The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove: or, The Missing Chest of Gold

Fred pointed the binoculars in the direction that Lester indicated and plainly saw a shack near the edge of the water.

“Do you see any one about the cabin?” asked Lester.

“No, I don’t,” replied his companion. “The door is open though, and he may be inside.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” laughed Lester. “Mark hasn’t anything worth stealing, and I guess the door’s open all the time except in winter. But it won’t be long now before we find out.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE SPOILS OF WAR

Just where the cabin stood was a little bay formed by an inward bend of the coast, and in this the water was comparatively smooth.

Lester headed his boat into this and Ross, who took his sailing directions from the Ariel, followed his example.

A hundred yards from shore, Fred ran down the sail and the boat drifted in with its own momentum, while Lester took soundings cautiously to find the best place to cast anchor. The Ariel was of light draught, and, with the centerboard up, found three feet of water ample to prevent her scraping.

“Here we are,” Lester said at last, when the two boats had reached a suitable spot and he could see the sandy bottom through the clear water. “Heave over the anchor now, and you fellows stand ready to go overboard.”

The boys followed his directions, and a moment later all were in the water.

Lester had previously unfastened the line by which they had been towing the shark and thrown it over to Fred, who stood the nearest to the shore. The rest ranged themselves along the line at intervals and bent their backs to the strain.

For strain it proved to be. While the huge carcass was floating clear of the bottom it was comparatively easy to draw him along; but when the lower part began to scrape, it was a more difficult matter. They progressed only an inch at a time. By taking advantage of the rollers, however, as they came tumbling in, the boys finally got their booty to the edge of the water line. They could not drag it entirely clear of the water, but got it half way out, the head and upper part of the body remaining exposed, while the tail swished idly to and fro in the shallow water.

“Whew!” said Teddy, wiping his streaming forehead. “I wouldn’t like to work so hard as that every day in the week.”

“You won’t have to,” remarked Lester, comfortingly. “Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place, and the chances are that you’ll never catch a shark again in your life.”

“As long as a shark never catches me, I won’t kick,” said the philosophical Bill.

They threw themselves down on the beach, panting and perspiring. The day was very warm, and the excitement of the catch, together with their recent efforts, made the rest a needed and grateful one.

“Well,” said Lester, the first to get on his feet again, “while you weary Willies are loafing here, I’m going up to Mark’s cabin and see if he’s at home. The chances are that he isn’t, or he’d have been out to see what all this fuss was about. Still, he may be asleep. Anyway, whether he’s home or not, I want to scare up an axe or hatchet or something of the kind to dig out that harpoon.”

“What’s the matter with the hatchet we’ve got?” asked Teddy lazily.

“That’s rather small, and, besides, with that only one can work at a time. It’ll take some digging to get through that hide. Then, too, you fellows were talking of getting out the teeth and strips of the hide for mementoes, and you can’t do that with your pocket knives alone.”

“Go on then, you horny-handed son of toil, and luck be with you,” drawled Bill. “You’ll find us here when you get back.”

“I’m sure of that,” retorted Lester. “It would take an earthquake to make you fellows move.”

Lester went up the beach until he reached the open door of the cabin and looked in. He found it deserted as he had expected. He went in and hunted about among its meagre belongings and came back to the boys, triumphant, bringing with him a hatchet, an axe and a large, keen-bladed knife that was used by Mark in cleaning his fish.

“Here they are!” he exclaimed, as he laid them down on the sand. “Mark wasn’t at home, so I made free with these things of his, as I knew he wouldn’t mind. There’s no further excuse for you hoboes now, and you want to get a wiggle on.”

“Take back them cruel woids,” groaned Teddy.

“Listen to the chant of the slave driver!” jibed Bill.

“There’s nothing left but to obey, shipmates,” said Fred with mock resignation. “Remember he’s the captain and we don’t want to be tried for mutiny.”

They distributed the implements among them and moved in a body toward the shark.

The first thing to do was to get out the harpoon, and this was no easy task, for the barb of the shank lay deeply imbedded among the tough fibres of its victim. The implement was freed at last, however, and Lester carefully washed it off in the water and then polished it with sand until it shone.

“Just see him gloat,” laughed Teddy. “You’d think he was a pilgrim who had just come across a precious relic.”

“Or a miner who had found a diamond,” added Ross.

