The sun came up over a heaving sea and the gale diminished. By five o’clock, although the wind still blew hard, it had shifted a point or two and Bill Glass predicted that by forenoon it would be gone. Sleepy-eyed the boys tumbled out of the tent and followed Bill around the side of the hill. There is always something depressing in the sight of a wrecked ship and none of them spoke for several minutes.

The schooner lay gripped between the two ledges, her bow high out of the water and the seas rushing across her abaft of the foremast. Her deck had been swept clean and not a boat was in sight. She had settled on a nearly even keel. The mainmast was broken short off some eight feet above the deck and although it had been cut away it still wallowed alongside, held by a rope or two. The foremast stood, but the topmast hung in splinters. As far as could be seen, however, the hull had not broken and Bill thought she was not leaking much.

“She be an old-timer,” said Bill. “The Jupiter, just as I told ye last night. They made ’em staunch and able twenty years ago, mates. She be one o’ your father’s boats, mate, an’ likely she be well filled with fish. Maybe they’ll get her off, but she’s lyin’ ugly, she’s lyin’ ugly.” And Bill shook his head.

“They’ll send tugs around pretty soon, I guess,” said Jack. “But they’ll have to wait for high tide, won’t they?”

“Aye, along toward two o’clock, I cal’ate. They’ll lighten her first, though. Maybe if the sea goes down they can save the cargo. I don’t know though.”

“There’s one ship right under her now,” said Bee. “We saw her the other day.”

“Aye, the State o’ Maine,” agreed Bill. “She went to pieces there forty-odd years ago, I cal’ate. A brig, she was. Seven men went down with her, they tell.”

Bee shivered. “I’m glad I didn’t see any of them,” he murmured.

“Gone long afore this, they be,” answered Bill. “Well, I must be gettin’ home. Cal’ate, though, I’ll be back again later.”

“Won’t you have some breakfast with us?” asked Bee.

“Thank ye, mate, but I’ll be goin’ back. There’s Benjamin Franklin to feed an’—”

“Benjamin Franklin!” exclaimed Bee.

“The cat,” replied Bill with one of his hidden smiles. “He an’ me be old friends an’ Ben don’t take kindly to waitin’ for his breakfast.”

They watched Bill go down the hill and across the sandy stretch to the wharf and then set about preparing breakfast, everyone taking a hand since all were hungry. The wind had sensibly diminished and it was possible to build a fire outside. Jack was just touching a match to the kindlings when a faint shout reached them and they saw Bill Glass a hundred yards or so up the river waving his hand and pointing across the flat between the river and the sea.

“Now, what’s he mean?” muttered Jack as they moved around the shoulder of the hill. Then three ejaculations of astonishment burst from as many throats. Across what yesterday had been a level stretch of dry sand and beach-grass flowed a twenty-foot inlet! The sea had claimed its right of way once more and once more Nobody’s Island had become an island in fact as well as in name! At the ocean end the waves had eaten a wide indentation in the shore, from which the new stream curved westward until it joined the river. Even as they looked a long section of the bank crumbled and splashed into the water and the little cove widened.

“Well, what do you think of that!” exclaimed Bee.

“Father always said that inlet would come back some day,” said Jack, “and last night’s storm was just the kind to do it, for it was blowing straight across that sand. It’s a good thing it wasn’t there when we came back from Bill Glass’s or we might have turned into it and found ourselves in the surf. Look at the wreckage over there, fellows. There’s wood enough to last us all winter.”

“There’s a whaling big boat down there,” announced Hal. “See it! Lying on its side where all that seaweed is piled up.”

“That’s right. It’s probably one of the Jupiter’s. We’ll have to go down there after breakfast and look at it.”

“Now,” said Bee, as they ate, “we can go ahead. There’s no use trying to find buried treasure on an island that isn’t an island at all. That’s what has been queering us, fellows. Now that it is really an island again, though, we can’t miss it!”

“You don’t mean that you’re going to start that business again?” groaned Hal.

“Right away,” answered Bee cheerfully. “That storm has removed the hoodoo from—from our undertaking, Hal.”

“Well, it certainly removed a lot of other things,” laughed Jack, “and why not a hoodoo?”

“I’m hoping it removed our shovels,” said Hal. “We left them down there where we were digging and I don’t see them now!”

