The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove Part 32

After a little more friendly urging, the others acquiesced in the arrangement and went forward, cautiously testing each plank before they set their feet down, for fear it might give way under them.

A certain feeling of eeriness settled down upon them. Living men, hearty, boisterous, vigorous men, full of the joy of life, had trodden these planks when the vessel was in her prime and winging her way over the seas as swiftly as the gull whose name she bore. Now the hungry waves had swallowed them, and the subdued chanting of the water along her side might well be their requiem.

Instinctively the boys drew closer together, and their voices lowered almost to a whisper.

"Makes you feel kind of creepy, doesn't it?" remarked Bill.

"It sure does," answered Teddy. "I shouldn't care to sleep here over night."

"You wouldn't do much sleeping," affirmed Fred. "You'd be expecting every minute to see something standing at the foot of your bed."

But these first fancies could not long endure in the flood of sunlight that beat upon the schooner, and the boys soon recovered their normal confidence. They went through the captain's cabin and two others that had evidently been set apart for the mates. Except one or two sodden mattresses and a huddled bunch of mouldy bed coverings, there was nothing of the slightest value. Whatever there had been at the time of the wreck had either been washed overboard or taken possession of by the authorities, shortly after the wreck occurred.

"Nothing more to see here," declared Bill, after a brief look around. "I guess we'd better join the other fellows now. Lester'll be anxious to get going."

"Right-o," acceded Fred. "Let's get a move on."

But something, he did not know what, moved Teddy to stay a little longer.

"You fellows go back and unfasten the rope," he suggested, "and I'll be with you in a minute."

They went slowly back to the stern and started to untie the rope, bantering meanwhile with Lester and Ross, who were getting restive.

Teddy ran forward toward the bow and looked into the gloomy depths of the forecastle. He could see that the floor was solid, but it was some inches deep in water. He hesitated only a moment and then leaped lightly down.

Three minutes later, Fred and Bill were startled to see Teddy running toward them, his face as white as chalk and his eyes blazing with excitement.

"What's the matter?" they cried in alarm, leaping to their feet.

Teddy tried to speak, but for a moment no words came.

"The m-m-map!" he stuttered at last. "It's in the f-forecastle!"

"The map?" repeated Bill blankly.

A light sprang into Fred's eyes.

"Do you mean the map that the sailor carved?" he demanded, clutching his brother's arm with a force like a vise.

Teddy nodded, still a prey to his tremendous agitation.

"But how can it be?" asked Fred wildly. "This isn't the _Ranger_."

"How do you know it isn't?" cried Bill, catching the contagion. "Her name was changed, you remember."

"What are you fellows chinning about up there?" demanded Lester, with a touch of impatience in his voice.

"Lester!" called Fred. "Sc.r.a.pe the paint off the name on the stern there, and see if you can make out anything underneath."

Lester took out his claspknife and sc.r.a.ped vigorously.

"There has been something else there," he announced after a moment, "but I can't fully make it out. I can see a couple of R's----"

"That's it," shouted Fred jubilantly. "It's the old _Ranger_. Come aboard, you fellows. Lively, now. Don't mind about the boats. They're safe enough for a few minutes."

A moment more, and those on board were joined by Ross and Lester, as breathless and excited as themselves, for the meaning of Teddy's discovery had dawned upon them.

They all raced to the forecastle and tumbled in pell mell.

CHAPTER XXIX

TREASURE COVE

With a finger that he vainly tried to keep steady, Teddy pointed to a rough tracing on the wall at the left side of the forecastle.

It took a moment to accustom their eyes to the dim light of the place, then their vision cleared and the boys could make out the details of a map similar to the one which the old sailor had described to Ross.

There were two clumps, one consisting of two and the other of three trees, at a little distance in from the beach. To the right was a huge rock that rose like some giant sentinel and seemed to mark the entrance to a bay or cove. A series of waving lines appeared to indicate the water, and a more heavily shaded part was evidently meant to denote the land. There was no artistic element in the drawing, but just then the boys would not have exchanged the rough scrawl of that knife blade for a painting by t.i.tian or Raphael.

"Glory, hallelujah!" shouted Teddy, who had by this time recovered his power of speech.

"Eureka!" cried Lester.

"We've found it," translated Fred.

"Joy!" exulted Bill, his habitual caution swept away in the flood of his excitement.

Ross alone said nothing, though his trembling hands and moistened eyes betrayed the depth of his emotion. To the Rally Hall boys this meant a tremendous step forward, they hoped, toward the achievement of their ambition. It meant all that, too, to Ross, but it meant much more. He was on the spot where his father had been foully a.s.saulted and brought to his death. Somewhere in this ship there had been the scuffling of feet and the thud of a deadly weapon, as his father had fought for his property and his life.

The other boys were quick to recognize his feeling, and with the true courtesy that marked them, they strove to restrain their exultation for a time, and to talk among themselves until Ross should have had time to get a grip on himself.

Bill, as usual, was the first to put a brake on their optimism and subdue their enthusiasm by questioning cautiously the real value of their discovery.

"It's splendid, of course," he ventured to suggest, "but, after all, what does it give us that we didn't already know? To be sure, it shows that the sailor was telling the truth. But there doesn't seem to be anything in the map that he hadn't already described."

"That's so," admitted Teddy, his enthusiasm a little dampened.

"Don't be too sure that there's nothing else," said Fred. "It's so dark in here that we can't see anything but the rough outlines. Who has some matches?"

"Here you are," replied Lester, producing an oilskin pouch from an inside pocket.

Fred struck one, and as it flared up, five eager pairs of eyes scanned the wall in front.

But while it brought into greater distinctness the main features that they had already seen, the map seemed to reveal nothing more and there was a general sigh of disappointment.