Then came a wrenching sound and David cried, “I’ve got it!” He worked out the bits of broken lid and then paused, looking in upon the contents.
“What’s in there, David?” Sally whispered.
David moved things around with a dull clatter. “Lots of things.” He was surprised to find that his voice and hands were shaking, his legs felt boneless.
Poke laughed in triumph. “Hand it all down and let’s get it out into the sun.”
The three hurried to remove the contents of the kettle to the floor of the cave, and then down the tunnel to the water’s edge, with hands filled and pockets bulging. Loading the valuables into the dory was an exciting task since they paused to glance, however briefly, at each long-concealed object.
There was a pitcher, dull with age, whose beauty of design was not entirely hidden. There was a broad silver bowl to match. There were pewter plates and porringers, and a pewter teapot with its wooden finial partly rotted away. There was a jewel case containing a few gold rings and earrings and a locket that delighted Sally with its quaint design. There were several tiny painted miniatures of early Blakes in the dress of the eighteenth century. There was a round wooden box filled with buttons. And finally, in a rotted leather pouch, lay a small pile of coins.
The light of the flash lantern was growing dim when Poke pushed the loaded dory afloat. With their treasure safely stored on David’s old sweater at the bottom of the boat, they made their way through the dark tunnel and out into the sunshine.
At first nobody spoke. There were too many wonderful things to think about. On the little beach beside The Bite they made the Lobster Boy fast. Then, unloading the picnic things, they all began to talk at once.
“The more I think about it, the more certain I am that’s a Paul Revere pitcher,” Poke declared. “It’s exactly like one that I once saw in a museum.”
“Could be. And I want to find out more about those old coins.” David placed the box of cream puffs carefully on the sand beside the picnic hamper.
“Did you see that beautiful gold locket?” Sally asked. “Inside there’s a picture of a little boy,” she went on softly. “I think it’s Jonathan Blake when he was little.”
“There may be some pewter buttons in that wooden box,” Poke continued. He handed out the picnic kettle filled with its restless catch of lobsters. “In those days,” he told them in his lecture voice, “buttons were very rare. The colonists made some out of pewter and some out of bone. A very few people were lucky enough to own silver ones brought from England.”
David teased, “All this must be from the B’s in your encyclopedia.”
“Right,” Poke agreed. “And Aunt Mira and Uncle Charlie will turn themselves inside out if you have any pewter buttons. As for silver ones!” He whistled softly.
“Let’s have a look!” David reached into the dory toward the little wooden box.
“Not until we start the lobsters.” Sally was matter-of-fact. “I want to see that treasure just as much as you do. But I’m hungry enough to eat a bear.”
Agreeably, the boys combed the shore for driftwood. Sally spread the old picnic cloth on the little sunny beach that flanked the rocky entrance to the tunnel.
Soon the fire was crackling. The lobsters and the new com steamed in the kettle. Then they opened the button box and emptied its contents out upon the picnic cloth.
“Sally Blake’s buttons,” mused Sally as she helped spread them around. Then she straightened. “Pewter! Lots of them! Just like the one Roddie took for his mother. Oh, David, Poke, let’s give one to Aunt Mira. And one to Uncle Charlie, too.”
“How about one for Mrs. McNeill?” David teased.
“Oh, yes! That will make her happier.”
David said nothing, but he glanced with pride at his young sister.
“Here are some oval buttons,” Poke announced. “Uncle Charlie once told me they are as scarce as dinosaur eggs.”
David was scratching with his knife at several of the larger buttons, dull and crusty with mold. “What do you know? These things are silver, with designs and initials on them.”
Poke whistled. “Do you realize,” he asked in his sober way, “that the Blake treasure might really be a treasure, after all?” He stretched his long limbs and rose to peer into the lobster kettle.
Sally trotted after him. “They’re beginning to look nice and red. What do you think, Poke?”
But Poke’s answer, whatever it might be, was lost to David. The sand was warm beneath his shirt. He lay on his stomach and looked across the water toward his beloved island. He was seeing a brave boy his own age, rowing hard in a night wind with a covered iron kettle in the bottom of his boat.
Then the friendly phantom vanished and the world flooded in upon him. The waves lapped against the beach. A gull called and called in the noon-bright sky. The shining sand at his feet gave way to the silver water of the cove, and on the shore at Blake’s the beach grass shone golden in the sun.
Aunt Mira was right. Here was the real treasure — the islands, the sky, the sea reaching out to the blue edge of time.
David turned over and stretched on his back, the sun hot on his eyelids. It was a moment of fulfillment. The treasure was found, Saturday Cove’s old secret was now known and understood. All the nightmare trouble with the lobstermen was over. Best of all, Poke, his fear of the sea mastered, was David’s partner in the wonderful business of lobstering.
‘My cup runneth over,’ thought David. Life had nothing more to offer. . . .
“David, wake up.” Poke nudged him gently.
David struggled up onto one elbow to see Poke and Sally laughing good-naturedly at him. The picnic cloth was laden and the air was rich with the fragrance of good food. There were scarlet, steaming lobsters and piles of golden corn streaming with butter. Paper plates crowded with fat tomatoes and crisp cucumbers fresh from the garden. A new loaf of Mrs. Blake’s yeast bread. A fat jug of icy lemonade. And Aunt Mira’s box of cream puffs.
David sat up and grinned. I was wrong, he thought. Life does have more to offer!
“This,” he said to Poke and Sally as he reached for a lobster, “is only the beginning.”
The Secret of Saturday Cove Page 12