THE FIRST CLUE
It was a discouraged pair that rowed home from Slipper Point that
morning. Sally was depressed beyond words by their recent discovery, for
she had counted many long months on her “pirate theory” and the ultimate
unearthing of buried treasure. Doris, however, was not so much depressed
as she was baffled by this curious turn of the morning’s investigation.
Thinking hard, she suddenly shipped her oars and turned about to face
Sally with an exultant little exclamation.
“Do you realize that we’ve made a very valuable find this morning, after
all, Sally?” she cried.
“Why, no, I don’t. Everything’s just spoiled!” retorted Sally dubiously.
“If it isn’t pirates, it isn’t anything that’s _worth_ anything, is
it?”
“I don’t know yet how much it’s worth,” retorted Doris, “but I do know
that we’ve unearthed enough to start us on a new hunt.”
“Well, what is it?” demanded Sally, still incredulous.
“Can’t you guess? The _name_ of this vessel that the lumber came
from,--and the _date_. Whatever happened that cave couldn’t have been
made before 1843, anyhow, and that isn’t so terribly long ago. There
might even be persons alive here today who could remember as far back as
that date, if not further. And if this _Anne Arundel_ was wrecked
somewhere about here, perhaps there’s some one who will remember that,
and--”
But here Sally interrupted her with an excited cry. “My grandfather!--He
surely would know. He was born in 1830, ’cause he’s eighty-seven now,
and he ought to remember if there was a wreck on this beach when he was
thirteen years old or older. He remembers lots about wrecks. I’ll ask
him.”
Doris recalled the hearty old sea-captain, Sally’s grandfather, whom she
had often seen sitting on Sally’s own front porch, or down at the
Landing. That he could remember many tales of wrecks and storms she did
not doubt, and her spirits rose with Sally’s.
“But you must go about it carefully,” she warned. “Don’t let him know,
at first that you know much about the _Anne Arundel_, or he’ll begin to
suspect something and ask questions. I don’t see quite how you _are_
going to find out about it without asking him anyway.”
“You leave that to me!” declared Sally. “Grandfather’s great on spinning
yarns when he gets going. And he grows so interested about it generally
that he doesn’t realize afterward whether he’s told you a thing or
you’ve asked him about it, ’cause he has so much to tell and gets so
excited about it. Oh, I’ll find out about the _Anne Arundel_, all
right--if there’s anything _to_ find out!”
They parted that morning filled anew with the spirit of adventure and
mystery, stopping no longer to consider the dashed hopes of the earlier
day.
“I probably shan’t get a chance to talk to Grandfather alone before
evening,” said Sally in parting, “though I’m going to be around most of
the afternoon where he is. But I’ll surely talk to him tonight when he’s
smoking on our porch and Mother and Dad are away at the Landing. Then
I’ll find out what he knows, and let you know tomorrow morning.”
* * * * *
It was a breathless and excited Sally that rowed up to the hotel at an
early hour next day.
“Did he say anything?” demanded Doris breathlessly, flying down to the
sand to meet her.
“Come out in the boat,” answered Sally, “and I’ll tell you all about it.
He certainly _did_ say something!”
Doris clambered into the boat, and they headed as usual for Slipper
Point.
“Well?” queried Doris, impatiently, when they were in midstream.
“Grandfather was good and ready to talk wrecks with me last night,”
began Sally, “for there was no one else about to talk to. You know, the
pavilion opened for dancing the first time this season, and every one
made a bee-line for that. Grandfather never goes down to the Landing at
night, so he was left stranded for some one to talk to and was right
glad to have me. I began by asking him to tell me something about when
he was a young man and how things were around here and how he came to go
to sea. It always pleases him to pieces to be asked to tell about those
times, so he sailed in and I didn’t do a thing but sit and listen,
though I’ve heard most of all that before.
“But after a while he got to talking about how he’d been shipwrecked and
along about there I saw how it would be easy to switch him off to the
shipwrecks that happened around here. When I did that he had plenty to
tell me and it was rather interesting too. By and by I said, just
quietly, as if I wasn’t awfully interested:
“‘Grandfather, I’ve heard tell of a ship called the _Anne Arundel_ that
was wrecked about here once. Do you know anything of her?’ And he said
he just guessed he _did_. She came ashore one winter night, along about
1850, in the worst storm they’d ever had on this coast. He was a young
man of twenty then and he helped to rescue some of the sailors and
passengers. She was a five-masted schooner, an English ship, and she
just drove right up on the shore and went to pieces. They didn’t get
many of her crew off alive, as most of them had been swept overboard in
the heavy seas.
“But, listen to this. He said that the queer part of it all was that,
though her hulk and wreckage lay on the beach for a couple of months or
so, and nobody gave it any attention, suddenly, in one week, it all
disappeared as clean as if another hurricane had hit it and carried it
off. But this wasn’t the case, because there had been fine weather for a
long stretch. Everybody wondered and wondered what had become of the
_Anne Arundel_ but nobody ever found out. It seemed particularly
strange because no one, not even beach-combers, would be likely to carry
off a whole wreck, bodily, like that.”
“And he never had a suspicion,” cried Doris, “that some one had taken it
to build that little cave up the river? How perfectly wonderful, Sally!”
“No, but there’s something about it that puzzles me a lot,” replied
Sally. “They took it to fix up that cave, sure enough. But, do you
realize, Doris, that it only took a small part of a big vessel like
that, to build the cave. What became of all the rest of it? Why was it
all taken, when so little of it was needed? What was it used for?”
This was as much a puzzle to Doris as to Sally. “I’m sure I can’t
imagine,” she replied. “But one thing’s certain. We’ve got to find out
who took it and why, if it takes all summer. By the way! I’ve got a new
idea about why that cave was built. I believe it was for some one who
wanted to hide away,--a prisoner escaped from jail, for instance, or
some one who was afraid of being put in prison because he’d done
something wrong, or it was thought that he had. How about that?”
“Then what about the queer piece of writing we found?” demanded Sally.
Doris had to admit she could not see where that entered into things.
“Well,” declared Sally, at length, “I’ve got a brand new idea about it
too. It came from something else Grandfather was telling me last night.
If it wasn’t pirates it was--_smugglers_!”
“Mercy!” cried Doris. “What makes you think so?”
“Because Grandfather was telling me of a lot of smugglers who worked a
little farther down the coast. They used to run in to one of the rivers
with a small schooner they cruised in, and hide lots of stuff that
they’d have to pay duty on if they brought it in the proper way. They
hid it in an old deserted house near the shore and after a while would
sell what they had and bring in some more. By and by the government
officers got after them and caught them all.
“It just set me to thinking that this might be another hiding place that
was never discovered, and this bit of paper the secret plan to show
where or how they hid the stuff. Perhaps they were all captured at some
time, and never got back here to find the rest of their things. I tell
you, we may find some treasure yet, though it probably won’t be like
what the pirates would have hidden.”
Doris was decidedly fired by the new idea. “It sounds quite possible to
me,” she acknowledged, “and what we want to do now is to try and work
out the meaning of that queer bit of paper.”
“Yes, and by the way, you said quite a while ago that you had an idea
about that,” Sally reminded her. “What was it?”
“Oh, I don’t know as it amounts to much,” said Doris. “So many things
have happened since, that I’ve half forgotten about it. But if we’re
going up to Slipper Point, I can show you better when we get there. Do
you know, Sally, I believe I’m just as much interested if that’s a
smuggler’s cave as if it had been a pirate’s. It’s actually thrilling!”
And without further words, they bent their energies toward reaching
their destination.