Jack ran for the shovels and in a moment, breathless and excited, the three boys were laboring mightily, getting in each other’s way and taking a quarter of an hour at least to do what might have been accomplished calmly by one worker in ten minutes! But at last the chest lay exposed. It was over two feet in length by some eighteen inches wide and of about the same depth. It appeared to be made of sheet iron and was reinforced on the edges. There was a handle at one end and traces of one at the other. It was covered with red rust and as they lifted it from the hole it threatened to fall to pieces in their hands. There were two simple hasp locks in front, one near each end. The boys laid the chest on the ground and looked at each other in triumph.

“I told you we’d find it!” exulted Bee, his eyes sparkling. “And we have!”

“And it isn’t ours,” mourned Hal. “What do you suppose is in it? It feels heavy enough!”

“I mean to find out,” responded Bee. “Let’s take it up to the tent, fellows.”

“What’s the use?” asked Jack. “It isn’t ours. It belongs to Bill Glass and we might as well dump it into the launch and take it to him.”

“That’s all right,” replied Bee doggedly, “but when I find hidden treasure I have a look at it, no matter whose it is! And I mean to open that chest and see what’s inside! It’s Bill Glass’s, but we found it and we ought at least to have a look at it.”

Jack perhaps felt that Bee’s reasoning was faulty, but his own curiosity was too strong to allow of much conviction in his tones when he replied, “Well, we haven’t any business to open it, Bee, but—”

“Never mind the ‘buts’,” said Bee. “Where’s that pick? We’ll open it right here and have a look. Then we’ll put it in the launch and hand it over to Bill. Do you suppose there are jewels there, Jack? There must be gold, because it’s so heavy!”

The point of the pick solved the locks in a twinkling. Hal and Jack bent forward and Bee, after a moment of breathless hesitation, raised the lid.

The first thing that met their eyes was a layer or covering of yellow-brown material that turned out to be canvas, stained and rotted. It fell to pieces as Bee tried to lift it aside, revealing a strange hodge-podge of silver and silver-plate; oldfashioned butter-dishes, castors, spoon-holders, sugar-bowls, knives, forks, spoons!

“What do you think of that!” gasped Hal.

Bee delved into the mass, scattering the things to the ground. A watch-case minus the works—it might have been gold or only gold-plate—rewarded his search, as did a gold brooch set with coral. Then a small leather pouch, white with mold, secured with a leather thong that broke when Bee strove to loosen it, tumbled out of a sugar-bowl. Bee peered into the pouch and then inverted it. A number of coins fell out.

“That’s more like it!” Bee muttered.

They were all of silver, dollars and fifty-cent pieces, and when they were counted summed up to exactly twenty dollars. Bee tossed them back into the pouch disappointedly and proceeded to empty the chest. A ship’s clock was near the bottom, its brass green with verdigris, its dial chipped and cracked, its old hands pointing to fourteen minutes after seven.

“Now,” exclaimed Jack, “I’ll bet I know where Bill Glass got all those things he has on his walls! He dug them up here on the island!”

“That’s just about it,” agreed Hal. “Whenever Old Verny found a chest on a boat he just loaded it with this sort of truck and sunk it in the ground somewhere and I suppose Bill has been digging them up for years! It’s a bit of a sell on us, isn’t it?”

“No,” answered Bee, who, having reached the bottom of the chest without discovering anything more valuable than the gold knob from a cane, was now returning the articles. “We set out to look for a treasure chest and we found it. I’m satisfied. Of course, it would have been more interesting to have found diamonds and gold, but we did what we set out to do. And Bill’s richer by twenty dollars—to say nothing of more spoons and sugar bowls and such things than he will ever be able to use!”

“He has probably been doing that for years,” mused Jack. “Maybe that’s the way he’s lived. Whenever he got hard-up he took a shovel, dug up a treasure chest and sold the contents! If that watch-case and the cane head and the other thing are really gold Bill ought to make about—about fifty or sixty dollars out of this lot. And that isn’t so bad!”

“It must have kept Old Verny pretty busy burying things here,” said Bee. “I wonder—” He paused and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully—“I wonder, fellows, if this is the treasure chest, the one he buried when the officers came after him. I don’t believe it is! I believe that chest is still here!”

Hal groaned. “For the love of mud, Bee, don’t tell me you’re going to start all over again!”

