*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76532 ***





  GAY’S YEAR
  ON SUNSET ISLAND

  _By_
  MARGUERITE ASPINWALL

  [Illustration: _The_
  GOLDSMITH
  _Publishing Co._
  CLEVELAND OHIO]

  MADE IN U.S.A.




  Copyright, 1926
  by
  Marguerite Aspinwall




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                               PAGE

     I.--A SURPRISE                        3

    II.--OFF FOR SUNSET ISLAND!           20

   III.--PLANTER’S HOUSE                  37

    IV.--ROSEMARY’S DIARY                 50

     V.--AN EXPLORING PARTY               65

    VI.--A NIGHT IN THE CAVES             76

   VII.--WE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE           91

  VIII.--SIR HENRY MORGAN’S MAP          103

    IX.--THE MAP IS STOLEN               121

     X.--THE _Myra_ BRINGS VISITORS      131

    XI.--A SWIM IN THE LAGOON            146

   XII.--“DEAD MEN’S INLET”              163

  XIII.--ALONG MORGAN’S TRAIL            180

   XIV.--THE TREASURE HOLE               195

    XV.--CAPTAIN RAWSON RETURNS          211

   XVI.--THE LOST TREASURE               226




Gay’s Year on Sunset Island




CHAPTER I

A SURPRISE


If you have lived all your life in a sleepy little New England
village like Braeburn, you get so you just don’t expect exciting,
story-book sort of things to happen. I know that I, Gay Annersley,
fifteen years old and an orphan, but living with the nicest aunt,
uncle and cousins in the world--isn’t that the proper way to begin an
autobiography?--certainly never expected anything like Sunset Island to
happen to me.

Perhaps now, having written that much, I’d better go back and explain
how it all came about, only I somehow simply had to put Sunset Island
into the first paragraph.

Ever since I was a baby I’ve lived with Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles,
because my own mother, who was Aunt Mollie’s twin sister, died when
I wasn’t quite a week old, and of course my father, being just a man,
couldn’t be expected to know how to bring up all by himself a daughter
as young as that. Besides, Aunt Mollie had a baby of her own then,
Dan, who was two, and she declared she had plenty of room in her big
old-fashioned Braeburn house, and still more in her heart, for another,
especially when that poor red, crying, motherless mite that was Gay
Annersley in those days, was her twin sister’s only child.

So that’s how I came to be one of Aunt Mollie’s flock, and for quite
a long time I didn’t even know she wasn’t my own mother. For she has
never once in all those years made any difference in the love she gives
us, between Andrée, who is her real daughter, and me.

She never made any difference, either, between another adopted child
she found room for later in her big family and her still bigger heart.
This was Sydney Ross, just my age, and the son of Uncle Charles’ old
business partner. Syd’s mother and father had died in a dreadful
typhoid epidemic when the little fellow wasn’t more than five or six,
and Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie had taken him in promptly, as they
had me.

Andrée’s the one girl cousin I possess, but there’s still another
boy besides Dan and Sydney--the baby of the family, named Joe for a
sea-captain uncle of ours, but because of the color of his hair, never
called anything except Reddy. Reddy’s a darling, and just ten; not a
bit spoiled, either, in spite of being the youngest.

I wish I could say the same thing for my cousin Andrée, but I can’t.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that she and I, being the only girls, would
be chums and like the same things, and the same people. Well, we’re
not, and we don’t.

Andrée liked dolls, and silly, girly sort of books, and tea
parties--that kind of thing, and I loathed them. I always wanted to
play ball with Dan and Sydney, when they’d let me tag round after them,
and climb trees, and swim in the lake, and go on cross-country hikes.
When I was ten I could beat both the boys at sprinting, though they
could tire me on long distance runs.

I still like tramping better than parties and dancing, which Andrée
is crazy over. But then Andrée’s pretty, in a really lovely pink and
cream and golden fashion, and sure to be popular wherever she goes,
and I’m not. I’m little and skinny, and have half a million freckles,
and a turn-up nose, though I have nice eyes--hazel, with long lashes.
I can say that without being vain, because Aunt Mollie says I’ve got
my mother’s eyes, and everyone admits _she_ was a beauty. I’m like my
daddy, and what can be all right in a man, you know, can be quite plain
in a little girl.

However, I’ve never cared much about it one way or the other. I’ve been
too busy, I guess. And I remember my father a little--he died when I
was six--but I know how wonderful he was, and I’d rather look like him
than be pretty like Andrée. Honestly I would. Because Daddy was the
bravest and finest man I’ve ever heard of, even counting in the famous
heroes in books and histories.

He was a sea captain, just as Uncle Joe is, and lost his life in a
dreadful storm at sea, saving one of his sailors who had been washed
overboard. Daddy dove right into that raging sea, Uncle Joe wrote Aunt
Mollie--Uncle Joe was his first mate at the time--and reached the man,
and held him up safely till a boat could be lowered away. But a heavy
crate that had been washed overboard, too, struck Daddy’s head just as
he was being lifted into the lifeboat. He never recovered consciousness
again, and died the next morning, and they had to bury him at sea.

So maybe you can understand why I’m proud of looking like him, and
always will be. A girl with a father like that has got something big to
live up to all the rest of her life. And I’m certainly going to do it
if I can.

Up to six months ago, we’d all been just about as happy in the
old-fashioned grey and white house on State Street, as any family could
ask to be. Uncle Charles wasn’t a rich man, but he was president of
the First National Bank in Braeburn, and his salary must have been a
pretty nice one, for we children had everything we wanted in the way of
clothes and toys, and Aunt Mollie had a car of her own. Andrée and I
went to Miss Porter’s private school on Elm Street, instead of to the
public school, and Dan was expecting to go to Andover that fall.

And then, the spring before, Uncle Charles had what the doctors called
a nervous break-down, and had to give up his position at the bank. Aunt
Mollie told me a little about it--you see, she’d gotten in the way of
treating me almost like an older person, and talking things over with
me that she never told Andrée.

It seems Uncle Charles had been working awfully hard at the bank, which
was going through some kind of crisis. I didn’t quite understand that
part, but I know it had something to do with someone’s bad judgment
in investments, and that, though the fault really wasn’t his, Uncle
Charles had insisted on giving up all his own fortune so the bank’s
depositors shouldn’t lose a penny. Aunt Mollie was so proud of him for
doing it that she never seemed to realize it meant we would have to
sell the old house on State Street we loved so much and be quite, quite
poor people.

But I guess Uncle Charles realized it all right, and probably he blamed
himself for not somehow knowing what the other man was doing. Anyhow,
there we were, all at once, with no money except a few hundred dollars
of Aunt Mollie’s in the savings bank, the house having to be sold just
as soon as we could find a buyer who would pay a fair price, and poor
Uncle Charles so ill and nervous and unlike his usual jolly self that
Dr. West began to talk about the possibility of his having to go to a
sanitarium.

Of course there was Syd’s little income that his own father had left
him, but neither Aunt Mollie nor Uncle Charles would touch a penny of
that, though Sydney begged and _begged_ them. Anyhow it wasn’t much,
just enough to send him to boarding school later, and college, with a
bit left over to start him in some good business afterwards.

Aunt Mollie put her arms around me the night after Dr. West first
hinted at the sanitarium, and for the first time in my life I saw her
give way and cry as if her heart were broken.

“Oh, Gay, darling, what are we going to do?” she asked in a trembly
sort of voice that made a big lump come in my own throat to hear. “I’d
do anything, _anything_ to make your uncle well. But where are we going
to find the money to pay for a sanitarium?”

“Maybe it won’t be necessary after all,” I said as cheerfully as I
could. “I thought he seemed a little better today, didn’t you?”

Aunt Mollie’s never been the kind to look on the dark side of things,
but though she tried to cheer up and smile, I could see she hadn’t much
heart in it.

“Wel-ll, perhaps so, dear,” she replied with a little sigh she tried to
smother. “But he’s been ill for over six months now. I can’t seem to
see any real improvement.”

“And perhaps a nice rich buyer will come along soon,” I hurried on,
“who’ll want this house so badly he’ll give a whacking big price for
it--oh, _lots_ more than we’re asking. Then we’d have money enough to
live on for the next few years, while Dan and Sydney and I are growing
up and learning to support the family.”

She kissed me then, and called me her blessed little comfort, and
blamed herself for being, as she put it, “cowardly and lacking in
faith.” And we didn’t talk about it again for several days. But I
thought and thought, trying to think up a way out, until my head felt
actually dizzy.

Only, when you’re just fifteen, and a girl, what can you possibly do
in a situation like that? It looked pretty hopeless, but I knew it
wouldn’t help matters any if I gave in and cried, too, so I set my
teeth hard, and Syd and Dan and I talked and talked and _talked_,
though none of it seemed to get us any nearer the edge of our Slough of
Despond.

And then, tumbling on each other’s heels, as you might say, right out
of a blue sky, two wonderful things happened. We found a buyer for the
house, at a fairly good price, though not quite what Aunt Mollie had
hoped for. And Uncle Joe’s ship, the _Myra_, came into New York after
five years up and down the South Seas and the Indian Ocean, and Uncle
Joe, without waiting to send a telegram, took the first train out to
Braeburn and walked in on us just as we were sitting down to supper.

I don’t think I would have remembered him, because I wasn’t quite ten
the last time I’d seen him, but of course the minute Aunt Mollie jumped
up from the table, crying, “Joe, Joe!” in that excited, breathless way,
I knew who our unexpected visitor was.

He was a big man, with broad shoulders, and a sort of squarish, red
face with a grey mustache, and the twinklingest, jolliest grey eyes
I’ve ever seen. I knew right off that I was going to like my Uncle Joe,
even before we’d had a chance to speak a word to each other.

Aunt Mollie was hanging on to his arm with both hands as if she never
meant to let him go again, and I guessed she was not far from tears,
too, though, as I said before, I’d never seen her cry but once in my
life. She kept repeating, softly, almost as if she were saying a prayer
in church, “Joe, I’ve needed you so! I’ve needed you so!” And he just
patted her shoulder and cleared his throat two or three times.

The boys and I hung back a little, at first--I don’t know exactly
why--probably shyness, for I could see by their expressions that Dan
and Syd were as excited as I was over his arrival. In fact I was so
excited that my knees suddenly felt so weak and shaky under me, I
couldn’t have moved if I’d tried. It was the queerest feeling.

You see, it came to me the minute I heard Aunt Mollie call him Joe, and
I looked up and saw him beaming at us all with that nice smile of his,
that he’d been the last person to see my daddy alive, and that he could
tell me, if he only would, so many things I’d always simply _ached_ to
know about the part of his life he’d spent at sea. I made up my mind
then and there that when we got to know each other better, I was going
to take Uncle Joe off alone somewhere and ask him about a thousand
questions.

But Andrée apparently wasn’t the least bit shy. She went up and kissed
him as calmly as if she’d known him all her life, and said, “Welcome
home, Uncle Joe! I’m your niece, Andrée. Don’t you remember me?”

Andrée can always be counted on to do the pretty, polite thing no
matter how surprised she is. I can’t seem to think fast enough.

Uncle Joe put one arm around her and kissed her, at the same time
holding out his other hand to me.

“Then this must be Gay,” he said in a nice, deep, _gruff-ish_ sort of
voice, and I was scooped up beside Andrée in a regular bear’s hug,
right off my tip-toes, too, because I’m little and Uncle Joe is simply
huge. When I say huge, I mean across and up-and-down, both. He’s one
of the biggest men I’ve ever seen, I think, but he carries himself so
straight, and moves so lightly and quickly, you don’t quite realize at
first just how enormous he is, he’s so perfectly proportioned.

Then he spoke to the boys, and made some funny sailor jokes that set
them grinning, but he kept one arm tight about my shoulders all the
time, and somehow I knew it was because of Daddy. Aunt Mollie had told
me he simply worshipped Daddy, and had refused to be made captain of
another ship, which he had a chance of being, because he preferred to
keep on sailing as mate with Daddy. They’d been at school together, and
college, and it was through Uncle Joe that Daddy first met my mother at
a Fraternity party in their freshman year.

Finally we somehow got settled down to supper once more, with Uncle Joe
between Aunt Mollie and me, and for a while everybody tried to talk at
once, and the bedlam was awful. Uncle Charles was upstairs asleep--he’d
been having one of his bad days--and when things grew too noisy, Aunt
Mollie hushed us for fear we’d wake him, and told us no one but Uncle
Joe was to open his lips, except for eating purposes, for the next
fifteen minutes.

“So now, Joe, you have a clear field,” she laughed. She suddenly looked
almost as pink-cheeked and young and unworried as Andrée. “Tell us all
about yourself, and how you happened to come home and surprise us this
way.”

Uncle Joe smiled that specially nice smile of his back at her.

“Well, I had two perfectly good reasons, Mollie,” he chuckled. Then his
eyes stopped laughing, and grew quite grave all at once, and he put his
hand on Aunt Mollie’s arm. “I somehow felt you might need the wanderer
back for a while, when I heard about Charles, my dear. And--number
two--” his eyes crinkled up at the corners again, “I’ve got a plan to
propose.”

Syd started to shout “Hoo-_ray_!” and stuffed a big piece of biscuit
into his mouth in a hurry, remembering we weren’t to speak for another
ten minutes or so yet.

“Well, well! Not a comment,” Uncle Joe laughed. “Mollie, you’ve got
them well trained. I suppose, then, since they can’t ask questions, I’d
better end the suspense at once, so here goes! I brought the _Myra_
back especially to take a certain family not far off at the moment, on
a cruise of three or four months down to the nice, hot tropics, away
from snow, ice and winter worries, to search for rest and health for my
brother-in-law, Charles Jennings, principally; and for the rest--” he
hesitated teasingly, and glanced deliberately about the table at each
of us in turn. He had to grin, then, at the expressions of our faces.
Syd and Dan looked as though they’d _explode_ in another second if Aunt
Mollie didn’t give in about talking, or Uncle Joe didn’t hurry and
finish what he’d started to say. Even Andrée’s blue eyes were shining,
and I know I felt excited the way Syd looked.

“Excuse me, that wasn’t quite fair of me,” Uncle Joe apologized, still
chuckling. “I was thinking we might head for the Caribbean, and make
our headquarters on Sunset Island.”

And then I simply couldn’t keep still another instant. I was so excited
that I was trembling again. “Sunset Island,” I burst out. “Oh, Uncle
Joe, it sounds like all the treasure-island stories I’ve ever read--and
even nicer! What is it?”

“Why, some people believe it is a treasure island,” Uncle Joe said
quickly. “But I can’t guarantee that. Still, there’ll be no harm
in having a hunt, of course. It’s a small island, not far from
Martinique----”

“Where your great-great-great-grandmother came from,” Syd interrupted
breathlessly in his turn. “The one Andrée’s named for, you know.”

“And who used to play with the Empress Josephine when they were
children, before she _was_ Empress of France,” I supplied eagerly. “I
always wished they’d named me for her instead of Andrée. She doesn’t
care.”

“I do, too,” Andrée said indignantly. “You always say that, Gay
Annersley, just because I don’t like to read stupid old history books
all day.” She pouted and her eyes filled. Crying makes me homelier than
ever, because I scowl and my eyes get red, but Andrée looks like a
pathetic, pink and white baby when she cries, and strangers think she
must be horribly abused and will do anything to cheer her up again.

Uncle Joe evidently reacted in the usual way, for he looked rather
alarmed and terribly sympathetic, and hurried on with his explanations
about the island before the tears should actually spill over.

“Yes, yes, that’s the place,” he assented. “Makes it all the more
appropriate for us to be going back there, doesn’t it? Of course Sunset
Island’s not really Martinique, but Martinique’s the nearest land. We
had to send there to have my deed to the island recorded.”

“You mean you _own_ this island, Uncle Joe?” Syd demanded, staring with
round, amazed eyes. (Of course, after being one of the family all these
years, he considered Uncle Joe his uncle too.)

“Yes, _sir_,” Uncle Joe said promptly. “Though I’ve never set foot on
my property. It’s not a long story,” he added, twinkling again. “A few
words will tell you how I became a landed proprietor, and then we’ll
get down to discussing plans and sailing dates. The former owner was a
Frenchman by the name of Jean Carreau, who had a fine old plantation
house, in the Spanish style, and an orange grove on the island, besides
growing some sugar-cane, too, I believe. The war ruined him financially
and he lost his only son at Mons, which seemed to take all the courage
out of him, poor fellow.

“It cost too much to operate his plantation, with the market and the
price of labor what they were after the war, so in the end, after
making a losing fight for a year, he just quietly pulled up stakes one
day, took his wife--who wasn’t strong, and had come to hate the island
and its loneliness--and they went abroad with what money they had left;
it was mighty little. There they wandered about from place to place,
getting poorer and more discouraged all the time, and two years ago I
met them in India, pretty much up against it, as I soon discovered.
I’d known them years before, when they spent a winter in the States,
and Mr. Carreau had done me a favor--a very great favor, but no matter
about that now.”

“Joe, I can finish your story,” Aunt Mollie said gently, shaking her
head at him. “You found your chance to repay that old favor, by buying
his island, house, plantation, orange grove and all the rest of it,
though you hadn’t the slightest use for any of them.”

Uncle Joe blushed fierily through his mahogany-colored tan.

“At a ridiculously cheap figure,” he said, then. “I couldn’t make the
honest old fellow take what I was sure the island ought to be worth.
And, Mollie, you’re wrong about not having a use for it. I’m going to
take you all down there to spend the winter hunting that old pirate
Morgan’s treasure which tradition says is buried somewhere on that very
island of mine. Don’t you see, it will give us all time to think things
out, and will do more for Charles than a hundred sanitariums. I never
did believe in sanitariums,” he finished, and blew his nose loudly,
because I think he was afraid Aunt Mollie was once more on the edge of
tears.

“Buck up, old girl,” he told her, and patted her hand as though she’d
been Reddy’s age and had bumped herself on something hard. “It may not
be too luxurious--the house has been deserted for years, you know--but
it’s a splendid climate, and we can live on the schooner if necessary
till we get things patched up shipshape ashore. Come now, say you’ll
go, Mollie! I can see these girls and boys aren’t going to put any
difficulties in the way.” And his jolly, rumbling little chuckle boomed
out so contagiously that we were all one broad grin around the table,
including Aunt Mollie who had forgotten she wanted to cry as suddenly
as she’d thought of it.

“Oh, Joe, it--it sounds like a little bit of heaven on earth after all
these long months of worry,” she said in a voice that shook. “I’ll say
yes, dear boy, of course, if--if Charles is willing.”




CHAPTER II

OFF FOR SUNSET ISLAND!


Uncle Charles proved willing enough to go on the cruise, when the plan
was explained to him. He’d hated the idea of a sanitarium all along,
and declared that he felt better already at the thought of the sea
voyage and the warmth and peacefulness of Uncle Joe’s tropic island. He
certainly looked brighter, just talking of the change, and the brighter
and more hopeful he seemed, the more Aunt Mollie threw off care, and
bustled about packing and planning with her old light-hearted smile
that we’d seen so seldom since Uncle Charles’ illness.

As for the boys--even Reddy--they were absolutely mad with excitement,
and there was mighty little talked about in the Jennings household
until the day for sailing came, that wasn’t in one way or another
connected with the voyage and Sunset Island.

At first even a week seemed ages to our impatience, but after we got
fairly into the midst of our preparations, the time flew so fast that
Friday, the day we were to leave for New York, arrived long before it
seemed possible.

Uncle Joe had decided that we were all to take the noon train from
Braeburn for New York, and spend that night at a quiet little hotel he
knew of downtown. In this way we could make an early start Saturday
morning for the schooner, which was tied up at a wharf in the East
River. Uncle Joe wanted to sail about eleven on account of the tide.

I had never been in New York before, and never on a ship, to remember
it, that is. I’d been told that once, when Daddy’s ship came into
Boston harbor, Aunt Mollie took me down to see her and we had our lunch
on board, but I was so small at the time I don’t--very much to my
regret, as you may believe--remember one single little thing about it.

Ordinarily, then, I’d have been crazy to see all I could of New York,
but as matters stood I was saving all my curiosity for the _Myra_,
and our trip to Uncle Joe’s pirate island. The boys and I had taken
to calling it a pirate island because of that story about Morgan’s
treasure being buried there; and oh, didn’t we make plans for finding
golden ducats and pieces of eight after we reached it. It was all
so gorgeously thrilling, it simply didn’t seem possible it could be
actually happening to us.

Somehow, being a sea captain’s daughter, I felt as if I ought to know
about ships by instinct, but of course I didn’t, and was just as
mortifyingly ignorant as Andrée herself, about everything on board,
when we went up the gangway and stood at last on the _Myra’s_ beautiful
spick-and-span deck.

The _Myra_ was a sailing schooner, with an auxiliary engine for calms,
or for coming into port. She had three masts, which Uncle Joe explained
were called fore, main and mizzen. The fore-mast is the one up nearest
the bow--which is what they call the front of a ship. The main-mast is
the big one in the middle, and the mizzen-mast is the one behind--aft
is the proper sea word.

I felt quite proud of myself when I’d picked up a few real nautical
terms and decided I was going to listen and watch all I could on the
trip south and see how much I could remember.

It was a beautiful morning when we cast off our mooring lines (I’m not
_quite_ sure that’s the right way to say it, but I’ll let it stand till
I can ask Uncle Joe some day, privately). We used the engine for going
down the bay, but we hoisted some of the sails, too--one on each mast I
think.

So much that was exciting happened in the weeks following our departure
from New York, that I’m not as certain of my memory for details of the
voyage itself as I’d like to be. Anyhow, I know the sails shone very
white and beautiful against the blue sky and the blue water of the
bay, and I can still hear how the wind made a pleasant little humming
sound in the canvas, and among the sheets (that’s sea-talk for ropes; I
learned that the first day, too).

Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie sat in steamer chairs up on deck, on
the sunny side, all wrapped up in rugs because it was cold, even for
late October. But of course the boys and I scorned the very idea of
deck chairs when there was so much to do and see; and even Andrée, for
once, preferred being with us, and trailed along at our heels, as much
interested as the rest of us in learning all she could about the _Myra_.

If there wasn’t such a lot to tell about what happened after we reached
the Island, I might take the time to describe the week we spent at
sea, on the way there. But as it was all quite peaceful, and calm and
lovely, with no storms and nothing out-of-the-way from start to finish
of the voyage, I’ll just say no one was seasick; that Uncle Charles
improved simply miraculously, and that we all grew red and brown with
sunburn and salt winds, and were hungrier and happier and thankfuller
for Uncle Joe’s _scr-umptious_ idea every day of the trip.

It was very early in the morning--only a little after sunrise--when we
got our first glimpse of our Island. I was sound asleep, and dreaming I
was back in Braeburn, when someone knocked heavily on the door of the
tiny cubbyhole of a stateroom Andrée and I shared between us.

At first the sound mixed itself up with the rest of my dream, but when
it was repeated I sat up in bed in a hurry, feeling rather frightened.

“What is it?” I called. “Who’s there?”

“Martin, Miss,” came the answer. “The Captain says to come on deck,
please. We’ve lifted the Island.”

And of course, at that, I woke Andrée in a hurry, and we fell out of
our bunks and scrambled into our clothes faster than we’d ever made it
before.

“We’ll be right up, Martin,” I shrieked. “How near are we? Oh, Martin,
wait--what does the Island look like?”

But Martin had gone and we had to wait to satisfy our curiosity until
we’d followed him up on deck.

Martin, who was the youngest sailor on board, was only a year older
than Dan, but he’d been at sea for three years--two of them on the
_Myra_ with Uncle Joe and I guess it sort of amused and pleased him to
answer some of our million questions about the ship and his own sea
adventures.

We realized Uncle Joe would probably be much too busy that morning to
bother with us and our curiosity, but if we could keep near Martin we’d
know the meaning of everything that was happening. Martin’s patience
was endless, and besides, as I said, I think he liked the feeling of
importance our asking gave him.

He had called Dan and Sydney first, so we found the boys on deck
ahead of us, perched on the port rail, up near the bow, both of them
squinting horribly as they tried to look straight into the glare of the
sun which was pretty strong already, even if it was only a little way
above the horizon.

It took us all quite a while, squinting and straining our eyes, to pick
out the tiny, black speck, higher at one end than the other, that lay
directly across the sun’s path.

“It doesn’t look like an island,” Andrée said in a disappointed tone.
“It’s more like a ship with one tall mast in the stern.”

“Well, it’s not,” Dan said decidedly. “That’s Sunset Island. Uncle Joe
pointed it out to me himself. Here, take the glasses, Gay. The glare
doesn’t hurt so much through them.”

He passed them over, and I took a long, careful look to get my
bearings, but at first all I could see was pink and gold light on the
water, and deeper orange and red clouds all banded round the edges with
violet, that reached down to the sea. Then, quite suddenly, the glasses
caught it and showed up the place so plainly that I gave a gasp and
forgot to breathe again for several seconds.

It looked, through the glasses, like a hilly little island, perhaps
five miles, or less, long, with a ridge down the middle from end to end
that kept you from seeing across it. The ridge rose at the north end to
a small, but quite steep, mountain, pointed at the top like those hills
that are always called “Sugar Loaf.” We have several in different parts
of New England I’ve been in.

The whole island was thickly grown over with trees; I couldn’t make
out the kind from the ship, except along the beach where the trees,
growing down to the edge, were some sort of tall palms. I’d never seen
a palm before, except in books and travel movies, and now, actually
seeing them, rows upon rows of them, blowing in the lovely morning
breeze right before me, made the whole thing--island, pirate treasure
and all--seem actually _real_ for the first time since Uncle Joe had
spoken of his plans to us.

Somehow, deep down inside of me, I hadn’t quite believed in them
before. I think I’d gone about all those last ten days afraid I’d wake
up any minute and find it was nothing but a dream.

But now I stopped quite suddenly being afraid.

There was the Island, getting nearer and plainer and more _like_ an
island every minute. There was the same kind of sandy white beach I’d
read of in desert-island stories--oh, _ever_ so different from ordinary
seashore beaches at home! And there were the palms beckoning us to
hurry, hurry; and the curving line of surf a little distance off the
shore, appearing to go completely round the island like a long white
wall.

That must be the reef--all desert islands you read of have a reef round
them--and though I couldn’t see any break in it, even with the glasses,
I knew there must be one somewhere that would let us through to the
still water of the lagoon inside. It was too good to be true; only, it
_was_ true.

Uncle Joe had the man at the wheel lay a course to pass around the
southern tip of the island--the end that didn’t have the little sugar
loaf mountain--and as soon as the _Myra_ had rounded this, we could all
see there was an opening in the reef, just as we’d known there must be.

It looked pretty narrow for a ship as big as the _Myra_ to pass
through, and the water was pounding and fairly boiling over the reef on
both sides of the break, so that the idea of missing the entrance by
some miscalculation wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

But Uncle Joe had no fear on the subject apparently. There was a steady
wind blowing, and the _Myra_ raced through the water like a wild thing
running for the sheer joy of it.

It was awfully pretty, and sort of thrilling, but I’ll confess I would
have enjoyed it more if the _Myra’s_ nose hadn’t been pointed so
squarely at a particularly boiling patch of white water to the left of
the entrance. She looked as though her first and main object in the
race was to climb right over the reef at that special spot, but when
we seemed right on the point of doing it, the man at the wheel put it
over hard, and the next moment we were through the break in the white
wall, with the water thundering and breaking in clouds of spray on
either side of us.

Inside the little lagoon there was hardly a ripple, and the _Myra_
stopped like a big gull lighting, her white sails folding exactly like
wings. The water was the blue of a lovely aquamarine ring I once saw
at a jeweler’s in Boston, and so clear you could look away-way down to
a bottom of clean white sand like that on the beach. And across it,
from the island itself, there came to us the spiciest, most delicious
smell that was like nothing I’d ever smelled or imagined up to that
moment--orange blossoms, and new grass, and just a tang of salt air,
and wet seaweed, and hot sand, and lots of other things I hadn’t any
names for, all mixed up together. I put up my snub nose the way an
inquisitive puppy will, and sniffed and _sniffed_.

Uncle Joe came along at that moment, and how he did laugh at me. But I
was so excited. I was past caring about that.

“How soon can we go ashore?” I begged.

He laughed again and shook his head at me.

“Nobody goes ashore from my ship without breakfast,” he told me.
“Depends on you and Andy, here, how soon that’s eaten.”

Usually, as I knew perfectly well, Andrée hated his nickname for her
of Andy, but that morning she didn’t notice it. She slipped her hand
through my arm.

“Hurry up, Gay, and let’s eat quick, then,” she said, and of course I
didn’t need any urging when I found that was the condition on which our
going ashore depended.

Half an hour later everybody, including Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles
and Reddy, were on deck, to find the long boat already in the water,
with Martin and another sailor waiting at the oars. It was only a
little bit of a row from the schooner to the beach, and we all went,
even Uncle Charles, who insisted he felt like his old self, and
couldn’t be tired by anything that morning.

The first thing Syd said when he stepped ashore was, “Do you suppose it
was here the pirates landed?”

The boys weren’t interested in anything but buried treasure. I don’t
believe they’d so much as noticed that lovely fragrance, or the
blueness of the lagoon, and how beautiful the palms looked blowing
against the blue up above, and the dazzling white sand in what I’ve
heard artists call the foreground of the picture.

Still, I suppose boys are made like that, and there’s no use expecting
them to be different. Now with me, even if there proved never to be any
treasure, Sunset Island was romantic and exciting enough for me just as
it was that morning.

Martin answered Sydney’s question quite seriously.

