  Nicky wasted no time going around through the door. He scrambled to the windowsill and leaped out into the darkness. Springing clear of the bushes which were planted close to the house, he landed on his feet and looked hurriedly about him. Nothing was to be seen! As soon as his eyes became used to the dark he strained them in every direction. But there was nothing to reward his eager eyes. Finally, after poking around in the brush just beyond the clearing in which the house stood, he returned to his friends. The colored boy was recovering slowly from the effects of his terror. Tom, too, had regained some of his usual steadiness, though he seemed to be much more excited than either of his chums. The older men had discovered the absence of the map but had thought that Nicky took it. “No!” he panted, still laboring under his excitement and his exertions in running from one dump of brush to another, “it was gone when I looked around before I jumped through the window.” “But where did it go?” demanded Cliff. “That’s the puzzle,” replied Clarence Neale. “De ghos’ done taken it!” gasped the small colored boy. “Nothing of the sort! There aren’t any ghosts!” declared Mr. Gray. The boy stared. “Yes, they is!” he retorted. “I seen it! It was white! It——” “Where did you see it?” Nicky asked quickly. “By de window, sar!” “Was it looking in?” “It was comin’ to’ds”—toward, he meant—“to’ds me!” “What is all this?” a new voice spoke. The owner of the plantation, a rough, stocky Englishman with a bronzed face, stood in the doorway. He had been out on another of his many properties for several days and had, apparently, come back in time to discover the excitement without understanding its meaning. Mr. Gray explained the boy’s fright without mentioning the loss of the map. Nicky, about to speak, saw Cliff make a gesture which unmistakably was the Mystery Boys’ signal for silence; he closed his lips and waited. “These colored people are afraid of shadows,” said the plantation owner. “Run along home, boy. Nothing will hurt you!” “No, sar, Mister Coleson, sar, I dassent go in de dark alone!” “The natives of this island are full of legends and stories about ghosts,” Mr. Coleson explained to the group. “Why, I have even heard them declare that the ghosts and spirits of the old pirates appear at times. Joe, my overseer, here on the plantation, says he once heard where treasure was hidden and he decided to try to get it. But when he got near the place his superstitions got the best of him. The way he tells about it, he saw pirates, in red bandana head cloths, with glittering cutlasses, and smoking pistols, stalking toward him. Naturally, being a coward, he ran. Of course,” he added, “I’m only telling you what he said. Personally, I think the fellow built it all up in his mind!” “Oh—sar!” broke in the colored boy. “No! I see dem, too! I see Cap’n Kidd in my dream, de odder night. He come and he say ‘Boo!’ an’ wake me up!” Clarence Neale laughed. “That shows how easy it is to believe in ghosts if you hear about them and think about them all your life!” he told Tom. “This lad even dreams about them.” “Captain Kidd, eh?” repeated the Englishman, laughing and then becoming half serious. “Well, if there’s any truth in superstition, the old boy must be watching over some of his treasure that is threatened!” He winked toward Clarence Neale, but neither Tom nor the colored boy saw it and both thought he was quite serious. “Don’t, sar—please, don’t!” begged the boy, beginning to snivel. “He say ‘Boo’ at me. Den I mus’ have see him, tonight again!” “Well,” said the Englishman, “I’ll leave you people to argue with this little scare-cat! I’m tired and I think I will turn in!” He said goodnight and went to the quarters he occupied. “Wasn’t Sam to come here?” asked Mr. Gray. “Yes, he was—” began Cliff; he paused, and glanced at Nicky. The latter opened his eyes wider as the thought struck him too. Could Sam have had anything to do with the “ghost business?” Sam had half a map; he saw Nicky, earlier, displaying his excitement when the map was shown. Maybe he had become suspicious, followed them, overheard something; perhaps he had even listened at the window. They discussed the strange disappearance of their map, stated their suspicions, brought up the question of Sam’s possible guilt. The colored boy, not understanding, stood with his eyes rolling, afraid to depart. “There is an easy way to settle the question, and, at the same time to dispose of this boy’s fears,” suggested Clarence Neale. “I will walk home with him!” That seemed to be the best course and so Mr. Neale, reassuring their dusky charge, put a hand on his shoulder and gently urged him from the room. “I don’t care much for this situation,” said Mr. Gray. “It seems to me that some human agency is at work, trying to frighten you lads. I assure you that there is no ghost. Whatever Tom may have seen, and whatever the boy saw, there is a human being behind it. And no ghostly hands took your paper!” “I think that way too,” Nicky declared, and Cliff nodded his agreement. Tom also gave a rather lame assent. “Anyhow,” stated Nicky, practically, “if there was a ghost—if Captain Kidd did watch!