“They’re in the trenches,” answered Bee. “I looked. And the trenches are pretty nearly filled up again.”

After breakfast they went down to the new cove. The dory lay on the opposite side of the inlet, however, and although Bee suggested wading across, investigation proved that the water was at least four feet deep in the shallowest place. So they removed their clothes, plunged in and swam to the opposite side, Bee remarking that it was quite a thing to be the first bathers there. When they reached the dory, however, they found that it was half full of sand and that their united efforts failed to even budge it.

“Well,” said Jack, “it won’t get away in a hurry. We’ll leave it for someone else to rescue, I guess. There are probably more dories along shore.”

They returned across the inlet and ran up and down in the wind to get dry. It didn’t take long, but it was cold work and they were glad to pull their clothes on again. Afterwards they set out along the edge of the stream. The tide had begun to rise and the water was running in fast. Now and then the edge of the sandy bank on their side would break away and topple down, dissolving like sugar in a tea cup. Bee, who had loitered a few steps behind the others, stopped and said “Hello!” in a surprised voice and the others turned back.

“What have you found?” asked Jack.

Bee was kicking the sand with his foot and by the time Jack and Hal reached him he had laid bare the top of a roughly-laid stone wall or pavement. “It’s a cabin,” he exclaimed eagerly. “I mean it’s the foundation of it. I’m going to get a shovel.”

“Bring them both!” called Jack as Bee sped off around the island.

Five minutes of digging, however, showed them that instead of finding the foundations of the wrecker’s cabin they had unearthed the end of a little stone wharf, and Bee was greatly disappointed. “Still,” he said presently, “if the wharf was here it’s possible the cabin was nearby.” He looked about for a probable site, but the sand continued for nearly a hundred feet before the hill began and he finally agreed with the others that Verny would not have been likely to build his house thereabouts. “Just the same, I don’t see why he needed two wharves,” he objected.

“I guess that other one must have been put up by someone else,” pondered Jack. “When you come to think of it, those wooden spiles wouldn’t have lasted for over forty years, would they? This was probably Old Verny’s wharf and he put it here so he could get to it from either side of the point.”

“Well, we’ve found something,” said Hal, “even if we haven’t discovered the treasure. What’s that?”

The sound he had heard proved on investigation to be the whistle of a tug and by the time they had reached the seaward side of the island it was evident that the task of getting the Jupiter off was about to begin. Two tugs and a small lighter were lying off The Tombstones and already a boat was putting off from one of the tugs. In the stern of it sat two men whom Hal recognized even at that distance.

“That’s dad and Tom Dickenson,” he said. “They’re going to look things over, I guess.” Hal waved his cap and after awhile the men saw and waved back. “Look here, why can’t we go out there?” asked Hal eagerly.

“Not in the launch,” replied Jack. “We’d be on the rocks in five minutes with that wind and tide. Let’s wait awhile. Maybe by noon the wind will be gone. It’s holding up every minute now.”

So they perched themselves in a partly sheltered corner of the big ledge overlooking The Tombstones and watched operations. The row boat, with four men at the oars, circled around the Jupiter, tossing and rocking on the waves. The two tugs, one having the lighter in tow, wallowed and pitched at a safe distance, drifting in toward shore and then steaming back again, until the row boat returned. Then activity began in earnest. The tugs drifted down to within a rope’s throw of the ledges and dropped anchors. Cables were payed out into rowboats and in a few minutes the bow of the Jupiter was alive with men. The lighter was hauled alongside, cables were made fast, hatches thrown off, wreckage was cleared away and the work of unloading the schooner was begun. The work went merrily in spite of the high seas that still swept now and then across the after deck. The men disappeared under clouds of spray at times, but the baskets were lowered and filled with fish and hauled up again by block and tackle and swung over the side to the lighter, which lay under the bow, with remarkable regularity. The mainmast, floating alongside, was hauled away by two men in a cockleshell of a dory and made fast to one of the tugs. At the end of an hour the wind, always drawing further into the north, was scarcely more than a good blow and the surface of the sea perceptibly calmed.

