The Mystery Boys and Captain Kidd's Message

by Van Powell

  CHAPTER XXI IN THE BOTTOM OF THE DIPPER!

  First of all, of course, it was necessary for Tom, Cliff and Nicky todiscover the key islands which formed the Dipper. This was not easy,because the channels between the islets were, in many places, tooshallow for even their light-draught boat to navigate.

  They had no definite idea just where to locate the Dipper, except thatthe charts had shown it, and the white men had mentioned it as beingabout midway between the inner and the outer boundaries of thearchipelago.

  Many trials they made before they found a channel that ran far into thecrowded outcroppings which showed above the shallow water.

  Every time they would locate what seemed to be a straight and a deepwaterway, it would shoal up at one end and they would have to make adetour, sometimes of several islands, to find water they could use.

  “I declare!” said Nicky, “it makes me think of a day my New York cousinstook me for an automobile ride on Long Island. They were repairingroads, and every fork or crossroad we came to, it seemed, they had asign, ‘Detour!’”

  “And now we ‘detour!’ again,” laughed Cliff, piloting from the bow, “tothe left, this time, Tom—Nicky—easy!”

  They turned into a new channel, and so, time after time, even retracingtheir course occasionally to get back to deeper water, they made slowprogress.

  No delay daunted them; no shoal “made their pluck run aground,” as Nickyexplained it. To the continual detouring was added the handicap of thedifficulty they had in recognizing what would look like the Dipperconstellation from above. “If we had an airplane, now,” Tom argued, “wecould spy it in a second.”

  “Right, again—pull slowly,” Cliff cut in; and so the morning wore on andthey began to feel as though they had rowed half way around most of thearchipelago.

  But the longest way ’round is said to be the shortest way through, andthe chums found it so.

  “Look!” exclaimed Cliff, from the bow, “back water, fellows! And lookahead. I believe we’ve found it!” Tom and Nicky swung on the seat andstared over their shoulders. Hard as it was to be sure, because otherislands, a little closer or further away complicated the generalpattern, they felt that, at last, they saw the Dipper.

  “But there’s an island almost in line with two of the lower ones thatwasn’t on the map,” objected Tom.

  “That’s so,” said Cliff, ruefully.

  “Anyway, here’s a good channel, and we’re going South again—back towardwhere we started,” Nicky argued. “Let’s——”

  “Back water! Back water!” ordered Cliff. But they had given a swiftimpetus to the small craft as Nicky and Tom bent to the oars and with adull grating sound the bow up-ended a little, as it ran onto a shelf ofthe bedrock limestone, into which the coral formed itself.

  Tom and Nicky narrowly escaped toppling over backward and Cliff savedhimself from a plunge onto the shoal only by gripping the thwart withboth hands as the boat stopped sharply.

  “Well—here we are!” said Nicky, settling himself. “Come aft, Cliff, sowe can lighten her bow and maybe we can pole off and back out—it’s toonarrow a channel to turn around in!”

  Cliff stood up to do as his chum counseled; but he remained standing,his eyes fixed, his body becoming tense.

  “What’s the matter?” cried Nicky. “See anything?” asked Tom.

  Cliff lifted a hand, pointing dramatically.

  “Come here Nicky—Tom!” he urged. “Easy, so as not to tip the boat! Doyou know what? That is the Dipper, and we have run aground right wherethe line would show we ought to stop in the chart—and yonder is ‘thebottom of the Dipper!’”

  Excitedly his fellows scrambled over the intervening seat and crouchedat his side.

  “That’s right, I do believe!” agreed Nicky. “The reason the line stoppedis because the channel stopped. This is where they must have come to astandstill in the old boat—those castaways!”

  “Yes,” added Cliff, “they couldn’t go any further. And the bottom islevel here. We could climb out and walk along it.”

  “It’s just the place to unload chests of treasure,” Tom agreed. “If onlythere was some place to hide it in——”

  “What about that?” cried Nicky, pointing straight ahead. “There on thatislet that’s really at the bottom of the Dipper.”

  “But it said ‘in’ not ‘at’ the bottom of the Dipper,” reminded Tom.Nicky nodded, scrambling out into the shallow water. Cliff followed, andTom delayed only long enough to draw the nose of their tender far enoughonto the shelf of limestone to prevent any chance of a slight currentdrifting it out of easy reach while they walked along carefully on thecoral bed, avoiding jutting prongs and dodging the menacing littlespaces into which a foot could slip so as to twist an ankle.

  “We’re in the bottom of the Dipper, at least,” Cliff declared after afew minutes of cautious wading.

  “I don’t see anything to write home about,” Tom said morosely, wincingfrom the pain of a slightly twisted foot. “All our trouble—for what?”

  “Stand here a minute,” urged Nicky. “Let’s think. Now, fellows, you knowthat the treasure wasn’t buried yesterday. Maybe the whole top of thearchipelago has changed since the castaways’ day. But this looks likethe place they told Captain Kidd about, and unless some one else hastaken it away, their treasure ought to be here, if we just know how tolocate it!”

  “That’s the trouble,” said Cliff, “how?”

  “It’s no use,” called Tom, who had moved a little beyond his twocompanions, at the side of the tiny islet. “Some one has been herealready!”