Bee shook his head with a smile. “Not this summer, anyway, old Hal. But—next year—perhaps! It’s pretty good sport, this treasure hunting, but I’ve had enough for now and I’m ready to return to town and read about it in stories for awhile. Come on; let’s get this down to the launch and take it to Bill.”

When, twenty minutes later, they laid their find in front of the half-open door of Bill Glass’s cabin and knocked, there was no response. Jack pushed the door wide and they looked in. The cabin was empty save for Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin sat amidst the dinner dishes, blinking benignly in the sunlight. On the walls the fourteen clocks tick-ticked noisily and the stuffed parrot studied them with beady eyes. They laid the chest on a chair and Bee found a piece of paper and wrote on it: “For Honest Bill Glass, with best wishes from The Treasure Hunters Company, Ltd.” This he placed on the old chest and they started out. Then—

“Ding, dong!” said a ship’s clock with a tenor voice.

“Ting, tang,” piped a clock with a soprano voice.

And then came all the others in a weird jumble of sound, and the boys hurried out laughing, Bee with his hands over his ears.

“Two bells,” exclaimed Hal. “Why, it’s long after dinner time! Come on, fellows; something calls me!”

So they tumbled back into the Corsair and returned to the island for their last dinner there. By three o’clock everything was bundled aboard the sloop or the launch and they said good-bye to Nobody’s Island.

“We had a mighty good time there,” reflected Bee. “It wasn’t what you’d call a fancy treasure island, but it was a good plain treasure island. Something sort of tells me I’ll be back there some day, fellows.”

“If you are I’ll see that you don’t have a shovel with you!” muttered Hal as he emptied the last drop of oil in the oil-can where it would do the least possible good. Then the breeze caught the patched, gray mainsail of the Crystal Spring and the three boats rounded The Clinker and Nobody’s Island was lost to sight.

Three weeks later, almost to an hour, the boys again sat in the cockpit of the Crystal Spring. But what a different Crystal Spring it was! Amidship, an engine, gay in black enamel and brass, hummed and purred and clicked. The mast had been freshly scraped and varnished, the deck looked like new, the hull glistened like a raven’s wing and an immaculate white mainsail lay furled along the boom under a creamy canvas cover. No, you’d hardly have recognized the old sloop. There was even a new pump, and instead of having to operate it by hand Jack need merely uncouple the propeller shaft by the move of a lever, start the engine and the pump would throw such a stream as would fill a tank in almost no time!

Bee was returning home on the morrow and this meeting was in the nature of a farewell gathering, although Jack was to accompany the boys back to dinner later. The Crystal Spring, lazing along at three or four miles an hour, was passing the entrance of the canal at the end of the harbor when Jack suddenly moved the helm over and, reaching forward, pulled the throttle wider.

“What is it?” asked Hal.

Jack pointed to where, a mile away, the snub-nosed lighthouse tender was just moving into sight around the end of the breakwater.

“Hurrah!” cried Bee. “Hit her up, Jack!”

The Crystal Spring dug her nose and pushed the water aside while the engine hummed louder and faster. No one could liken the sloop’s progress to the flight of an arrow, but what she lacked in grace she made up for in power, and by the time she was half-way to Gull Island she was slapping off a good seven miles! And just as they reached the inner end of the island a buff cat-rigged boat under power hurried forth from the basin.

“There she is!” whispered Hal. “Can you beat her, Jack?”

“Watch me,” answered Jack with a grim smile.

The Morning Star had something of a start and her engine was buzzing and her exhaust popping for all they were worth. But foot by foot the old Crystal Spring gained as they swept by the wharves. Along the string-pieces idlers, sunning themselves, saw the race and shouted them on. The government boat was slowing down to drop her anchor now.

“Open her up just a tiny bit more, Hal,” directed Jack softly. Hal touched the throttle lever gently and the engine purred more quickly. Then the bow of the sloop was even with the stern of her rival and the Lampron brothers, gazing across, scowled angrily. Faster now the Crystal Spring swept through the water. The Morning Star no longer led; the sloop was even with her. And now the Crystal Spring was actually drawing away; there was clear water between them!

A little farther the Morning Star held on, then the helm went over and the rival water boat swung off her course, accepting defeat. In the bow, at the wheel, Tony Lampron gazed after the Crystal Spring and shook his fist. Jack, seeing, smiled and seized a small megaphone from its rack. As the Morning Star headed back toward the basin Jack put the megaphone to his mouth.

“Where you been some time, Mister?” he shouted.

THE END.