Bill Glass reappeared just before noon and joined the boys on the hill. The last of the unloading was finished shortly after and it was evident that all was in readiness for an attempt to haul the Jupiter off the ledges; all, that is, save the tide. That would not be at its height until 1:56, Bill Glass announced. The lighter was pulled safely away from the schooner meanwhile and taken around the point and anchored. Then the tug which had towed her lowered a boat and Hal, watching, jumped to his feet.

“That’s dad,” he said. “He’s coming ashore. Come on, fellows.”

Hal hurried around the hill and down to the beach toward which the boat was making, and the others, including Bill Glass, followed more slowly. The boat ran up on to the sand on the crest of a breaker, a tall sailor in rubber boots leaped over the bow and pulled and tugged, another wave helped and Mr. Folsom jumped nimbly ashore. When the others arrived father and son were already walking up the hill toward the tent. Mr. Folsom was a man of medium size, with sharp black eyes, a dark beard and a seamed and weather-tanned face that told of the days when he had been a sailing captain instead of the head of a great business. He wore glasses, had a voice at least one size larger than his frame led you to expect and talked quickly and incisively.

“How are you, Bee?” he greeted, nodding briefly. “Having a good time here? Who’s this, Harry?”

“This is Jack Herrick, dad. Jack, this is—”

“Glad to know you, Jack.” Mr. Folsom shook hands quickly. “I knew your father very well. Hello, Bill Glass? What are you doing here? Keeping an eye on these young Crusoes? How’s your health?”

“Ain’t complainin’, sir, ain’t complainin’. Sorry to see the old Jupiter gone, Mr. Folsom.”

“Gone? Not a bit of it! There isn’t hole or a crack in her, Bill. She’s good for another ten years. We’ll have her on the railway by sunset. A couple of dollars worth of pitch and oakum’s all she needs.”

“Glad to hear it, sir, glad to hear it. How about the crew, Mr. Folsom? All safe be they?”

“Every mother’s son of them. Jasper White has a broken arm and a Portugese named Paletto or something like that got a couple of ribs busted. That’s all. I’ve got them in the hospital. Where’s this camp of yours, Harry?”

Hal led the way up and Mr. Folsom viewed it with interest.

“Good thing you pitched it on this side the island,” he observed. “You’d have blown away otherwise. What time do you serve dinner?”

“It’s time now,” answered Hal. “Will you stay, dad?”

“If I get an invitation,” replied Mr. Folsom dryly.

“We’ll have to have canned things, I guess,” said Jack. “We are all out of fresh meat.”

“Anything is good when you’re hungry, Herrick. By the way, I want to tell you youngsters right now that the next time a storm like that comes up you’re to put out for home. Understand? Your mother had conniption fits all night, Harry. And I guess your folks must have been worried about you, Herrick. You ought to have known enough about weather to have seen what was coming, eh?”

“Yes, sir, but by that time it was too stormy to get back,” replied Jack. “Hal wanted to go but I was afraid to risk it.”

“I see. Well, you might have reached the railroad and picked up a train. Don’t try it again. Found that treasure yet, Bee?”

“No, sir, not yet. We’re still hunting. We found Verny’s wharf this morning, though.”

Mr. Folsom had to hear about that and Bill Glass asked no end of questions and presently they all trooped down to see it.

“You remember this, Bill?” asked Mr. Folsom when they had looked it over.

“Seems like I do, sort of,” responded Bill, scratching his head to aid memory. “Seems, too, like there was a way alongside where the old man used to pull his boat up. That would be gone now, though, I cal’ate.”

“Yes, there’s been many a sea through here since Old Verny left,” agreed Mr. Folsom. “Well, that’s interesting, but not vastly important, boys.”

Hal pointed out the dory to him and he said he would send someone for it. Then they retraced their steps to the tent. Bill Glass, disclaiming any desire for food, nevertheless accepted an invitation to dinner and Jack set about opening the choicest of their canned delicacies.

“I suppose you boys slept right through the trouble last night,” observed Mr. Folsom presently. “Or did you know about the Jupiter?”

The boys looked at each other and Hal began to laugh. Mr. Folsom frowned. “Well, what’s the joke, Harry?” he asked.

“Why—why, dad, I thought you knew!”

“Knew what? What tomfoolery have you been up to now, eh?”

“I like that!” laughed Hal. “If it hadn’t been for us, especially Jack and—Mr. Glass—things would have been a heap worse, I guess! It was we who sent word to the life savers, dad.”