“If they ever came here at all--which ain’t sure, you know--I guess
they came same way we did, unless they owned wings ’stead of boats.
There ain’t but one entrance through the reef, the Captain says.”

So that was that.

Well, it wasn’t so silly of the boys after all. It certainly added to
the thrill to know that _maybe_ Morgan and his men, carrying their
heavy treasure chests, had come across the same sandy beach we were
standing on, once upon a time.

The Island hadn’t been inhabited for nearly five years, according to
Uncle Joe, and five years in the tropics make lots of changes. The
jungle grows quickly when it isn’t fought and kept out and trimmed.

Martin was the one who first found traces of what had been the old
road from the beach to the French planter’s house. It was pretty nearly
hidden with vines and underbrush now, but it wasn’t quite so dense as
the rest of the thicket.

“Martin and I’ll go first and cut a way,” Uncle Joe said. They had
brought curious looking axes with them in the boat, that Martin told
us were called _machetes_, and were specially useful in clearing wild
undergrowth.

“An’ keep your eyes peeled for snakes,” Martin added, never dreaming
what a bomb that single word “snakes” was going to cast into the party
behind him.

Aunt Mollie looked startled and gathered her skirts about her, as if
she were going wading, but she’s a good little sport, Aunt Mollie, if
there ever was one, and she didn’t _peep_, just started pluckily after
Martin, holding on to Uncle Charles’ arm.

Andrée, however, isn’t made of hero-stuff. She repeated the word
“snakes” in a gaspy sort of voice, and sat down on the sand, drawing
her legs up under her dress.

“Why didn’t you tell me there were snakes before?” she asked and hugged
her knees tighter with both arms, rocking back and forth. “I won’t go
into that place. I won’t--I tell you I _never_ will! I want to go back
to the ship.” And she began to cry. I’d have _died_ before I’d have
done that, no matter how scared I might be.

“Spoil sport!” Syd jeered at her. “Cry-baby! All right, go back to the
ship. But you can’t go till we come back for you. Sit there on the sand
alone, if you want to. We’re going on.”

But of course she wouldn’t do that either, and it took us ten solid
minutes, all of us pleading and reasoning in turn and together,
before she decided she’d rather brave the snakes in our company in
the thicket, then have them come out and surprise her on the beach by
herself.

So we made a second start. But some of that first flame of excitement
we’d been feeling had been nicely drowned now by Andrée’s silly tears.
Uncle Charles can’t stand a scene since he’s been sick, and I could see
he was already beginning to feel nervous and upset and half sorry he’d
ever attempted the trip ashore. But we kept on walking.

There weren’t any more interruptions, and we found the road freer after
a while, and at the end of two hundred yards or so we came out of the
trees into a beautiful green clearing, in the center of which stood a
low, white house that looked from where we were, as though it were made
of stucco or concrete. It had a red tiled roof that had lost quite a
lot of the tiles in places, and some heavy vines with bright orange
flowers were climbing over the corners and dropping down the white
walls.

It was the loveliest place you can imagine and yet--in a way I can’t
describe--somehow it was the loneliest as well. A house shows so
plainly, you see, when there’s nobody living in it and loving it.

There was a wide tiled terrace in front of it, and a million weeds
were growing luxuriously out of the cracks between the tiles in every
direction. Most of the windows hadn’t any glass in them, and vines had
grown across the openings.

“Well, well,” Uncle Joe said cheerfully. “We’ll have to turn to and do
some quick repair work on our new house. It won’t be hard, folks, don’t
all look so discouraged. Wait till you see what Martin and I can do to
put things shipshape again!”

It was unfortunate that at that moment a huge land crab came scuttling
and clattering across the weedy terrace toward us, and seeing us,
turned with a funny sidewise jump and rattled off indignantly into the
bushes. I didn’t know then it was a land crab, still, he wasn’t a bit a
frightening looking creature to me--he was just _funny_.

But Andrée didn’t see any humor in the situation. She shrieked and
clung to Aunt Mollie.

“Let’s live on the ship while we’re here,” she sobbed. “I hate this
place!”

“But look here, Andy-girl,” Uncle Joe interposed gently. “We can’t live
on the _Myra_ because she’s bound for Montevideo with a cargo from New
York. She’ll call back for us in two months or so.”

Andrée faced him with the scaredest eyes I’ve ever seen.

“You--mean,” she demanded, “that we’ll be left stranded here on the
Island for _two_ months in--that _awful_ house? That we can’t leave
till the ship comes back? Suppose somebody gets sick--suppose--”

“_Andrée_,” Aunt Mollie said quickly, “don’t be a goose. Nothing’s
going to happen. Hush, my dear!”

I saw Uncle Charles’ forehead crease in that old troubled pucker we
had come to dread, and he looked, all of a sudden, so terribly worn it
frightened me.

“I think--I’m a little tired, Mollie,” he said slowly. “I’d better sit
down for a minute or two.”

And he had started out so full of beautiful enthusiasm and a belief
that he was _almost_ well!

I wanted to take Andrée by her shoulders and shake her till her silly
head wobbled. It would have done both of us good.




CHAPTER III

PLANTER’S HOUSE


While Uncle Charles rested on the tiled terrace, with Andrée to keep
him company (she still refused to go inside the house), Uncle Joe
tried to unlock the front door with the big brass key Mr. Carreau, the
Frenchman, had given him when he bought the Island.

The lock must have rusted badly, however, in the five years it hadn’t
been used, for the key simply couldn’t budge it, no matter how hard
Uncle Joe tugged and twisted.

So Syd volunteered to climb through one of the broken windows and see
if he couldn’t open the door from the other side.

I didn’t say anything, but I made up my mind I was going to see the
inside of the house as soon as Sydney did, and when he pulled himself
up to the sill I was close at his heels before Aunt Mollie could say I
mustn’t.

The window opened on a stairway, so instead of the drop we’d both
expected to the floor, we only had to step over the sill and there we
were, standing on a beautiful broad staircase that curved down to a
perfectly huge hall below.

The hall ran clear through the house, from front to rear, and the
second story opened on it with a sort of balcony going all around. You
could come out of any of the upstairs rooms and look right down on the
hall over a lovely carved mahogany railing.

The floor of the hall was all tiled, in tiny red and white squares, and
in the middle of it there was--yes, honestly and truly there was--a
fountain in a creamy marble basin sunk in the floor. Of course the
fountain wasn’t playing now, but the little figure of a mermaid holding
up a shell for the water to pour through was awfully pretty.

Naturally I’d never lived before in a house with a fountain in the
main hall, and I fell in love with the idea at my first glimpse of
it. I made up my mind the very first repair work (if I had anything
to say about it) that Uncle Joe and Martin did, would be to start the
mermaid fountain going again. I could imagine how cool and musical the
splashing of the water into the basin would sound in that big room.

Sydney, however, wasn’t interested in fountains. He had run down the
stairs at once and after some fussing with the catch, he succeeded in
getting the front door open, and letting the rest of the party in.

It took us almost an hour to go all through the house, there were so
many rooms, and we found so much to stop and exclaim over in every
one. Contrary to what the condition of the house outside had led us
to fear, we found the rooms in pretty good shape. Of course, where
the windows were broken, storms had rained in and done some damage,
warping the floor boards just under the windows, and leaving stains
in places on the painted walls. But Aunt Mollie was relieved to find
things no worse, and that the furniture was apparently unhurt--even the
mattresses on the beds were quite dry and ready to be slept on after
they’d had the airing in the hot sunshine out on the terrace that she
ordered for them.

Uncle Joe had brought a lot of supplies of all sorts on the _Myra_, not
knowing just what we’d need, and among these were several sheets of
plate glass, which could be cut to the right size to replace the broken
window panes.

He was anxious to move into the house as soon as possible so the
_Myra_ could continue on her way, under command of Mr. Hooper, the
mate, to deliver her cargo at Montevideo, way down in Uruguay.

After we’d been all through the house, and Uncle Joe had made notes of
what we would need from the schooner, we went out on the terrace again
and found Uncle Charles looking much less tired, talking cheerfully to
Andrée about plans for our stay on the Island.

Andrée seemed a little ashamed of having made a scene, and laid herself
out to be specially sweet to Uncle Joe on the walk back to the beach.
By the time then that we were back on the _Myra_ again everybody was
almost as cheerful as they’d started out.

Uncle Joe took Martin and the ship’s carpenter--a man named
Graham--back to the house right after dinner, and Dan and Sydney and I
begged to be allowed to go, too, assuring him we could make ourselves
much more useful than he thought. We were, too.

We had brought brooms and pails and dust cloths from the _Myra_, and
Syd and I undertook to sweep out the bedrooms. Dan took the mattresses
and pillows downstairs to beat and leave in the sun.

By the time darkness came, and we had to stop work and go back to the
schooner, all the broken windows had new panes and the whole second
floor was scrubbed and swept and dusted as clean as a new whistle. Even
with Aunt Mollie to direct us, I’m sure it couldn’t have been done more
thoroughly, for though usually I’m fonder of being outdoors than doing
housework, this time it seemed just part of an exciting game.

I had thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night for thinking
of what we’d done during the day, and the still more wonderful
possibilities that lay ahead in the next two months, but after all, I
was so tired that I went to sleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

The next morning Aunt Mollie went ashore with us, taking the blankets
and linen and the new plated table silver we’d brought from Braeburn.
The minute we reached the house we all fell to, with Martin helping
us, to clean the first floor, which had a big living room, library and
dining room, besides the hall where the fountain was.

Martin was very understanding for a boy, about how much having that
fountain play again meant to me, and after tinkering with it for an
hour, suddenly he gave a funny sort of grunt, and jumped out of the
basin quickly, as a thin, silvery jet of water leaped high in the air
from the mermaid’s shell, and came down in a long arc of spray right on
his neck.

After that the fountain went to work as nicely and steadily as you
please, sending up its jet of water--that took the loveliest colors
from the sun shining in the west window across the hall--and letting
it fall with a sound like little tinkling fairy bells, into its white
marble basin. I felt as though we were living in some old Moorish
palace out of a story-book, and I could have stood there beside it,
listening to and looking at it all day, if only there hadn’t been so
many more important things to do.

We spent that night on the _Myra_ again, but the morning after, we
moved ashore bag and baggage, hung up our clothes in the huge mahogany
wardrobes in our bedrooms, put the food stores we’d laid in to last
till the _Myra’s_ return--canned things, you know, and ham, bacon, tea
and coffee in packages--in the big dark storeroom that opened into a
little passageway off the dining room. Last of all, we said goodbye to
the friends we’d made on the _Myra_, especially Martin, and watched the
schooner spread her white gull-wings and sail away through the passage
in the reef, south to Montevideo.

Then, rather soberly for all our anticipations of good times ahead, we
walked back, without talking much, through the thicket along the old
Planter’s Road, to the house.

It was too late now for anybody to change his or her mind about staying
on Sunset Island. There we were and there we must remain, no matter
what happened, until the _Myra’s_ sails showed over the horizon two
months later bound north from Uruguay.

Well, I, for one, wasn’t a bit sorry. I loved Sunset Island, and the
house had quite lost its deserted, lonely look since we’d mended the
windows and fixed blinds to shut out the glare, and had smoke coming
out of the kitchen chimney.

Of course, like most houses in the tropics, the kitchen wasn’t in the
house itself but in a small outbuilding connected with the house by
a covered passage. Still the smoke looked awfully cheerful curling
up from the chimney out there, as Aunt Mollie set about getting our
supper. She hadn’t gone down to see the schooner sail, because she
didn’t want to leave Uncle Charles, who was tired, and so the first
thing we saw as we trooped up the old drive about sunset was the
curling eddies of smoke from Aunt Mollie’s supper-fire.

Unfortunately, our first night in our new home was also our first
experience of a real tropical hurricane. The wind came up while we were
at supper, but as we were snugly shut indoors, with lots of lamps and
candles, we thought it had rather a pleasant sound in the trees around
the house.

But by the time we went to bed it had become a furious roar and the
wind seemed to take the house itself in its clutch from time to time
and shake it with such force that even the boys, finally, began to look
worried. It certainly sounded as though nothing, no matter how solid,
could hope to last through constant assaults like those.

Then, after a while, we heard a new note in all that uproar; not coming
and going like the attacks of the gale, but a steady din that rose in
a kind of high crescendo, and immediately after each outburst started
upward again.

We children puzzled over it for a while, until Uncle Joe enlightened us.

“It’s the surf on the reef,” he explained. “There’s a wild sea
outside--and bound to be wilder before morning.” He looked rather
serious, and suddenly I knew he was thinking of the _Myra_, heading for
Montevideo through all that violence of wind and waves. Probably he
was wishing, too, he was on board her. You see, the _Myra_ was Uncle
Joe’s very own--nobody else owned a share in her, and he loved her, I
honestly believe, as if she were a living thing, and a member of his
family.

Syd noticed his expression also, and came over to where I was sitting.

“I bet this is a worse storm than we realize, Sis,” he said in a low
voice. He’d always called me Sis or Sissie, since I could remember.

“Uncle Joe’s worried sick about the _Myra_. He’s trying not to let on,
but I’m sure of it.”

“I’m afraid he is,” I replied soberly. “Do you suppose this is a
hurricane, Syd? They have them down here, you know, and I think I’ve
read somewhere that though summer is the regular time for them, they do
turn up as late as October.”

We looked at each other very thoughtfully.

“It sounds like it,” Syd declared then. “But don’t for Pete’s sake
mention it before Andrée. She’s such a cry-baby she makes me sick.
If it wasn’t for the _Myra_,” he added, “I’d sort of enjoy seeing a
hurricane. We’re safe enough here on the Island--unless maybe the roof
blows off, though I don’t guess that’ll happen.”

But several times in the night which followed, I woke up with a start,
thinking that probably the roof _was_ coming off, after all. It seemed
as if the wind simply dug its fingers under the edges and shook it the
way a terrier might shake a helpless kitten. For a wonder Andrée slept
through it all; I didn’t see myself how she could, but I was mighty
glad she managed it. She’d have just about died over some of that wild
howling overhead, and as for the pounding of the surf on the reef, it
sounded so close that once or twice I half believed the sea was coming
clear over Sunset Island.

The worst of the gale--or hurricane, whichever it was--blew itself out
toward morning and when I woke after my last nap the sun was already
up, and shining beautifully, and there was only a nice, stiff sailing
breeze to keep the palms waving their arms.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and as soon as we’d had breakfast, all
of us, including Uncle Charles, started out down the road to the beach
to see the surf break on the reef.

The lagoon was as smooth as a piece of shiny blue silk, but out on the
barrier reef there was the most glorious big surf lashing and pounding.

We sat down on the sand, which was as dry and hot already as if it had
just come from being baked, and watched the waves. Uncle Joe had his
glasses and we all of us took turns looking out to sea through them.

It was Syd who first noticed the pieces of wreckage floating way out
beyond the reef, but being drawn nearer steadily by the tide.

“It looks like the top of a ship’s mast snapped off,” he announced,
after a long look. “And there’s a boat--or at least the stern part of
one drifting near it. Have a squint at ’em, Uncle Joe?”

Uncle Joe took the glasses back in a hurry. He focussed them on the
bit of row boat for so long that Syd and I watched him feeling sort of
anxious. Luckily, none of the others seemed to notice.

When he laid them down, his face was grey instead of ruddy brown, but
he only walked off quietly up the beach without a word.

Syd snatched the glasses up, and stared hard at the boat in his turn.
Then he passed them to me.

“Sis, see if you can read what the name painted on the stern is,”
he whispered. “It looks like--no, I won’t say it. You read it for
yourself.”

I did. The boat-end had floated so much nearer now that you could
almost read it without glasses. It was a piece of one of the life boats
from the _Myra_.

“But it might have been washed overboard in the storm,” I argued,
feeling my heart do a queer somersault. “It doesn’t mean anything. Why
Syd, you can’t think----”

“I don’t want to,” he said fiercely. “The boat by itself mightn’t mean
anything, as you say, Sis. But there’s that big piece of mast, too. I
can see Uncle Joe’s half crazy over it.”

“Well, look here, let’s not tell the others,” I said quickly. “They
haven’t seen that wreckage evidently.” (Andrée had started them all on
a hunt for shells, and Uncle Charles and Reddy were making a race of
it to see which could find the most brightly colored ones). “If Uncle
Joe doesn’t speak of it, let’s not either. You see, we don’t actually
_know_ anything’s happened to the _Myra_.”

“You’re a good kid, Sissie,” Syd told me approvingly. “I guess
there’s no use starting a panic. It isn’t as if we could help things
by telling. But you--you understand what it means, don’t you, if the
_Myra_ _has_ gone--to the bottom?”

I nodded dumbly, swallowing hard on a big lump in my throat.

Aside from the loss of our good friends on the schooner, if there
were no _Myra_ to call for us in two months how were we going to get
away from Sunset Island? No one at home knew when we were planning to
return. Probably none of them actually knew the Island’s exact latitude
and longitude, and on Martinique, where the deed had been recorded,
they didn’t know anything about our movements and likely enough cared
less.

I remembered, too, Uncle Joe’s saying once that Sunset Island lay well
out of the regular lanes of ocean travel. It might be months--or even
years--before a ship happened that way, near enough to signal her.




CHAPTER IV

ROSEMARY’S DIARY


That first week on Sunset Island was a busy one for all of us. In
fact, there was so much to do that Syd and I didn’t have any time to
worry about the possibility of the _Myra’s_ not returning to pick
us up two months later. And besides, as I said before, we didn’t
actually _know_ anything had happened to her, and as long as we weren’t
sure--and couldn’t be sure--there was no earthly sense in wasting all
that beautiful stay on the Island we’d looked forward to so, in being
miserable.

And Uncle Joe evidently felt the same way about it, for he had more
plans mapped out for every hour of the day than you’d believe could be
crowded into it.

He declared that the first step was to organize us for work, and he
appointed Aunt Mollie captain of the indoors team, with the privilege
of choosing two assistants. She chose Andrée, and--after a little
discussion--Reddy; because she knew I was awfully keen to be on the
outdoors team, and Reddy could be very useful drying dishes and running
errands up and downstairs. He could even dust quite nicely, if you gave
him plenty of time, and didn’t let him do bric-a-brac or high shelves.

Andrée was a real housewife by nature, and could make beds, hang
curtains and oil hardwood floors as well as Aunt Mollie herself. She
was very neat about everything she did, and very exact. The indoors
team, then, agreed to put the house in its former order and repair
inside, as far as possible, and keep it so during our visit to the
Island.

Uncle Joe was captain of the outdoors team, which of course included
all the rest of us, though he sub-divided us into two smaller
committees which had to report progress to him.

Uncle Charles and Dan were gradually--without over-taxing Uncle
Charles’ returning strength--to get the old paths and the Planter’s
Road to the beach cleared for comfortable walking. And Sydney and I
were to be a committee on gardens.

I say _gardens_, because, though Uncle Joe only stipulated that we must
have lots of vegetables, I was set on cultivating some of the profusion
of tropical flowers that grew wild all over the place.

I could see how simply gorgeous the grounds must have been once upon a
time, and how, with a little work, we could have them looking the same
way, or nearly as lovely again.

“It’s like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty--under a spell,” I said to
Uncle Joe, a little shyly for fear he’d laugh. “I want to wake it all
up and make it beautiful again, as it used to be.”

He laughed, but not in the way I’d have minded. Just a nice,
understanding jolly kind of laugh that made me grin with him.

“I’m afraid you’re a romantic young lady,” he warned me. “But, after
all, I find I like beauty as well as the next man, and a tropic island
certainly does call for a flower garden. If you can persuade Syd to
undertake the extra work, go to it, my child!”

After I’d argued with him for a few minutes, Syd saw it from my point
of view, and we decided we’d have both vegetable and flower gardens,
as big as we two could take care of by ourselves, though Uncle Joe
promised to lend a hand whenever we needed extra help.

That was to be his job for the present anyhow: to supervise all the
different phases of work, and help each team out with his experience
and his strong arms whenever and wherever they were most needed.

The first two or three days were taken up with making plans and getting
tools and materials and things ready. But by the fourth day, we were
all up early and hard at work the minute breakfast was over.

Syd and I had discovered traces of a garden back of the house--pretty
jungly and overgrown, of course, but still showing some faint
indications of what it had once been, and that encouraged us to begin
there and see what we could make of it again.

Let me tell everybody right here that if they ever feel the need of
exercise, the kind of exercise that makes your back ache till it feels
ready to break in two, and your knees tremble from sheer exhaustion,
they can’t do anything more effective than grub up weeds that’ve been
growing unchecked for five years in a garden in the tropics. My! but
Syd and I were two weary, _weary_ laborers that first evening.

“I feel as if somebody’d been beating me with a hundred clubs,” Syd
groaned. And I wasn’t much better off.

But we went right at it again the next morning and by afternoon, though
we were tired enough, the stiff, achey feeling had begun to wear off,
and by the third evening we were regular veterans.

The garden was showing the results, too, of all our hard work. The
weeds were gone, and in their places were nice rich patches of earth
which our spades had turned up, all fresh-smelling and sweet.

This had been a flower bed, and quite a number of blossoms I didn’t
know the names of, but evidently annuals--and hardy ones at that, to
withstand all the choking pressure of those weeds--were blooming today
as proud and utterly gorgeous as they ever could have looked when the
first gardener planted them.

Uncle Joe had offered to start clearing a big patch for the vegetable
seeds we’d brought South with us, while we were working on the other
bed, which helped a lot.

I wondered a little whether he was so specially anxious about getting a
big vegetable crop because he was afraid the _Myra_ was never going to
sail in through the opening in the reef again. In that case we’d need
all the food we could raise, though it was comforting to remember that
I’d heard, or read somewhere, that no one ever starved in the tropics,
because things grew so easily and fast. I certainly hoped that was true.

In the meantime, Aunt Mollie and her team had accomplished real wonders
inside the house, and Dan and Uncle Charles had several paths cleared,
which made a most surprising difference in the homelike appearance of
the place.

Of course we were all fairly on pins and needles with curiosity to
explore the Island, but beyond a few short walks, Uncle Joe wouldn’t
hear of our doing anything that would interfere with the tasks he’d
assigned to each of us.

“Finish the planting of the garden, children, and get the house
shipshape and livable,” he would tell us, shaking his grey head. “Then
we’ll go treasure-hunting to your hearts’ content.”

And we had to be satisfied with that promise.

It was not until our vegetable garden was spaded up, and planted in
neat rows, and our reclaimed flowers were blooming beautifully, while
waiting for the seeds we’d put in to come up and join them, that Andrée
made a discovery indoors which was to go a great way toward making our
stay on the Island more exciting even than we’d expected.

It happened at about the end of our third week on Sunset Island. Syd
and I were grubbing weeds in the yam patch, for in the tropics you
can’t give the weeds--or yourself--a breathing spell, unless you want
all the original hard work to do over again.

I had my back to the house, but I saw Syd straighten up suddenly, and
whistle.

“Hey, look at Andy!” he said in a surprised voice. “Something’s
happened to get her excited good and plenty. She’s running, and she’s
forgotten to put on her hat.”

We had teased Andrée a lot about her hat. No matter what hour of the
day, early morning when it was still cool, midday or sunset, she had
never once since we landed on the Island, ventured outside the house
without her big Panama shade hat.

Of course the boys pretended she was afraid of freckles and sunburn
for her complexion, but I think she was really afraid of sunstroke. It
seems some silly person at home had warned her of the terrible things
the sun did to you in the tropics, and the poor kid was half scared to
death, though I only found that out much later. So when Syd said she’d
forgotten her hat, I turned around in a hurry.

Andrée flung herself down on the grass at the edge of the garden and
panted. Her blue eyes were shining and she had the loveliest color in
her cheeks that matched exactly one of the climbing roses in the garden.

“Mother and I have been cleaning out the storeroom--not the one where
we put the provisions, but the big one in the wing, where the old
furniture and the trunks are,” she announced breathlessly. “And way
back in a corner--I found an old chest with the most wonderful clothes
in it. Silks and brocades and velvets--my _stars_!” Andrée breathed
ecstatically, clasping her hands. “You never saw such things, Gay!
Mother says that they’re what is called _Empire_, the style of dress
the Empress Josephine introduced. Come and look at them. I wanted to
get you before we went down deeper than the top layer. They’ll be grand
for dressing up.”

Of course I dropped my trowel and jumped to my feet double-quick. Even
Syd decided he’d come, too; not, as he explained carefully, that he
cared for clothes, no matter how ancient or fine they were; but because
there might be other interesting discoveries in the chest.

Neither Andrée nor I had thought of that, but we saw at once
the possibility, and scurried back to the house in a flutter of
anticipation.

We found Aunt Mollie and Red still in the storeroom, before the chest,
which was of some dark, very hard wood that looked like ebony, and had
brass hasps and lock.

Andrée had been right. I’d never even dreamed of anything as lovely as
those old, high-waisted gowns with their narrow skirts and short puffed
sleeves. There was one blue and silver brocade that almost took my
breath away it was so exquisite.

It had a knot of blue forget-me-nots and tiny pink roses, made of
velvet, on the bodice, and there was a blue feather fan with ivory
sticks lying near it, and the wee-est blue slippers without heels and
laced with silver ribbons.

Andrée looked at the whole collection longingly, and sighed.

“She--whoever owned these things, I mean--must have been little like
you, Gay,” she said. “I couldn’t get into that dress in a thousand
years.”

I lifted it out of the chest very, very carefully, and as I did so
something small and flat, rolled up in a big white silk kerchief,
slipped out of its folds and fell to the floor.

Syd picked it up and unwrapped a little book, bound in ribbed white
silk that had grown frayed and yellow with time. It was tied with a
white silk cord that had tiny yellow-white rosebuds for tassels, and on
the cover were the words in gold, old-fashioned curly-cue lettering:

  Rosemary Carreau--Her Diary

and under them the date: “1804.”

“My stars!” said Andrée again, breathlessly. “She must have been Mr.
Jean Carreau’s grandmother.”

“His great-grandmother more likely,” I corrected her. “Look at the
date--over a hundred and twenty years ago!”

“Maybe it was his great-great,” suggested Syd, grinning. “Don’t scrap,
you girls. Let’s sit down and read it out loud. It may tell us all
kinds of things we’d like to know about our island.”

Aunt Mollie looked sort of troubled.

“But I’m not sure we ought to read it, children,” she objected. “A
diary’s a private matter, and it seems to me only one of Rosemary’s
descendants ought to open it. Sometimes there are--well, family secrets
in a diary, you know. Perhaps Mr. Jean Carreau wouldn’t like our doing
it.”

“Then he ought to have taken it away with him,” I argued, in a
disappointed tone. If Aunt Mollie said we mustn’t, it was going to be
simply _fearful_ to go on living in the house with all those thrilling
secrets of the past locked up in that little white book, and us not
having a peep at them. Besides, wasn’t it Sunset Island history and
wasn’t the Island our very own now? Or at least our very own uncle’s
very own.

Then I had a bright thought.

“Can’t we leave it to Uncle Joe to decide?” I begged. “After all, it’s
his house, and I guess he bought this chest from Mr. Carreau just as
much as all the rest of the furniture.”

Aunt Mollie finally agreed to that, and Reddy was sent post-haste to
find Uncle Joe.

He came back in about five minutes with not only Uncle Joe, but Dan and
Uncle Charles as well. Reddy had blurted out a confused account of what
we’d found and roused their curiosity to boiling pitch.

After some arguing back and forth, Uncle Joe decided that Mr. Carreau
wouldn’t have left any very private family papers behind, and
that--since no one knew where he was now to ask about it--we might
start reading the little book, but must stop if we came to anything
of a private nature, in which case, he added gravely, we would all,
of course, be on our honor never to repeat what we had stumbled on
inadvertently.

“But I don’t believe there’s anything there he’d mind our knowing,”
he informed us, after he had turned over a number of the pages, and
read a bit here and there. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s all right to go
ahead,” he said, and handed the book to Andrée, since she had been
the first one to discover the old chest. His eyes twinkled at us as
he added, “I caught a glimpse of a sentence or two about old Morgan’s
treasure that’ll probably interest you youngsters. From what I can make
out, this Rosemary Carreau was the wife of the first Carreau to settle
on Sunset Island. She speaks of being half-French and half-English
herself, and living on Martinique before her marriage. Her mother who
went back to England then, appears to have asked her daughter to keep
a diary in her new home, in order not to forget the English tongue.
Judging by stray specimens I’ve noted here and there, Mrs. Rosemary’s
English was quite French, if I’m allowed to be Irish for once.”

We laughed, and Syd put in eagerly: “But what does it say about the
treasure, Uncle Joe? The girls may like wading through all that fine,
scrawly looking writing, but I want to know about the treasure first.”

Uncle Joe reached for the diary and began flipping over the pages.

“It was somewhere toward the end--here it is.” He paused teasingly and
studied our strained and anxious expressions with his grin, that’s as
young as Reddy’s. Then he began to read:

“‘My dear husband, knowing of how my always interest in the legend
concerning the treasure of the great and so-dreadful buccaneer, Sir
Henry Morgan, which is connect with this our Island where we now live,
did give me for _souvenir_ of our wedding day the map he had from the
English sailor on his gallant barque that died at Saint Pierre’--Hold
on,” Uncle Joe gasped, “this is growing complicated with a vengeance.
Was it the ‘gallant barque’ or the ‘English sailor’ who died at Saint
Pierre? Never mind, somebody died and gave a map to the first owner of
Sunset Island, or I suppose I should say he gave it to the owner and
_then_ died. I’m getting as confused as poor Rosemary. Still, the main
point is, there’s, a map, and it was in Rosemary’s possession as a
souvenir--quaint word that--of her wedding day.”