“He’s earned the right to gloat,” maintained Fred. “If I’d driven home a harpoon with such a sure hand and steady aim as his, I’d be so proud that my hat wouldn’t fit me.”

“I’m thinking as much of dad as I am of myself,” grinned Lester. “He’ll be tickled to death when he hears that I’ve speared a shark with that old harpoon of his. He’s always thought a lot of it, but he’ll think still more of it now.”

“Well, now that the harpoon is out, let’s turn this fellow on his back. I want to have a good look at that mouth of his,” remarked Fred.

It was quite an undertaking, but by distributing themselves along the body, using their implements as levers and all heaving at a given signal, they finally succeeded.

It was a frightful mouth, armed with huge rows of sawlike teeth, and although they knew the brute was dead the boys could not repress a shudder as they looked at it.

“Talk about a buzz saw!” exclaimed Teddy. “It couldn’t cut you in two more neatly than this fellow could when he was swimming around.”

“If those teeth could talk, I imagine they’d have some stories to tell,” added Ross.

“And they wouldn’t be pretty stories either,” observed Bill.

“I wouldn’t want him to be the undertaker at my funeral,” said Fred, who could not help thinking that that dismal function might have been performed by this shark or some other the day he had gone overboard.

“Look at those wicked eyes,” said Lester. “They’re almost as fiendish now as they were when they looked up at us as he came swimming around the boat. I’ll wager we’ll see them more than once in our dreams.”

“As long as we don’t see them any other way it won’t matter much,” concluded Bill, the practical.

It was a full hour before the boys had cut the teeth from the bony sockets and had secured all the strips of hide they wanted to make up into souvenirs.

“We’ll leave the rest of the carcass here until the tide comes in and carries it away,” remarked Lester, when the work was finished. “It’ll float out to sea and the other fish will make short work of it.”

“That’ll be only justice,” said Teddy. “He’s feasted on them or their brothers by the ton in his time.”

“The gulls will help them out,” said Lester, as he pointed to a number of the great birds circling around. “They’re getting ready now to pick the bones, and are only waiting for us to get out of the way before they settle down to the job.”

“It’s getting pretty late, isn’t it?” inquired Bill. “I hardly think we’ll see Bartanet Shoals again to-night.”

“Not a chance in the world,” replied Lester, as he looked at the sky, already crimsoning in the west. “We’ll have to stay all night with Mark and make a break for home in the morning. But it doesn’t matter, and dad won’t be worrying about us this time, especially if the weather stays clear.”

“I’m afraid Mark will find it some job to put us up for the night,” observed Ross, as he noted the tiny dimensions of the little cabin on the beach.

“It isn’t exactly a summer hotel,” grinned Lester. “There’s only one room and that’s pretty well cluttered up with his nets and tackle and other junk.”

“We’ll probably have to sleep outside on the sand,” remarked Bill.

“All the more fun,” chimed in Teddy. “We’ve done it once and we can do it again. One thing sure, there won’t be any kick coming on the question of ventilation. The earth for a bed, the sky for a blanket–”

“And the sea for a lullaby,” finished Ross.

CHAPTER XX

THE EMPTY HUT

“Listen to the poets,” jibed Bill. “Homer and Milton have nothing on them.”

“Don’t mind his knocking, Ross,” said Teddy. “He’s only envious because he can’t rise to our heights. He’s like that fellow that Wordsworth tells us about:

“‘A primrose by the river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him

And nothing more.’”

“Well, what more was it?” grinned Bill, stubbornly holding his ground.

“A hopeless case,” groaned Teddy. “If he heard a bobolink singing, he’d ask whether it was good to eat.”

“What is this anyway?” laughed Fred. “It sounds like elocution day at Rally Hall.”

“Talking about eats,” chimed in Lester, “what’s the matter with getting our stuff off the boat before it gets dark? Mark will have plenty of fish with him when he gets back, and with what we can supply we ought to be able to get up a nifty little supper.”

“Count me in on this,” said Ross. “I’ve got quite a cargo of supplies on the Sleuth, and we’ll all chip in together.”

“The more the merrier,” cried Lester, accepting the offer. “I imagine Mark doesn’t have much variety in his diet, and we’ll see that to-night at least the old man has a bang-up meal.”

“They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” observed Teddy, “and if we fill him up, he’ll be all the more ready to loosen up and tell us all he knows.”