  They moved up to his position and observed with dejected eyes the signsof a previous visit by others; roots were chopped in half; the signswere very fresh. At one place, very close to the edge of the small,root-matted surface, a hole had been chopped completely through themass. Further into the brush there were signs of another such spot.

  “That settles it,” Cliff grumbled. “Some one has beaten us.”

  “Look out, Cliff,” cried Nicky, just behind his friend. “Don’t stepback. Here’s another channel—right at the bottom of the Dipper part—itruns along what is the bottom, between the islands.”

  “It’s only a hole, maybe——”

  “No, it’s a channel,” persisted Nicky. “See—yonder, the color of thewater looks different from the shoals. It runs——”

  “It only goes to the lower island,” declared Tom, studying the water,and gently lowering himself, testing till his foot found the bottom.“It’s only about three feet deep, and—” he waded carefully away, andthen returned. “It stops just by the other island, the South one. Butthere’s another channel beyond a reef there.”

  “Then whoever came here didn’t use a boat,” Nicky suggested. “My guessis that those men waded up to here yesterday, and dug or chopped untilthey were sure they couldn’t find anything.”

  “How do you know they didn’t come from where our boat is?”

  “Because,” Nicky explained, “the chopped places are all on the outsidepart, nearest the gully—it isn’t really a boat channel, it’s only agully.”

  “Well, that doesn’t help us any,” Tom was still dejected and the more sobecause of his slightly injured foot. “I move we give up.”

  But Nicky had climbed up onto the low, small islet, and, his bodysprawled over the rooted, matted growth, was poking and probing.

  “Yes,” he said, after a moment, “I guess we might as well. If there isany treasure, it’s too well hidden to discover. I say we might as wellwade back to the boat and get some lunch.”

  “Then we had better find our way out before dark—it took all morning toget in here,” Cliff suggested. Nicky, as nearly erect as the small,tough roots under foot would make it safe to be, began to push and workhis way straight across the islet. Only his head and shoulders appearedabove the low, young growths.

  “I hate to give up,” he said, as his comrades started to pick their wa
yback along the bed of the reef. “This island may not have been here atall when the—” His words ceased. There came a crackling and rending ofwood. Nicky cried out!

  Cliff, turning, saw Nicky disappearing!

  Forgetting his ankle, with a cry, Tom, who also swung about, scrambledand plunged toward Nicky.

  The latter was almost out of sight, near the edge of the islet,prevented from going lower by two roots, over which he had with quickpresence of mind flung his arms.

  “I—I fell—through!” he gasped as his chums made their way to the edge ofthe islet. “It’s a hole under the roots! Be careful, fellows, don’t slipor break through; the coral may be thin over it. It may spread furtheraround than you think!”

  With all the caution that their fear for Nicky permitted his comradesgot close. The reef held.

  “Listen,” cried Nicky, breathlessly, “I’m not hurt. Fellows—” He made abeckoning motion with his head, “I’ve—we’ve—found it!”

  “The treasure?”

  “The treasure! I’m sure of it. I fell through—and I can just touchsomething—like bricks—with my shoes!”

  They had to go around the islet and approach Nicky from behind. Thesurface of the thin coating of land, held up and bound together only byits interwoven roots, was shaky enough, but they did not break through,and finally, by dint of much tugging, heaving and puffing, they drewNicky back far enough so that he could scramble free and sprawl,gasping, half-laughing, on the surface by the jagged hole he had justleft. Cautiously Cliff protruded his head.

  “I see something!” he whispered, as if some one might hear——

  “The island wasn’t as big or as high,” Tom said, peering too, “when thecastaways brought the chests here. They buried them—they must have usedpicks to break a place in the coral.”

  “Then they must have covered it over with boards and pulled the rootsand earth over it—or else the wind and the birds have brought seeds andthe islet has grown over the place,” Nicky added. “The boards were sorotted and the roots were so weak that my weight broke through!”

  Like three active puppies digging a hole for bones, the chums pushed andscraped, tugged and tore at the roots; the weaker ones gave way and soonthey had quite a goodly sized opening uncovered.

  “There’s something down there!” gasped Cliff. “Gold bars, maybe! Thechests must have been thrown away.”

  “Now the puzzle is—how can we get close enough to tell?” Nicky said, inan eager voice; he was none the worse for his experience.

  “Could one of us make a dive?” Tom speculated. All three were on theirknees, heedless of the sharp coral bits, peering intently through limpidwater into a mysteriously dark depression.

  “I could almost touch bottom; where I was,” Nicky exclaimed. “Tom, youhold one arm, Cliff, you brace and hold the other. I’ll let myselfdown——”

  “Don’t bother,” came a sharp voice, unexpectedly, from behind them.

  They looked up, startled, dismayed. Quickly their eyes took in thescene. Just back of their own tender lay the boat of _El Libertad_.Quietly it must have been sculled up, while their attention was focusedon Nicky and his find. Close behind them, smiling in a half sneeringway, was Mr. Coleson, with Senor Ortiga beside him.

  “We thought you might have misled us,” Mr. Coleson said. “We took thelogical step to give you a free hand, and here you have exercised it—forwhich we are very—very grateful.”

  “As for the treasure,” added Senor Ortiga, “never mind diving for it.Here comes Jim.”

  “No, never mind,” added Mr. Coleson. “We will attend to it!”