“Oh, _please_ go on!” we shouted in chorus. A map! It was getting more
gorgeous by the minute, this Island of ours.

Uncle Joe obediently resumed his reading.

“‘It is a strange map--very old, very yellow and most _merveilleux_ in
spelling. The English sailor was a very old man when he came to die,
and for cause of favors my dear husband had showed to him, he delivered
into his hands the map--his most treasure possession. It is supposed
to have been made, a copy, by a traitor among the buccaneers following
Sir Henry Morgan. The man meant surely to return and retrieve part of
the treasure, but, _hélas_! Morgan did discover his act, and punished
it by a death most terrible. One buccaneer who acted as guard to the
man condemned was kind to him, and the poor wretch gave to him in
thanks the dangerous map, Morgan never discovering. That guard was the
great-grandfather of the English sailor from whom my husband had, in
turn, the very map. It lies in my lap, as I write. But though of a rare
curiosity to behold, I much fear me--and so does my dear husband--that
the thief-buccaneer was not so accurate in his copying as could be
desire. There is no sign of Morgan’s great treasure--not one little
_moidore_ or golden guinea near the spot it marks. But I keep the map
for a souvenir.’ There’s that word she’s so fond of again, and that’s
all she says about the treasure.”

“Well, but,” I exclaimed, “where _is_ this map? We--we’ve simply got to
find it. Maybe we could read it differently, or maybe--oh, anyway, we
must have it.”

“Perhaps it’s here in the chest somewhere,” Uncle Joe offered
thoughtfully.

But it wasn’t. We took every gown, and wrap, and piece of lace out of
that ebony chest of Rosemary’s; we shook them all out, and felt them
over carefully, inch by inch. But there was no “strange map, very old,
very yellow,” anywhere to be found among them.

We sat back and stared at one another, solemnly, with very woebegone
faces. It was simply maddening to be so near and yet so hopelessly far
from our one and only clue to the secret of Sunset Island.




CHAPTER V

AN EXPLORING PARTY


It was soon after the excitement of our finding Rosemary’s old diary,
and our unsuccessful hunt for the map it described, that Uncle Joe
decided the time had come for us to explore the Island.

At first his idea had been for just Dan, Sydney and himself to go, but
the rest of us set up such a howl of dismay, he had to revise his plans.

Even Aunt Mollie and Andrée declared they weren’t going to be left out
of the fun, and promised they wouldn’t mind hard walking, or getting
tired, or anything. While as for Uncle Charles, he insisted that
sleeping out of doors in that warm balmy air was exactly what he needed
to entirely complete his cure. Dan and he had done such steady work on
the path-weeding lately that Uncle Charles said his muscles had grown
nearly as hard as when he was a track-man at college, and offered to
bet us he’d come pretty close to tiring any of us out at tramping over
rough ground.

So, in the end, the entire party started out one morning just before
sunrise, in order to cover as much distance as possible before the heat
of the day set in. We each had a small pack strapped over our shoulders
except Aunt Mollie, who wasn’t allowed to carry anything but a heavy
stick to help her in walking, and a small canvas bag on her arm, which
she jokingly called “Mother Robinson’s bag” after the famous one in
“The Swiss Family Robinson” that contained such a marvelous assortment
of necessary articles.

Aunt Mollie wouldn’t tell us what was in her bag, but it looked quite
fat, though it didn’t weigh much when I lifted it once. She informed us
mysteriously we’d find out, all in good time.

Mr. Jean Carreau had told Uncle Joe the Island was about five miles
long by three wide, and, as we wanted to make the circuit of it on the
beach first, before striking inland at the hilly end, we figured we had
about a sixteen-mile walk ahead of us.

By taking things easily, on account of the heat and Uncle Charles,
Aunt Mollie and little Reddy, we’d probably average about five miles,
or possibly six, a day, which meant three nights, at least, out in the
open.

I had always longed to sleep out-of-doors--right under the sky, you
know, without even a tent to shut me in, and I guess probably I was the
most excited member of the party when we started.

Dan and Syd had camped out in the woods for a week every summer, back
home, and Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie had done it often when they
were first married, while Uncle Joe was as used to sleeping without a
roof over him as with one.

Andrée seemed a little doubtful, I thought, as to just how much she was
going to enjoy the new experience, but she was very sweet about wanting
to do her full share of carrying our camp stuff, and made no fuss over
snakes or the other crawling creatures she was afraid of meeting.

Perhaps one reason for that was that we kept to the beach, and there
wasn’t much chance of running into anything alive there, unless it were
a turtle or some kind of stranded jelly-fish left by the tide.

It was beautiful, walking along the water’s edge, on the firm, wet sand
in the coolness of early morning. On account of the barrier reef that
went all the way round the Island there wasn’t any surf on the beach,
just a pleasant gentle little lapping sound of ripples curling against
the shelving sand.

The sky was all lit up with the glory of the sunrise--pink and gold and
purple and flaming red-orange along the clouds, and then quite suddenly
the big red ball of the sun poked its edge over one monstrous, darker
cloud to look at us.

We walked south along the beach, steadily, until the sun grew too warm
for comfort, which was about ten o’clock. By that time we had rounded
the little promontory which up to then had cut off our view of the
beach beyond it, from our landing place.

The trees grew closer to the water at this point, and seemed freer
of underbrush, so Uncle Joe picked it as a good place to camp until
afternoon. Dan and he took their machetes and went ahead of us to clear
a space big enough for us to spread our blankets in, in the shade.
Also, to relieve Andy’s fears of snakes, they made a thorough search
of the thicket around the little clearing and pronounced it free from
dangerous inhabitants.

At first we were all glad just to sprawl out on the blankets and rest,
but after our backs and legs had stopped aching (walking on sand is
terribly hard on the muscles, till you’re used to it), we youngsters
began to get restless. We hadn’t been idle as long as that since we
left the _Myra_, and we couldn’t seem to settle down to waiting, with
nothing to do, for four or five hours till it was time to go on to our
next camping place for the night.

But Aunt Mollie didn’t let us fidget long. She picked up the little
canvas bag we’d been so curious about, and opening it, took out a whole
bunch of neatly sharpened pencils and a large pad of yellow paper,
sheets of which she passed around to everybody.

“You’ll have to contrive something hard to write on,” she said. “A
flat piece of driftwood, or your packs--whatever you like. But we’re
going to hold a sort of outdoor gypsy school. Your Uncle Joe and I
have been talking it over, and we decided that there ought to be a few
lessons--even on Sunset Island--and one of the courses we elected for
you is astronomy. Uncle Joe, who knows the stars like old friends, from
his ship’s bridge, is hereby appointed teacher, and it seemed to us
that tonight, when we’re all going to sleep without anything between us
and the planets and constellations, would be a very good time to begin
learning to know them all by name. What do you think of the plan?”

As this sounded quite a different thing from ordinary stuffy school
rooms and exercise books, we were enthusiastic about trying it, and
Uncle Joe, with our help, cleared a patch of sandy soil about three
feet square, smoothing it out all flat and hard.

Then we sat about in a circle, and with a sharp-pointed twig he began
to draw little crosses in the sand, each of which represented a star,
or planetary system, and we copied them off, in exactly their positions
and relations to each other, on our yellow sheet writing after each
cross the name of the star as he told it to us.

After we’d studied them for a few minutes, he made us reverse the
papers, then he’d quiz us in turn on the names, jumping here and there
over the three-foot sky map.

It was great fun, when we began tripping each other up and asking
questions about what lay beyond the limits of our map, and from that we
got Uncle Joe reminiscing about sea days, when he first learned to know
the stars.

Before we knew it, it was time for our noon meal; then we all felt hot
and sleepy and took cat-naps for an hour, after which we were ready to
pack up and continue our exploring tour.

That night we camped on the warm sand beyond the high water-line, and
slept as cosily, wrapped in our blankets, under the eyes of our new
friends, the stars, as if we’d been in our beds at Planter’s House,
now more than six miles behind us.

The second day of our walking trip was much like the first, except that
the beach we found on the opposite side of the Island was much richer
in beautiful and unusual shells than our side.

We could hardly go on walking at times, we kept finding so many lovely
things to hold us at every step, and we had to throw simply pounds and
_bushels_ of shells away from time to time, because we accumulated so
many more than we could possibly carry.

That night we slept on the beach again, and Uncle Joe held a class on
shells and the queer sea animals that live in them, before he went to
sleep.

All the morning after we made a game of this; so many counts to anybody
who knew the name of a shell he or she picked up; of course allowing
more credits for the rarer shells, or the more brilliantly colored ones.

Andrée, to everybody’s surprise--including her own--came out with the
most credits, but she took her honors so modestly and prettily that we
couldn’t begrudge her the prize of a tiny carved silver conch shell
Uncle Joe had bought years before in India, and which he always wore on
his watch chain.

We had often admired the lovely, delicate fluting on the shell, and
Andy was tickled to pieces, now, as you may imagine, actually to own
it. Aunt Mollie found her a length of narrow black watch ribbon in her
Mother Robinson bag, and Andy promptly hung the shell around her neck
for a good luck piece.

That third day we made such progress, having by that time got our
muscles hardened up a bit, that Uncle Joe told us if we kept on an
extra hour or two after our usual camping time, we’d be able to sleep
in Planter’s House instead of outdoors that night.

But somehow, we all wanted one more camp, and voted to stop walking
earlier and find a specially good place. Then we could start for
home about sunrise next morning, and be in the house before the heat
commenced.

All the way, after our noon rest, we searched the jungle growth along
the beach, each of us hoping to be the one to discover the ideal camp
site for the end of our hike.

Of course we realized that maybe nobody would find it, and we’d have to
be content with the beach for the third time, but since we’d sort of
formed a habit of making a game of everything we did on this trip, we
made a game of “Find-the-Camp-Site” too.

And sure enough, we did find it, or rather Reddy did--quite
unintentionally.

We were at the hilly end of the Island, where the slope, instead of
being a gradual one, went up pretty steeply almost from the edge of the
beach, in a series of bush-grown cliffs.

The boys, including Reddy, had been amusing themselves for half an
hour or so, by climbing up the sides of these cliffs a little way, and
jumping down on the soft sand below, daring each other every time to go
higher and higher.

All at once there was a frightened scream from Reddy, and he
disappeared backward into the low brush, exactly as if the earth had
opened suddenly and swallowed him up.

Everybody exclaimed and scrambled up the cliff, catching at vines and
bushes to help them go faster. But when we got to where Reddy had been,
there was no one to be seen--only a big black hole in the side of the
hill, with some loose sandy earth sliding down the sides of it.

But if we couldn’t see Reddy, we could hear him howling vigorously, so
we knew he was alive, and not far away.

Syd got there before anyone else, and flung himself flat on the ground,
with his head thrust into the hole through which the smallest member
of our expedition has disappeared.

“Reddy!” he shouted. “It’s all right; we’re coming. How far down do I
drop? Stop bawling, kid. You’re not hurt really.”

We heard a sound like sniffing, and guessed, with huge relief, that
Reddy was more frightened than hurt after all.

By the time we were near enough to look into the hole, Syd had let
himself down, feet first, into the darkness inside, holding with both
hands to a particularly tough vine that hung over one of the edges.
Then he, too, had disappeared, but the next moment his voice came up to
us excitedly:

“_Sa-ay_, there’s a huge big cave in here, folks! Uncle Joe, reach me
down your pocket torch, please, I want to look the place over before
any more of you come down.”

Uncle Joe complied, and crowding close about the opening, we could see
the flicker of the flashlight moving about like a giant firefly, as Syd
and Reddy circled the cave.

Then Syd called to us again:

“Come on in, everybody, the water’s fine! We’ve got our camp site all
right! There’s a big cave here, as dry and nice as you’d want, with a
sandy floor. Be careful to hold on to that vine coming down, and it’s
not much of a drop.”

One by one, beginning with Gay Annersley, and ending with Uncle Joe,
who had stayed behind to steady the rest of us down the steep slope, we
climbed carefully down to the level of the cave floor.

As soon as our eyes became accustomed a bit to the dimness inside, we
could see that it was indeed, as Syd had said, a huge cave.

The floor was soft sand, cool and clean when you touched it, and as
smooth as if it had lain there undisturbed through centuries of time.
The roof was so far above our heads we couldn’t see it.

“Why, you could camp a whole ship’s company in here,” Uncle Joe said
in a surprised tone. And added thoughtfully, “You’d never in the wide
world find them either, unless they meant you to.”

A sudden thought made my heart beat so violently it seemed to jump
right up into my throat.

“_What_ ship’s company?” I stammered eagerly. “Not--oh, Uncle Joe, you
don’t suppose it could have been--_Morgan’s_?”




CHAPTER VI

A NIGHT IN THE CAVES


When I gasped that breathless question at Uncle Joe about the
possibility of the cave having been used by Morgan’s men, there was a
sort of stunned silence for a moment. Then Dan and Sydney burst out
with a regular war-whoop, in which Reddy--who by now had forgotten he’d
believed himself hurt by his fall--joined shrilly.

“_Boys_, for goodness sakes, do stop that awful racket,” I begged. “I
want to know what Uncle Joe thinks about it.”

I had to put my hands over my ears for a second or two, till things
quieted down, and then I looked up at Uncle Joe and repeated my
question.

“It _might_ have been--oh, Uncle Joe, say it would be just exactly the
kind of place to find buried treasure. Because, really it _is_!”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said cautiously, “never having buried any. It
certainly looks like a pretty good spot to hide anything, from a band
of smugglers to pieces of eight. We’ll camp here tonight, anyway, and
have a look-see. But there may be a dozen other better hiding places on
the Island that we haven’t found yet.”

“Not so nice and convenient to the beach though,” I said firmly, for
I couldn’t bear to give up the notion, or even admit a doubt of its
probability until we’d at least made a thorough search.

“Why--don’t you see, Uncle Joe, how easily the pirates could have
brought the stuff ashore in boats, and carried it these few hundred
feet up here to a perfectly safe secret cave like this? Treasure is
heavy, you know,--it would be so much easier to bury it as near the
landing place as they could. Very likely they stumbled on the cave by
chance, just as we did, and then realized it was exactly what they
needed.”

“You’d make a great little lawyer,” Uncle Joe laughed. “However, it’s
all right with me. You’ve convinced me Sir Henry Morgan’s golden loot
is lying somewhere near us at this very moment--that is, until we don’t
find it.”

I pouted, but had to grin a little, too. Ever since I can remember I’ve
been teased about my enthusiasms. Still, I don’t really mind. Who wants
to be a _lettuce_--cool and green and undisturbed by nice things and
sorry things both.

But the boys were as excited as I was, this time.

Aunt Mollie, who had taken possession of the flashlight, and was busily
exploring the corners of the cave, now gave a little exclamation that
brought us all running to her.

“Look what I’ve found!” she cried delightedly. “Another cave--light,
too!”

Sure enough, there was a slightly smaller cave opening out of the big
one, that was lighted quite brightly by a long narrow aperture up near
the roof, which probably looked out into another clump of bushes higher
up the cliff.

The floor was as dry and sandy as in the outer cave, and as a room it
was certainly more cheerful in there, though perhaps not so mysterious.

“This will make a nice bedroom for you and the girls, Mollie,” Uncle
Joe said at once. “Pirates or no pirates, these caves are a great find
considered as a camp site. We might even fit them up as a permanent
headquarters for outdoor picnics and hiking parties. Let’s go and
collect blankets and the rest of the stuff.”

We hurried back to the outer cave and, as the first step in making
camp, Uncle Joe, Dan and Sydney began to enlarge the entrance and pile
the loose earth removed in doing it inside the cave to form a narrow
sloping path from the floor level to the mouth. This certainly made
entering and leaving camp easier, especially for Aunt Mollie and Uncle
Charles. Then they cut down some of the thickest bushes and underbrush
around our new doorway, which let more light into the cave, changing
the interior from almost dusk to a cool and pleasant twilight.

We cooked supper on the beach because there wasn’t any proper vent for
the smoke inside the caves if we’d lighted a fire in there. But as soon
as the meal was over, instead of lingering round the fire and talking,
as we usually did, we washed up our few plates, cups and cooking
utensils at top speed, so we might hurry back to our latest find.

It was while Syd and I were scrubbing our one and only camp frying
pan--both of us working at it together, because Aunt Mollie insisted
on its being scrupulously clean and shining--that Syd brought up the
subject of the _Myra’s_ return. By a sort of unspoken understanding
we hadn’t mentioned it since that morning after the hurricane when we
spied that piece of snapped-off mast and the wrecked lifeboat floating
beyond the reef. I think we felt, instinctively, that putting our
fears into words made them seem that much more real and alarming.

But now, as if the bare possibility of our being suddenly rich had made
him think of home, Syd spoke, rather hesitantly.

“Gay, if we don’t find Morgan’s _cache_ before the _Myra_ comes--” he
broke off, and I said softly, “_If_ she comes, Syd dear.”

He gulped and tried to turn the sound into a laugh.

“Well, we’ll try to believe she will till we know--she won’t. What do
you think Uncle Joe believes, Gay?”

I shook my head and suddenly the lovely twilight sky and the bright
reflections on the waters of the lagoon blurred together in a silvery
mist of tears across my eyes.

“Of course I haven’t said anything to him, Syd, because we promised
each other not to. But I’ve been watching him a lot----”

“So’ve I,” Syd said, in a low voice, huskily.

“And when he doesn’t think anyone’s noticing him,” I went on,
more slowly, “he looks so troubled, and--and sort of anxious. And
_remorseful_, someway. Do you know, I think he’s blaming himself,
inside, all the time, for bringing us down here and letting us in for
what we may be up against if the _Myra_ doesn’t--come back. And Syd, if
he’s really feeling that--and he is--it’s because he lost hope of the
_Myra_ after seeing those pieces of wreckage that morning.”

Syd nodded without speaking. I think I had half expected him to
contradict me, and this unprotesting agreement with my words came with
a funny sense of shock. It was like finding those floating bits of
wreckage all over again and realizing what they might mean to us.

All the delicious excitement of our discovery of the caves faded out in
an awful _numbness_ that closed my throat up uncomfortably. My heart
began to pound against my ear-drums.

“Oh, Syd,” I said forlornly. “Oh--Syd!”

He put his hand on my arm, and squeezed it hard, which--from Syd--meant
more than a whole speech from most people.

“We’d better not talk about it, Sis,” he said, quite decidedly. “I
oughtn’t to have started the subject. But I was thinking how--how queer
it would be if we really did manage to find old Morgan’s treasure and
then couldn’t ever get away to--to spend it.”

The others had gone up to the caves without waiting for us, and
looking after them, we could see a cheerful little glow of light stream
suddenly out of the black entrance-hole; the lantern, probably, that
Uncle Joe had insisted on bringing with us and Dan had carried in
addition to his own pack. It certainly would come in usefully now, to
make the caves more cheerful that evening.

We packed up the pans and as many of the dishes as Aunt Mollie had left
for us, and made our way up the steep hillside to the glow of lantern
light. But half way up, something dark, crouching in the bushes,
stopped us. Syd went over to investigate and I heard him say, in a
startled voice, “Why, it’s Andy--_crying_. Andy, you hurt anywhere? Are
you sick?”

He sounded frightened and I ran over to them as fast as my legs would
carry me.

Andrée was lying in a huddled little heap, her face down in her arms,
and her shoulders shaking in convulsive heaves. Funny, strangled sounds
came from her that were more like a hurt baby crying and trying to
catch its breath than a big girl of fourteen. It made me feel toward
her just as I would have if she’d really been a baby in trouble,--all
shaken up inside and sympathetic and anxious to comfort her.

I put both my arms around her and got her head out of the leaves and
brambles onto my shoulder, and hugged her close for a few minutes,
without trying to say a word. She felt so soft and scared and limp in
my arms that I had to put my face down against her wet cheek, and kiss
her two or three times, _hard_.

“Andy, what’s the matter?” I asked her after I’d waited a while, and
she seemed to be crying more quietly. “Tell Gay, honey. Syd and I’ll do
anything--_please_, Andy!”

She wouldn’t say a word at first, though she still held on to me with a
desperate sort of hold, but little by little the sobs quieted down and
at last she pushed me back from her and sat up, rubbing her eyes with
both fists--which again was exactly like a frightened baby.

“Nothing’s the m-matter,” she said, not too steadily. “I’m such a
goose about getting scared--you know I do, Gay. That’s all it was.
It--it just came suddenly. I was s-scared of the dark and--and those
c-caves--” she caught her breath, and I felt a shiver go through her.

“Oh, Andy, you’re not afraid of the caves,” I cried in a dismayed tone.
“Why, we’ve been all over them--in every single corner, and there’s
not a thing to hurt you.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of _things_ in the caves,” she interrupted me quite
scornfully.

“But you said--” I began.

“No, I didn’t,” she insisted. “I only said I got scared easily. I--I
like the caves. I’d much rather sleep in there than out on the beach,
as we did the other nights. Come on, Mother’ll be waiting for us, Gay.
I’ll carry the coffee pot.”

She turned and started up the cliff at a brisk climb, leaving Syd and
me to follow, both of us so puzzled by her contradictory words and
actions that we hadn’t even a word left to comment on them to each
other.

The cave was so enormous that Uncle Joe’s lantern only succeeded in
making a round splash of yellow light in the very middle of it, leaving
the walls far-off patches of greyish dusk.

But Aunt Mollie and Red had spread all our gay scarlet and tan camping
blankets in a circle on the sandy floor around the lantern, as if it
were a camp fire, and we sat down, each on our own particular blanket,
in our own particular attitude of comfort, ready for the latest of Aunt
Mollie’s study hours. She’d had a new one for us at each halt on the
entire trip.

That night was the best of all--for me, anyhow. It was supposed to be a
history class, but it was the most fascinating way to study history I’d
ever tried.

Aunt Mollie called it the “History of the Spanish Main” and it was all
about the part of the world we were in right then--the West Indies,
the Caribbean Sea, and the coasts of Central and northern South
America. She and Uncle Charles told us things they’d read in books and
histories, but Uncle Joe’s were the sea stories that sailors hand down
to one another in the long, lonely voyages in sailing ships. There were
pirates ancient and modern--rum-runners and smugglers of our present
day, and the deliberate losing of a ship at sea for the insurance money
the owners could collect on her, when she’d stopped being a paying
investment as a trader or freighter. I wish you could have heard the
scorn Uncle Joe boomed out in his big voice for the captains who let
themselves be bribed by owners to commit that lowest-of-all crimes in
the sea calendar.

And then, there were stories of the old pirates and buccaneers
we’d read about at school in our history books--Captain Kidd, and
Blackbeard, and Sir Henry Morgan who was the one we kept the tales
going about longest of all; and half a dozen others. They were wicked,
cruel men, of course, every last one of them, and we’d have hated
terribly to have met them in the flesh on our beautiful Sunset Island,
but now we drank in the old sea yarns about them that have come to be
sort of legends. Wouldn’t anyone have been thrilled!

There we sat, about our lantern fire, in the very cave, the very circle
on the sandy floor where--maybe--once upon a time nearly four hundred
years ago Morgan himself and his men had sat before us, and counted
pieces of eight, Spanish doubloons and moidores. (I don’t know how much
or what nationality a _moidore_ is even now, but I adore the sound of
the word!)

And then, much too soon, the evening was over and it was time for our
blanket beds.

The boys had brought in soft brush and spread three thick luxurious
piles of it in the inner cave for Aunt Mollie, Andy and me. And when we
had laid our blankets over them, we couldn’t have envied the richest
millionaire at home in the States his most expensive mattress and box
springs.

I dropped right off to sleep at once, I was so tired, and I don’t know
how long I had slept when I found myself broad awake again, listening
to some faint, smothered sort of sound quite near me that was repeated
steadily over and over again.

For a while I couldn’t place it, and raised my head on my elbow to
listen harder. Then I reached for the flashlight that lay on the floor
beside me and turned its light cautiously into the darkness where the
sound came from. It was Andy, sobbing into the thick folds of her
blanket she’d pulled over her face.

I let the light go out, and reaching over put my arm around her.

“Andy,” I whispered. “Andy, you’ve _got_ to tell me what’s the matter.”

An uneasy little suspicion had occurred to me that she might possibly
have overheard Syd’s and my conversation about the _Myra_ down on the
beach after supper. If she had, poor kid, it would be natural enough if
the knowledge of the uncertainty confronting us had made her cry. But
it wasn’t natural for Andy to keep a thing like that to herself, and
cry over it in the dark, alone. So I decided it wasn’t that, but I kept
getting more and more puzzled as to what could be wrong.

She pulled away from me, shaking her shoulder free of my arm with a
little shrug that I knew of old meant “let me alone.”

“Go to sleep, Gay, I’m only--h-h-homesick,” she whispered in a cross
voice. But somehow I didn’t mind the crossness as I’d ordinarily have
done--being rather quick-tempered myself--because, in spite of its
crossness, it was the forlornest and most miserable voice you can
imagine.

I deliberately moved my blanket closer, spreading it on the sand of the
cave floor, because I was afraid if I moved the brush, too, I’d surely
wake Aunt Mollie.

“I’m going to sleep over nearer, where you can grab me in the night if
you wake again,” I said cheerfully. And when she didn’t answer I set
about scooping some of the sand together in a little mound for a pillow.

There was a small flat pebble in the sand I was sifting through my
fingers, and I was about to toss it to one side, so I shouldn’t hurt my
cheek against it, when something tiny and round at one end of it moved
loosely as I touched it. It felt exactly like the little ring in the
top of a watch to snap the chain into.

I twisted about so my back was toward Aunt Mollie, and using my body to
screen the light from her, I held the pebble-thing I had in my hand
under the light of the electric torch.

It wasn’t a pebble at all, or, if it was, it was a golden pebble that
sent back a flicker of sparks at the flashlight.

It was about the size of a United States fifty-cent piece, only a
second look showed me it wasn’t round, but heart-shaped, with a gold
ring at the top to slip a chain through. Andrée, seeing the light and
hearing me give--I suppose I must have--a little grunt of astonishment,
turned over quickly, and together we studied the heart-shaped thing in
the light of the torch.

“Is it a--a piece of eight, do you suppose?” she asked in an awed
voice, but remembering to speak softly because of Aunt Mollie.

“_No!_” I whispered back; my breath was coming in gasps as if I’d been
running a race. “Don’t you see--it’s a locket! A gold locket.”

We both bent closer to stare at our surprising treasure-love lying on
my shaking, outstretched palm.

“It’s got a name engraved on it,” Andrée murmured, and put out the tip
of a finger that was trembling as hard as my own.

I held the locket nearer to the flashlight, and together we made out
the name, engraved in flourishing old-fashioned lettering that looked
somehow familiar.

It was “Rosemary.”




CHAPTER VII

WE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE


Of course after finding the locket, Andy and I lay awake a long time
and talked our discovery over in whispers. But at last weariness won
out over excitement and we fell asleep long before either of us meant
to drop such a fascinating subject.

In the morning we showed the locket to the rest of the party, and the
thing had to be thrashed out all over again.

By using Uncle Joe’s thinnest knife blade we finally pried the pretty
trinket open, and found inside a lock of straight, very black hair,
which we assumed to be that of Monsieur Carreau, “my dear husband.”
Also a stiff and yellowed orange blossom, pressed flat--probably from
Rosemary’s bridal bouquet. We wondered whether the blossoms had come
from the grove on Sunset Island.

Aunt Mollie thought--and we finally agreed with her--that the cave
probably _had_ been the spot marked on the English sailor’s map and
that Rosemary had lost the locket while conducting the unsuccessful
search party the diary told about.

But since the diary had also stated that they had hunted most
thoroughly, we could only come, reluctantly enough, to the same
conclusion Rosemary had: that the buccaneer who made the copy of the
map, had not been as accurate as he ought to have been, considering all
that was at stake; and that the treasure was not here.

Uncle Joe had another theory to account for this which, however,
we were none of us willing to accept at present. He held that the
buccaneer was much more likely to have made a mistake in copying the
sailing directions--the latitude and longitude of the Island--than the
actual measurements in regard to the place to dig after the Island was
reached.

He explained to us that in all probability the man was an ignorant hand
before the mast, with no education, and that while he could have read
off and copied understandingly so many feet north, south, east or west,
and so many right or left turns from the place of landing, the more
complicated directions for setting a course--which must have been on
the map, or on a paper attached to it--would be only so much Greek to
him. He might easily, then, in his hurry and excitement, (expecting
every moment to be caught red-handed, no doubt, by the terrible Morgan
himself) have copied wrongly the part he did not comprehend.

But that, we pointed out to Uncle Joe protestingly, would mean that the
treasure wasn’t on Sunset Island at all.

In that case the real hiding place of the golden loot might be in a
quite different and distant corner of the Caribbean.

We couldn’t subscribe to such a simply devastating theory, and we told
Uncle Joe so in no uncertain tones.

He laughed and flung up his hands.

“Sorry, children, to disappoint you all like this,” he said
apologetically, though his eyes still twinkled. “However, that’s my
honest opinion of how the case actually stands, if you ask me.”

Well, there wasn’t any way of proving him either right or wrong without
the map, and that seemed as impossible to locate as the treasure itself.

And after spending the whole morning searching the caves vigorously
and with most minute attention to corners and possible obliterated
traces of ancient excavations, and finding, of course, nothing at all
to reward our hard work, we ate our lunch, packed up our camp kit
with reluctance, and as soon as the afternoon grew cooler, set out for
Planter’s House.

Much as we had enjoyed our trip around the Island, we decided by common
consent, to put off exploring the hill at the north end, and the
interior of the Island until another day. We had all discovered a queer
sort of homesickness for Planter’s House, and wanted to be back there.
We had lived in it less than a month, but, perhaps because we had
worked so patiently to make it livable and homelike, it already seemed
almost as much home to us as the Braeburn house we had left more than a
thousand miles behind us up north.

