  Cramped and aching in every muscle, the chums struggled uselessly throughout a long and irksome day. The ropes were tied too securely to be loosened; they would not stretch. It was almost twilight when they heard the returning sweep of oars and the grate of the boats alongside. “Jim, see if those lads are still safe, and let them stretch a bit,” came a voice the chums recognized as that of Mr. Coleson. Jim, the colored Jamaican, came into the cabin with leisurely slowness and they saw, from his downcast face, the answer to a question in the minds of at least two cramped prisoners. He was frowning and his whole bearing was dejected. They had found no treasure! This was borne out by the faces of the white men when they came in and dropped heavily onto the cushioned side seats. “Look here,” said Senor Ortiga, morosely, fixing Nicky with a cold glare, “are you sure you remembered that message correctly?” “I’m sure,” said Nicky, rubbing his arms and legs to get the blood into circulation again, still seated on the cabin flooring. “Well, then,” said Mr. Coleson, “it’s all a myth, or someone has been ahead of us.” “Repeat that message,” commanded Ortiga, not convinced. Nicky, looking him in the eyes, did so. “‘At the end of the line, in the lowest part of the Dipper,’” he stated. “And you say that’s the truth?” “It’s the truth——” “The whole truth?” “Yes—and ‘nothing but the truth!’” “Well, we searched the bottom where those lines join, and then we rowed over to the two islands, went over them again, and then searched the bottom between them—that’s the ‘lowest part of the islands,’ too,” stated Mr. Coleson. Neither Nicky, Cliff nor Tom cared much. Their bodies were too sore, too tired from staying in one position, too full of aches, to enable them to give much thought to treasure. Almost nothing was said as Jim prepared supper, for which the chums were waiting as eagerly as their weary bodies allowed. A low-voiced conference was held between the white men, but it was not until the meal was ended, Cliff lifting his cup with cramped arm and hand, Tom feeling his feet prickle as circulation fed the life fluid to them, Nicky feeling as though he had been trussed up for years, that Senor Ortiga delivered the result of the conference. “We noticed that the tender you came in was marked from the Senorita,” he stated to Tom. “We rowed down the inner channel a way, wondering how you came to be in it!” “We found the wreck,” added Mr. Coleson. “Again my dear brother failed to get ahead of me!” snapped the Spaniard, glowering. “But that is aside from the point, which is that we are through here.” “Then you’ll take us back to Jamaica with you?” asked Cliff. Ortiga shook his head. “You have the tender,” he replied. “We will put some food in it and let you use it to get to wherever you want to go. Do you suppose we want to get mixed up with the American Government for tying up its younger citizens? Not we! But we won’t set you adrift or maroon you. We’ll let you have the tender and some food.” It was almost half an hour later that Cliff, Tom and Nicky, seated in the tender, with a few days’ supply of canned foods in her bottom, saw the anchor of El Libertad come up, heard the pulsing throb of her single, four-cylinder speed motor, and watched her swing in a graceful curve into the wide waters of the Gulf and lay a course Southward. “There she goes,” said Cliff morosely. “Now we’d better lay to, on some island for the night, and then start rowing for civilization.” “I half wonder if they found the treasure, after all,” said Tom, “and just acted the way they did to ‘steer us off’ and wait till we get away.” “No,” said Nicky. “No?——” “No. At least, if they did, I’ll bet the treasure was moved up to a new place.” “What do you mean?” demanded Cliff sharply. “You see,” said Nicky, “I did tell the truth—the whole thing and nothing else except the truth. But——” He grinned at his chums in the dull light. “I saw your signals, even though I would have done what I did without them.” If they had suddenly been touched by a “live” electric wire the other two could not have jumped more, or assumed more interested and amazed expressions. “Tell us what you mean!” cried Tom. “Well,” said Nicky, enjoying their suspense, “I told them exactly what Captain Kidd was reported to have said—except for one word that I changed. It didn’t change the real meaning, but I had a sort of flash of something inside, whatever it was, and I thought maybe if I changed that one word I could fool them—lead them on a false scent, and still tell the truth.” “What word was it you changed?” cried Tom, and Cliff echoed the question in slightly different words but with no less eagerness. “Repeat the message!” demanded Nicky. Cliff spoke. “‘At the end of the line, in the lowest part of——’” “Wait,” commanded Nicky. “What did you say after ‘in’?” “The lowest part,” replied Cliff. “And what is ‘the lowest part’ of a dipper?” Tom saw it first. “The bottom!” he almost yelled. “That’s it,” nodded Nicky. “The way I remembered it said ‘in the bottom of the dipper.’ So I changed the word to ‘lowest part’ so I could make it seem that the two islands at the lowest part of the sketch were the ones it meant.” “Then it was easy to draw the lines,” Tom agreed. “Nicky—I’m ashamed of myself for being angry and for not trusting you!” He made the admission manfully, and extended his hand. “I ask your pardon!” “You ought to!” declared Nicky, but he grinned to take the sting out of his words. Cliff was not behind Tom by more than a sentence. He, too, told his chum how sorry he was that he did not trust him. Nicky was glad to grip hands with both and to forget their former distrust. “I didn’t pretend to notice because I wanted you both to act as though you were mad at me. It would make them believe I was telling the truth, I thought,” he explained. “Let’s row in and see what the real ‘in the bottom of the Dipper’ looks like,” he added. “I’m nearly wild to see the real treasure spot, even if we can’t locate anything there.” But Cliff counseled caution. “Those fellows aren’t quite out of sight yet,” he declared, “and they might be watching. If we pretend to row along the same way they are going, until it gets dark, they will believe we have given up too.” “That’s good sense,” Tom agreed. “When it’s so dark they can’t see us, even if they come back, we can swing in and camp out on some island. Then, if they get soft-hearted and return to pick us up, they won’t suspect anything.” This was agreed to and they rowed along easily for about an hour. There was no sign, strain their eyes as they might, that the Libertad was anywhere else than on the first leg of her journey to Jamaica, so they pulled to the shore of an islet that had a small grove of cocoanut or mangrove trees—it was too dark to know which—and, though their couch was not very dry and rather too full of matted roots for comfort, the expectation of the morning’s find, and their own athletic training, enabled them to make the best of what they had. Sunrise found Nicky awake and alert. He shook his comrades. “Up—up, daisy, the sun is in the sky!” he cried, “and we—we, daisy, for treasure we shall try!” “That’s good sense but terrible poetry!” laughed Cliff. “I don’t care,” Nicky replied, “Tom, cook up some ham, and a rasher of bacon, and about twenty eggs and some cocoa.” “Where do you expect me to get them?” demanded his chum, laughing. “Charge them!” Nicky exulted. “Charge them at the nearest store. Our credit ought to be good. By noon we’ll have gold enough to pay the National Debt!” “Hooray!” responded Cliff, “gold—gold—gold!” And by eight o’clock they were in the tender. “Treasure bound!” Nicky grinned. |
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