“I wish we had a Chinaman along,” remarked Fred. “We’d get him to make us a soup out of the shark’s fins.”

“We’ll try it ourselves if we get hard up,” laughed Ross, “but it seems to me we’ve got our money’s worth out of the shark already, without taxing him any further.”

They waded out to the boats and ransacked the lockers, returning loaded with coffee and bacon and beans and eggs and jams, the sight of which added a spur to their already lively appetites.

“That looks like Mark’s boat out there now,” observed Lester, as he straightened up and surveyed the sea.

He pointed to a tiny catboat coming in at a spanking gait, and that seemed to be headed directly for that part of the beach where the boys stood.

“At the rate he’s coming, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” Lester announced a moment later.

“What’s the matter with having supper all ready when the old man gets in?” chuckled Fred. “It’ll pay for using his tools, and it will give him the surprise of his life.”

“Good thing!” exclaimed Lester heartily. “The poor old chap doesn’t get many surprises–pleasant ones I mean–and it will warm his heart.”

“To say nothing of his stomach,” added the ever practical Bill.

The boys set to work with a zest, and five pairs of hands transformed the interior of the little hut in a twinkling. Fred lighted a fire in the rusty stove, Bill cut up some wood for fuel, Ross brought water for the coffee from a neighboring spring, Teddy cleared the litter of odds and ends off the rough pine table and set out the eatables, while Lester fried the bacon, warmed the beans and made the coffee. Everything, even down to salt and sugar, had come from their own stores, so that Mark’s meagre stock was not drawn upon for anything. A fluffy omelet finished Lester’s part of the work, and when Ross produced a big apple pie that his landlady had given him to take along that morning, the boys stood off and viewed their handiwork with pride.

“It makes one’s mouth water,” said Teddy, who claimed to be an expert where food was concerned.

“I can’t wait,” declared Bill. “I wish Mark had wings.”

“He doesn’t need them,” replied Lester, looking out of the door, “for here he comes now.”

The boys ran out to greet the returning master of the house, who had rounded the point into the sheltered bay and was fast approaching the beach. He had already noticed the two boats lying side by side and surmised that he had visitors. He looked at the boys curiously and waved his hand to Lester in friendly fashion.

Then his boat claimed all his attention. With surprising agility for one so old, he did all that was necessary to lay it up snugly for the night. Then he clambered into a small rowboat that trailed at the stern, loosed the rope that held it and with a few deft pulls at the oars rowed in until he grounded on the beach. The boys ran forward and drew the boat far up on the sands above the high water mark, while Lester shook hands with the newcomer.

“How are you, Mark?” he said heartily.

“How be yer, Les?” responded the other with no less cordiality, “an’ how’s yer pa?”

“Dad’s all right and so am I,” was the answer. “You see I’ve brought a bunch of my friends over to see you.”

“I take it kindly of yer,” said Mark. “I get a leetle lonesome here all by myself, an’ it heartens me up a bit ter git a sight of young critters. Out on a fishin’ trip, I s’pose?”

The boys had crowded round them by this time, and Lester introduced them to the old fisherman, who shook hands heartily, albeit rather awkwardly.

“Yes,” said Lester, when this ceremony was finished, answering Mark’s last question, “we are on a fishing trip, but we’re fishing for information more than for anything else.”

“Information?” repeated Mark, taken a little aback. “Waal,” he said, recovering himself, “ef there’s anythin’ I know, yer welcome ter have it. What is it yer want ter know?”

“Lots of things,” laughed Lester. “But they can wait till after supper. By the way, Mark, I suppose you’ll let us stay to supper? I know it’s awfully nervy to plump ourselves down on you this way without any warning and without being invited. But if you can take care of us for the night and give us a bite to eat, we’ll be mighty thankful.”

“Sure I will,” replied Mark warmly. “But yer’ll have ter take pot luck. Come up ter the cabin an’ I’ll hunt yer up a snack of sumthin’.”

The boys had been standing between him and their catch of the morning, but as they separated to go up to the shack he caught sight of the stranded body of the shark. He stopped short in amazement.

“Sufferin’ cats!” he shouted. “Where in the world did that thing come from?”

“He didn’t come of his own accord,” laughed Fred. “We picked him up and brought him along.”

“Do yer mean ter tell me that you youngsters caught him all by yerselves?” asked Mark, looking from one to the other in incredulous astonishment.