That evening after supper I called Syd into the library. The Carreaus
had evidently liked books, and the shelves were well stocked. I
had been so busy up to now I hadn’t had a chance to look them over
thoroughly before.

Even if I do care more for outdoor things than indoor, I’ve always
loved books. And here I found there was a regular feast spread out
waiting for me. Only I’d read them out in the garden, I decided, or on
the beach.

“I’ve thought of something I want to talk to you about,” I told Syd
solemnly.

He was looking at the shelves hopefully. “Maybe there are some books
there on pirates,” he suggested.

“Ah’mm,” I said impatiently, for though usually I was keen enough on
that subject, I had my mind on something quite different at the moment.
“There are a few--I looked. But see this shelf, Syd.”

He bent over and read several titles, and his face looked awfully
puzzled.

“They’re all about orange-growing, Sis,” he objected. “What do you want
with them?”

I tried to speak slowly, and not let my enthusiasm run away with me
this time, so he’d take me seriously.

“Well, we have a big orange grove to be looked after on Sunset Island,
haven’t we?” I asked significantly. “Uncle Joe and I walked over part
of it the first week we were here, but it’s fearfully rank with weeds,
and the jungly growth is creeping in on all sides. You can see, though,
it’s been a beautiful well cared-for plantation once, and we oughtn’t
to deliberately waste the--the real gold we might be able to take out
of a good orange grove, in our efforts to find old Morgan’s, that
mayn’t ever have been near the Island. Now, ought we?”

Syd caught my idea at once.

“You mean in--in case the _Myra_ doesn’t--we’d be building up a--a
sort of business against the time a vessel _will_ touch here some day
in the future. Is that it, Gay? Because, of course, if we’re only going
to be here six weeks or so longer, it wouldn’t be worth while.”

“Perhaps Uncle Joe won’t give up the Island even if the _Myra_ does
come,” I said firmly. “He might decide it was a good proposition to
leave a manager here, and some men to work the plantation. If he does,
I--I wish we could all stay on in Planter’s House, and help build the
Island up again. I love it here, Syd. I don’t ever want to go back to
Braeburn, at least not to live. But of course, I want ships to call at
the Island at intervals, to bring letters, and keep us in touch with
the world.”

He stared at the floor as if he were thinking hard.

“It’s funny, your saying that, Sis,” he said then, looking up at me. “I
couldn’t feel half as badly about the _Myra_ maybe not coming back as
I--I know I ought. ’Course I’d hate for anything to have happened to
her, but I don’t want to go back to Braeburn to live, any more than you
do. We’re all lots happier and busier here, seems to me, and Father’s
certainly better. He’s stronger and more hopeful and interested every
day. Say, Sissie, that’s sure some swell plan of yours about the
orange grove. Let’s study up on it a bit; find out a few of the simple
things that ought to be done in caring for the trees first. Then,
p’raps we could get the others interested, too, later.”

“It’s worth trying,” I agreed eagerly, feeling tremendously relieved
because Syd was back of me in the new plan. “Suppose we each choose one
of these books now, and read a few pages whenever we get a chance and
there’s no one round to ask questions.”

We had a wide choice, for a twelve-foot shelf was completely filled
with hand books of all descriptions on the single subject of
orange-growing. After looking through a number of them, we picked out
the two we thought looked least dry reading, and took them up to our
rooms, promising each other to make a start that very night.

Thinking it over in bed afterward, I was surprised to realize what
a lot of brand new subjects we’d become interested in learning more
about, in the short time we’d been on the Island. Study had always
seemed, before, a thing to be rushed through as quickly as possible, in
order to get at something more interesting. But the kind of learning we
were doing on Sunset Island sort of teased you on to wanting to know
more about it.

Take our interest in astronomy; we hadn’t stopped with that one lesson,
and I’d already been through the shelves in the library to hunt for
some books on the subject. I found half a dozen, too. That was how I
happened to come on the orange-books.

And there was our History Course on the Spanish Main, that Uncle Joe
had promised to enlarge to a “Sailor’s History of the Seven Seas,” as
he put it. We were planning to study that every evening after supper.

And our course on shells and the animals that live in them. We learned
a new lesson in that every time we walked on the beach.

And now our latest--orange culture.

Life on Sunset Island was most awfully interesting. There was something
to do every minute of the day and evening, and all of it worth doing.
You never had to stop and wonder what would come next--it was always
ready and waiting before you’d quite finished the last one.

The best part of it was that it didn’t wear off with the passing of the
first novelty of our island life.

In making that list of our interests and studies, I find I’ve forgotten
to include the most important of all, as far as Syd and I were
concerned: our garden-making.

We were pretty successful with it, and had a splendidly assorted
crop of vegetables coming along, some of which were almost ready for
picking. And as for our flowers--well, words aren’t equal to describing
the gorgeous color and brilliance of them. I’d have to have a huge
palette splashed over with a mass of the vividest colors known to an
artist, to give just the faintest idea of what we saw every time we
went out to work in those flower beds.

At the end of ten days of really concentrated reading up on oranges--it
was exactly the kind of thing Syd and I’d both done to cram for school
exams--we felt so simply _stuffed_ with facts on the subject, not to
mention theories of our own, galore, that we took Uncle Joe aside and
explained the plan to him in great detail.

He seemed quite struck by it, and nodded very emphatic approval as we
went along. He only made one comment, but that hit what Syd called the
crux of the whole situation.

“The _Myra’s_ due back here in another month, or six weeks allowing for
head winds. This is a several years’ proposition, youngsters, you know
that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said softly, and Syd added, “It wouldn’t hurt, would it,
Uncle Joe, to be prepared in case--in case something happened and she
_didn’t_?”

Uncle Joe looked at us both keenly.

“You saw those pieces of wreckage,” he stated, rather than asked. “I
thought so at the time. And you’ve never worried Mollie, or even spoken
of it to Dan. Good children!” His tone was so hearty and yet so moved
that silly tears came into my eyes, and I couldn’t see him for a second
or two.

“Yes,” we said quickly, together. And Syd went on, “What is _your_
opinion, Uncle Joe? Do you think she’ll--come?”

“I don’t know, Sydney,” was his reply. “We can only wait and see. And
it’s a good thing to say a bit of a prayer about it, once in a while,”
he added gravely.

We said nothing more on the subject then, but instead went back to
making plans for rescuing our oranges.

“And maybe,” I said hesitatingly, “maybe, Uncle Joe, you might want to
put a manager and some workmen on the Island sometime, and make the
grove pay you a nice fat income so you can retire from being a sea
captain, when you get old, and live in luxury. Wouldn’t that be worth
while?”

“Of course it would,” he agreed cheerfully, “and I seem to have a niece
with a very wise little business head on her young shoulders. Let’s
start work on the grove tomorrow, and see what we can accomplish in the
next few weeks. And you might pick out one of those orange-books of
yours for me to read, while you’re about it.”

So, with our new work at the grove, and our old work in the house and
the gardens, another month slipped by before any of us realized it, and
still no _Myra_ showed her white gulls’ wings over the blue horizon to
the south.

We hadn’t paid much attention to calendars since our arrival, except
to mark off weeks in a vague sort of way. And I was so surprised I
couldn’t do anything but gasp stupidly when Aunt Mollie asked us one
evening at supper, how many of us realized that Christmas was just
_three days_ off.

“But it’s summer!” Reddy protested, looking out the open window at a
vine, that flung big golden trumpet-flowers over the sill. “Christmas
comes in winter--when it snows,” he explained carefully, as if he were
afraid we wouldn’t understand.

We all laughed except Uncle Charles who went into the reason for this
mix-up in seasons with great thoroughness for Reddy’s benefit, until at
last the little fellow was convinced, but somewhat wistful over the
missing snow.

“Will there be any Christmas tree?” he asked finally, his blue eyes
wide.

“Not the kind you’ve been used to, I’m afraid, Reddy-boy,” Uncle Joe
said. “But there’ll be a tree, I promise you that. And we can make it
as jolly a holiday season as ever.”

“Oh, Uncle Joe, let’s cut down one of the small orange trees and use it
in place of an evergreen,” I begged eagerly.

“An’ maybe the _Myra_’ll be here by Christmas,” Reddy exclaimed, “an’
Martin can see the tree. Let’s hang up a stocking for Martin, too,
Mother.”

I felt a big, hard lump suddenly in my throat, and I sat there staring
at the table, not daring to meet Uncle Joe’s pitying eyes, or Syd’s.

Where was Martin right now, was the thought in their minds, as well
as in mine, I knew. Would he ever see our Christmas tree, or poke
exploring fingers into the stuffed and bulging Christmas stocking we’d
hang up for him?




CHAPTER VIII

SIR HENRY MORGAN’S MAP


Christmas came and went without the _Myra_. We had our orange tree
decked out in its hundreds of little golden balls, that were real fruit
instead of the colored glass ornaments we’d been used to at home. It
was awfully pretty. And we gathered armfuls of red and yellow flowers
from the garden and the vines on the house wall, and wove garlands to
hang on the tree between the oranges, and over the doorways.

After Reddy had gone to bed on Christmas Eve, we filled the stockings,
one for each of us, and one for Martin, as Reddy had begged us to do.
We hadn’t been able to make any real presents, but we had managed to
collect lots of little things that served as pretty good substitutes.

Aunt Mollie had made a big fruit cake, and several pounds of simple
sugar candies, and of course there were oranges in plenty, so that much
at least was like the usual Christmas “trimmings.”

Then she had cleverly ripped up one of Rosemary’s pretty gowns--a thin
pink silk, with velvet roses appliquéd on it, and had made two simply
_ducky_ scarfs for Andy and me. And from her famous Mother Robinson Bag
(which was still dealing out surprises) she had produced some spools of
heavy dark blue silk which she had turned into knitted ties for Dan and
Sidney.

We young folks had a little trouble planning our gifts, but in the end
we achieved a window box for Aunt Mollie’s room--Dan and Syd made the
box out of an old crate, and painted it with some white enamel paint
left over from the supply the ship’s carpenter had brought ashore from
the _Myra_ to freshen up the bedroom woodwork at Planter’s House.

Syd and I filled it with our choicest blooms from the garden, and Andy
gave up her newest, broadest scarlet hair ribbon to dress the whole up
in a Christmas bow.

The boys whittled two sturdy walking sticks for Uncle Joe and their
father, and Andy and I boiled an awful-looking (and smelling) mess of
bark most of one long hot day to get the right shade brown to stain
them when they were finished.

Things like that, you know. But we got the real Christmas thrill out
of making them, as well as from opening the bundles we received when
the day itself finally arrived.

Yet in other ways we couldn’t make it seem to ourselves like
Christmas. And when, after dinner, we went out on the terrace and sat
there, with the scent of a hundred tropical flowers all about us,
watching a gorgeous sunset, (no wonder the first discoverer named it
Sunset Island! We had a new and super-variety every evening) it was
just perfectly _fantastic_ to connect the day with our cold, white
Christmases at home.

Somebody suggested getting Rosemary’s diary, and taking turns reading
it aloud. We hailed this as a brilliant suggestion, and Andy ran for
the little book, which she had kept jealously in her own possession
ever since the day she discovered it.

She had hardly been gone three minutes when we heard her feet flying
across the hall behind us, and she burst out the front door like a
small, excited rocket, and tore over the terrace toward us, her heels
clicking on the tiles at every leap she took. She was waving the diary
above her head in one hand, and something white in the other.

Instinctively everyone sat up, holding his or her breath. It couldn’t
be bad news, we knew, because you never saw such a shining face as
Andy wore at that moment.

She literally fell over Uncle Charles’ feet, and sat down on the
terrace, panting, without strength apparently to get up and find the
chair she’d been sitting in before.

“What’s happened?” we chorused.

She waved the white thing weakly again, and we saw now that it was a
folded piece of heavy paper, rather dirty and worn along the edges. And
suddenly I was as sure of what it was she was flourishing as if she had
already told me.

“You’ve found the map,” I faltered. “Oh, _Andy_! _Is_ it?”

She tried to answer, laughed, choked, and tried again.

“The map! Morgan’s map--or--or the copy of Morgan’s map. Look here!”
She opened the paper with a dramatic flourish, and it was a map. A
rather crude, unremarkable map, except for the romance it stood for and
the sprawled names on it: “Morgan’s Beach,” “Gold Hill” and “Dead Men’s
Inlet”--which last was kind of gruesomely suggestive to say the least.
The points of the compass were given, and in one corner a jumble of
figures--latitude and longitude--rather smudgy, and erased, and made
pretty well undecipherable by a big blot of ink.

On the map, at the north end, just where it would correspond with our
cave, there was a row of three crosses and under them two letters that
looked like H--M.

“Henry Morgan,” Syd whispered quickly. “Look closer, there are some
words and figures, half blotted out. Those’ll be directions if we
can only read ’em. Looks like ‘200 paces from beach, north end
lagoon’--_Yep-py_, that’s it--‘20 right’--we did go to the right to the
cave. Yess-sir! And look here, too. ‘Cave entrance up 30.’ That’s where
we climbed the cliff. It was the cave. It _must_ have been. Let’s have
another search tomorrow!”

“Hold on a moment, Syd,” Uncle Joe put in, smiling. “Give me a look at
that longitude and latitude, first, before we jump to conclusions.”

“But the places are all here,” Andy urged anxiously. “Our cave, and the
lagoon, and the hill. It must be, Uncle Joe.” She was as excited as Syd
and I were.

“Quite true, Andy; but what about ‘Dead Men’s Inlet?’ We’ve been
entirely around the Island, and we didn’t find an inlet, or even any
signs that one might originally have been there.”

We stared at him in silence. It was true. There was no inlet on Sunset
Island.

Andy handed the map to him, and we continued to stare while he puzzled
out the blurred figures in the corner.

“If this figure’s a one, then the map _is_ of Sunset Island, but it’s
possible it’s seven--after looking at it through my glasses, it seems
more like a seven after all,” he pronounced slowly. “That throws the
calculations away--_way_ out, youngsters, much as I hate to admit it.
Maybe, too, some of the other figures aren’t right. And that matter of
the inlet is certainly disturbing.”

“And the worst of it is there’s no possible means of telling, is there,
unless we had the original map,” I mourned. “Still, we can take shovels
up there tomorrow and dig all the floor of those two caves up,” I
added, brightening. “It’s soft sand mostly, till we get down to rock,
and even the pirates couldn’t have gone through _that_. Uncle Joe,
please say it’s worth trying! It’ll be good exercise for our gardening,
too.”

It wasn’t until then that we remembered to ask Andy where she’d found
the map. It had been sewed inside the silk cover of the diary, the back
cover, all the time, and in Andy’s hurry to take the book out of her
bureau drawer, a torn edge of the silk had caught on the drawer key and
ripped, and a corner of the map had poked through. It was all as simple
as that. Blind luck! Well, maybe we’d find the doubloons by help of the
same sort of lucky chance, I thought--for I, at any rate, hadn’t given
up hope of their being on Sunset Island, inlet or no inlet.

That was the final excitement of our first Christmas Day on the Island.
We went to bed fairly early, in order to be able to start by sunrise
the next morning for our second treasure hunt in the caves.

But though we dug, and probed and dug again, and carted basketsful of
loose sand and earth from one end of the caves to the other, we found
no traces--not the littlest silver three-penny piece, or the biggest
golden doubloon--not even a rusty knife or a broken axe head--to hint
that Sir Henry Morgan’s men had so much as heard of those caves, not to
speak of considerately burying their treasure there for us to find.

We even, as a last desperate measure, dug in the cliff outside the cave
entrance, and when that failed, explored the whole side and top of the
cliff for signs of another suite of caves, without finding them.

On New Year’s Eve, exhausted, hot, dusty and disillusioned, we gave up
the expedition, and trooped back to Planter’s House and warm baths.

“So it wasn’t Sunset Island--drat that ignorant buccaneer!” Uncle Joe
grumbled quaintly, trying to make us laugh.

We were too weary to achieve more than a feeble chuckle, but we loved
his spirit, and rallied to meet our own disappointment in the matter as
gamely.

I whispered to Syd as we went up the wide staircase of Planter’s House
together, “Let’s put as much energy and hard work on the gold we know
is on Sunset Island, and we’ll make honester fortunes than with that
bloody old pirate’s stolen treasure.”

“You mean the oranges?” Syd asked, squeezing my arm sympathetically.
“All right, Sis; we will.”

And we did. Another month went by--a little more slowly than the
preceding two, because by now everyone in the party was keeping an
anxious eye out for the _Myra_, and those who were not in the secret
did a good deal of speculating as to what could be detaining her.

But the work we had laid out for ourselves progressed encouragingly.
The gardens were a delight both to our eyes and our tummies, for
the flowers grew as I’ve never seen flowers grow before, and our
vegetables were so varied and delicious that we never once missed fresh
meat.

We had brought some chickens to the Island with us, and before the
_Myra_ sailed, the carpenter had built us a nice little wire-enclosed
run for them. So we had eggs for breakfast, and for cooking, pretty
steadily. You see, in the usual desert-island story I’d read people
were always cast ashore without tools or food or clothes. But though we
were almost as hopelessly marooned on our Island, as Robinson Crusoe
on his, at least we had come prepared to stay two months, and had
outfitted ourselves accordingly.

We had about a quarter of the orange grove cleared, too, and had pruned
dead branches, and done what we could to make it all what Uncle Joe
calls “shipshape.” The oranges were as sweet as honey to eat. I’d never
tasted an orange ripened on the tree, before coming to the Island, and
there’s simply no comparison between them, and the kind sold up north.

Uncle Joe was almost as enthusiastic now as Syd and I, over the
prospect of building up a big, paying plantation again on Sunset
Island. But, of course, to do this, we had to establish communication
with the outside world, somehow.

We needed men to work in the grove, and in the bigger produce gardens
we were planning. And even more, we needed fertilizer, and new tools,
and--of course--a market to ship the results of our labors to, when
they were ready.

At the beginning of our fourth month on Sunset Island, Uncle Joe faced
the necessity of telling the rest of the family his fears--which were
pretty much a certainty now--concerning the _Myra’s_ fate.

He told the facts simply, not exaggerating, but not making light of
the matter, either. He went on to say that Syd and I had known all the
time, and had pluckily kept still about it in order not to worry the
others in the party until it was sure the schooner was not coming.

No one made an outcry, or even spoke, for a long minute. Aunt Mollie
grew very pale, and set her lips firmly together, and Uncle Charles
reached out and took her hand in both of his. But it was Andy who
astonished us utterly. She looked straight at Uncle Joe and smiled.

“I knew, too,” she said quietly. “Not as long as Gay and Syd did, but
quite a while. I overheard them talking about it on the beach the first
night we spent in the caves.”

So that was it, after all. And she’d kept it to herself even when
I caught her crying in the dark that night. I felt awfully mean and
remorseful, to remember the things I’d thought about Andy’s selfishness
and lack of consideration, I can tell you, and judging by Syd’s amazed
expression, he was feeling the same way.

He said to me, later that day, referring to Andy, “It’s the Island,
Sis. I can’t describe it, but somehow it’s--it’s been doing things to
all of us. Changing us--well, making us--a little _bigger_, I guess,
since we’ve lived on it. Do you get what I mean? Andy couldn’t have
kept a secret that scared her half to death, at home in Braeburn.”

“I don’t believe we could have, either,” I reminded him. “Yes, I reckon
it is the Island.”

When I get excited, I usually say “reckon” as Aunt Mollie does
sometimes. Aunt Mollie and my own mother were from Georgia and even
after living all her married life in New England, some of Aunt Mollie’s
pretty Southern expressions still slip out at times. None of her own
children have caught them from her, which seems odd, but I’ve always
been as imitative as a monkey.

However, to go back to Syd, and the subject of the Island, after the
above digression (as I’ve seen real authors say sometimes in books).

It was perfectly true, all that Syd had said, and he was pretty smart,
for a boy, to have reasoned it out like that. The Island had done
something to every one of us.

Look at the change in Uncle Charles! Not only in health, I mean, but
in giving him back his courage and steady nerves. And Aunt Mollie had
regained all the pounds she’d lost while Uncle Charles was ill, and she
seemed most of the time as young, and untroubled as Andy or I.

Then, there was the way we’d all learned to work--constructively is the
word Uncle Charles would use, I think. And working outdoors the way we
had, had made us awfully fit physically, and sort of mentally alert,
too, if you can understand what I mean.

You had to keep right on your mental tip-toes, every minute on Sunset
Island, if you were going to get along.

The others must have been thinking very much the same thing, for one
evening after supper, Aunt Mollie brought up the subject.

“Joe,” she began, wrinkling her forehead up as she does when she’s
thinking specially hard. “If the _Myra_ should come back in the near
future--and she may, you know, there might be all sorts of reasons for
this delay--or if she doesn’t, but we succeed in hailing another vessel
that’ll be sure to pass some day, why, I--” She stopped, and thought
again, harder.

“I know,” Uncle Charles put in eagerly, “what you’re trying to say,
Mollie. Or I believe I do. You don’t want, even if the chance comes,
to go back to Braeburn. Well, what’s more, I don’t want to, either.
I’ve found health and peace of mind here; plenty of work for my hands,
and not too much for my brain--it was the other way about in Braeburn.
I hope Joe will decide, if--and when--a ship touches here, to let the
Jennings family stay on in Planter’s House, and oversee his plantation.
What do the other members of my family say to such a plan?”

We chorused it quickly, and very decidedly.

“We want to stay. _We--want--to--stay!_”

“We’ll talk of this again, Charles,” Uncle Joe said, but I noticed
his face smoothed out as if someone had removed a big weight from
his shoulders. He knew now we weren’t in our hearts blaming him for
stranding us on his Island.

I might almost end the story of this part of Gay Annersley’s life on
Sunset Island right here, with that conversation out on the tiled
terrace. Because, after all, things worked out exactly as we’d said
then that we wanted them to do. It was almost like the old fairy tales
of the three wishes coming true.

We’d wished the _Myra_ would come back safely; we’d wished we needn’t
go away in her, but could stay on, on Sunset Island; and we’d wished
to make our plantation a success, so we could remain at Planter’s
House and all of us have enough money to live on, and perhaps leave
the Island every few years for a trip somewhere--just so we wouldn’t
entirely lose sight of our old world.

Now see how they were answered--those three wishes that the whole
family wished in concert that evening.

I was usually the first person up and out in the mornings, and on the
morning after that talk of ours, I was sort of restless, and woke
particularly early.

Scrambling into my clothes, I caught up a bath towel, and stole
downstairs and out of the house, meaning to go down the Planter’s
Road--now beautifully cleared and leveled--to the beach for a morning
dip in the lagoon.

I reached the beach, according to plan, but I never got that swim--at
least not that day. For there, about a mile beyond the barrier reef,
heading straight for me, cutting the clear blue water with a sharp
black bow, and showing all her white gulls’ wings against the blue sky,
came the _Myra_ herself. I knew her at my first glimpse of her. I guess
I’m not a sailor’s daughter for nothing, after all, for I’ve got a real
seaman’s memory for the identity of ships even from a distance.

I don’t know how I got back to the house. I remember I was crying so I
couldn’t see where I put my feet, and once fell down, _hard_, sprawling
out flat on my hands and face.

I began calling the news when I was way across the tiled terrace, at
the top of my voice, and by the time I reached the front door the
family were already tumbling down the stairs in bathrobes and slippers,
and for a minute ’most everybody was crying on each other’s shoulders,
and it was bedlam, nothing less.

Then we calmed down, went back to our rooms, put some clothes on and
hurried to the beach.

By the time we reached there the _Myra_ was just coming through the
opening in the reef, and a few moments later she was riding at anchor
in the identical spot she’d anchored in four months ago, and a boat was
pulling ashore from her.

The first person we recognized in it was Martin, and how we shouted
and clapped when we saw him. Poor Reddy burst into tears and tried to
explain to him, all that distance across the lagoon, that he’d saved
Martin’s Christmas stocking for him.

We had the entire crew of the _Myra_ ashore for breakfast in Planter’s
House--they were all old hands who had sailed for years with Uncle Joe
and seemed to him sort of like one big family.

Aunt Mollie and Andy and I cooked the most enormous breakfast for them,
and the two uncles and Syd and Dan waited on them, while Reddy, who was
much too excited to be trusted with anything breakable to carry, sat
beside Martin at the table and entirely forgot his accustomed appetite
for griddle cakes in listening to the story of the _Myra’s_ adventures
since she left us.

Naturally, when the three hot and weary cooks came out of the kitchen,
the whole story had to be repeated in great detail for their benefit.

It seems the _Myra_ nearly did founder that awful night of the
hurricane. She snapped off one of her masts--which we later saw
floating near the reef--and lost her deck railing and all her life
boats. She sprang a bad leak, too, and had to put in at Barbadoes for
repairs. Well, from then on, everything seemed dead against the poor
_Myra_.

As Martin put it, “We had head winds, and _no_ winds, and another
hurricane. And the water supply gave out, and two of the crew came down
with what we were afraid first was yellow fever, and they quarantined
us when we put into Bahia, finally. But we kept a-going--there wasn’t
nothing else for us to do, and we got to Monte at last, and delivered
our cargo. If we’d been a single day later the consignees wouldn’t have
accepted it, for another ship was expected with the same stuff in a few
days, and they’d about given us up for lost, as they hadn’t received
the cable from Bahia.”

Of course, then, nothing would do but we must all go out and look the
_Myra_ over, after her hard-luck adventurings, and afterward, Martin
must come back, to Planter’s House with us, and spend the night. On his
part, he was as anxious to hear what we’d been doing on the Island, as
we had been to have his story, only so far we hadn’t given him a chance
to do anything but answer questions.

When he heard our plan to make our home permanently on Sunset Island,
for the next few years, Martin looked very thoughtful for a while,
and later came rather shyly to Aunt Mollie and begged her to ask the
“Cap’n” to let him--Martin--remain as part of our little pioneer
colony. He declared that last voyage had given him all of the sea he
wanted for years to come, and he’d love to work in a garden again,
ashore. He told us he’d been born a farm boy, and he guessed it was
“back to the farm for him,” after this.

Of course Aunt Mollie did as he wanted, and pleaded his cause with
Uncle Joe so successfully that Martin was forthwith transferred to
shore duty, as he called it, and Uncle Joe appointed him his own
special representative on Sunset Island, when the _Myra_ sailed in the
due course of events, for the North with Uncle Joe himself on board,
and the Jennings family and one Gay Annersley (who has used the word
“I” a disgraceful number of times in these pages) stood on the lagoon
beach and waved a rather tearful goodbye.




CHAPTER IX

THE MAP IS STOLEN


We missed Uncle Joe dreadfully that month. It was the first time we had
been on the Island without his wise head and experienced hands to help
us over all emergencies, and we felt a bit forlorn and “lost” every
time we stopped to realize he wasn’t with us.

But Uncle Charles was stronger now and able to assume more and more
responsibility and Martin was a real joy, he was so eager to do more
than his share always, instead of less. The boys too, had grown very
experienced in the routine work, and Aunt Mollie, Andrée, Reddy and I
all had our special duties, so we got along as well as could be asked.

There was only one unpleasant happening in the month the _Myra_ was
away, but that worried us a good deal for many a day afterward, so I
might as well tell it here.

It was about the middle of the third week after the schooner’s
departure for the North, that we woke up one morning to see from our
east windows a long trail of black, smudgy smoke across the clear blue
of the sky. Under the smoke trail was a low, raky-looking boat, built
somewhat on the lines of a yacht, heading directly in toward our Island.

Of course we all forgot completely about breakfast, and as soon as we
had scrambled into our clothes in the shortest time possible, we raced
each other--at least we children did,--down the Planter’s Road to the
lagoon beach. Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie followed at a more sedate
pace, yet even they were excited, because it was so long since any of
us had seen people from the outside world, that the bare possibility
that this strange boat meant to pay us a visit was actually thrilling.

But of us all, it was Martin who was the most excited. He had brought
a pair of Uncle Charles’ binoculars down to the beach, and now he was
studying every line of the oncoming boat, his forehead puckered into a
funny scowl of anxiety.

“She’s coming fast--oh, boy! Watch her bow cut the water!” Dan
ejaculated, whistling. “D’you suppose she means really to come inside,
Martin? And why should she?”

Martin put the glasses down, and shook his head doubtfully.

“Maybe she needs fresh water--or thinks she can pick up a load of
cocoanuts and oranges for the crew,” he offered. “Most of these islands
have wild fruit growin’ on ’em, handy for the pickin’. And if a ship
runs short on fresh vegetables, fruit’s a necessity. But she may not be
comin’ in after all.” She was though, as we all knew within the next
five minutes. Straight ahead, her sharp black bow shearing through the
curling blue water, she came on at what looked almost like locomotive
speed, heading apparently right at the reef over which high tide was
boiling. Her heading so straight for the reef made us guess--even
before she made the abrupt manœuvre we’d seen the _Myra_ make on
similar occasions--that she knew her way in through the reef-opening.

Sure enough, just at the proper moment, she nosed sidewise, and slipped
through, into the quiet water of the lagoon. Then there was a splash as
her anchor ran out, and we saw several men--not in the trim uniform of
a yacht’s crew however--moving about her deck.

Someone on board had caught sight of us gathered on the beach, for we
saw the man who was evidently in command, beckon two of the others to
him, and they held a sort of consultation. Meanwhile, the crew had
swung a small boat overside, and then the man I’d decided was captain,
and the two who had been consulting with him, got into the little boat,
and were rowed ashore by two of the sailors.

