"Hello!" the visitors exclaimed, when they clapped eyes on Billy. "Where you going?"

"Fishin'."

"Take us, won't you, please?"

Billy Topsail grinned.

"Won't you?"

"I don't know," said Billy. "I 'low so."

They went to the grounds; and the day was blue, and the sea was quiet, and Billy Topsail and the schoolboys had a marvellously splendid time; so they were all friends together from that out.

Tom Call and Jack Wither were members of what they called, with no little pride, "The Ethnological and Antiquarian Club of St. John's." The object of this club of lads was, in the beginning, to preserve relics of the exterminated Beothuk tribe; but to the little collections of stone implements and flint-lock guns were soon added collections of mineral specimens, of fossils, of stamps, of fish and shells and sea-weeds, of insects, of old prints and documents—in short, of everything to which an inveterate collector might attach a value.

Wherever they went in the long vacation, whether to the coast or to the interior, not one of them but kept an eye open for additions to the club collections; and, though much of what they brought back had to be rejected, it was not long before they had the gratification of observing an occasional reference to "the collections of the Ethnological and Antiquarian Club" in the city newspapers.

All this accounts for the presence of Tom Call and Jack Wither in the Little Tickle Basin, in the thick of the islands off Ruddy Cove, one vacation day, and for their interest in a rusted iron mooring-ring, which was there sunk in the rock.

"And nobody knows who put it there?" Tom asked, curiously fingering the old ring.

"No," replied Billy Topsail, who had taken them over; "but they says 'twas the pirates put it there, long ago."

"Pirates!" cried Tom. "Do they say that?"

"'Twas me grandfather told me so."

It may be that pirates harboured in the Little Tickle Basin in the days when they made the Caribbean Sea a fearsome place to sail upon. When the Newfoundland coast was remote, uninhabited, uncharted, no safer hiding place could have been found than that quiet little basin, hidden away among the thousand barren islands of the bay. If, as they say, every pirate had his place of refuge, the iron ring is some evidence, at least, that a buccaneer was accustomed to fly to the basin when pursuit got too persistent and too hot for him.

"Of course!" said Tom, when they were sailing back to Ruddy Cove. "How else can you account for that ring? I bet you," he concluded, "that dozens of pirates had dens on this coast."

"Now, Tom," said Jack, "you know as well as I do that that's just a little too——"

"Well," he interrupted, "everybody knows that pirates used to come here. You'll find it in the histories. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there is a cave around here."

"There is," said Billy Topsail.

"There!" cried Tom, his eyes shining. "I told you so!"

"'Tis a wonderful curious place, too," Billy went on. "You has t' crawl through a hole t' get inside. Sure, the hole is no bigger than a scuttle. You could close it with a fair sized rock. But once you gets through, the cave is as big as a room. 'Twould hold a score o' men very comfortable."

Tom gave Jack a meaning glance. Then he turned to Billy Topsail.

"Can you take us there?" he asked.

"I don't know as I could. I've only heered tell they was a cave like that."

"And you've never been there?"

"Not me."

Tom's face fell—fell so suddenly and to an expression so woeful that Jack laughed outright, though he sympathized with Tom's disappointment.

"But I knows a man that has been there," Billy continued. "He's the man that found it. 'Tis like, now, that he's the only man that's ever been inside."

"Then the place isn't well known?"

"So far as I can tell, nobody knows it but ol' Joe West."

When they ran Billy's punt to old Joe West's stage, at Ruddy Cove, that night, Joe was inside, splitting the day's catch of cod. They broached the object of their visit without delay. Would he guide them to the cave at Little Tickle Basin? But Joe shook his head. The squid were in the harbour, and the fish were taking the bait in lively fashion. The loss of a day's catch was "beyond thinkin' of."

"Do you know the bearings?" Tom asked.

"T' be sure. 'Tis very simple t' get near the spot; but 'tis wonderful hard t' find the hole. 'Tis all overgrown. You might hunt for a year, I'm thinkin', an' never find it. When you does find it, it takes a deal o' nerve t' crawl in. 'Tis that dark an' damp! You keeps thinkin' all the time, too, that something will fall over the hole an' shut you in. If you crawls through," Joe concluded, impressively, "be sure one o' you stays outside."

"But we've no chart of the place," Tom complained.

"If you've paper an' a bit o' pencil," said Skipper Joe, "I'll draw you one."

Here is what he drew:

Skipper Joe, of course, carefully explained his drawing. "Does you see where the arrow points?" said he. "Well, 'tis there. You gets the head o' that little rock in line with the point, at high water, an' there you are. The cliff is rough, an' covered with a growth o' spruce. The hole is about half way up, openin' off a mossy ledge. You'll have t' pry around a wonderful lot t' find it."

"What's it like inside?" Tom asked, eagerly.

"Well, they is a deal o' birch bark scattered around, an' a lot o' broken rock. I saw that by the light of a match; but I was too scared t' stay long, an' I haven't never been there since."

Billy Topsail agreed to sail the sloop to Little Tickle Basin on the next day. Then the boys walked home by the road, much excited. Indeed, Tom, who was of an imaginative and enthusiastic turn, was fairly transported. No flight of fancy was too high for him—no hope too wild. The chart passed from his hand to Jack's and back again a hundred times. The crude, strange drawing, with its significant arrow, touched all the pirate tales with reality.

"If it had been only a cave, without a rusted mooring-ring, it wouldn't have been so much," said Tom. "But with the ring—with the ring, my boy—a narrow, hidden passage to a cave means a great deal more."

Jack asked Tom what he was "driving at."

"I think," said he calmly, "that there is buried treasure there."

Jack scoffed.

"Very well," said Tom; "but you must remember that these discoveries come unexpectedly. They're stumbled on. You can't expect to find a sign-post near buried treasure."

That night they lay awake for a long time. Tom and Jack were bed-fellows at Ruddy Cove. Struck by a simple idea, Jack awoke his friend.

"Tom," said he, "I think we'll find something there."

"Spanish gold or English?" Tom asked, sleepily.

"It will be something," Jack replied. "Something we want."