“That’s what we did,” replied Teddy. “That is, we all had a part in hooking him, and then Lester, here, finished the job with his father’s harpoon.”

“Les, ye’re a chip of the old block,” cried Mark delightedly. “Yer pa was one of the best harpooners thet ever sailed from these parts an’ ye sure have got his blood in yer ter do a man-sized job like this. A mighty good job it is too, fer I don’t know when these fellers has been more troublesome than they’ve been this year, what with sp’ilin’ the nets an’ scarin’ away the fish.”

He walked around the body, giving vent to muttered exclamations of wonder and satisfaction, and the boys had a chance to study him more closely than they had yet been able to do.

He was a wizened, dried-up little man, not much more than five feet in height. His shoulders were bent with the infirmities of age–they judged him to be over seventy–but his movements were spry, and they had already seen by the way he handled his boat that he was not lacking in dexterity. There was a suspicious redness about his nose that was explained by Lester’s hint about his fondness for a certain black bottle. But his eyes were friendly and free from guile, and the simple cordiality with which he had welcomed them to his scanty fare showed that his heart was kindly.

He found it hard to tear himself away from gloating over the body of the shark–the shark he hated with the hatred of all the members of his calling–but he recalled himself at last to the duties of hospitality.

“Waal, I swan!” he ejaculated. “Here I am wastin’ time on this cantankerous old pirate when I ought ter be hustlin’ around ter get you boys some grub.”

The boys could see a growing perplexity in the old fellow’s kindly face as he tried to think how to feed such a hungry crew as he saw about him.

“Oh, anything will do,” Lester hastened to assure him. “Come along up to the cabin and we’ll pitch in and help.”

They reached the door, and as Mark’s eyes fell upon the crowded table, and as the fragrant odor of the coffee and the other good things assailed his nostrils, he gave vent to an exclamation of astonishment and relief that was lost in the roar of laughter that burst from the boys.

“Waal, I vum!” he exclaimed as soon as he could catch his breath.

“Some surprise party, eh Mark?” asked Lester.

“Yer could knock me down with a feather,” the old fisherman replied. “An’ me a-rackin’ my old noddle as ter how I was goin’ ter giv’ ye anythin’ but fish.”

“You’re not going to taste of fish to-night,” stated Teddy.

“Waal, that won’t be no loss,” grinned Mark delightedly. “I eat so much fish that I’m expectin’ almost any minnit I’ll be sproutin’ fins an’ gills.”

“This treat is all on us,” affirmed Fred, “and all you have to do is to fill up on what you see before you and tell us what you think of our cook.”

“I’ll do that right enough,” said Mark, “an’ ef it tastes as good as it smells an’ looks, there ain’t one of you youngsters that will stow away more than I kin.”

They installed him at the head of the table in the one chair that the cabin boasted, while they disposed themselves around on boxes and whatever else would serve as seats. Their surroundings were of the rudest kind but the fare was ample and their appetites keen and there was an atmosphere of mirth and high spirits that made full amends for whatever was lacking in the way of what Teddy called frills. Mark renewed his youth in the unaccustomed company of so many young lads, and ate as he had not eaten for many a day or year.

They did not broach the object of their visit until the meal was finished and the remnants cleared away. Then they adjourned to the beach in front of the cabin, where Mark filled his pipe and tilted back in his chair against the front of the shack, while the boys threw themselves down on the sand around him.

“Well, Mark,” began Lester, when, with his pipe drawing well, the old fisherman beamed on them all in rare good humor, “I suppose you’ve been wondering what we mean by coming down and taking you by storm in this way.”

“I’d like ter be taken by storm that way a mighty sight oftener than I be,” returned Mark. “But sence yer speak of it, I am a leetle mite curious as ter what yer wanted with an old fisherman like me.”

“It’s about something that happened nine or ten years ago,” went on Lester. “Do you remember the time you picked up a man in an open boat off this coast somewhere?”

Mark was attentive in an instant.

“I’ll never forgit it,” he declared emphatically. “I never was so sorry fur a feller-bein’ in all my life as I was fur him.”

“This is his son,” said Lester, indicating Ross.

CHAPTER XXI

BITS OF EVIDENCE

If Mark had received a shock from a galvanic battery he would not have been more startled.

