“There it is,” exclaimed Fred when he had finished writing.

“What does it say?” demanded George. “It’s certainly jumbled up.”

“We’ll start at the beginning,” said Grant eagerly, “and spell out the letters and see if we can’t make words out of them.”

“Read them out loud,” suggested Fred, “and go slow.”

“T,” began Grant, “that doesn’t spell anything. T-a; T-a-k; T-a-k-e.”

“Take,” exclaimed George. “There’s a word.”

“Good,” cried John. “Go ahead from there, Grant.”

“A,” said Grant.

“That’s a word,” cried Fred. “We’ve got ‘take a,’ so far.”

“C,” said Grant. “C-o; C-o-u; C-o-u-r.”

“That means ‘heart’ in French,” exclaimed George. “The next three letters, s-e-d, mean ‘but’ in French. Do you suppose that could be right?”

“It doesn’t make sense that way,” said John. ‘Take a heart but.’ What does that mean?“

“Perhaps every word doesn’t count,” George suggested.

“Look here,” exclaimed Grant. “What does c-o-u-r-s-e spell?”

“Course, of course,” said John laughingly.

“Certainly it does,” said Grant. “That’s the word we want. So far we have three; ‘take a course.’ Doesn’t that sound more like it to you fellows than some sort of French that George is trying to bring into it?”

“Absolutely,” said Fred with great conviction. “‘Take a course’ is right, and the next word is d-u-e, due.”

“Correct,” cried Grant. “Why, this is easy. Just see if I can’t read the whole thing right off now.”

“Try it anyway,” said John. “Take it slow.”

Grant studied the letters in front of him for some moments in silence. “I’ve got it,” he exclaimed at length. “Just listen to this,” and he began to read slowly, “‘Take a course due north one hundred feet from the south–’” he paused.

“From the southern, isn’t it?” queried John.

“That’s it. ‘Take a course due north one hundred feet from the southern extremity of shark rock, then east fifty feet and north by east thirty-three dig.’”

“Correct,” cried John, “only you ought to have read the last of it like this: ‘and north by east thirty-three. Dig!” and he shouted the final word with all his might.

“We’re going to find the gold, we’re going to find the gold!” shouted Fred, borrowing John’s chant, and a moment later every one in the little party had joined hands and was dancing joyously about singing and laughing and shouting. Finally they stopped from sheer exhaustion.

“Read dat again, will yo’?” demanded Sam eagerly.

“Read it, Grant,” shouted George. “We’re going to find the gold, we’re going to find the gold!”

“If you’ll keep quiet a minute I’ll read it,” said Grant, and while every one listened with rapt attention he read again the words it had taken them so many days and weeks to discover. “‘Take a course due north one hundred feet from the southern extremity of shark rock, then east fifty feet and north by east thirty-three. Dig.’”

“Say, I just happened to think,” exclaimed Fred in dismay. “How are we going to get those directions right? How can we tell north from south except in a general sort of way?”

“Fred,” said George, pretending to be greatly disappointed in his comrade, “how long will it take you to learn that whenever anything is needed, I am the one who always has it? Don’t you know that I always wear a compass and don’t you remember Captain Dodge on board the Josephine complimenting me on the fact one time? You are a great trial to me, Fred,” and George shook his head sorrowfully.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got it anyway,” said Fred shortly. “I still don’t see, though, how we are going to measure distances.”

“That will be hard,” admitted Grant. “How long are your feet, String?”

“A yard and a half,” said George readily, and immediately ducked to escape a blow aimed in his direction by the owner of the feet in question.

“Ten inches,” replied John. “That is, my shoes are just exactly that long, for I remember measuring them in the gymnasium just before I left home. They’re in the cave if you want them.”

“Not now,” said Grant. “It’s too late to do anything to-day, anyway, and it’ll be dark in a little while. If your shoes are exactly ten inches long though, we can measure with them and figure out the distance easy enough.”

“Are you sure that the shark rock the code speaks of is the one on the end of the island here?” exclaimed Fred.

“Sho’ it am,” said Sam. “Dey nevah was two rocks lak dat one.”

“I guess that’s right,” agreed Fred. “It must be the one.”

“Certainly it is,” said John. “We wouldn’t have found two codes on this island unless the spot they referred to was here too.”

“Oh, that’s the rock all right,” said Grant confidently. “I wish we could start right down there now, but I suppose it would be foolish.”

“I think we’ve done enough for one day anyhow,” said John. “As long as we have solved the code we can’t have much to complain of for one day’s work.”

“You haven’t told us how you did it yet,” said George.