Uncle Charles with Syd and Dan on either side of him, walked down to
the water’s edge to meet them, and the Captain--who we now saw wore
some kind of uniform cap, even if he couldn’t boast a uniform to
match--raised one hand in a kind of rough salute, and called out to
know if they might land.

Of course Uncle Charles consented, not being able to prevent their
doing it even if he’d wanted to, and as soon as the boat grounded, the
three men who weren’t rowing climbed over the side, and waded ashore.

Uncle Charles, making the best of the matter, held out his hand and the
Captain met it with his own, which was huge and extremely dirty.

None of our unexpected visitors were what Aunt Mollie calls
“prepossessing” looking. In fact, to be quite frank about it, they were
as tough and hard-faced a group of men as I’d ever pictured Sir Henry
Morgan’s pirates. But the Captain was polite enough though, from what I
heard him saying to Uncle Charles, decidedly astonished to find anybody
living on the Island.

As Martin had guessed, they had put in for fresh fruit, the Captain
explaining they had obtained a supply here on several occasions before
in the past two or three years. He said he’d always found the place
deserted before, and hadn’t known anyone had taken possession since. He
apologized for trespassing, as nicely as you could have asked--if only
his face had been more naturally reassuring.

Uncle Charles told him he could send his men down to the orange grove
to pick, under Syd’s and Dan’s direction, as much fruit as they were
likely to need. And at that, Aunt Mollie, who wouldn’t have sent Morgan
himself away from her property hungry, asked the Captain whether he
and the men with him would come up to the house for a home-cooked
breakfast. There were some fresh-baked yam pies in the storeroom--and
though the Captain couldn’t have known then what Aunt Mollie’s yam
pies were, he must have guessed by the way Reddy smacked his lips
involuntarily, and the older boys grinned.

Anyhow he accepted with alacrity, and sending the sailors to the grove
with Dan and Syd, followed the rest of us up to the house. Reddy who
seemed to be fascinated by the salty flavor of our visitors--or maybe
he was wisely keeping in the near vicinity of the yam pies--tagged at
the Captain’s heels, his blue eyes round with curiosity and wonder.

In the big hall of the fountain, Uncle Charles produced a box of
cigars, and Aunt Mollie, Andy and I hurried off to the kitchen. Under
Aunt Mollie’s capable direction, a hearty breakfast was soon under way;
sliced oranges, cereal (with evaporated cream: fresh milk and butter
being something we had had to learn to do without on Sunset Island, so
far); eggs and hot, sizzling ham; wheat cakes with a golden cane syrup,
coffee--and the pies!

By the time it was set on the breakfast table which we had moved out
onto the tiled terrace, the four sailors returned from their orange
picking, all with ravenous appetites to judge by the way their eyes
glistened at sight of that heaped-up table.

Andy and the boys and I ran back and forth between kitchen and terrace
with the trays, and the amount those men ate was something to wonder
at! Reddy sat at the table, close beside the Captain--Captain Rawson,
his name was--not eating much, but hanging on every word that was said,
his round, rosy little face quite solemn, and his blue eyes shining.

After they had eaten all they apparently could, the men went back to
the beach, and lay on the sand for a while, smoking their pipes, and
Reddy carried Captain Rawson off to show him the garden at his--the
Captain’s--particular request. The Captain seemed to be sort of
flattered by Reddy’s hero-worship, and as he treated the little fellow
gently, Aunt Mollie made no objections to the expedition.

There was quite a lot of confusion and running up and down the
Planter’s Road by the boys, superintending the transferring of the
oranges to the ship’s boat, and Aunt Mollie, Andy and I had retired to
the kitchen to wash up the mound of soiled breakfast dishes, so we none
of us noticed that Reddy hadn’t gone down to the beach with the others.

It wasn’t till the oranges had been put aboard the ship, and she had
steamed out through the opening in the reef, and so to sea, that Andy
came upon Reddy in his own little bedroom upstairs, crying as if his
heart would break.

His face wore such a woebegone and frightened expression, it frightened
Andy, and she called for Aunt Mollie. I heard her, and ran upstairs
too, and after a lot of soothing and coaxing from all three of us, we
finally wormed what had happened out of Reddy’s unwilling lips.

_He had told the Captain about Sir Henry Morgan’s treasure, and about
the map._ Probably the poor baby had had some notion of impressing his
new hero, but if he had, the results of his confidence were totally
unexpected. The Captain had been flatteringly interested, and had
wondered if Reddy knew where this wonderful map was kept, and if so,
would Reddy let another admirer of the great pirate, have a peep at it?

Poor Reddy! He fell for that hard! He hadn’t even known he was doing
anything he shouldn’t. We had never made a secret of the map’s
whereabouts, because there was no one on the Island except ourselves,
to see it. It was always kept in the big escritoire in the library,
that had belonged to some dead-and-gone Carreau.

Reddy had led his visitor straight to the spot and proudly exhibited
the map, which the ungrateful Captain had proceeded, to Reddy’s horror,
coolly to tuck away in his pocket.

“Cut on upstairs to your room, young ’un, and don’t try to blab till
you see that boat of mine pass through the reef,” the Captain had
warned him roughly, and had added a sharp clip over the ear for extra
measure. Imagine it! Our Reddy, who had never been struck before in
all his ten years. He’d been rather a delicate child and Aunt Mollie
had perhaps babied him a bit. It made me hot all over with rage to
picture that big bully daring to touch him. And I guess by the way Aunt
Mollie’s lips went together, she felt just the same about it.

Our visitor had muttered a string of ugly words that had scared poor
Red more than the blow itself, and had wound up by insinuating that
besides punishment done to Reddy’s small self in the event of his
“blabbing,” there might also be quite a few unpleasantnesses due to
happen to the house and the rest of the family as well.

Well, of course, that had effectively sealed Reddy’s lips, and he had
knelt, crying bitterly, at the window, straining his eyes to watch the
ship’s departure through the barrier reef, and out to sea. Then Andy
had found him, before he could run to Aunt Mollie with his story.

He was frightened, but not yet quite sure whether he had been naughty
to show the map, and in face of his remorse, and the scare he had been
through, none of us had the heart to scold him. Andy and I finally left
him with Aunt Mollie to comfort him, and tumbled downstairs, bursting
with indignation, to pour out the story of our loss to the boys and
Uncle Charles.

They heard us with a running series of astonished exclamations, and
when we had come to the end, Syd had struck an angry fist down on the
arm of his chair, his face clouding anxiously.

“Dad, the loss of the map’s not the worst of it,” he said slowly.
“Of course, we know by now, the map isn’t accurate, probably, but
those--those _pirates_--Martin’s sure they’re rum-runners, by the way,
and a pretty dangerous crew!--they’ll be bound to believe they’ll find
Morgan’s treasure if they look for it where the directions show.”

He stopped, and glanced about our little group, his brows drawing
together still more anxiously.

“Don’t be scared, girls, it’ll turn out all right. And of course the
_Myra’s_ due to return almost any day now.”

“You mean,” I asked, keeping my voice quite casual and steady by an
effort, I was so excited, “that we may expect a return visit from
Captain Rawson?”

Syd nodded soberly. “I’m afraid so. But it’ll take some time for him
to make his plans, and decide what to do,” he said reassuringly. “And
Uncle Joe and the _Myra_’ll surely be here before then.”




CHAPTER X

THE _Myra_ BRINGS VISITORS


We had hardly dared to hope the _Myra_ would be back promptly at the
end of four weeks, remembering that long, anxious delay on her former
voyage, but she surprised us by showing her top-sails over the blue
horizon-line three full days before we had dreamed of her being due.

Of course we were all clustered in mad excitement on the beach, waving
frantically, when she slipped through the break in the barrier reef and
into the smooth, transparent water of our little lagoon, where she came
to anchor. Uncle Joe was in the dinghy when it pulled ashore, and with
him we saw an elderly couple--neither of whose faces we knew--the lady
being dressed in deep mourning.

Naturally enough the first greetings were for Uncle Joe, but a moment
later he shook us aside, something the way a big, playful bear might
have done to a lot of bothering cubs, and turned to the little
black-gowned old lady beside him.

“First,” he said, in the deep, hearty voice we had learned to love the
sound of, “you must meet the finest and dearest sister a wandering
sailor ever possessed. Mollie dear, I have brought you as visitors the
former owners of Sunset Island, Monsieur and Madame Carreau.”

Aunt Mollie took the little frail looking old lady’s hands--which
were trembling pitifully--in both hers and then, somewhat to my
astonishment, because Aunt Mollie’s not usually demonstrative with
outsiders--she bent over impulsively and kissed Madame Carreau.

“Welcome home, Madame,” she said warmly. “I feel as if we had been your
very happy, grateful guests all these months. How nice to be able to
enjoy this beautiful old house with you! How did Joe happen to find you
both? He told me he had seen you last in India.”

She was shaking hands now with Monsieur Carreau, who looked almost
as frail and tired as his wife, I thought. Then Uncle Charles was
introduced, and finally Andrée and the boys and I. We were half
dying of smothered excitement and curiosity, by the time it came our
turn, over the advent of visitors--particularly visitors about whose
identity we had speculated as often and heatedly as we had on the
former owners of our Island.

“It was the luckiest chance you ever heard of, my meeting these good
friends again,” Uncle Joe spoke up promptly. “It seems they’d got
homesick for the Island, and decided that somehow they must find me
and win my permission to come back--as if _that_ were necessary, of
course it’s their home still!” Here Uncle Joe laughed and blew his nose
loudly, to cover up his real sympathy I guessed. “Anyhow,” he went on,
“they thought they were getting along in years, and that the world had
been a pretty rough place of late, and they wanted nothing so much as
to come home to Sunset Island and end their days here peacefully, with
their memories of their son, Raoul, and the happiness of that time when
he was alive and the plantation prosperous.”

I saw Aunt Mollie’s arm go quietly about Madame Carreau’s thin little
shoulder and draw her nearer.

“Yes, that was it,” Monsieur Carreau broke in, his voice trembling. “We
thought never to return to this island where so much of sorrow came
to us. But in the end, one desires always to go home. We can remember
better here, as our good friend Monsieur le Capitaine says, the times
when we were very happy and Raoul was young.”

“And by the merest chance we found each other in New York,” Uncle Joe
took up the story cheerfully. “They had been inquiring for me at a sort
of sea-faring club they knew I used to belong to, but which I haven’t
been near in ten years or more. The secretary of the club, however, who
follows the shipping news, had seen the arrival of the _Myra_ listed,
and got word to me. And of course the moment I found out how they felt,
I bundled Monsieur and Madame aboard the schooner, hardly giving them
time to send for their luggage. And here we are!”

“We have been protesting all the way down,” Madame said in her soft,
gentle little voice, “about being inflicted on strangers in this
fashion. We did not know the Capitaine’s family were living on the
Island. We hoped perhaps we could have been of service in overseeing
the plantation for its new owner.”

“But that’s just what you can do--better than anyone else,” Aunt Mollie
said quickly. “To speak in the American slang of my sons, you and
Monsieur, here, ‘know the ropes,’ and can help us to many short-cuts we
would otherwise have to work out for ourselves. Besides, think of the
company you will be for us all!”

“And perhaps,” I was bold enough to say excitedly, thinking of that
chest in the storeroom with the fascinating old clothes and Rosemary’s
diary, and all the rest of it, that had helped to make our stay on
Sunset Island so like a book. “Perhaps when you’re rested, Madame,
you’ll tell us stories sometimes, about the history of the Island.
And--and about Rosemary. You see we found her diary, and some of her
lovely clothes and--and Morgan’s map--but we’ve lost _that_!--We’ll
save that part to tell you later, when things are quieter--Uncle Joe
will have to hear it too.”

The smile she gave me was so sort of grateful and pleased, it actually
made the tears come to my eyes, and I’m not the kind of girl that cries
easily either.

“You dear child,” she half whispered, and patted me on the cheek, as if
I were five instead of fifteen--only I didn’t mind that.

“Jean,” she said, turning to her husband, her big, sad looking dark
eyes bright and excited, “she wants to know about Rosemary--and the
treasure.”

Monsieur nodded, almost as excited and eager as she was. “They are like
Raoul,” he murmured. “He was always hunting for Morgan’s doubloons.”

They beamed at each other so delightedly that I was glad I’d mentioned
the map, guessing that the reference to it had brought back the
happiest time in their lives, and broken the ice of formality between
us.

Then Aunt Mollie insisted that further conversation must be left until
our new visitors had been installed in their old bedroom in Planter’s
House, and we all clamored to go along as escort.

Monsieur and Madame Carreau protested anxiously, in the same breath,
that they would on no account consent to dislodging anyone who might
now be occupying their room. That they knew and loved all the rooms in
the house, and would be comfortable and at home in any that was vacant.

Fortunately it turned out that theirs was the room we had saved for our
“guest room”--wondering at the time, when we’d ever have guests to put
in it; so everyone was satisfied.

Uncle Joe had two of the sailors from the _Myra_ carry up the one
shabby trunk the Carreaus had brought to the Island, and Andrée and I,
at our earnest request, were allowed by Madame to unpack it, and hang
the clothes in the two big closets in the room, under her direction.

Of course we didn’t comment to each other, either then or later, on
the shabbiness and old-fashioned cut of both Monsieur’s and Madame’s
wardrobes, but we couldn’t help noticing and guessing at the struggle
they’d had, not only with their sorrow for their dead son, but with
poverty as well.

I certainly did feel glad we’d got them safely on Sunset Island, where
we could try to make up to them for all the bad times that had gone
before. Naturally it would have been rude to venture to refer to their
troubles, but I tried sort of stumblingly, to tell her how happy we
were that she and Monsieur had come back to the Island, and Andy came
to my help with a pretty little speech such as she can be counted on to
make when the occasion requires it. I’ve always envied her the positive
genius she has for saying the right, graceful thing at the right time.

Madame blushed like a girl. She had a soft, delicate white skin that
showed every little fluttering change of color.

“You’re dear children,” she told us, and reaching up laid one of those
wrinkled, blue-veined gentle old hands of hers against my cheek, and
the other under Andy’s chin, and drew us both down to kiss us.

“So you are interested in finding that treasure, _mes enfants, n’est-ce
pas_?” she asked us, smiling. “So was my Raoul. Always he talked about
the great Morgan’s hiding place. And when he was a little boy--about
so tall--” she measured off three feet from the floor--“he would
make _maman_ to hunt with him. I will show you all the places, _mes
chéries_. Perhaps--perhaps after all, one day we find that treasure,
_non_?”

“Uncle Joe doesn’t believe it’s on the Island at all,” I said
doubtfully. “He thinks the old sailor who copied the chart made a
mistake in copying the latitude, or the longitude--I never know which
is which. The figures are so blurred, you know. They might be almost
anything. And besides, there’s no inlet on the Island, like the one
marked ‘Dead Men’s Inlet’ on the map.”

Andy looked anxiously from me to Madame, her eyes sparkling. I’d never
thought before she was quite as keen as the rest of us on the treasure
hunt, but suddenly I felt a little ashamed to realize that perhaps I
hadn’t bothered to find out just what this particular young cousin of
mine was thinking and feeling. Andy had a way of keeping her thoughts
to herself, but that wasn’t any real excuse for leaving her out of
things as maybe Syd and I had been doing unconsciously.

“But I never believed that there was a mistake in that map.” Madame
answered my last remark very emphatically. She nodded her head with
great assurance at each word. “It has always been the--how do you
say--_tradition_, that it was here on the Island Morgan made his
_cache_. Let us not consult those wise persons, children, like my
husband and Monsieur your _oncle_. Let us make our own hunt for the
treasure.”

She thought a moment, and then added:

“There may be another way of reading that map--well, we shall see.
And--here is a secret--I have sometimes thought what if the little
plateau on top of the high ground--You have not hunted there yet? I
thought not. The other search parties always claimed it was too far
from the beach.”

Andy and I looked at each other, our breath coming faster. I had often
wanted to explore that jungly patch of high ground, but it was such
hard going we’d kept putting it off, before. Of course probably Uncle
Joe was right; he usually was; but another treasure hunt would be a
glorious lark, whether we found anything to reward us or not.

When the unpacking was finished, we persuaded Madame to lie down for a
little nap, and Andy and I hurried downstairs to find Uncle Joe.

We both wanted to be present when he heard about Captain Rawson’s visit
and the theft of the map. To our disappointment we discovered we were
too late for that, but the whole family, including Monsieur Carreau,
were gathered in the hall, still talking the matter over.

Uncle Joe, though of course he was a good deal surprised by the
news, was the calmest of us all--But that’s the way Uncle Joe is. He
never loses his head, and just because of that very calmness, and
self-assurance of his the people round him begin to feel pretty sure
that everything’s quite all right after all--and that even if it’s not,
Uncle Joe’s able to make it so.

Syd says that is the quality that makes great leaders, and I guess
he’s right. I know Uncle Joe’s crew on the _Myra_ adore him, and would
follow him into any danger, sure he’d find a way to bring them safely
through.

In a different fashion, Aunt Mollie’s the same. The whole family has
always turned to her instinctively when we’re in any trouble.

Almost the first question Uncle Joe asked when the story had been told,
was addressed to Martin.

“Didn’t know the ship, did you, Martin? Get a look at her name?”

Martin tried to nod his head and shake it, both at the same time in
answer, and he was so in earnest none of us saw anything funny in the
way he did it.

“I didn’t see her name, sir,” he said. “That was one point made me kind
o’ suspicious things weren’t all clear and aboveboard. She was a sloppy
lookin’ craft--not in her lines, which was pretty as you could ask.
Somebody’s racin’ yacht she’s been, once upon a time, sir, if you ask
me. There’s real class to her, an’ no mistake. But, say, it’d have made
any yacht owner’s heart real sick, to look at the way that crew kept
her. Things layin’ ’round on her deck, an’ a long tarpaulin trailin’
over her stern so it hid her name plate entirely--’Course it might have
been an accident, but she didn’t have no name on her for’ard, and no
name on the dinghy neither. Still an’ all, I kind o’ got a feelin’ I’ve
seen her before but I can’t rightly say just where nor when.”

Uncle Joe thought this over carefully for a full minute.

“You think she’s a rum-runner, eh?” he asked then. “Sounds as if she
might be some kind of tough customer, judging by her Captain’s actions.
Poor Reddy! Well, maybe we’ll find out more about her antecedents and
mission later on.”

At this Syd gave me a significant look. So Uncle Joe expected our
modern pirates back again, too! I felt pretty thankful that if they
were really coming they’d been considerate enough to wait till Uncle
Joe was at the helm.

But here Uncle Charles changed the subject by asking a question about
the result of the trip north, and Uncle Joe had so many interesting
things to tell of the arrangements he had made in New York for
disposing of our oranges, and the various tools, stores, etc., he
had brought back for the plantation in the _Myra_, that we forgot
all about Captain Rawson for the time being, and when Madame Carreau
came downstairs an hour later, looking rested, and bright, we forgot
entirely to tell her anything about the map being lost.

Later we were all glad of this, because Monsieur, seizing a moment when
Madame had left the room for something, asked us very earnestly not to
mention the subject before her.

He told us she had always had a weak heart, and it had been his
particular care, as it had been their son’s also while he lived, to
keep all worry and anxiety from her as far as it lay in their power.

Of course, it wasn’t the theft of the map that would worry
her--Monsieur Carreau expressed his belief, proudly, that his wife
would be entirely able to draw that map line for line, from memory--but
the apprehension connected with the possibility of a return visit from
Captain Rawson’s vessel, might prey on her imagination. For his part
he added, he very much doubted whether we should ever see anything of
those ill-mannered gentry again. But I think we all felt he was only
saying this because he wanted to believe it--not because he really did.
Naturally, we all promised solemnly we wouldn’t mention the matter
before Madame.

“But suppose she asks to see the map,” Andy reminded us suddenly.
“She’s awfully interested in the whole idea of a new treasure hunt, so
she probably will want the map to study over--don’t you think so, Gay?”

I had to admit that after what she had said to us upstairs, it seemed
very likely.

Monsieur Carreau frowned in a troubled fashion. Then his face cleared.

“But I heard Mademoiselle Gay tell her, down on the beach when we
arrived, that the map was lost,” he exclaimed triumphantly. “We can
tell her just that. She will think it mislaid somewhere. That will not
be a lie, my friends. It is lost--quite thoroughly, I should say. My
wife is too polite, I hope, ever to ask impertinent questions as to
_how_ you contrived to lose it.”

It was beautiful to see how proud of her, and careful and considerate
for her he was, even in the smallest details. But then, somehow, I
couldn’t have imagined anyone who had lived in the same house with
Madame Carreau for long, being anything but devoted to her.

It was just as well Monsieur Carreau had warned us when he did, for
as soon as the shadows began to lengthen out on the terrace, Madame
brought out some exquisite embroidery she was working on, and asked
Andy and me to draw up chairs beside her.

“How pleasant it is to be home again,” she said softly, with a little
half sigh. “There is just one thing I want to see, to make me feel
natural, _mes enfants_, and that is Morgan’s map. Raoul and I were
forever puzzling over it.” There were sudden tears in her eyes, which
Andy and I pretended politely not to see.

Andy spoke quickly and sort of carelessly, while I was still wondering
how to begin.

“We’re awfully ashamed, Madame, to have to tell you that we’ve managed
very stupidly to lose your map--yes, of course it’s really yours. It
was poor little Reddy--he took it out of the escritoire one day about a
week ago, without permission, and now he doesn’t know where it is.”

Every word of which was literally true, but I resented her blaming it
on Reddy’s supposed carelessness. Of course, he shouldn’t have shown
the map to Captain Rawson, but he hadn’t just carelessly mislaid it, as
her version of the affair seemed to imply. However, I couldn’t think of
anything to improve the story without coming out with all the facts, so
I kept still.

To our surprise and relief Madame took the loss matter-of-factly.

“That is too bad, but it will turn up somewhere. Lost things always
do,” she said smilingly. “I hope you didn’t scold the poor little
fellow. All boys adore a treasure map. And at any rate it can’t have
got off the Island.” Little did she guess how far off the Island it had
gone.




CHAPTER XI

A SWIM IN THE LAGOON


We made a celebration of dinner, that first night after the _Myra’s_
return from New York. Besides our own family, there were the two
Carreaus and Mr. Hopper, the mate from the _Myra_, so we were quite a
big party.

Martin refused to sit down at the table, saying it wasn’t for a “hand
before the mast” to dine with the Captain and Mate, and nothing
we could say to him--about his being no longer connected with the
schooner, but a member of the Island colony now--made any difference in
his determination.

“I began as a mess boy,” he said. “And I guess I ain’t forgot how to
wait on table. I’ll be your butler, Miss Gay, for the party.”

So, since he seemed to have set his heart on it, we finally let him
have his way, and Aunt Mollie, who’d trained a good many waitresses in
the old days before we left Braeburn, had to admit that Martin was a
perfect butler, which made him blush fierily all over his freckled face
in a most un-butlerish manner.

We had vegetables from Syd’s and my garden; oranges served in several
varieties of styles, from the Sunset Island grove; and eggs, laid by
our own chickens, cooked according to a brand new, sc-crumptious recipe
Aunt Mollie had made up specially for the occasion. We hadn’t any fresh
meat, but the _Myra_ had brought us a new supply of hams and bacon, and
we had roast ham, Virginia style, with yams--candied. Yum-yum! as Reddy
remarked feelingly when he first caught sight of the dish being carried
in by Martin. And it certainly tasted as wonderful as it looked.

Andy, who’s an artist when it comes to flower decorations, had made the
table a perfectly gorgeous riot of color, and at Madame’s place she had
laid the sweetest little old-fashioned posy of the hardy perennials
that must have once formed part of the original garden. It was a pretty
little attention. I was disappointed for a moment I hadn’t thought of
it myself, when I saw how touched Madame was as she picked it up and
buried her nose in its colorful sweetness before pinning it on the
front of her gown.

After dinner we sat around and talked, everybody trying to tell what
had happened to them during the month we had been separated, and the
hub-bub was awful. However, after a while Aunt Mollie declared that
both Monsieur and Madame Carreau had had enough excitement for one
evening, and that it was high time all of us were in bed.

I hadn’t had a chance to say anything to Syd yet about Madame’s
suggestion of another treasure hunt, but as we were going up the broad
stairway, I managed to whisper him a hurried account of our talk.

“That plateau is pretty far from the beach, you know,” he reminded me
doubtfully. “It’s a bad climb too, and it would have taken a lot of
hard work to clear a path through the jungle, for carrying treasure
chests up there.”

“But maybe they had some other way of going, that we don’t know yet,”
I insisted eagerly. “And, besides, they _wanted_ a hard place to get
at, didn’t they? The harder the better, I should say. Old Morgan didn’t
want anyone walking in sort of easy and casual and making off with his
pieces of eight. And he had plenty of men in his crew to carry out
orders, no matter how difficult they might be.”

Syd nodded. “Yes, that’s all quite true,” he agreed. “Of course, it
doesn’t correspond with the map at all, but I’ve always had a hankering
to look that plateau over. There must be a mighty fine view from there
anyhow. As soon as we get a chance to clear a path, let’s organize
another treasure hunt, and take it by easy stages so Madame Carreau can
go too. She seems a good little sport, by what you tell me.”

I had to laugh at that description of the dainty, fragile looking
little old lady, with her Dresden china coloring and her manner of
being a sort of grand duchess of what Mademoiselle, at Miss Porter’s
School, used to call the old _Faubourg Saint Germain_. But all the same
I knew what Syd meant in spite of his slang. She was just as young and
eager underneath her delicate outside, as any of us. If we had to take
turns carrying her up that jungly climb to the plateau, I was resolved
she shouldn’t miss the fun of going with us.

That night I dreamed a whole series of exciting dreams about _almost_
finding the buried treasure, and always just missing it by a silly
little bit of bad luck at the end. I woke from the last of these to
find that morning had come. The sun wasn’t up yet, but my window, which
looked out to the east, showed long pink and golden streaks across the
sky, and a lovely rose-tinted glow on the water--low down, where the
clouds and ocean met.

This was the nicest hour of the whole day on the Island, because it
was so fresh and cool and _clean_, somehow. You had a feeling that
overnight the whole world had been scrubbed after the hot yesterday,
and before the hot tomorrow. I didn’t always wake early enough to see
it, but when I did, I never failed to spring out of bed, gather up a
kimono and towels, and run down the old Planter’s Road to the beach,
for a morning dip in the lagoon.

I was up out of bed in a jiffy that morning, and as I was stealing down
the hall toward the stairs, trying to walk softly so as not to wake
anyone else in the house, I was startled to see the door of Madame
Carreau’s bedroom open, very carefully, an inch or two at a time, and
Madame’s white head, covered with a gay lavender and rose bathing cap,
peep out.

She smiled in a funny, half guilty manner at seeing me, and put her
finger to her lips cautiously.

Then she opened the door wider, and slipped out into the hall to join
me. She looked very tiny and doll-like, somehow, in a fleecy lavender
kimono wrapped tightly round her, and with her bare feet in little
high-heeled lavender silk mules that seemed just big enough for a
six-year-old child.

She carried a huge Turkish bath towel over one arm, and I guessed at
once that she was bound for the lagoon and a swim, just as I was.
Probably it was an old custom of hers when she used to live on the
Island.

Without either of us saying a word for fear of waking the sleepers
round us, we tip-toed down the stairs side by side, and out across the
terrace in front of the house. There Madame stopped and drew a long
breath of the wonderful morning air. Her black eyes were shining.

“I had forgotten how beautiful it was,” she whispered. “You love it
too, little Gay? This is the best time of the whole twenty-four hours,
and those sleepy-heads waste it in bed! _Pouf!_ We are wiser, you and
I!”

“I’m afraid I don’t always wake in time to come down here at this
hour,” I said honestly. “But when I do, I’m up in a hurry. I’m glad you
swim too. It’s lot nicer to have company. Andy’s too lazy for early
morning exercise, and the boys like to wait till the middle of the
morning when they can stay in longer. They say it’s so hot then they
need to be cooled off more than now. But I like this time best.”

She put her hand out and pinched my cheek, but I noticed suddenly that
her kind, faded, old eyes were looking at me sort of keenly.

“It is too beautiful, this morning, to keep all to ourselves,” she
suggested, smiling that warm friendly smile of hers. “Why don’t you go
upstairs--oh, very softly,--and bring that pretty little cousin Andrée
down to share our swim with us? I have been more used to boys than
young girls, all my life, but now that I have a chance, I propose to
become acquainted with my own sex. Don’t you think if you wake her,
Andrée would enjoy all this--loveliness?” She made a gesture that took
in the morning about us, and with that funny, new feeling of having
been unconsciously a bit unfair to my girl cousin, that I’d experienced
yesterday in Madame’s room, I nodded and ran back into the house.

When I woke her, Andy was inclined to grumble just at first and roll
over for another forty winks. But when she understood Madame wanted
her, she sat up in a hurry.

“Why didn’t you tell me that at once?” she demanded rather crossly.
“Isn’t she a wonder, Gay? Fancy her going swimming at sunrise, when
she must be pretty nearly seventy years old.”

“She’s seventy years young, I guess,” I corrected her. “But, you’ve got
to hurry if you’re coming. We can’t keep her waiting down there alone.
Where did you put your Annette yesterday, it’s not in the closet--Oh,
here it is, back of this door--grab a towel now and come on!”

Madame had a quick approving little smile for me when we came hurrying
across the terrace to join her.

“Isn’t this a morning of mornings?” she greeted Andy. “Little Gay here,
and I couldn’t bear to have you miss it.”