“What’s that you say?” he demanded, bringing his chair down from its tilted position and looking around upon the group in a bewildered way.

“Lester is right,” said Ross, who had risen to his feet and stretched out his hand. “My name is Ross Montgomery, and I want to thank you with all my heart for what you did for my father. I’ve never had the chance to do it before.”

His voice was shaken with emotion at this meeting with the man who had played so large a part in the tragedy of his family so many years before.

Mark grasped the extended hand and shook it warmly.

“So it was your pa that I picked up that day,” he said. “I hed a sort of feelin’ to-day that I had seen you somewheres, an’ I s’pose it’s because you favored him some. You have the same kind of hair an’ eyes, as near as I kin rec’lect.”

“Of course I was only a little chap when it all happened,” said Ross, “but I’ve often heard mother tell how kind you were to him after you found him adrift.”

“Oh, pshaw! that was nothin’,” replied Mark deprecatingly, as he resumed his seat. “I only did fur him what any man would do fur an’ unfo’tunit feller-man. He was nearly all gone when I come across him. The doc said he would ’a’ died ef he’d floated around a few hours longer.”

“Do you remember anything he said to you while you were taking care of him?” asked Lester.

“Oh, he said a heap o’ things, jest like any man does when he is out of his head,” was the answer. “I didn’t pay much attention like. I was too busy holdin’ him down when he got vi’lent, as he did pretty often the first few days. After that he kind of settled down an’ only kep’ a-mutterin’ to himself.”

“Yes, but didn’t he say anything that would give you a hint of what had happened to him and how he came to be adrift?” asked Fred.

Mark ruminated for a full minute, evidently doing his best to tax his memory.

“I ain’t got the best memory in the world,” he said apologetically, “an’ I couldn’t make out fur certain all he said. But I got the idee thet there’d been a fight of some kind an’ thet he’d lost a pile of money. He kep’ a talkin’ of ‘gold’ an’ some ‘debts’ he owed. Course I thought it was only the ravin’s of a crazy man an’ I didn’t take much stock in it.”

“Wasn’t there anything else?” prodded Fred.

“N-no,” replied Mark hesitatingly, “nothin’ thet I remember on. Oh, yes,” he went on, as a sudden flash of memory came to him, “I do rec’lect he kep’ sayin’: ‘It’s where the water’s comin’ in.’ But of course there wasn’t no sense in that.”

The boys sat up straight.

“Say that again, won’t you?” asked Teddy.

“It’s where the water’s comin’ in,” repeated Mark. “He said that over and over. I s’pose it was the feelin’ of the spray thet came over him in the boat. I don’t rightly know what else it could have been.”

As the boys themselves turned the phrase over in their minds, they could not see how it bore on the object of their search. They filed it away in their minds to think about later on.

For the next two hours they discussed the matter with Mark, trying to get from him any little shred of evidence that would be of help, and yet at the same time guarding carefully against revealing the real object of their questioning. He, for his part, set it down to the natural curiosity they felt in an event that touched the life of one of them so nearly, and did his best to cudgel his memory. But nothing more came of it than they had already learned, and it was with a sense of depression and failure that they finally gave up the cross examination that they had come so far to make.

“Well, Mark,” said Lester at last, when several long yawns had shown that the old man was tired and sleepy, “we can’t tell you how much obliged we are to you for all you’ve told us. But I guess we’ve tired you out with all our questions.”

“Not a bit of it,” denied Mark valiantly, though his drooping eyelids belied his words.

“I was just a-wonderin’ where I was goin’ to put all you boys for the night,” he went on. “There’s only one bed in the cabin, but I kin spread some blankets on the floor, ef that’ll do yer.”

“Don’t worry at all about that,” said Fred cheerily. “You go right in to bed and we’ll bunk out here on the beach. It’s a warm night, and we’d as soon do it as not.”

As there was really nothing else to do, Mark, after making a feeble protest, said good-night and went inside, while the boys moved down the beach until they were out of earshot and prepared to camp out.

“We didn’t get much out of the old chap after all, did we?” said Bill rather despondently.

“After coming all this way too,” added Teddy, even more dejectedly.

“The only thing we’ll have to show for the trip will be the shark, I guess,” said Lester.

“Well, that would be enough if we hadn’t gotten anything else,” declared Fred. “But I’m not so sure that we came on a fool’s errand after all.”