The Frontier, May 1926 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

18 us. In our immediate foreground was a rolling terrain, coveréd with patches of yellow grass, jutting outcrops of coral and occasional gnarled shrubs. This stretched to the trees surrounding the rim of the Devil’s Caldron, over a mile from us; while beyond it, to northward, there rose the jagged heights of London Tower. Execution Knob rose just to the west of us, less than a half mile distant. Among other things, we had been remarking the ease with which sound carried on the island, and suddenly we were given further proof of it. All heard the faint report of a gun from the direction of Drake’s Bay, followed by a second and third shot, almost immediately after. Everyone jumped to his feet. “Kidd's Mauley?” cried the judge. “No,” said Captain Van Tassel, raising his glass, and leveling it toward the peak in question. “No smoke dere. Anyway, see for yourselluf. Dere’s no canoes in sight.” He handed the glass to one of the men, then. ‘Get aloft in dot Pine,” ’ he said, “und see vot you see,” The nimble sailor made the climb in a brace of shakes. “Boat comin’ ashore, sir,” he sang out a moment later. “Looks to be three or four in it. Can’t tell who they is.” “Any mofement abort?” cried the captain. “Can't see anything unusual, sir. Looks like there’s some standing at the bulwarks, that’s all.” No canoes being reported in sight, and no further shots sounding, it was decided that some of the men might have been sent ashore to try a shot at a deer or wild hog. The sailor aloft said that the boat disappeared behind a spit; whereupon the captain ordered him to come down, and, shortly after- - ward, we took up the march for the cache. CHAPTER IX FALSE BEARINGS T WAS I who first sighted the cave. Exactly as it was marked on the chart, there it lay, in between two out- jutting spurs, in the footslopes on the northern side of Execution Knob. In the distance its black open mouth looked like the hollow eye of a skull. “Well,” cried my uncle, excitedly, {> THE FRONTIER when we had hurried to it, “now for the compass and the bald rock!” “Bald rock?” cried the judge. “Why, look—there’s four of them I can see, at least, between here and the lake,” We waited impatiently for the needle to stop swinging. | When it paused at last, my uncle dropped to the ground behind it, the better to take his bearing. “Hell!” he exclaimed, in an irri- tated tone. “Too much grass ahead of me. Anyway, it doesn’t point to any of the rocks, I see.” “The northeast corner of the cave,” said the judge, reading from the chart. “You're in the right position.” “One minute,” said Uncle George. “Stand back, men. Maybe there’s too much iron near the needle.” The needle did swing a point when we moved back, he declared; but still no one of the rocks was in line. Nor did the compass vary when we made a pile of haversacks, to raise the instru- ment, and make more accurate sight- ing possible. “The nearest bald rock is five points off!” Uncle George declared, perplex- edly. “Vell,” the skipper suggested quietly. “maype his gompass vas off a leedle— Cherry Plunt’s, I mean.” “That’s possible, too!” Uncle George responded, hopefully. “Well, now, well try that rock.” Forthwith a seaman was sent out to act as marker, and Uncle George took bearing to place him on a line running due northwest from the northeastern corner of the cavern. Captain Van Tassel and the judge, meantime, pro- ceeded to the bald rock with another compass. The rock lay about fotrr hundred yards from the cave. To westward, and running from north to south, was a ridge of coral rock, bare of vegeta- tion. This appeared to be equi-distant from the cave and the rock, and it was at least seventy-five yards wide. Uncle George looked at it dubi- ously. Watching the man move back on the line in answer to the skipper’s calls, his face fell. “Why,” he exclaimed, “it’s going to bring him smack on that ridge!” And so it proved. Sight as they would, the intersection of the lines placed the marker on the ridge, and far back from its eastern edge. Nor were the results any better with the next nearest rock—which was fully ten points off the magnetic north line mentioned on the chart. Gloomily we trooped over the ridge, No one seemed to want to speak the thoughts in his mind. One swung a pick and struck the surface of the rough ridge—a surface which seemed to be made up of white granules, glued together by some cement unknown to man. One might as well have picked at a granite slab. Presently my uncle coughed and cleared his throat. His shoulders went back, and he cast a fiery glance in the direction of the ship. “Well, men,” he said, “I’ve been had. No fool would bury treasure there, even with nigger labor—it would have taken weeks with picks, and Lord knows how much drilling and powder. Besides, there’s not a sign of a loose rock here to show a filled-in hole.” “T said the lower part of that paper had been cut away,” said the judge, nodding at the chart. “Easy enough to say ‘I told you so,” Uncle George growled. “There’s treasure here, though, I believe, and that man Donovan knows where it is.” Here he looked quizzically at the skip- per, with a half angry, half apologetic light in his eyes. “Come on, now; have your say, Captain. Did you sus- pect something like this?” “Vell,” said the skipper, slowly, eye- ing the pipe which he was filling, “if you ask me do I exspecgt somedings wrong, jess. Somehow I feel it. Only, I haf no broof, und so! Be- sites, if I say somedings eferyone t'inks [’m sore.” “Very true,’ Uncle George admit- ted. ‘Well, sir, you’re captain; what now?” “Back,” said the skipper, nodding toward Drake’s Bay. “Den ve see,” We made the trip back to the bot- tom of the plateau in far less time than we had consumed mounting it. And at the base we met the quartermaster, Johannsen, with the seamen, Killifer and Gunderson. They had had little trouble in following our broad trail. HE quartermaster’s broad, leathery fea- tures were aflame with seGignshoe: Y Ne | tooed forearm as thick as the limb of an oak, and shook his great fist in the direction of the Anthony Wayne. “All I ask,” he bellowed, for a be- ginning, “is one swipe at them swabs, so help me Davy Jones!” GOmMmiIiGcdoo SCO