—he sent part of the map to my own ancestor. He wouldn’t want to scare us! If he scared anybody, or took a map from anywhere, he would go after the colored fellow, Sam. His half of the cipher wasn’t rightfully his, the way mine is.” “But there is no ghost,” repeated Mr. Gray. “If you ever get the true facts you will see that some person is at the bottom of this.” “Sam, most likely!” declared Tom, entering into the spirit of the discussion and reassuring himself. “No,” said Mr. Neale, coming in, his arm around the shoulders of the colored man they had just named, “no—Sam isn’t at the bottom of it.” They looked at Sam. He was weak and shaken, and slumped down in a chair, rather limp and groggy. “I found Sam out by the gate,” Mr. Neale explained. “He had been knocked out, actually, by a blow. He was on his way here, he managed to tell me. He thought he saw something light-colored near the house and he stopped by the gate. But whatever—whoever—it was, disappeared behind the house and he stood a moment wondering. Then he heard the voice in the house, here, and wondered whether to come in or to wait. Before he guessed what was happening, some one was behind him and struck him. That is all he remembered.” “No ghost did that!” exclaimed Nicky. “I don’t—know,” Sam said, weakly. “They tell, on the island, that ghosts have terrible power. I never did believe much in it, but—I don’t know—now!” “Well, I do know!” declared Mr. Neale defiantly. “Your part of the map is gone, of course!” “Yes, sar—yes——” “Of course! Does that seem like the work of a ghost?” “It might be!” Sam said uncertainly. He drank the water Nicky had brought him, and seemed to be pulling himself together, but his age-old instinct of fear was beginning to triumph over his education. “At any rate,” Mr. Gray summed up, “whatever and whoever did these things, the result amounts to this: neither Sam nor we have any clue to the treasure——” “You wouldn’t let that stop you, would you?” demanded Nicky. “I wouldn’t, if Father would let us go on,” Cliff stated. “Nor I,” agreed Clarence Neale. “We can remember the map closely enough—we know the longitude—we could even cable Nicky’s uncle and get the original if necessary——” “But we don’t remember the latitude on Sam’s half,” said Cliff. “Unless Sam does——” “When he gets over his bump—it won’t be serious—he will be able to help. Anyway, we know in a general way that the place is somewhere in the Florida Keys, about twenty-five degrees and some minutes of North latitude and we all recall the longitude—and one-half of the map had the phrase ‘dip’ and the other ‘per’—put them together and they mean ‘Dipper.’” Mr. Neale sketched on a bit of envelope the picture of the constellation know as “The Dipper.” “There!” he said, triumphantly. “Doesn’t that show you the same little marks that were on the two maps?” Nicky, Cliff, Tom and Mr. Gray nodded. “Well, then, we can find that set of islands,” declared Mr. Neale, “and, if Mr. Gray would carry on my work here, I, for one, would vote to go ahead!” “Here too!” cried Nicky. “Same for me!” stated Cliff, giving his father an imploring look. “I’m with you,” Tom chimed in, not as aggressively, but with his will power overcoming his uncertainty. “I’d go if you would let me,” said Sam, while Mr. Gray bandaged a lump on his head after it had been disinfected and washed. “I know where I could get a sloop with a little engine to kick it along if the wind failed——” “That would be fine!” exclaimed Nicky. “I vote we take Sam in!” “Share and share alike!” cried Cliff eagerly. “That is, our part of whatever we find! Of course we’d give some to the governor’s family if we can find them.” “We’d have to keep it secret—our plan!” said Nicky, earnestly. “We’d have to pretend to be going——” “To cruise for Carib relics on smaller islands!” broke in Clarence Neale, as excited as his younger companions. “Fine!” agreed Nicky. “Is the sloop big enough, Sam? Where is it? What’s it like? Is it seaworthy for a cruise like this?” Sam said “yes” and described the one-masted, thirty-foot boat with its heavy duty motor. “Maybe close quarters to sleep in,” he said, “but she has shorely got a good name for treasure hunting!” “What?” demanded all three chums in unison. “The Treasure Belle——” “Oh!” cried Nicky. “With a name like that we simply must get her! Mr. Gray, you can’t refuse us permission.” Three eager youths pleaded. The older man, counseled and reassured by Clarence Neale, finally agreed. “Hooray!” Nicky exulted. “Treasure bent in the Treasure Belle! Nothing can stop us!” Tom, a little silent, hoped that nothing could! |
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