“Haven’t you found out for yourself? My, but you’re dull.”

“Perhaps I am,” admitted George. “I don’t see it though.”

“Nor I,” added Fred. “Tell us how you did it.”

“How many letters are there in the alphabet?” asked Grant.

“Twenty-six,” said George.

“What’s the first letter?”

“A.”

“What’s the second?”

“B.”

“And the third?”

“C.”

“What’s the twenty-sixth?”

“Z.”

“You know your alphabet anyway,” laughed Grant. “Now this is how the code works; a is the first letter so we call it one, b is the second so we call that two, and so on all the way through. For instance, the letter s would be number nineteen, and t would be twenty. Do you see the idea?”

“Yes, I see that,” said George. “Explain the rest.”

“Why, it’s just this. Wherever number one came we put the letter a. If number thirteen appeared we’d substitute the thirteenth letter in the alphabet in its place.”

“Which would be m,” said George after a little calculation on his fingers.

“That’s right,” exclaimed Grant. “Now do you see how it was done?”

“Of course. Isn’t that simple?”

“It took us long enough to find it out though,” said John.

“Well, I should say so,” exclaimed George. “Weren’t we stupid?”

“I don’t know,” said Grant. “The simplest things are often the hardest to explain. Of course when you get the key the rest is easy enough.”

“According to this code then,” said Fred, “one, two, three would be a, b, c. Is that right?”

“Yes,” said Grant, “and twenty-four, twenty-five and twenty-six would be x, y, z.”

“I see,” exclaimed Fred. “You couldn’t have a number higher than twenty-six in this code then, could you?”

“Of course not. There are only that many letters in the alphabet, you see.”

“How did you ever happen to think of it, Grant?”

“Well, I guess I’d thought of about everything else possible,” laughed Grant. “When I heard Pop talking about teaching his parrot the alphabet and somebody said there were twenty-six letters in it, I got an idea all of a sudden. I knew those figures backwards and forwards and I remembered that twenty-five was the highest number in it. That would mean that twenty-six stood for the letter z, but that is so uncommon anyway that it didn’t seem strange that it should be missing. It was a new idea and it struck me right away as being a good one.”

“It certainly was,” exclaimed George. “We ought to give you a medal, Grant.”

“Wouldn’t a gold piece do?” laughed Fred.

“It sho’ would suit me,” grinned Sam. “Ah does want one ob dem dere diamon’ ho’seshoes, dough.”

“Well, when you get enough gold pieces you can buy one,” said Grant. “Don’t you think your friends back home would be jealous of you though?” and he winked slyly at his companions.

“Ah suttinly does hope so,” exclaimed Sam heartily. “Dey’s a lot of good fo’ nothin’ no ’count niggers anyhow.”

“Would you work any more if you had a lot of money?” asked George.

“Work!” exclaimed Sam disdainfully. “Hello, dere, foolish! What yo’ think Ah am anyhow? To’ must think Ah’m plumb crazy,” and Sam looked pityingly at George. “Ob co’se Ah wouldn’t nebber lif’ mah han’ agin.”

“Don’t you think you’d get tired of doing nothing?” laughed George.

“Jes’ lemme try it onct,” and Sam snorted at the idea of any one being so silly as to work unless he was compelled to do so.

“Well, I hope you do get rich, Sam,” exclaimed John, “and I hope all the rest of us do too.”

“Dis am de place fo’ it,” said Sam confidently. “Jes’ think how many people would gib dere eyes jes’ to fin’ dis yere island.”

“Finding the island wouldn’t do them much good unless they knew where to look after they got here,” said Grant.

“But we do know,” exclaimed Fred. “All we have to do now is to make a few measurements and do a little digging.”

“It may be a good deal of digging,” said Grant.

“We don’t know how deep the stuff is buried, you know.”

“And we don’t care,” said George. “I’d dig all the way to China to get that stuff if it was necessary.”

“I wish we had some tools,” sighed John. “It may be slow work.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said George. “It’s all sand down around that end of the island and we can use sticks and anything we can get hold of.”

“An’ mah knife,” added Sam eagerly.

“Yes,” agreed Grant. “That knife will help a lot.”

“We can get Snip to use his beak on the tough spots,” suggested Fred.

“Yes,” laughed George. “By the way he dug into my hand he ought to be able to tear holes in the ground without any trouble at all.”

“Let’s get to sleep,” said Grant, “and at the crack of dawn to-morrow we’ll be down at the old shark rock with our compass and String’s shoe ready to make ourselves wealthy.”

It was an excited little party that turned in presently and dreamed of gold and treasure unheard of all the rest of the warm tropical night.