and shaken.
As the more agile of the quartet, the young man was first on his feet.
He tenderly assisted Ruth to rise, while the others scrambled up
unaided.
"Are you hurt?" Drew asked the girl solicitously.
"Not a bit," she answered pluckily, and Drew reflected on what a
thoroughbred she was.
The others also had sustained no injury. But their forebodings as to
their safety on the island had been quickened by this striking example
of nature's restlessness. The giant in the volcano was not dead. He
was uneasy and had turned in his sleep. It was as though he resented
the coming of these interlopers, and was giving them warning to go away
and leave him undisturbed.
"Now if I was superstitious," remarked Tyke, "I should say that
something was trying to keep us from getting this treasure."
"Let it try then," said the captain grimly. "We haven't come as far as
this to turn tail and run just when we're on the point of getting what
we came for."
"Good for you, Daddy!" cried Ruth gaily. "We're bound to have that
treasure."
They quickened their steps now. This was no time for leisurely
investigation of the phenomena of earthquakes. They soon reached the
point they had attained the day before. But as they had explored that
section of the hillside already, they did not halt there, but pushed on
to the west.
"Now," said the captain, as he and Drew disburdened themselves of the
spades and mattocks they had brought along, carefully wrapped under the
guise of surveyors instruments, "we'll go at this thing in a scientific
way. We'll make a rough division of this whole section"--he included
with a wave of his hand a space half a mile square--"into four parts.
No, three parts. Tyke must rest his leg. Then each must search his
section to find some rocks that look like those beauties marked on the
map."
The three scattered promptly, and began the search. They looked
diligently, but for a long time found nothing to reward their efforts.
Drew tried as conscientiously as the rest, although at times he could
not make his eyes behave, and his gaze would wander over in Ruth's
direction. It was in one of these lapses from industry that he saw her
lift her arm and wave eagerly in his direction. He did not wait for a
second summons, but hurried over, after calling to the others to follow.
The girl was flushed and excited.
"What have you found?" Drew asked, as soon as he got within speaking
distance.
"Look!" she answered. "Doesn't that big rock over there seem to you
like a witch's head--wild and ragged locks, and all that?"
From where he was then standing, he could trace no resemblance, but
when he reached her side and looked from the same angle he raised a
shout.
"The very thing!" he cried. "There can't be any doubt of it."
The rock in question stood apart from the rest on the slope of the
hill. Nature had carved it in a moment of prankishness. There were
all the features of an old crone, forehead, nose, sunken mouth,
nut-cracker jaws, while small streams of lava, hardening as they had
flowed, gave the similitude of scanty tresses.
Tyke and the captain, soon came up, and all their doubts disappeared as
they gazed.
"The Witch's Head!" they agreed exultantly.
"With that to start with, the rest will be easy," cried Drew. "The
Three Sisters can't be more than a few hundred feet or so away."
Ten minutes' further search revealed a group of three rocks, which,
while having no resemblance to female faces, were the only ones that
stood apart from all the rest as a trio.
The hands of the three men trembled as they got out the old map and
pored over it.
"Thirty-seven big paces due north from the Witch's Head; eighty-nine
big paces due east from The Three Sisters," muttered the captain.
"Paces, even big paces, is rather indefinite," commented Drew. "If it
were yards or feet, now, it would be different. But one man's paces
differ from another's, and a short man's differ from a tall man's."
"It was very inconsiderate of that old pirate not to tell exactly how
tall he was," jested Ruth.
"Well, we can't have everything handed to us on a gold plate," said the
captain. "We may have to dig in a good many places before we strike
the right spot."
"Let's do this," suggested Tyke. "Each one of us men will mark off the
paces, taking good long strides, an' see where we bring up. Then we'll
mark off a big circle that will include all three results. It's a
moral certainty that it will be somewheres in that circle if it's here
at all."
They acted on this suggestion, Ruth, with pencil and paper, serving as
scribe, while the men did the pacing. She was elated at the part she
had played in the discovery.
It was an easy enough matter to make thirty-seven big paces from one
point and eighty-nine big paces from another, but, as every student of
angles knows, it was very difficult to make the two lines converge at
the proper point. But though their methods were rough, they succeeded
at last in getting a very fair working hypothesis. A rough circle of
forty feet in diameter was drawn about the stake Drew set up, and
within that circle they were convinced the treasure lay.
By this time the sun had reached the zenith, and before they started to
dig they retreated to the shade in the edge of the jungle and ate their
lunch.
"Hadn't you better wait until it gets a little cooler by and by?" asked
Ruth anxiously. "It will be frightful under this hot sun. This is the
hour of siesta."
"I guess we're too impatient for that," answered her father. "But
we'll work only a few minutes at a time and take long resting spells
between."
Fortunately the ground was moderately soft within the circle, and their
spades sank deep with every thrust. Tyke was not allowed to share in
this work of excavation, much to his disgust. As for Drew and Captain
Hamilton, their muscular arms worked like machines, and they soon had
great mounds of earth piled around their respective pits.
But fortune failed to reward their efforts. One place after another
was abandoned as hopeless.
They were toiling away with the perspiration dripping from them, when
Drew was startled by a cry from Ruth. He leaped instantly out of his
excavation, and ran to her. Ruth was standing in the shade of the
jungle's edge; but she was staring across the barren hillside toward
the west.
"What is it?" demanded the young man. "What do you see?"
"I--I don't know. I'm not _sure_ I saw anything," she admitted. "And
yet----"
"Some of the seamen?" demanded Drew. "I've been expecting that, though
your father is so sure that Ditty and his gang will remain at the
eastern end of the island."
"Oh, Allen! Not Ditty! Not one of the sailors! I--I could almost
believe in--in ghosts," and she tried to laugh.
"What is it, my dear?" asked Tyke, who had come over. "What's
happened? Did you see something?"
"Yes. It moved. It was there, and then it wasn't there. The space it
stood in was empty," said the girl earnestly.
"For the love o' goodness!" cried Tyke, mopping his brow. "You've got
me all stirred up. Now, if I was superstitious----"
"You will be if I tell you more about that--that thing," Ruth said.
She said it jokingly, and Tyke turned away, going over to where Captain
Hamilton was still at work.
"It must have been the spirit of the old pirate come back to guard his
hoard," Drew said lightly.
Ruth looked at him very oddly.
"What do you think?" she whispered, when Tyke was out of hearing. "Why
should the ghost of Ramon Alvarez look so much like Mr. Parmalee?"
Drew paled, and then flushed.
"Do you mean that, Ruth?" he asked, and he could not keep his voice
from trembling.
"Yes," she said. Then she flashed him a sudden smile. "Of course, it
was merely an hallucination. But, 'if I was superstitious----'" and
she quoted Tyke with a look which she tried to make merry.