I was surprised to see Andy flush, and her lip start trembling
unexpectedly at the words, but she looked away so we shouldn’t see and
pretended to be fussing with a loose thread on her bathing suit.

“It was sweet of you not to forget me,” she said, still not looking up,
and again I had that feeling of having been unkind without meaning it.
It was a horrid, uncomfortable feeling, and it made me sort of half mad
with myself for having had to be reminded about Andrée, and half mad
with her for always waiting to be singled out, instead of joining in
naturally like the rest of the family.

“Let’s start,” I said impatiently, deciding it was pleasanter to be
doing something than to think just then.

So we three trotted along together down the Planter’s Road, and came
out on the cool white sand of the lagoon beach. The sky and ocean were
both quite a deep rose in the East now, and there was that lovely,
spicy little breeze blowing from the land behind us that I’d smelled
the first day the schooner lifted the Island.

No matter how many times I’d smelled it since, I had never got over
feeling it meant romance and adventure, desert islands, buried treasure
and all sorts of wonderful, unreal things that don’t happen in an
every-day world.

I saw Madame lift her head suddenly, and sniff, and I knew she
recognized the odor too.

“Once,” she said to us, “way out in India, I smelled something like
it, at the edge of the jungle. We were traveling from a small native
village, and had to cross quite a strip of real jungle to get to our
next stopping place. It made me so homesick, I cried when my husband
wasn’t looking. It was after then I began to want to come home to
Sunset Island.”

She took off her lavender kimono and underneath it she had on the
funniest, most old-fashioned bathing suit of black silk I’d ever seen,
but somehow it suited her--all bunches and ruffles and little bows. I
felt Andy and I were awfully modern in our Annettes, but she seemed to
like them, and told us she knew one couldn’t swim really far in skirts.
Anyhow, she just liked now to paddle about and lie down in the shallow
water.

But when we were actually in, I found she swam a good deal better than
she’d led us to suppose.

“I taught Raoul to swim when he was only five,” she told me shyly. “We
used to swim out to the reef every morning, when he was a little older.
I’d like to do that again.”

I was a little bit worried over this, because though it wasn’t a long
swim across for me, or for the boys, Madame was a different matter.
Even Andy, who wasn’t a strong swimmer, had never attempted it yet.
However, Madame looked so little and light, I finally decided I could
tow her safely ashore if she did give out on the way, so we set out,
swimming slowly, a few feet apart, leaving Andy splashing lazily near
the beach.

The surf was breaking over the barrier reef, but not as strongly as it
would later when the tide was high, and we found a place where we could
climb up and rest on the rocks without getting more than an occasional
splash of spray. The first rim of the sun was showing through the
clouds behind us, and when we sat facing the shore there was a wide
gold pathway right across the lagoon, from our feet to the white sand
of the beach.

The Island itself looked awfully deserted and mysterious from the reef.
The undergrowth was so thick that you couldn’t see the house, or any
of our improvements and outbuildings. The land sloped upward from the
beach to the north, to the pointed hill I’d always called Sugar Loaf,
on top of which was the small, jungle-covered plateau Madame wanted to
search for the treasure.

Uncle Joe had estimated the height of that hill at about three hundred
feet or so, but from the reef, and in the early morning light, it
looked higher--and sort of dark and forbidding as well. You could
easily believe, just looking at it, that it had all kinds of secrets to
keep. So why not Morgan’s too?

Madame Carreau pointed it out with her small, wrinkled hand.

“Raoul climbed it several times,” she said. “Do you see that little
break in the jungle growth--over there to the right? You can scarcely
find it--as if there’d been a road cut through once. It’s nearly
grown over now, I suppose. Raoul cut that path so I could go exploring
with him, but my husband was always worrying about my heart--he thinks
because I look frail I must be delicate. My family have always tried
to make an invalid of me by too much care and pampering. But I’m
really as strong as--as a carthorse.” She ended so emphatically, and
the comparison was so utterly absurd applied to her, that I had to
laugh. She joined me a second afterwards but kept nodding her head
determinedly.

“Now don’t you get to fancying, Gay, that my husband is right,” she
warned. “He finally succeeded in frightening Raoul so he would never
take me up there.” Once more her hand pointed to the top of Sugar
Loaf. “But now _I’m going_, and I’m counting on you, _bébé_, to help
me. I want to see that view from up there, and have one more hunt for
Morgan’s gold pieces before I die.”

After that we slipped into the water again, and swam comfortably back
to the beach. She seemed a little out of breath, I thought, when we
reached the sand, and I insisted that we should lie there a while to
dry off and rest, before going back to the house.

I scooped up the sand into a high chair-back for Madame to lean
against, and Andy and I sprawled out luxuriously, on either side of
her and talked for nearly an hour, till we heard the sound of the
breakfast gong clanging faintly down the Planter’s Road through the
woods to us, and all jumped to our feet guiltily.

But in that hour Andy and I learned to know Madame as an old friend. We
said afterwards we couldn’t quite believe she had arrived on the _Myra_
only the day before, and that in reality we had known her for less than
twenty-four hours.

She told us such vivid, quaintly worded stories of Sunset Island--the
traditions about its former pirate visitors, the building of the
plantation house by Rosemary’s husband--the first Carreau to settle on
the Island over a hundred years ago--and last of all, but scarcely less
interesting, her own life in Planter’s House, and Raoul’s boyhood.

In return I told her of Braeburn--Andy as usual preferring to sit back
and listen--and how Aunt Mollie had taken me in when my mother died and
my young father was drowned at sea rescuing one of his own men. Except
for that part about Daddy, the rest of what I had to tell sounded
pretty tame to me, compared with Madame’s stories, but she really
seemed interested, and kept asking questions that finally drew Andy,
too, on to talk about Dan and Sydney, and little Red, and all our good
times together.

Then while we were both still chattering like magpies, finding
something new to remember at every pause, that gong rang, and we were
suddenly reminded that we were starved for breakfast.

So we started back up the road, and Madame thought of the little side
door that led into the passageway behind the back-staircase, and let us
slip up to our rooms without meeting any of the family.

Monsieur Carreau, seated at Aunt Mollie’s right, looked up with a
twinkle in his black eyes when we appeared in the dining room.

“Now, Mademoiselle Gay and Mademoiselle Andrée, I am wondering which of
you three led the others into mischief,” he said. “You will find that
this wife of mine, although she may appear to be sixty, is in reality
no more than six, and liable to get into all sorts of scrapes unless
you keep an eagle eye on her.”

The family laughed, and Madame, her own eyes twinkling as brightly as
Monsieur’s, sat down in her place by Uncle Charles, and attacked her
orange with a hungry air.

“You should know my habits after forty years, Jean,” she said with
pretended severity. “I was taking my morning swim in the lagoon, and
these young ladies have also the same excellent and healthful custom.
_Voila!_ We swam together.”

Perhaps it went through Monsieur Carreau’s mind, as she spoke, that
she had formed her habit of swimming years ago, with a much nearer and
dearer companion than either Gay or Andrée, for his face softened,
though he merely nodded and resumed his breakfast.

“We discussed the treasure _cache_,” Madame went on with her brave
little air of gaiety. “We are going to make a real business of the
search. I warn you all that this time we are going to accomplish
something.”

“Hooray for Madame Carreau!” Syd cried impulsively, and then blushed
scarlet for fear he’d be thought forward and disrespectful. But Madame
looked as pleased as Punch.

“Will you join our search party, Sydnee?” she asked him. She had queer,
unexpected little touches of accent at times, especially in saying
names, and at others she would talk ahead without giving a sign that
she had been brought up to French as her mother tongue.

“You bet!” Syd said with emphasis, and only grinned when Aunt Mollie
arched her eyebrows at him as she does when we get too slangy. It’s the
nearest she ever comes to actual scolding.

“Madame doesn’t mind--she’s used to boys,” Syd said quickly, and then
stopped short, for fear his reference to Raoul might hurt our guests.

“Yes, I am used to boys,” Madame wasn’t hurt, but pleased. “As I told
you I am not so used to girls,” she added apologetically, smiling at
Andrée and me. “But I am already very fond of two.”

That day Syd, Andrée and I appointed ourselves a committee of three
to show Madame and Monsieur all the changes we had made in the house
and grounds, and our plans for the future. They were as interested
and excited as we could have asked, and every once in a while would
stop to point out something to each other, and say softly, “You
remember? See--this is different--Why did we not think of doing so?”
Or else--“Here it is the same. We could have remembered no better
ourselves.”

After the midday meal, Madame rested, and Monsieur sat in the big,
cool hall by the fountain, and read during the heat of the early
afternoon. But about the time the shadows had lengthened out along the
Planter’s Road, and walking was pleasanter, Madame came downstairs--in
old-fashioned lavender sprigged dimity--and they set out together for
the beach, arm in arm.

“I guess maybe they want to talk about Raoul and old days,” Andy said
with a quick sympathy that surprised me a little from her. “Suppose we
stay away a while, and let them get accustomed to things.”




CHAPTER XII

“DEAD MEN’S INLET”


Both the Carreaus were very much interested in our plans for making a
real business of the orange grove, and shipping to the States as often
as we could arrange for vessels to stop and load a cargo at the Island.

During their ownership of Sunset Island, they had been content to sell
the fruit at Martinique, and occasionally make a shipment to Cuba or
Jamaica, when opportunity offered. Their market hadn’t been big, and
neither had their profits, but they had had few real expenses, and
until the death of Raoul, which had taken the heart out of them both,
they had evidently been satisfied to drift along getting what they
could for their crops.

But Uncle Joe and Uncle Charles were planning to ship on a really
big scale. Uncle Joe had brought back a little group of workers with
him--all hands who had been used to the work in Florida groves--and
the first labor he had set them at was building a row of neat little
cabins down at the other end of the garden, to serve as quarters.

Monsieur Carreau, in spite of his rather indolent management of the
grove originally, possessed a good deal of valuable knowledge of
orange-growing, and spurred on by our enthusiasm, he offered his
services as advisor and instructor, and pretty soon had worked out
a number of very helpful plans that Uncle Joe and Uncle Charles
immediately acted on.

The Carreaus had been living on the Island about two weeks, and the
_Myra_ was preparing to sail north again (she had been chartered months
beforehand to carry lumber from Savannah to Boston at this time), when
Madame Carreau came to Andy and me with a new proposition.

“I am so amazed and delighted, children, with all this businesslike
activity on the Island,” she began in her pretty, fluttering voice.
“But thinking it over--oh, so very hard--it has occurred to me that you
two _enfants_ and your good Aunt, and I might organize ourselves as
business women, and build up what your _oncle_ would call a--I have it!
a little _side line_ business.”

“Let’s go down to the beach and talk it over,” I suggested eagerly,
for when Madame proposed anything, we had learned already it was only
after much careful consideration, and would be sure to be interesting.

So we each took a big sunshade and started down the Planter’s Road. The
sun had dropped behind the Sugar Loaf plateau, and there was a nice
long strip of shade at our favorite end of the lagoon beach. Andy and I
had brought several pillows for us all to tuck ourselves up on cosily,
while we discussed plans.

From a deep pocket in her grey linen dress--I guess Madame’s the one
woman left today who has that kind of pockets in her gowns--she drew a
little book, about the size of Rosemary’s diary, and bound like it, in
yellowish-white silk.

“You missed this, Andrée, when you found the diary in Rosemary’s
chest,” she said, smiling at our exclamations. “This was Rosemary’s
cook book, and each housekeeper of each succeeding generation of the
Carreaus, has added new recipes. There are several of my own in it.”
She laid it on Andy’s lap, and leaning over, I helped her turn the
yellowed, neatly written pages, curiously.

“I was sure it had been packed away in the old chest before we left the
Island, so this morning I made a search, and fortunately it was still
there.” She took the little book back, and turning over the leaves
hurriedly, found what she was looking for.

It was headed, in the same old-fashioned, curly-cue lettering of
the diary: “Candied Orange Peel _à la Josephine_,” and there were
two closely written pages of explicit directions that it would take
too long to set down here. Besides, as Madame reminded me, it’s our
business secret now, so we can’t give it away for outsiders to read.

“It is supposed, by family tradition,” Madame informed us, “to have
been a sweet of which Josephine--afterward Empress of the French--was
inordinately fond. It has come down in our family through all the
generations since. This afternoon, if you agree, _chéries_, we will
gather some suitable oranges, and prepare everything to commence the
preserving and candying tomorrow morning. Ah--but wait only, until you
have tasted this delicious confection!”

“I love candied peel,” I sighed, my mouth watering. “I suppose though,
this is something specially wonderful.”

She laughed, and made a little face expressive of just _how_ wonderful
it was going to be.

“Wait until you taste--that is all,” she said very impressively. “Then
we hold, perhaps, a family council--just the feminine members--and
decide whether we might not build up our own little business for
shipping sweets, _à la_ Empress Josephine, to your big New York and
Chicago and Philadelphia. We must make charming little boxes to hold
the sweets, and imagine some pretty sentiment for a--what do you call
it--trade mark, _n’est-ce pas_? We shall become immensely wealthy--oh,
but immediately!”

We laughed, but Andy and I were at once as fired with enthusiasm for
the new project as she was. And I couldn’t see any reason either, if
the recipe was really as wonderful as Madame declared, why we shouldn’t
find a market for it.

It was pretty to see how pleased she was because we were pleased. She
insisted on reading the recipe over to us, and explaining with great
care and detail every stage of the candying process, although as I’m
not much of a cook myself, it didn’t all make as much sense to me as
she thought it did. I can’t speak for Andy.

We decided not to tell the rest of the family what we were planning; we
just told them we were candying some orange peel by an old recipe of
Madame’s and everyone’s mouths watered in anticipation, just as mine
had--we’re a family with an awfully sweet tooth, all of us.

Later that day, when it grew cooler, Madame, Andy and I went down to
the grove, and Madame selected the oranges herself, to be used for
the experiment, so there shouldn’t be any chances of a slip the next
morning.

There’s a sort of large alcove to the kitchen at Planter’s
House--almost a second kitchen in itself, for it has a big table,
cabinets, and everything complete except a stove. So we took possession
of this, and made it our work shop.

Here on the big center table, Madame spread the oranges, after first
carefully washing them, and drying them with a soft, clean towel. Then
all the ingredients for the recipe were checked up, and measured out in
cups and jars and set out on the table--covered of course--all ready
for us to start work the first thing in the morning.

I’d watched candied peel made before, but I certainly had never seen so
many spices and different kinds of sugar, and other fruits included in
the recipe. But it sounded _scr-r-rumptious_, I can tell you! I went to
bed that night so excited, and anxious for the morning to come, that it
seemed as if the night would never be over.

However, I did fall asleep at last, and then the next thing I knew was
Madame knocking on my door, and whispering that it was time to get up.
I tumbled out of bed, snatched a towel, and pulled on my Annette in a
hurry--for of course we weren’t going to miss our morning dip because
we were starting in business that day.

Andy had been waked too, and was just coming out of her room in her
bathing suit and kimono, and we all stole down the stairs softly,
letting ourselves out into the beautiful early morning. Every day was
beautiful on Sunset Island at this season, but most beautiful at this
hour of the day, and later, at sunset.

We didn’t linger over our swim; just took several plunges, swam a
hundred yards or so, and then hurried back to the house to dress. We
were out in the kitchen within half an hour from the time Madame had
waked us, and had the great work started before anyone else in the
family had thought of getting up.

Madame showed me just how the rind must be cut, and after a few clumsy
attempts I caught the idea, and got under way fairly fast, while
Andy and she mixed spices, and measured and weighed. My land! it was
a complicated performance, that candying, yet Madame went at it so
easily and as if she knew each motion by heart--as she undoubtedly
did--that after a while I began to look on it too, as simply part of a
familiar routine.

After about three-quarters of an hour, Aunt Mollie came into the
kitchen to start the breakfast, and was astonished not only to find us
already at work, but that we had the breakfast half cooked as well.

It took three days--of course working only a few hours at a time--to
complete the job, but the results, when we tasted them, certainly
justified _any_ amount of time it might have required. Don’t ask me
to describe the taste; it’s beyond me. But if you want to try it for
yourselves, go into almost any big candy shop or fancy grocery in the
larger cities and ask for “Orange Peel _à la_ Josephine.”

The only thing I can think of to compare it with is that spicy little
Island breeze I love. The Orange Peel tastes, to me, exactly the way
that smells. If you have any imagination you’ll get an idea of it; and
if you haven’t, then no words will help you anyhow.

The boys were wild about it, and that first batch we’d made didn’t last
long. The evening the last crumb of it disappeared, Madame called the
whole family to a council, in the big hall by the fountain, and in her
pretty half-French English, laid our plan before them and asked for
volunteers to help us see it through.

Well, when she finished, it seemed as if everybody present had
something to say--all of them excited and pleased and anxious to do
anything they could. Syd suggested that Dan and he should make the
boxes, just as we’d hoped they would, and they went off in a corner and
had a sort of council-within-a-council about the materials they meant
to use--what would prove most durable and air-tight.

Finally they came back, very enthusiastic, with broad grins on their
faces, and announced that they had a real inspiration. To keep the peel
fresh for the long trip, they said it ought to be packed in air-tight
tins first, and for this they could use small round baking powder
boxes--we had an enormous supply of these in the house, and when the
_Myra_ went north again she could order us as many empty tins as we’d
need, of course.

They were going to paint the tins green outside, and then use strips of
palmetto to weave cunning basket-work around them. They even offered to
make several samples so we could choose the most effective design, and
promised to begin work at once.

On the _Myra’s_ return from New York, she had brought us, along with
the new supplies, a lovely birch-bark canoe, painted a dull green,
which the boys had been crazy to have for fishing in the lagoon.

I had been out in it several times with both Syd and Uncle Joe but I
had never paddled it alone. It takes quite a lot of skill to propel and
steer a canoe with one paddle, and though I’d been wanting to try it,
so far the opportunity hadn’t happened to come. That night, when our
exciting conference about the candied-peel business was over, I ran
down the Planter’s Road to the lagoon beach for a last breath of sea
air, to cool off before turning in.

I didn’t think to stop and tell anyone where I was bound, as I’d done
this, either alone or with the others, so often before. But I had no
sooner reached the beach on that particular evening, and seen the
green canoe pulled up above high tide mark on the sand, with the big,
tropical golden moon shining down enticingly on it, than I was seized
with a perfectly irresistible temptation to launch it, and paddle about
the lagoon alone for ten minutes or so before going back to the house.

Even if I didn’t manage specially brilliantly at paddling by myself,
I couldn’t come to harm in the quiet, reef-enclosed lagoon, I argued
with an exasperating little doubt that pricked me. Why, even if I
contrived to upset myself, which wasn’t likely, I could swim across the
lagoon and back several times without tiring--I’d done it too, in my
morning swims.

And if I were going to make a joke of myself upsetting, I’d much rather
have no witnesses about to jeer at me afterwards.

The canoe was quite deeply bedded in the sand, but I’m a pretty strong
girl, and after a lot of heaving and pulling, I got it down to the edge
of the water and was just about to climb aboard when somebody called me
and I nearly jumped out of my skin, with the start I gave. But it was
only little Reddy, who had evidently seen me slip out of the house and
followed me.

As he was there, there wasn’t anything to do but take him along. He was
so excited when I told him he could come, that I felt selfish at having
tried to steal such a gorgeous night all for myself.

We kept the paddles in the canoe, since there was no chance of thieves
on the Island, but foolishly I tossed the second one back on the sand
as I got in and then, seating myself on the stern seat, and with Reddy
on the floor facing me, we pushed off.

It gave me a real thrill of adventure being out there in the bright
moonlight, with the black shadows making the shore look unfamiliar and
sort of dangerous. I hadn’t seen the Island from the lagoon before at
night, except from the _Myra’s_ deck, which was quite different again.

It was so lovely and cool, with that spicy little land breeze I loved,
blowing across my hot face, and filling my nose with its delicious tang
of spices and moist warm earth, and tropical gardens, and all the rest
of it.

Reddy sat on the canoe floor as quiet as a little mouse, letting one
fat hand trail over the side in the warm water.

For a few minutes we just drifted lazily. I dipped the paddle in a
little half stroke that kept the canoe barely moving, and after a while
I noticed that we had got into the current that sets seaward through
the opening in the reef. However, it was always such a gentle little
current, except in storms, that that didn’t worry me.

Swimming in the lagoon as much as we did, we’d discovered that there
were quite a number of little cross currents always moving the
water--sometimes seaward, sometimes north or south along the inner line
of the reef. This one that had caught Reddy and me was the strongest,
but I knew it wouldn’t mean exerting hardly any effort when I got as
near the reef-opening as I wished, to paddle across the current, and so
back to shore outside its influence. I’d seen the boys do it hundreds
of times.

At last I decided that it was time to turn back, and dipped my paddle
deeper, putting more strength into my strokes. Just as I’d expected,
I won free of the current’s pull easily enough, but to my surprise,
beyond it, the bow of the canoe was snatched sharply round by a new
current, much, much stronger than the old one. The suddenness of it
jerked the paddle from my fingers, and before I could reach for it, it
was swirling away, tantalizingly, just ahead of us, bound northward at
a sort of right angle to the reef, inside the shadow of the shore-line.
And close after it, bobbing gaily in its wake, went the canoe with
Reddy and me as helpless and astonished passengers.

I knew I could have gone overboard and swum to the paddle, but while
I was doing that the canoe might be hurried on by the current beyond
my swimming speed--which is slow. And I daren’t risk that with Reddy
in it. I’ll confess I was a tiny bit scared, just for a minute; then
I decided, as long as this new current appeared to be carrying us
shoreward anyway, my best course was to sit tight and see what would
happen.

This north end of the lagoon we seemed bound for, was the part we
hadn’t really explored from the shore, for the jungle grew very close
to the water here, and was impenetrable without machetes. The time we’d
all made the circuit of the Island on our three-days’ walking trip
of exploration, we had skirted the water’s edge at this part of the
journey. The tide had happened to be low too, so we’d had no trouble
passing over this stretch.

For that reason I wasn’t over-keen about landing at this end of
the lagoon, unless I could find the paddle somewhere along the
edge of the water when we grounded, and paddle back. But just as
I was thinking this might be possible, the moon that was lighting
the way so splendidly went under a big black cloud, and instantly
everything--lagoon, shore, and the dark outline of Sugar Loaf above me,
all melted into a solid wall of inky blackness. At the same moment I
felt a little grating jar under me, and knew the canoe had run its nose
aground on the beach.

Reddy, who--after one anxious glance at me when the paddle went
overboard--had sat perfectly still, offering no comments or advice, now
burst into a relieved little crow of delight.

“There’s the beach, Gay,” he shouted triumphantly. “Let’s get out an’
see if we can find the ol’ paddle.”

I thought that might be good advice, and got to my feet, carefully
feeling my way forward, and climbed over the bow down on the wet sand.
A long ripple, like a miniature wave, washed up over my feet, wetting
my white canvas pumps and splashing up my legs. But a wetting was the
least of my worries just then, and clutching the painter with one hand
firmly, cautioning Reddy to sit tight, I continued to walk up the
shelving beach, dragging the canoe and its small passenger after me.

A hanging vine, with a long, scented flower at the end, swished across
my face after I’d gone five steps, so I knew I was approaching the
jungle. Instinctively I swerved to the right, still pulling the canoe,
and found the way clearer before me. I took five more steps, and at the
fifth plunged into water up to my waist.

It surprised me so that I lost my balance, and as I went under I heard
a frightened little squeak from Reddy when he saw me disappear; I
had no trouble picking myself up, spluttering and drenched from head
to toes. I remember my first amazed realization was that the water I
wiped from my face and my lips was _fresh_--or at most had a faintly
brackish taste instead of the salt water of the lagoon.

And then, just when I needed it most, the moon came out from the
clouds, and flooded down through the interlaced branches of the jungle
that made a sort of open-work roof above us. By its light I saw that
what I’d thought was the beach was a narrow sand bar across the mouth
of what looked like a small stream, flowing out from the blackness of
the jungle, toward us.

But in the darkness, and with the responsibility of Reddy on my hands,
this was emphatically no time for exploring. So, holding by the
painter, I scrambled back to the sand and pushed the canoe backward
into the lagoon. Reddy, who hadn’t been out of it at all, was still
perfectly dry, and to my delight, right beside me the lost paddle was
drifting on the little ripples. I held the canoe steady, while Reddy
leaned over and rescued it, and in another minute we were paddling
south along the shore to our familiar landing place.

There hadn’t been any real danger in our little adventure, but even if
there had I’m sure I’d have forgotten it in the mad excitement that was
filling me at the discovery I’d made that night.

That brackish stream, slipping so quietly out of the jungle, and
sinking into the sand of the bar across its mouth, was--_must_ be the
“Dead Men’s Inlet” of Morgan’s map, that we’d been so certain wasn’t on
our Sunset Island. Not finding the inlet had been the principal proof
to Uncle Joe and the rest of them that a mistake had been made by the
old buccaneer who copied the map, and that Sunset Island wasn’t really
the famous treasure island at all.

It was simple enough to reason out now how the inlet had escaped
us, and how even the Carreaus, who had lived on the Island so long
before us, had missed it too. The silting up of the sand across the
inlet mouth, and the heavy jungle growth on the shore, had proved as
effective a screen for his secret as even Morgan himself could have
desired.

I paddled with frantic haste, on fire with impatience to get back to
Planter’s House and spring my wonderful find on the assembled company,
who must by this time be a little uneasy as to our whereabouts.




CHAPTER XIII

ALONG MORGAN’S TRAIL


When we got to the house, instead of finding the family worried by
our long absence as I’d been afraid would be the case, they hadn’t
missed us at all--evidently taking it for granted we’d both slipped
off to bed. They were still gathered in the big hall, discussing our
candied-peel scheme, and judging by some of the remarks I overheard as
I entered, they had been advancing suggestions, and thrashing out ways
and means at a great rate.

So suddenly the idea came to me that I wouldn’t blurt out my discovery
of the inlet--Reddy of course had guessed nothing of what it meant--but
would take only Syd into the secret, and we’d explore a bit further by
ourselves, before springing the surprise on the family.

I beckoned him over to a corner of the hall, and as the family were
used to our having a hundred secrets together, no one commented on this
either. Well, when I told him what we’d been doing that evening since
Reddy and I left the house, and what a gorgeous find we’d literally
tumbled into, he gave me one astonished look, and then pursed up his
lips in a long whistle.

“I’ll hand it to you, Sis, for luck!” he ejaculated enviously. “Gosh,
why wasn’t I with you tonight? Say, let’s keep mum about this till
we’ve hunted about a bit. If we take the whole bunch along there’ll be
an awful lot of time wasted.”

“That’s just what I thought,” I agreed. “It will be ever so much more
exciting if we can have a real discovery to report, won’t it?”

“What d’you say we start early tomorrow morning?” Syd suggested
eagerly. “We’ll tell mums we’re going out in the canoe before
breakfast, and she’ll put us up a snack to take with us. She won’t ask
questions.”

She wouldn’t, I knew. That was one of the dear things about Aunt
Mollie. She just trusted us to have our little plans and secrets, and
to tell her about them when we got ready. I suppose--having been used
to us children for a good many years--she probably “smelled a rat,” as
the saying goes, when we suggested the picnic breakfast, but she only
pulled Syd’s hair teasingly, and rubbed her cheek against mine when she
kissed us goodnight.

“If you’re going in the canoe,” she added casually, “you might take
your fishing tackle, and see if you can bring us home something good
for supper.”

I was almost sure then that she guessed our expedition had something
to do with the treasure hunt, her eyes were twinkling so. Besides, the
excuse she’d provided us with would keep the rest of the family from
suspecting anything out of the ordinary. That was Aunt Mollie all over
again. I just hugged her hard, for goodnight, I was so relieved we
needn’t try to make up excuses.

As a rule, the boys are awful sleepy-heads about getting up early,
but that next morning I didn’t have to pound on Syd’s door more than
once. We met downstairs by the side door, Syd armed with the machete,
and I with a heavy cane that would be good either for climbing, or
for killing snakes--supposing we met any. Aunt Mollie had put some
sandwiches, hard boiled eggs and a thermos bottle of cold milk in our
smallest picnic basket the night before, and we found that and Syd
slung it over his shoulder by the carrying strap.

Then we let ourselves out the door, and raced each other down the
Planter’s Road to the lagoon and the canoe. Stowing our provisions
and weapons (we always called them that on our picnics just for the
“desert-island” sound of it!) under one of the seats, we pushed the
green canoe down to the water’s edge, and I climbed aboard.

Syd gave it another strong push, and handed me my paddle, wading out
into the lagoon a few feet before he followed me into the canoe.

“You’ve got to be guide on this expedition, Sis,” he reminded me when
we were safely afloat and paddling north along the shore-line. “Sure
you remember your land marks from last night?”

It hadn’t occurred to me to doubt before, but now at his question
I began to wonder uneasily if I really did recall my directions as
clearly as I’d like to be certain of doing. I had drifted with the
current the evening before, not paying much attention to where it was
taking us, and when I’d finally landed on the shore the moon was under
the clouds, and I hadn’t had a good look at my surroundings.

So in rather a meek voice for me, I suggested that we paddle north,
keeping a look-out for signs of where the canoe had grounded last
evening. I knew high tide would have washed away the marks near the
water, but I had dragged the canoe clear across the sand bar, and
there were bound to be some traces left of _that_, that must be visible
from the lagoon if we kept in close.

Syd assented to this, and we paddled steadily, not doing much talking,
but using our eyes as busily as our hands. Finally, just as I was
beginning to fear we’d overshot our mark, Syd--whose eyes are like a
hawk’s for keenness--pointed excitedly with his dripping paddle.

