Adventure, November 1915 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

After, we explored the island, what they was of it—one big crater, choked with lava, an- other one on the cape, smaller, an’ I reckon still another on the little island. Not a thing grew on the place ’cept a spiky-leaved plant all covered with silver hairs. There was nothin’ livin’ but the sea-birds, an’ no fresh water. “Down not far from where the schooner was ashore we found some caves with funny carvings of men an’ animals all over the walls. an’ roof. T’ve seen just the same _ sort of picters out West in Indian caves. You could only get in the caves at low tide, an’ then some of the carvings was under water. I figgered that the island had been higher out of water once an’ had sunk down in some volcanic breakout, like lots of the South Sea islands have. “We took stock. Henley was gettin’ weaker an’ we was pretty well up against it. We didn’t have more than thirty gallons of good water. It wasn’t the rainy season, as the skipper had told us, an’ we had the chance of making Hawaii, eight hundred miles away, in a little open boat, or dyin’ of thirst either there on the island or in the boat if we was too long on the trip. “The boat, which had been stored amid- ships, was in fairly good shape. Henley started to tinker it up an’ rig up a mast an’ sail while I went below for grub. I reckon we was both scared after sizin’ up the water. I worked in a sweat pilin’ up cans an’ try- - in’ to make up my mind what to take, lis- tenin’ to Henley draggin’ an’ scrapin’ on deck with the boat. I was afraid of him, too. I still figgered he might get rid of me an’ put my weight into gold in the boat. It ’ud help with the water, too, if I was out of the way. So I went into the skipper’s cabin, hopin’ to find a pistol of some sort, an’ come across the log. “T turned over the pages an’ found what I hoped for. Drunk as he was, the skip- per’s habit was strong enough for him to set down the position regular an’ keep up the log. His reckonin’ that noon was on the last page. That was as good as a pistol to me. We'd have to leave some of the gold anyway. Even if Henley made away with me he couldn’t pack it all. So I fig- gered I’d hold the position of the island as a weapon. Then we could come back for the gold, an’ I figgered we’d have to leave enough behind to make it worth while for Henley not to shoot me in the back. Adventure “First I thought I’d keep the figgers in my head. Seemed as if I must remember them, but I wasn’t sure of myself. I started to tear out the sheet an’ then I thought of my watch. I took my knife an’ scratched ve figgers on the back lid which screwed off.”’ Addams had set the watch as a weight on top of the map. Fellowes unscrewed the case from the back of the old-fashioned key- winder and passed the lid to Archer who read the figures by the lamp. “See if you can make them out, Peggy,” he said. | The girl took the silver case. “One-six-five-four-naught-W?” “One hundred and sixty-five degrees and forty minutes west longitude from Green- wich,” he explained. “One-two-two-naught-N—that’s north I suppose?”’ “North of the Equator, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Twelve degrees and twenty minutes north latitude. Look it up on that chart, Jim. You'll find it easily enough.” . — Winton obediently unrolled a U. S. hy- drographic survey chart of the Southern Pacific and looked up the position. “It’s marked here!’ he said excitedly. “Not under any name, though. There’s just a dot and the lettering ‘E. D. reported — i Rovey Seats “Meaning that some ship reported that they had seen, or thought they had seen, an island about that position. That was in 1901. E. D. stands for ‘Existence Doubt- ful.’ That’s the chart for this year. The first official recognition of possible land was in t9o1, and the last. But it corroborates Fellowes’s yarn, There’s nothing to tie it up with a treasure island without Fellowes’s story and nothing then to show where the treasure is without the map indicating the caves.” “‘An’ nothin’ then to tell which cave it is or how it’s hidden,” chuckled the old man. “Without I told it—an’ I’ve told it to no one, mind you—you could dig an’ prod about the caves for twenty years an’ never find it. That part of it, miss, ’m goin’ to tell to you, because you’ve been kind to me, an’ because you look as my daughter might have looked if she’d lived. That gives you a share in it, though I’ve got an idea—”’ the gray eyes twinkled as he glanced at Addams and the girl, standing together ~ Gomichbooks (E) im