“In we go, Sis! There are the marks on the sand--No, farther in--where
you dragged the canoe. Steady now, girl! Don’t dump us and spoil the
breakfast, just when we’ve found our landing place.”

A long sweep of his paddle sent the canoe gliding shoreward, and with
several energetic thrusts with my own to help, we soon had the bow
pushed up on the sand, and were over the side.

“Sure this is a sand bar?” Syd asked doubtfully, looking about with a
critical eye. “Looks to me just like the rest of the beach.”

The sun had risen above the distant horizon-line now, and was pouring a
gorgeous path of gold and red and bright orange across the sea toward
us. It even jumped the barrier reef, and made a smaller, fainter glow
across the lagoon, right to our feet.

In its light, the place looked a whole lot different from last
night by moonlight, of course, but I recognized certain land marks
never-the-less--much to Syd’s relief when I pointed them out.

“There’s that hanging vine, with the big trumpet flower at the end
that tickled my face when I landed,” I exclaimed. “And here are my
footprints, where I walked round the canoe, and here--oh, Syd, _look_!
Here’s where I walked off the other side into the inlet. Try it
yourself, if you’re not convinced. Maybe a cold bath will prove to you
I know what I’m talking about.”

First pulling the canoe safely up on the sand bar, Syd walked over to
stand beside me, pushing aside the hanging vines that formed a regular
curtain-screen across the inlet mouth. There, sure enough, as I’d known
it would be, lay a broad, dark-looking stream stretching between the
side walls of jungle undergrowth, backward into the thicker jungle
behind.

Syd whistled again, and I heard him mutter something under his breath.
Then, as if we’d both had the impulse at the same moment, we turned and
grabbing the painter, dragged the canoe across the bar, and launched it
in the stream on the other side.

Syd held the stern while I got in, and a moment later we were off. My
land! If I live to be a hundred, it doesn’t seem as if I could ever
forget the thrill of that moment when we pushed up that jungle-enclosed
stream, and began paddling into unknown country on the trail--or so we
believed--of old Morgan’s lost treasure.

I twisted cautiously about to glance over my shoulder at Syd, and his
face looked exactly as excited and sort of _breathless_ as I felt
inside.

The stream ran straight ahead for several yards, and then swung about
a bend, under another hanging curtain of tropical vines. Being in the
bow, it was my place to push these aside with my paddle as best I
could, while Syd propelled us through. The vines grew pretty solidly
for about twenty feet, and going was difficult. We got scratches across
our faces from the whipping ends, but at length we were through, and
into clear water again.

The stream was narrower here, and the banks ran straighter up and down,
and with every yard we paddled they grew steeper and higher. Then came
a third unexpected turn, and before we realized it, we were heading
into the black mouth of a low cave, out of which the stream flowed.

Syd called to me hurriedly to back water, and we both put all our
strength into swinging the canoe’s head about, out of the full force of
the current that ran stronger here--particularly where we were, in the
middle of the stream.

“We’d better not go on, don’t you think, Sissy?” Syd asked, his voice
all mixed up between regret and a kind of hopeful expectancy. He knew I
wouldn’t agree with any such safe and sane policy as that, but I guess
he didn’t want to take the responsibility on his own shoulders where I
was concerned.

“_I’m_ going on--right to the end of the stream--or I guess maybe it’s
really the beginning I mean,” I retorted. “You can get out and wait for
me here, if you want to.” That was mean of me, only I knew he was dying
to keep on, and I wanted his conscience to be clear about doing it.
Because, of course, if I went on, he’d have to go along to take care of
me.

I chuckled to myself over the sigh of relief he gave, even while he was
trying to frown disapprovingly at me.

“I’m not sure we ought to, until we’ve got Father or Uncle Joe with
us,” he added as a last feeble protest, but I noticed that he already
had his paddle dipped in the water again, ready to start.

“If the pirates went this way, why can’t we?” I argued, splashing my
own paddle in vigorously, and pushing us out into midstream once more.
“What are you afraid could happen to us, Syd? There isn’t current
enough to be dangerous--and besides, what there is sets away from the
cave, so we can’t be sucked down any rapids, if you’re thinking of
_that_.”

“That’s true. You’re a bright child, Sis,” he said approvingly.
“I guess I was picturing us being drawn over waterfalls, and
things like that, into all kinds of horrible dark regions. Shows
what reading adventure stories can do to your common sense. Paddle
ahead--_faster_--we’re going to follow this trail to the end now, and
if anything we don’t like crops up, we’ll only have to let go and drift
out the way we came.”

Yet for all our brave words, I guess we both felt a wee little sinking
of the heart as we slipped from the daylight outside, into the dusk of
the cave.

At first it was just a grey twilight inside, that grew deeper and
deeper as we proceeded. The rippling of the current made a soft,
gurgling noise against the bow of the canoe and our dipped paddles,
that sounded cool and pleasant. The water was clearer, and we could see
down to the sandy bottom of the cave floor until we got so far from
the mouth that it was too dim to distinguish anything except vague
outlines.

The stream had spread out too, inside the cave, until it looked like
a small, underground pond, with dark walls on either hand, and a rock
roof that seemed to dip down lower, and nearer the water, the farther
in we paddled.

The water kept getting shallower and shallower, and after a while it
was hard to paddle without danger of striking the blade and breaking
it on the rock beneath us. Just at that point we ran aground, grating
horribly in a way that set our teeth on edge, and made us sure the
whole bottom of the canoe was being ripped out under us.

We had come to the end of navigable water at any rate, that was
certain. And unless the contour, of the cave had changed drastically
since Morgan’s time--a thing that wasn’t probable--if the pirates had
also come by our route, their trail must have ended right here.

Syd was explaining this to me--quite unnecessarily--as he sprang over
the side of the canoe and into the water, with me at his heels as fast
as I could steady myself out of the wobbly little craft.

“But of course, they may have carried the treasure farther, on foot,”
I was beginning to argue, when my own foot slipped and I found myself
stumbling helplessly down the sloping side of the cave floor,
on something that didn’t feel like rock bottom, but softer, and
slimier--a half-rotted wooden cask of huge proportions, laid sidewise
on the bottom of the stream, was the only simile that occurred to my
astonished brain.

“_Syd-d-d-d!_” I stuttered wildly, waving my arms as I tried vainly to
stop my rush down-hill, and then my toe caught in a kind of hole or
crevice in what I was walking over; and down I went, full length in the
shallow water.

The next moment Syd, stepping gingerly over the tricky surface, was
beside me, and hauling me to my feet, so excited that he didn’t realize
he was almost jerking my arm off.

“Hurt, Sissy?” he demanded anxiously, when I was at last standing
upright, dripping water, and choking over the half-gallon or so I’d
swallowed in my involuntary dive.

I choked again, shook some of the water out of my eyes, and clutched
Sydney in a sudden panic as a sharp pain darted through my left ankle.

“Oh--oh, Syd,” I groaned, “I’m afraid I’ve broken my ankle--sprained it
badly anyhow. What--what’ll we do?”

“Hold on to me--_hard_--and don’t let it scare you,” Syd said in his
usual, comforting, matter-of-fact voice. I guess inside he was a bit
scared too, at the fix we were in, but he didn’t let a sign of it show.

“Take it a step at a time, and we’ll be back at the canoe in half a
minute. Then all you’ll have to do is sit tight, while I push off,
and we’ll float back to the inlet mouth. It’s all right, Gay. There’s
nothing to worry about, but I’m mighty sorry about the ankle,” he added
in awkward sympathy.

I gritted my teeth and obeyed, holding on to his arm with both hands,
and feeling each painful step with as much care as if I’d been walking
on egg-shells. It was really only six or seven steps to the canoe, and
Syd helped me over the side, making me sit in the bottom where I could
stretch my aching foot out before me.

Once safely settled, my silly panic was gone as quickly as it had
seized me, and I was ashamed enough, I can tell you, over having let it
show.

“Before you push us off,” I suggested, “why don’t you try and see if
you can find out what that thing on the cave floor was I tripped over.
It felt like--like----”

“Like the upturned bottom of an old ship’s boat, which is exactly what
it _is_,” Syd announced in a triumphant tone. He had been stooping
down, feeling about in the water while I spoke. Now he straightened
up, and rubbed his wet hands on his equally wet knickers, evidently
under the absent-minded conviction that he could dry them that way.

“Sis,” he said quite solemnly--and somehow I knew perfectly well what
he was going to tell me next before he added another word--“I believe
that--that’s Morgan’s jolly boat--the one that carried the treasure up
here. Why should it be here otherwise--I ask you!”

“I’ll bet you anything you like it _is_,” I cried, bouncing up and down
in the canoe till it was a wonder I wasn’t back in the water again
quicker than I got out of it. “Maybe they overturned the boat here, and
buried the treasure somewhere under it. Feel about and see, Syd!”

I groaned again, furious with myself for breaking my wretched old ankle
just when I’d never needed it half so much to carry me.

“The water’s quite deep underneath,” Syd declared after a few very
tense minutes of investigation, in which he had been lying flat in the
water, feeling about and kicking out under the wrecked boat.

“We’re aground on the bottom of the boat,” he announced further, when
he rose at last, dripping as hard as I had a moment earlier. “It
looks to me as if the floor of the cave had either been hollowed out,
or there had been a natural depression here originally--maybe it’s
where the spring that feeds this stream rises. Then the boat’s been
overturned above it. Shall I try a dive? I don’t think there’s anything
down there to hurt me, only I wish there was a bit more light.”

I leaned over the side of the canoe, and seized him firmly by his
wet jacket. Something I had read about desert islands long ago, had
suddenly popped into my mind, sending a cold chill of terror up my
spinal column.

“Sydney, don’t you _dare_ attempt such a thing!” I gasped. “We’re two
little fools to come in here alone in the dark, with no one knowing
where we’ve gone, and try a stunt like this. How do you know there
isn’t some--some dreadful sea animal down in that black pool under the
boat? Haven’t you ever read that the giant squid--that’s an octopus,
you know--lives at the bottom of deep pools just like this, and--” I
stopped, shivering so I couldn’t go on for it seemed to both of us that
something had set the quiet water of the pool stirring ever so faintly.

Syd wasted no time in argument, but pushed off the canoe and sprang
in. Evidently he was remembering the same desert-island story I was.
We’d read it together several years before.

“I guess we’d better get Uncle Joe in on this,” he muttered in
agreement, and began to paddle.

The current more than made up for the loss of my rather amateurish
attempts at paddling, and we floated down the stream to the inlet mouth
in much faster time than we’d made coming up with two of us working.

Syd managed to pull the canoe across the sand bar alone, and then to
half carry, half drag me after it. The ankle wasn’t hurting quite so
badly now--though perhaps that was due to the excitement taking my
thoughts off it--and I had begun to hope it was only a bad wrench, not
a sprain after all.

Twenty minutes later saw us running the canoe’s nose ashore at our
landing place, at the foot of the Planter’s Road, where I sat down
meekly on the sand, as Syd commanded me, while he went to get Uncle Joe
or Dan to help him make a chair of their crossed hands, to carry me to
the house.




CHAPTER XIV

THE TREASURE HOLE


In about ten minutes I heard footsteps coming back along the Planter’s
Road, and Syd reappeared with Uncle Joe beside him.

“Well, well, Gay honey, what’s all this about a broken ankle?” Uncle
Joe demanded, as soon as he was within speaking distance.

He came over to me and kneeling down, slipped off my canvas pump very
gently, and began feeling my foot and ankle all over. But gentle as
his touch was, I couldn’t help wincing a little though I gritted my
teeth hard together and didn’t make a sound. At last he finished his
examination, and we each gave a little sigh of relief.

“No bones broken, young lady, for which you may be duly thankful,” he
told me cheerily. “It’s rather a bad sprain, I’m afraid, but rest and
bandaging will set that right in two or three weeks.”

“Two--or _three weeks_!” I gasped in dismay. “Oh, Uncle Joe! D’you mean
I’ll have to be quiet for three weeks? Why--why, I simply can’t! Syd
and I’ve just made the grandest discovery, and I’ve got to go back and
see it through.” I was babyishly near tears, but I fought them back
with all my might. Not for all the disappointments in the world would I
have let Uncle Joe and Syd see me cry.

Syd looked as dismayed as I, and Uncle Joe shook his head at us both,
pretending to be stern.

“That was a nasty wrench you gave your ankle, Gay my dear,” he said.
“It’s swelling pretty rapidly, you see.” It was. Now that I looked
at it, it was about twice as big as it ought to have been. “You’ve
probably torn some of the ligaments, if you haven’t actually fractured
a small bone. So, as we haven’t an X-Ray to make sure, we can’t take
chances. The boys and I will try to improvise a pair of crutches, and
you must keep off the foot as much as possible.

“Even three weeks,” he added with a twinkle, “will pass in time. Now
suppose I give you a seat on my shoulder, youngster--I don’t need Syd’s
help with a featherweight like you.”

Before I could answer, he bent over and swung me up to his broad
shoulder, as easily as if I were a baby.

Aunt Mollie, Madame Carreau and Andrée were on the terrace as we came
up the Planter’s Road.

“Nothing to worry about,” Uncle Joe called out reassuringly, before
they could even exclaim. “The girl’s twisted her ankle climbing over
some rocks somewhere. She’ll just have to play the fine lady for a few
weeks, and ‘sit on a cushion, and sew a fine seam’, while the rest of
us try our hands at entertaining.”

“But how did it happen, darling?” Aunt Mollie asked tenderly when we
were all in the big hall of the fountain, and Andy and Syd had run
upstairs for bandages, liniment and hot water.

“Call all the family,” I suggested, “and while Uncle Joe is putting
on the bandages--” he’d had to learn to be a pretty good doctor and
surgeon both, in his long sea voyages--“Sydney and I’ll tell you about
our big adventure.”

So Monsieur, Uncle Charles, Dan, little Reddy and Martin--whom we never
left out of any of our conferences now, because he had come to seem
just like one of the family--were summoned, and by the time they had
all assembled, Uncle Joe had finished bathing and massaging my ankle
and was putting on a sort of boot of narrow strips of adhesive tape,
with over this, tight strips of bandage that made me feel lots more
comfortable. When it was finished I was in a much better frame of mind
to enjoy the excitement and speculations Syd’s and my story produced.

Aunt Mollie and Madame could only see, at first, the possible danger
we had been in, when we went overboard in the cave. But the boys and
Uncle Joe were terribly worked up at the account of the overturned,
half-decayed ship’s boat.

“Of course we’ll have to go back and investigate it further,” Dan cried
eagerly. “Let’s start right off. Why, Uncle Joe, maybe the treasure’s
actually there waiting for us to find. Think! We’ll all be millionaires
several times over now!”

Little Reddy joined in with a shrill “Hurrah,” and even Andy was so
thrilled, she leaned forward with sparkling eyes, drinking in every
word.

“Yes, let’s get off right away,” Syd was agreeing with Dan
breathlessly. “The canoe’ll hold four--we’ll take Martin too--Dan and
Martin, and Uncle Joe and I--Like to go, wouldn’t you, Mart?”

“You _bet_!” Martin said emphatically, flushing all over his freckled
face with pleasure.

The most awful hollow sort of feeling struck me suddenly in the pit of
my stomach. Something like when you dream you’re falling off the top of
a high cliff, and there isn’t any bottom to anything. It choked me till
I couldn’t have uttered a single word of protest if I’d tried.

This was my discovery originally--_I’d_ found that lost “Dead Men’s
Inlet,” and led Syd to the place--_I’d_ helped paddle up that stream to
the cave with him. It was I who’d tripped over the old boat, so we’d
discovered it was there. And now, here they were all coolly proposing
to go off without me, to make the final search for the treasure! Just
because I’d hurt my wretched old ankle, that wasn’t any good reason for
leaving me out this way. The treasure wouldn’t run off, if they waited
till I was well enough to walk. But apparently no one had thought of
suggesting it. They hadn’t even said they were sorry I couldn’t go.

I was horribly ashamed of my silly resentment a second afterward,
because Uncle Joe turned to look at me, with those kind understanding
eyes of his, that I felt were reading me through and through like
a book, and at the same moment Syd and Dan cried together, in
conscience-stricken tones: “_Gay!_ We forgot Gay!”

And Uncle Joe said quietly, smiling at us all, “Yes, I thought you’d
forgotten Gay.”

Well, of course, when they turned to look at me, sort of guilty, and
ashamed and astonished at themselves, all together, I couldn’t feel
sorry for myself any longer,--I had to laugh at them instead. I felt
warm and happy again inside. They just hadn’t stopped to think. They
hadn’t meant to leave me out.

“Of course we’ll wait till Gay’s able to go along,” Dan said quickly.
“She can have my place then. This is Syd’s and her party. I’ll go next
trip. Think there’s any danger of octopus, Uncle?” he went on, changing
the subject, as I knew, so I wouldn’t have a chance to thank him.

Uncle Joe shook his head. “No--the stream up there in the cave must be
fresh water and it’s a long way from the sea. I don’t think there’s
any real chance of an octopus, children. But it’s just as well to go
prepared--you can’t always tell what you’ll run up against in these
tropical waters.”

I drew a long breath, and swallowed hard two or three times before I
could say what I meant to. But if they could be generous, why, so could
I, too!

“Uncle Joe, I don’t want you to wait for me,” I said then, steadily.
“The suspense would be too much for all of us. I’d rather know quickly
whether Morgan’s treasure is up in that cave, than wait three weeks to
help find out. Besides, I guess this is a man’s job. You’d all rather
feel you hadn’t a girl along, if you think there’s a chance of fighting
cuttlefish. Though,” I added, not willing to have them think me a
coward just because I was trying to do the fair thing all around, “I’d
honestly not be scared with Uncle Joe and Martin.”

Of course they protested a while, but I stuck to it that I wanted them
to go. And at last it was decided they should make the trip early the
next morning. Besides exploring that deep hole under the boat they
would push on farther into the cave on foot and see where it led. They
would take the machete, and Uncle Joe and Martin would have their
revolvers, and a lead and line for sounding that big hole, and of
course, things like a compass, and lantern, and a shovel in case they
had to dig. It would be a pretty big load for the canoe, but by being
careful they could manage.

Another reason for making the trip at once had to do with the
possibility of Captain Rawson and his rum-running pirates returning for
the same purpose. Of course we didn’t believe they’d attempt to force
their way in to the Island openly while the _Myra_ was in the lagoon,
but there was a bare chance they might try to sneak in, in a small boat
at night.

And if there was any finding of that treasure to be done, naturally we
were going to be the ones to do it if we could.

I think that Aunt Mollie was a little nervous over having the boys go,
after she’d heard about the possibility of some strange sea monster
lurking in the cave, but she’s the best little sport in the world, Aunt
Mollie is, and she wouldn’t say one word that might have spoiled even a
little bit of their pleasure in the expedition. Besides, she had such
faith in Uncle Joe, she knew he wouldn’t take them if he really thought
it dangerous.

That afternoon Uncle Joe rowed out to the _Myra_, and returned with a
pair of crutches he had found among the schooner’s hospital supplies.
Of course they were much too big for me, but he spent the whole evening
cutting them down to my size, and adjusting new, more comfortable
cushions on the tops.

The last thing before he carried me upstairs to bed, he gave me a
lesson in handling them, which to my surprise, proved a lot harder to
do than I’d supposed.

Aunt Mollie purposely didn’t wake me in the morning to see the
exploring party off. I guess she understood how I felt underneath my
efforts to appear unconcerned, and knew it would be easier if I didn’t
have to watch them bustling off, all high spirits and anticipation,
while I stayed behind, propped up between my two crutches.

When I did wake, it was to find the sun well up, and Andy coming into
my room with a daintily-set breakfast tray. My, but I felt grand and
luxurious having breakfast in bed! I sat up against the pillows with
the tray balanced on my knees, and ate every single thing Aunt Mollie
had sent me, while Andy perched on the foot of the bed, and in answer
to my questions told me how the boys and Uncle Joe had started out.

Suppressing a little sigh of envy, I pushed the tray aside, and with
Andy’s help, managed to get into my clothes. Then Uncle Charles
appeared and carried me downstairs picka-back, while Reddy trailed
behind us, much amused, carrying my crutches.

I had thought it would be a long day, waiting for the search party to
come back, and trying not to feel abused and sorry for myself. But
Madame Carreau had planned differently, bless her darling kind heart!
Instead of setting me down in the hall, or out on the terrace as I’d
expected, Uncle Charles carried me into the kitchen alcove, where I
found Madame, Aunt Mollie and Andy waiting, with all the material and
utensils for making candied orange peel on a large scale, spread out.

“We thought, _chérie_,” Madame explained, beaming at me, “that this
would be a most excellent time to set about making our samples of
_Orange Peel à la Josephine_ to send north on the schooner’s next trip.”

Of course, after that, there was no chance for any brooding or feeling
injured. I sat on a high chair by the table and cut the clean rind
into the proper size strips as fast as my fingers could fly, while the
other three measured, mixed, sugared, beat and boiled--all working so
smoothly under Madame’s orders, that there really didn’t seem to be a
single waste motion among the four of us.

We served Uncle Charles and Reddy a cold lunch, being far too busy and
interested to stop to cook our regular dinner, and when that was eaten
and the dishes washed the longest part of the day was over. Our orange
peel was safely past the first stage of candying, and we had time to
freshen ourselves up, put on clean dresses, and be waiting out in the
cool of the terrace for the return of our explorers.

They came just about sunset--four bedraggled, grimy, tattered looking
figures, but with grins on their faces.

“My--my,” Aunt Mollie greeted them, chuckling a little. “Do I see four
scare-crows coming to supper, or what? But I suppose that is how
proper explorers should look.”

“Did you find the treasure?” Andy and I shrieked wildly, in duet, while
Red broke in with,

“And was there an octopus _truly_?”

“No octopus,” Uncle Joe answered the last question cheerfully. “But as
for finding the treasure, well, we did--and we _didn’t_!”

He pulled up a chair and sank into it with a big sigh of satisfaction,
mopping his hot face vigorously.

We all stared doubtfully from him to the other three members of the
party.

“How could you find it, and _not_ find it?” Andy demanded practically.

“You mean--” I asked quickly, “that you haven’t actually found it, but
you know where it is?”

All four nodded at once, very emphatically.

“Something like that, Gay-girl,” Uncle Joe assented, lighting his
faithful pipe, which as we all knew by experience, was the prelude to a
story.

“If you know where it is, why didn’t you get it?” Reddy asked, his face
screwed up into a puzzled pucker.

“Well, it might have been like this--” Dan was beginning, his eyes
dancing tantalizingly.

I interrupted him impatiently, “Oh, Dan, please don’t tease! Let Uncle
Joe tell it!”

“I shouldn’t have said we really know where the treasure is,” Uncle Joe
began, slowly puffing at his lighted pipe. “We haven’t actual proof
Morgan ever saw those caves, but we pried up that old boat, and judging
by what’s left of it, and from what I know of boats of Morgan’s period,
it might easily have belonged to one of his ships.

“Then, when we’d settled that point to our satisfaction, we explored
further into the cave, on foot. And where do you suppose it came out?”
He glanced at our faces, and laughed. “No, it’s too bad to keep you
in suspense--I vow it is. That cave of the stream opens by a small
passageway, that was partly blocked by fallen rock, into Reddy’s caves,
where we camped the last night of our walking trip around the Island.
Remember? And we had worked out--remember this too--on that map of old
Morgan’s that the treasure should be located somewhere in those very
caves if it was anywhere on Sunset Island.”

“Perhaps,” put in Syd excitedly, “before the passage was blocked, the
pirates came by way of these other caves first. Found the stream, and
followed it back to the lagoon. Then, when they’d decided--or Morgan
had--that it was their best bet for a hiding place, they rowed up
from the Inlet--which wasn’t hidden by that sand bar then, and sunk
their treasure chests in that deep pool at the source of the stream,
overturned the boat, to mark the spot, and went back to the ship.
Or maybe,” he added darkly, “Morgan was the only one who went back.
Those old pirate captains thought nothing of three or four murders to
insure keeping the secret of their treasure. Maybe there are more than
doubloons down in that pool, if we could only see to the bottom.”

“Ughh,” Andy chattered, and I felt a sort of chilly creepy sensation
myself, prickling the back of my neck.

“Don’t scare the girls, Syd,” Uncle Joe laughed. “Those old robbers
would have been just as dead, anyhow, by now, if they lived to swing
from a gibbet--as they every man jack of them deserved. Don’t waste any
pity on them, girls. They were all as cruel, black-hearted ruffians as
the world has ever seen. Let’s just forget that side of it. It’s past
and gone these four hundred years or more.”

“Yes,” Aunt Mollie said hastily, “let’s forget it, children. Tell us
instead, Joe, why you think the treasure was sunk in that pool, not
buried farther in, in the caves?”

“Because it’s the logical, safest place,” Uncle Joe returned,
thoughtfully. “And we hunted those other caves over thoroughly, you
remember, and couldn’t find a trace of any possible hiding place. The
Carreaus hunted too, many times during their ownership of the Island.
Remember Rosemary’s diary. It’s mostly hard, volcanic rock anyhow,
that would have been almost impossible to dig into. Then, today with
the help of our lantern, we made just as exhaustive a search of the
stream-cave, and there literally isn’t another spot that’s possible.”

“But where are the chests, then?” I begged eagerly. “Couldn’t you fish
for them at the bottom of the pool, Uncle Joe?”

“My dear, that’s just the trouble,” he said. “The pool hasn’t any
bottom.”

We sat and stared at him unbelievingly, thinking it was only more of
his teasing. But his face was quite sober.

“Oh, I don’t mean it didn’t have a bottom when the pirates sank
their chests there,” he explained. “They must have made sure of that
before taking any such chances of not recovering their booty when
they wanted it. But that cave gives every evidence of fairly recent
volcanic disturbances--an earth-shock probably, that tumbled down
those rocks, blocking the passage to the other caves, and opened a
deep crevasse--perhaps clear down to the sea bottom, under the old
boat. That is my best deduction at any rate. There’s no way of proving
it. But if the treasure ever was there, it’s unreachable now. Another
thing--” he went on before anyone could speak. “That would explain also
the stream being so much shallower and narrower, that the sand could
silt across its mouth, and the water find some subterranean drainage
into the lagoon. Probably three-quarters of the original spring or
underground lake--whichever it was--that fed the stream, now flows down
that bottomless crevasse under the boat into the sea. The rest of it
finds the old way down the stream to the lagoon. We all noticed the
sound of falling water, though it was pretty muffled and faint, when we
were in the cave.”

Monsieur Carreau held up his hand with an authoritative gesture that
made us all turn to him.

“And the earth-shocks, to which Monsieur le Capitaine refers,” he said
solemnly, “occurred within the memory of all of us elders, at any rate.
Who has forgotten that awful disaster of Saint Pierre in Martinique, my
friends, when a whole city was hurled into ruins by volcano and tidal
wave combined? Here on Sunset Island we are so near Martinique, we
felt the shock severely. Rocks fell from that hill over there, and part
of the Planter’s House was wrecked.”

“I remember,” Madame murmured softly. “It was a terrible time. And to
think the treasure was so near us until then! If my Raoul had only
known!”




CHAPTER XV

CAPTAIN RAWSON RETURNS


After the excitement of the expedition to the cave of the stream had
died down, our life ran on more or less uneventfully for a while. I say
more or less, because it seemed to us that, compared with our old life
in Braeburn, there was always something new and interesting to make
each day different on Sunset Island.

There was our candied orange peel which turned out even better, if
that were possible, than Madame’s first batch. It looked so perfectly
_luscious_ we could hardly bear to pack it away in Syd’s and Dan’s tin
containers for shipment to New York. And speaking of those containers,
the boys certainly had made good their promise to turn out original and
artistic looking boxes for the peel. They had woven palmetto strips
into a cunning, twisted design, and thought up a way to braid the ends
to form a handle for the cover. They were the prettiest things you can
imagine, those boxes, and we felt sure we could sell the candied peel
just on the outside of the package.

Uncle Joe was optimistic about securing orders from a big commission
house he knew of in New York, for as much of the peel as we cared to
make, and altogether the outlook in that direction was quite rosy and
satisfactory.

Then, there were other pleasant happenings, such as picnics. We are a
great family for picnics and exploring expeditions, and now all these
affairs were planned near enough to the house for Uncle Joe to carry me
on his shoulders, so I shouldn’t be left out of anything on account of
my ankle.

On one occasion we had a whole day’s sea voyage on the _Myra_, just
before she left us for her second trip north. Maybe it’s partly because
of my sea-captain daddy, but I love the ocean and ships more than
almost anything in the world, and I’m never quite so happy as when I
can see a white sail straining in a heavy breeze over my head, and
curling, white-edged water rolling back from the bow.

If I were a boy, I’d certainly want to go to sea, and carry on our
family tradition of at least one sailor in every generation. None of
Aunt Mollie’s boys seem to have any ambition in that direction.

Sydney asks for nothing better, he says, than to live on the Island
all his life, and build up a big, flourishing plantation. He loves to
grub in the earth, and watch things grow--and really, it’s wonderful,
the results he can coax out of a few seeds, a spade, a small patch
of ground, and endless patience. Lots of times it’s been only shame
of falling behind, that has kept me working away beside him at that
endless weeding.

Dan thinks he’ll be a doctor, and is already planning to go back to the
States to college next year. I don’t know what we’ll do without him,
but it’s a splendid profession as Aunt Mollie says, that he has chosen,
and he must have his chance to make good.

Of course Reddy’s much too young yet to have any ideas on the subject
that are permanent; and though Andy and I wonder about our own futures
once in a while, she doesn’t seem to have many more definite notions
about it than little Red. As for me, I don’t talk much of my plans,
because it sounds silly,--or I’m afraid of its doing so--to talk of
what you haven’t proved yet you can carry out. But ever since I was
a tiny scrap of a girl, I’ve wanted some day to write stories, as I
can’t follow Daddy and sail a ship. Not big, important stories--I’ll
never be a genius, I know that. But stories that boys and girls, and
maybe grown-ups too, will find worth reading. That’s one reason I’m
practicing writing down here all the details of our first year on
Sunset Island. Whether anyone else ever reads it or not, I’ve loved the
doing it, and that’s something.

But I guess that’s enough about the future, because there are still
quite a lot of exciting events to tell about that have already taken
place.

The next of these to come along, was about a month after our discovery
of Morgan’s hiding place in the cave. In the meantime, the _Myra_ had
sailed for New York with our first cargo of fruit--and of course the
precious candied peel all done up in the boys’ fancy containers.

Uncle Charles, who is clever at pen and ink sketches, had made adorable
labels for them, showing a tropical island, with palms and orange trees
just vaguely hinted at against the skyline, and underneath--copying
Rosemary’s curly-cue lettering--the words: “Candied Orange Peel _à la
Josephine_.”

He had done the sketches by hand for our samples, but Uncle Joe was to
have a plate made in New York from the original drawing and several
thousand labels struck off. Because of course when we got to selling
on a big scale, it wouldn’t be possible for one person to draw each
individually.

Aunt Mollie had been rather anxious for Uncle Joe to remain behind on
this trip, and let the mate, Mr. Hopper, act for him in the matter of
the cargo. But Uncle Charles and he finally decided that it was better
to have the owner go, and so--in case of the return of Captain Rawson’s
vessel--Uncle Joe left two of his most trusted men behind, and sailed
short-handed.

“But I really don’t think you need worry, Mollie,” he had declared.
“I don’t believe the old blackguard will come back. Treasure maps and
things of that kind have sort of gone out of date. They’re fairy tales
nobody believes in. Men like Rawson make their money in more modern
pirating. You won’t see him again.”

But we did, all the same. And I was the one who saw his ship first. It
happened this way.

Since I hurt my ankle, I hadn’t of course been able to go swimming in
the lagoon with Madame and Andy in the early mornings. But I had got
in the habit of waking at that hour, and I kept on doing it still no
matter how hard I tried to sleep. So, because it was stupid to lie in
bed and think of all I was missing, once I found myself really wide
awake, I made it a rule to get up and practise using my crutches up and
down my room.

The room’s a quite big one, and I’d go up and down it twice the long
way, and then across to the window where I had a view of the ocean and
the sunrise over the distant horizon.

On this special morning I’m writing of--it must have been about two
weeks, or less, perhaps, after the _Myra’s_ sailing--my first glance
out the window showed me a steamer, very low and slim, like a yacht,
heading in toward the opening in the reef. Uncle Joe once told me I
have a good eye for recognizing ships, but I guess, with that dread of
Captain Rawson hanging over us, even Andrée or Red would have known
that vessel. Our unwelcome visitor had returned.

It didn’t take me long to hobble out into the hall, and wake Uncle
Charles and Aunt Mollie. I suppose I made more noise with my crutches
than I realized, for doors began to pop open all down the hall, and the
boys and Andy, and finally Monsieur and Madame Carreau, appeared, one
by one, in various stages of undress.

The minute they understood who was on the way to the Island, there was
a scramble of everybody back to their rooms to dress in a hurry, and be
among the first to reach the lagoon beach.

This last plan, however, Uncle Charles promptly vetoed, as soon as he
understood what we meant to do.

“I’d rather have you all wait at the house,” he said. “I’ll take
Diggons and Harworth” (the two sailors from the _Myra_) “and go down to
meet the fellow when he lands.”

The boys and Martin pleaded hard to be allowed to go along, but Uncle
Charles was firm. For one thing, I think he preferred to take the men,
(aside from their superior strength, of course) because they hadn’t
been told anything about the treasure or the stolen map. I had an idea
he was afraid the boys would be too excited to be discreet, and he
believed the less said the better. He may have had some idea of being
able to talk Captain Rawson out of coming ashore. Not that there was
any danger of his finding the treasure, of course, if he did come.
But we didn’t want that crew of his--or the captain himself--making
themselves at home on the Island while they looked for it. Any attempt
to persuade the captain that there really wasn’t any treasure after
all, would naturally be worse than useless. He’d be surer than ever we
only wanted him out of the way.

So in the end, we had to obey, since Uncle Charles was in command
of Sunset Island and all its little colony in Uncle Joe’s absence.
But none of us could stay in the house. That was asking too much.
We prowled back and forth, up and down the terrace, or sat sort of
tensely on the front steps, waiting for we didn’t know just what.
It was awfully exciting and shivery--exactly like the most exciting
desert-island-treasure-trove stories I’d ever read.

Uncle Charles and the sailors were gone so long we began to be
frightened in good earnest at last, and it was only Aunt Mollie’s
flatly forbidding it, that kept Dan and Syd from breaking away after an
hour had passed, and going down to the beach to investigate.

“If he doesn’t come in fifteen minutes more, you may go,” she said, and
they had to be satisfied with that.

Before the fifteen minutes were up however, we heard voices coming
up the Planter’s Road, and all of us stiffened to a sort of agonized
attention.

But the procession that appeared around the little bend in the road
was something entirely different from what we had any of us pictured
to ourselves. First came Uncle Charles, marching along like a general
of troops, and behind him, walking like his body guard were Diggons
and Harworth, while back of them two strange men--sailors from the
rum-running ship, we guessed--carried a covered stretcher between them.

Madame Carreau put her hand on her heart in a frightened gesture, and
I saw Monsieur step protectingly up beside her, and slip his arm about
her. But the rest of us were too astonished to move or speak.

Seeing us, Uncle Charles hurried on ahead of his procession and drew
Aunt Mollie aside.

“Can you and the girls get a room ready at once for a sick man?” he
asked. “It’s Captain Rawson. His men either can’t or won’t take care
of him on board, so it seems to be up to us unless we want to stand by
and see him die. He’s unconscious now,” he added, nodding toward the
stretcher behind him, “and doesn’t realize we’re moving him.”

Aunt Mollie turned quickly to Andy and me.

“Gay, your room’s the best for sickness--there are so many windows. You
won’t mind giving it up, dear, and going in with Andrée?”

I shook my head eagerly. “Of course not, Aunt Mollie. Shall we run
up and put clean sheets on the bed, and take my clothes out of the
closets?”

“Yes, do, chicks,” she smiled. But as we moved off, I heard her ask
Uncle Charles rather anxiously whether Captain Rawson had anything
contagious, and hadn’t she better keep the children away. Both Andy and
I hung back a little to hear his answer. “No, pneumonia, I think, dear.
I’m sorry Joe’s away--he’s the real doctor of the family, though we’ll
do what we can, of course.”

He lowered his voice then, but we were both near enough to catch his
next words. “From what I can make out, Rawson hasn’t mentioned the map
to anyone on board. Probably was figuring on keeping the treasure for
himself if he located it. They say he gave his orders to put back to
the Island, and the next day came down with this fever. Apparently he
was unconscious almost from the first.”

We missed whatever else he said because Aunt Mollie walked back with
him to the stretcher, so we scurried on to the house. Of course we were
pretty excited, and I guess we never made a bed or cleared out a closet
in such record time before. But our hands being busy didn’t keep our
tongues from moving equally fast as we talked the situation over.

“I wish Uncle Joe was home,” Andy said with a little shiver, smoothing
a clean pillow slip with fingers that I noticed were trembling.

“Don’t you worry,” I tried to reassure her--not feeling so very sure
of anything myself, though. “Uncle Charles will manage it all. And
besides, there are Diggons and Harworth, and Martin--and of course the
boys.”

She cheered up at that.

“Come along and tell mums the room’s ready,” she said. “And maybe if
that horrid Captain Rawson hasn’t told about the map, the fever’ll put
it out of his head forever.”

“Maybe,” said I, not too convinced of the probability of this. “There’s
nothing we can do about it anyhow.”

At the head of the stairs, we met the two stretcher-bearers with the
sick man, and Aunt Mollie, Uncle Charles and Madame Carreau bringing up
the rear. Andy led the way importantly into my room, and they carried
the Captain in, and laid him down on my bed.

The two sailors came out at once, and went back downstairs and
outdoors; and after a few minutes Aunt Mollie opened the bedroom door,
motioning us to go away, too.

Andy slipped her fingers through my arm as we tip-toed downstairs after
the sailors. Her face was rather white.

“Do you suppose he’ll--die?” she asked me in a shaky whisper.

“I don’t know,” I said impatiently. I couldn’t help feeling that it
wouldn’t be such a loss to the world if a man like that did die.
Still, the next moment I reminded myself he wasn’t fit to die, and
that anyhow, I didn’t want him to do it here, in our dear, beautiful
Planter’s House.

“I guess he’s too tough to die easily,” I declared. I hoped it was
true. “Do you suppose he was really coming back for the treasure?”

Andy didn’t answer, and we sat down on the steps to wait for news from
the sick room. Nobody else was in sight. Evidently the two sailors had
kept on to the beach, and the boys and Monsieur Carreau had gone with
them.

After what seemed like hours had passed, Syd came strolling up the
Planter’s Road, whistling. He hurried a little when he saw us waiting.

“The men have gone back to the ship,” he called. “Kind of a heartless
bunch,” he added, dropping down on the step beside us. “You’d think
they’d feel it a bit if they really believed, as they claim, that their
captain’s dying. Instead, they acted sort of relieved to get rid of the
care of him.”

He stopped short because at that moment we heard Aunt Mollie coming
downstairs, and we jumped to our feet, crowding round her to ask about
the Captain.

“A pretty sick man, I’m afraid,” she said soberly. “But by the greatest
good fortune, Madame has nursed pneumonia patients before, so she is
taking charge of the case.”

“What can we do, mums?” Syd coaxed eagerly. “We want to help.”

“Nothing, darling. There’s nothing any of the rest of us can do. Just
try to keep things quiet,” she said. “And go on about everything as
usual. Here comes Monsieur Carreau now. Run and tell him Madame wants
to speak to him!”

It was about an hour later, I think, that Reddy, who had been hanging
about the Captain’s door upstairs, brought us an astonishing piece of
news. Aunt Mollie, Uncle Charles, Andy and I were in the big hall, and
we turned quickly at the sound of his clattering footsteps.

“The ship’s going away,” he gasped excitedly. “I saw her from the
gallery. She’s almost out through the reef now.”

“But that isn’t possible, Sonny,” Uncle Charles exclaimed, catching
Red’s hand and drawing him to him. “Her captain’s upstairs, you know,
very sick. She’s probably only changing her anchorage, or something
like that. Let’s walk down to the beach and see.”

“No, she’s going away,” Red insisted feverishly. “Will that horrid man
that stole our map have to live with us _always_ now?”

He was on the verge of tears, so to comfort him, as well as to satisfy
our own curiosity, we all set out along the Planter’s Road to the
lagoon, to see what the ship was up to.

And there we saw that Reddy was right. She was past the reef now,
standing directly out to sea. Someone on board, spying us, sprang up on
the ship’s rail and waved both arms at us, and we heard several of the
men laughing behind him.

Uncle Charles cupped his hands into a megaphone, and shouted with all
his strength: “Where are you going? When will you be back?”

We heard the man’s reply easily, because the wind was blowing from him
to us, but I can’t set down what he said, as Aunt Mollie doesn’t like
us even to repeat swearing. But his meaning was clear enough. They
were deserting the Captain. They hadn’t any intention of ever coming
back. Maybe they really believed he was dying, or maybe the Mate had
conspired with the rest of them to steal the ship. Uncle Charles
thought the latter was the case.

Anyhow they were gone. That was all we knew. And there were we with a
desperately ill man on our hands, and no doctor within reach of Sunset
Island.

If it hadn’t been for the Carreaus, I don’t believe we’d ever have
pulled him through. But it turned out that Monsieur Carreau had a
pretty fair knowledge of medicine--he’d doctored their plantation hands
in the old days--and Madame was a natural-born nurse.

We others could only do what we were told, run errands and cook the
meager invalid fare Madame allowed her patient. Of course, I don’t
pretend to say it was as anxious a time for us as if it had been one
of the family who was lying up there in my room ill, but it’s never
pleasant to know that someone is suffering, and we were all honestly
glad and thankful when the day came that Monsieur pronounced the
Captain out of the woods.




CHAPTER XVI

THE LOST TREASURE


All the week or more that the Captain was sick, he never, even in his
few conscious moments, asked about his ship or where he was. He seemed
just to take everything for granted and to have no curiosity about
things round him.

Madame Carreau said that sometimes, when he was delirious, he called
out orders to his men, but they were always in regard to handling his
vessel, and mostly incomprehensible to the Carreaus. Once he muttered
something about maps and Morgan, and Madame told us afterward her heart
almost stopped beating for sheer excitement. But he only trailed off
into grunts and broken words.

After the crisis was past however, and he had begun to pick up strength
more and more surely with each day, we all worried a little how we were
to break the news to him about his crew’s desertion, and the loss of
his ship. When the time came, however, it all happened quite simply
and without fuss of any sort.

Madame had brought up his breakfast tray with his first real breakfast
of eggs and coffee on it, and he was propped up in the pillows,
enjoying every mouthful like a hungry schoolboy, when he turned his
head suddenly toward her.

“Sort of funny ain’t it, Anderson and some of the others haven’t been
up to see me ’fore this?” he asked thoughtfully. “Or wouldn’t you let
’em in?” Anderson was his first mate. We’d met him at our breakfast
party on the Captain’s first visit to the Island.

Madame says she hesitated just a moment, and I guess the Captain’s eyes
were pretty sharp, and his wits too.

He drew a quick breath, looking away from her toward the window and
then back.

“It would be like Anderson to give me the slip,” he said without any
sort of emotion in his tone. “He’s been kind of itchin’ to have a
command of his own for some time now. And in this game it’s every man
for himself. He wouldn’t find much loyalty in that bunch of swabs we
call a crew to hinder him stealin’ the ship, if he was minded that
way.” He stared at Madame keenly. “That’s what he done, ain’t it,
mam?” he asked. “You got it writ all over your face. I guess you
couldn’t lie even if you wanted to, nohow.”

Madame nodded, a little frightened now the secret was out, but he said
nothing more except: “You folks here on the Island got a schooner,
ain’t you? Calls here every so often?”

She nodded again, and he went on as if he were thinking it all out:
“Well, mebbe her cap’n’ll give me a chance to work my passage back to
the States. Don’t care much what port.” He gave a long sigh and lay
back on his pillows, pushing the tray away. “It ain’t the furst time
I’ve been double-crossed, lady,” he told Madame, grinning at the sight
of her puzzled expression. “I’ll win out again somehow, an’ then I’ll
see that Anderson an’ some of them others sweat for this. But you folks
have been real white to me. I won’t forgit that neither.”

He fell asleep after that, so Madame hurried downstairs, and repeated
what had passed between them on the subject.

“He’s a rough customer,” Uncle Charles said drily, “and I, for one,
wouldn’t care to incur his ill will. I’d hate to be in Anderson’s
boots, when he’s well and about again. But I believe the man’s capable
of gratitude--perhaps. We won’t trust him too far, but we’ll hope
for the best. When he’s able to get outdoors, I propose to tell him
frankly our theory about the treasure, and perhaps make up a party to
visit the cave and take him along. Just as well to rid his mind of any
hankerings after those gold pieces right now, and I guess Gay here,
and Madame--not to speak of Mollie and Red, will all be interested in
coming too.”

Of course we were enthusiastic about the plan, and Madame was given
permission to broach the subject to the Captain, and tell him what
we had in mind. She later reported to us that he had been sort of
shame-faced when she first spoke of the map, and tried to pass off his
action in taking possession of it, as a joke. He pretended to believe
that he’d thought the map some play gotten up by the boys and myself to
fool Reddy.

Madame let the matter rest at that, without questioning his
explanations, but insisted on telling him the whole story, showing him
Rosemary’s diary--which made him open his eyes very wide with a kind
of blue gleam of excitement she didn’t much care for, she said--and
then wound up frankly with the account of our locating the cave of the
stream, the old boat, and finally the effect the earth-shocks, and Mt.
Pélée’s eruption had had on the cave bed.

“So it’s down there, maybe several hundred fathom,” he had said sort of
musingly, when she finished. “Well, life’s a funny business. It ain’t
doin’ nobody any good, neither, where it is. And there’s quite a lot
of us could use it, if it was in reach, couldn’t we?” He appeared to
count himself in as a sharer of the treasure if it were found, though
it didn’t seem to us as if he had much to base his rights on.

When he was able to dress and walk downstairs, we found him a very
quiet, unobtrusive visitor, anxious to do what he could to save
trouble, and expressing himself several times a day as honestly
grateful to us for saving his life--that’s what he called it, and what
it really was, though the credit for it was due mostly to Madame and
Monsieur Carreau.

The first thing he had done, when he could walk about his room, was
to rip open the inner lining of his big sea carryall, that the men
had brought his clothes ashore in, and bring out the lost map. He had
handed this over to Madame Carreau with another apologetic reference to
“fooling.” But, as we all agreed privately after she’d told us of his
act, he had certainly hidden it pretty securely away for something he
regarded as just a children’s joke.

Before either the Captain or my ankle were in traveling trim for the
second expedition to the caves, the _Myra_ returned, and with a long
sigh of relief all round we shifted our responsibility in the matter of
Captain Rawson to Uncle Joe’s shoulders.

Uncle Joe grunted sort of non-committally when he’d listened to
the story of the Captain’s return, the way we’d nursed him through
pneumonia, and his present expressions of being grateful.

“Maybe he is--for the present, anyhow,” he said with a little shrug.
“We won’t strain his gratitude too far. I’ll see he gets a chance to
work his way north on the _Myra’s_ next trip--and we won’t put that off
too long either, while we’re about it.”

He endorsed heartily Uncle Charles’ plan of showing the Captain the
cave of the stream as proof of our story, and two or three days after
the _Myra’s_ sails had flashed between the reef-opening, we might have
been seen one morning just at sunrise, paddling up the lagoon in the
_Myra’s_ dinghy and the green canoe, with plenty of lanterns aboard,
and a picnic breakfast to eat in the cave.

Everyone in the family went, even Aunt Mollie, Monsieur and Madame
Carreau and little Red. And of course the Captain who appeared in high
spirits. As Syd whispered to me on the way, he thought the Captain,
in spite of our tale of earthquakes and volcanoes, fully expected
by superior cleverness to discover the treasure, and claim at least
nine-tenths as a reward for doing it.

Maybe we did him an injustice, but if so we’ll never know it now, for
the temptation to show himself in his blackest colors didn’t present
itself.

We had no trouble in locating the inlet, or--with the help of all those
muscular arms on board--of dragging both the canoe and dinghy across
the sand bar in no time at all, and launching them on the other side.

Then we all embarked again, and the journey up the stream began. Aunt
Mollie, Madame and Andy were in ecstasies over the beauty of the
flowering jungle vines that shut in both sides of the stream, and the
effects of light and shadow the interlacing of the trees overhead made
on the water. But the boys and I were impatient to get to the cave. We
had all been over this route before, and were far too excited to put
our minds on the beauties of Nature at the moment.

When we swung around the final bend I found it had suddenly become hard
to breathe, and my fingers were clinched so tightly on the edge of the
dinghy they were sore for days afterward.

There was the low, black mouth of the cave just before us as I
remembered it that first time with Syd. The canoe, which was leading
the way with Uncle Joe, Syd, Dan and Monsieur in it, was already
disappearing through the cave opening and our dinghy was just behind.

The dinghy, being so much more heavily loaded than the canoe, ran
aground about twenty feet before the canoe did. In fact we found, by
prodding the bottom with the oars, that we hadn’t grounded on the old
jolly boat at all, but upon the floor proper of the cave itself. By
the time we’d settled this fact to our own satisfaction the canoe was
perched on the overturned bottom of the old boat, and we all proceeded
to climb out--all of us, that is, except Aunt Mollie, and Madame, who
preferred to keep their feet dry, and look on.

Even Andy, who used to think more of her clothes than being a good
sport, forgot herself entirely, and sprang out into the shallow water
as quickly as Syd or Dan. It flashed over me as I saw her, that Andy
was quite a different girl from the one we knew in Braeburn. She didn’t
talk much more, but she was usually ready now for any expedition or fun
we others had on foot, and she didn’t hang back, or complain if things
went wrong and we got tired or hungry.

And the Andy who came down with us on the _Myra_ nearly a year ago,
and who had cried on the lagoon beach when we landed on Sunset Island
because she was afraid of snakes, must have had a big fight with
herself before she could clamber so unconcernedly out of the dinghy
now into cold, black water nearly to her knees, in a dark, underground
cave, and never give a thought to possible sea animals under foot. I
felt awfully proud of her, all at once.

First of course we explored the cave of the stream, and crept
cautiously up onto the overturned boat, to listen to the faint, far-off
sound of falling water underground, going down, down into the depths of
the sea where Sir Henry Morgan’s treasure lay.

Straightening up from my turn at listening, I found Captain Rawson
beside me, his face wearing in the lantern light an expression of
disappointment as open and unashamed as Reddy himself might have worn.

“So it was true, after all,” he said. “It’s down there now--millions
just waitin’ to be picked up. An’ not a soul can touch a penny of it!”

I felt sorry for him because I knew by my own disappointment what he
was feeling.

“I guess it’s there all right,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “And
what’s more I guess it’ll stay there.”

He grunted. “A lot of good that does us to know.”

“Come on,” I urged, “the others are going on to the outside caves.
Syd says we can squeeze through where the passage is blocked. I guess
Madame’ll want to go with us, she’s crazy about this treasure-hunt
business. Her son used to take her with him when he was alive.”

“I’ll take care of the little French lady,” Captain Rawson said
unexpectedly. His face had softened as much as its natural make-up
allowed. He didn’t look quite so villainous when he smiled like that,
and for a moment I almost forgot his roughness with poor Reddy, and
how he had planned to rob us if the doubloons were found. I guess it’s
true after all, that there’s some little hidden-away soft spot in even
the cruelest and wickedest folks if you can only find it. I knew then
that Captain Rawson’s gratitude was quite genuine as far as Madame was
concerned.

She was awfully pleased and touched when he went up to her and asked if
he could help her into the other caves, if she wanted to go.

“You don’t weigh no more’n a baby, mam,” he told her, grinning. “You
jus’ let me carry you on my shoulder where the walkin’s bad, an’ I’ll
promise you you won’t wet the tip of your shoe, nor bump agin nothin’
in the dark.”

She held out her arms to him as trustingly as a baby, saying only,
“Thank you, Captain, I am sure you will take good care of me,” and he
put her up on his shoulder the way Uncle Joe had carried me when I
sprained my ankle.

Syd and Uncle Joe went first, with the lanterns, and the rest of us
straggled carefully behind. We made a funny procession, plodding along
in that twisty, dark passage, climbing carefully over fallen rocks, and
stubbing our toes against crevices in the passage floor.

But after about fifty yards or more of the roughest kind of going,
we saw a little glimmer of light ahead. Just in front of us was the
hardest blockade to pass we’d struck yet, but we managed it at last,
and came through into the inner cave where Andy, Aunt Mollie and I had
slept so long ago, and where I had found Rosemary’s locket.

Aunt Mollie, and little Red who was tired, elected to go home by way of
the beach, through the outer cave, but the rest of us returned by the
passage to the Cave of the Stream, and the waiting boats.

“Syd,” I whispered anxiously, as we passed over the upturned bottom of
the old boat, “Syd, don’t you think you could scrape me off a piece of
the old jolly boat just for a souvenir?”

He nodded good humoredly and bent down, but, as I had also found it
on a former occasion, that half-rotted old wood was slippery flooring
to keep your balance on, and with a little exclamation he slid to his
knees in the water, dropping his knife.

“And it was my prize whittling knife,” he grumbled in disgust. “Here’s
your sliver of souvenir, Sis. Now be a good sport, in return, and help
me feel for Old Trusty. It’s bound to be somewheres around.”

Dan, seeing us rooting in the water, came to our help, finally
suggesting that we get our hands under the edge of the boat and lift it
enough to make anything on top of it slide off into the shallow water.
“Only take care to tilt it this way,” he added with a laugh, “or your
precious knife will go slipping down to join Morgan’s pieces of eight
at the bottom of the sea. The deep hole’s on the other side.”

After maneuvering about a bit, we decided to work our way to the end of
the boat, and try to tilt it from there. Uncle Joe and Captain Rawson
lent their arms also, and after a good deal of heaving and puffing, we
felt the old hulk move. Then I gave a startled scream, as a crumbling
piece of the wooden thwart broke off in my hand, and I stumbled
backward holding something oblong and heavy.

Examining my catch by the light of the nearest lantern I found that it
seemed to be a box, about the size of a quart measure, made of some
heavier kind of wood than the jolly boat. It was bound with an iron rim
and hoops, and was somehow attached to the piece of wood I had broken
off.

“Syd! Uncle Joe! Dan!” I shrieked, as my mind slowly took in the fact
of what I was holding. “It’s a box--caught under the edge of the old
boat! Bring more light, somebody, please!”

They were round me then, in a second; nobody speaking, but with a
circle of curious eyes riveted on the slimy, brown object.

I passed it over to Uncle Joe. “You see,” I begged. “I’m--I’m sort of
scared----”

Well, after a while we calmed down enough to pry the rotted wood free
of the old hasps, and so, after perfect ages of time to our impatience,
got the box open.

The flickering lanterns showed gleams of gold, and other things that
were small and hard and sparkled in gay colors where the light fell
on them. Pieces of eight--doubloons--some few bits of jewels set in
ancient, chased gold and silver pins, a bracelet or two and some rings.

“Watch Rawson,” Uncle Joe said in a whispered aside to the boys and
Uncle Charles; but after all, there was no need. It wasn’t a real
fortune in that small package, just a few odds and ends of the great
pirate’s loot, that had somehow wedged in the bow of the boat when it
was overturned, or--as Uncle Joe pointed out was more likely--been
secreted there by one of the buccaneers who hoped later to return and
retrieve it on the sly.

Anyhow, it proved beyond a doubt to us, the way the rest of the
treasure had gone, and after admiring our find a long time in the light
of the lanterns, we carried it out to the cave’s mouth, and inspected
it all over again in the sunlight.

Uncle Joe held out his two big hands to us filled with the lovely,
flashing things.

“First choice to the little lady who found them. Here, Gay-girl--what
do you want?”

I drew in my breath and looked--and _looked_. Rubies, and the green of
emeralds, and golden coins, all heaped together in Uncle Joe’s familiar
sun-browned hands. It was like a story after all--or the nice kind of
dream you hate to wake up and leave.

And then I put out one finger and touched the loveliest thing of all
there. It wasn’t the most valuable, or I wouldn’t have been selfish
enough to claim it.... A little pink pearl, set in a carved ring that
had a dragon’s wings round the finger part, and the pearl itself held
in the beast’s mouth. It just fitted my middle finger--not too snugly,
perhaps, but Aunt Mollie wouldn’t want me to wear it, I knew, till I
was older.

“I wonder,” I said, with a sudden shiver at the thought, “who owned it
originally, Uncle Joe?”

“Never mind, honey,” he said quickly, “whoever she was, she’s over all
her troubles now, poor soul. And perhaps,” he added smiling, “it never
belonged to anyone in especial. It’s quite likely it was part of some
big merchant’s stores being brought out to New Spain, when Morgan took
them. Now, all the rest of you, make your various choices. There’s just
enough to go round.”

So we chose and chose, and exchanged, and made up our minds all over
again, until nothing was left but the golden doubloons--worth, Uncle
Joe figured, about three hundred dollars.

Then Madame did a surprising thing. But she went over first to whisper
in Uncle Joe’s ear, and after a moment of close attention, he nodded
back, and laid the doubloons in her hands.

“Captain Rawson,” Madame said clearly, with her pleasant little smile,
beckoning him nearer, “you have lost your ship, and are starting life
all over again. And you have been very kind to me today. As kind, and
as strong as my Raoul could have been. We have all made our choice of
the treasure trove, and we’d like these pieces of eight to be your
share.”

She put them in his hands, and closed his big fingers down over the
coins.

“Now,” she said, with a tired little sigh, “let’s all go home. It has
been a wonderful day.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It would surely be what I’ve seen writers describe as an anti-climax,
to carry this journal of Sunset Island beyond our finding the jewels
and the pieces of eight in the cave that morning. Of course there’s
a lot more that I could tell, like Captain Rawson leaving us on the
_Myra_, our getting a great avalanche of orders from New York for our
candied peel and all of us plunging into a regular orgy of boiling and
beating. Then there were Syd’s successful experiments in gardening
that produced some brand new types of vegetables for our table, and
Andy’s developing a positive genius in making over the old frocks
and petticoats in Rosemary’s chest into pretty, every-day clothes
for herself and me. Things like that--not really exciting except to
ourselves, but making life on the Island so busy and interesting we
never knew where the days went to.

There was a storm blowing up from the east when I sat down to finish
this journal, and sitting at the desk by my window I could see the surf
dashing over the reef and hear the wind singing a high note through the
palms.

But while I’ve been writing, the wind has veered round again suddenly,
and now there’s the fragrant little Island breeze I love blowing across
my room, smelling of desert islands and jungle flowers and hot sunshine
on tropical gardens. I wish you could smell it too--and open your own
windows, every one of you, to see Sunset Island lying just outside, in
a blue, blue ocean.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76532 ***