Gay's year on Sunset Island
Date: 2025-07-20T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Islands -- Juvenile fiction; Adventure stories; Treasure troves -- Juvenile fiction; Teenage girls -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: Gay's year on Sunset Island

Author: Marguerite Aspinwall

Release date: July 20, 2025 [eBook #76532]

Language: English

Original publication: Cleveland: The Goldsmith Publishing Co, 1926

Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, Rod Crawford, Kelsey Nakaishi, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GAY'S YEAR ON SUNSET ISLAND ***

GAY’S YEAR
ON SUNSET ISLAND

By
MARGUERITE ASPINWALL

The
GOLDSMITH
Publishing Co.
CLEVELAND OHIO
MADE IN U.S.A.

Copyright, 1926
by
Marguerite Aspinwall

CONTENTS

CHAPTER | PAGE
I.— | A Surprise | 3
II.— | Off For Sunset Island! | 20
III.— | Planter’s House | 37
IV.— | Rosemary’s Diary | 50
V.— | An Exploring Party | 65
VI.— | A Night in the Caves | 76
VII.— | We Plan For the Future | 91
VIII.— | Sir Henry Morgan’s Map | 103
IX.— | The Map is Stolen | 121
X.— | The Myra Brings Visitors | 131
XI.— | A Swim in the Lagoon | 146
XII.— | “Dead Men’s Inlet” | 163
XIII.— | Along Morgan’s Trail | 180
XIV.— | The Treasure Hole | 195
XV.— | Captain Rawson Returns | 211
XVI.— | The Lost Treasure | 226

Gay’s Year on Sunset Island

CHAPTER I
A SURPRISE

IF you have lived all your life in a sleepy little New England village like Braeburn, you get so you just don’t expect exciting, story-book sort of things to happen. I know that I, Gay Annersley, fifteen years old and an orphan, but living with the nicest aunt, uncle and cousins in the world—isn’t that the proper way to begin an autobiography?—certainly never expected anything like Sunset Island to happen to me.

Perhaps now, having written that much, I’d better go back and explain how it all came about, only I somehow simply had to put Sunset Island into the first paragraph.

Ever since I was a baby I’ve lived with Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles, because my own mother, who was Aunt Mollie’s twin sister, died when I wasn’t quite a week old, and of course my father, being just a man, couldn’t be expected to know how to bring up all by himself a daughter as young as that. Besides, Aunt Mollie had a baby of her own then, Dan, who was two, and she declared she had plenty of room in her big old-fashioned Braeburn house, and still more in her heart, for another, especially when that poor red, crying, motherless mite that was Gay Annersley in those days, was her twin sister’s only child.

So that’s how I came to be one of Aunt Mollie’s flock, and for quite a long time I didn’t even know she wasn’t my own mother. For she has never once in all those years made any difference in the love she gives us, between Andrée, who is her real daughter, and me.

She never made any difference, either, between another adopted child she found room for later in her big family and her still bigger heart. This was Sydney Ross, just my age, and the son of Uncle Charles’ old business partner. Syd’s mother and father had died in a dreadful typhoid epidemic when the little fellow wasn’t more than five or six, and Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie had taken him in promptly, as they had me.

Andrée’s the one girl cousin I possess, but there’s still another boy besides Dan and Sydney—the baby of the family, named Joe for a sea-captain uncle of ours, but because of the color of his hair, never called anything except Reddy. Reddy’s a darling, and just ten; not a bit spoiled, either, in spite of being the youngest.

I wish I could say the same thing for my cousin Andrée, but I can’t. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that she and I, being the only girls, would be chums and like the same things, and the same people. Well, we’re not, and we don’t.

Andrée liked dolls, and silly, girly sort of books, and tea parties—that kind of thing, and I loathed them. I always wanted to play ball with Dan and Sydney, when they’d let me tag round after them, and climb trees, and swim in the lake, and go on cross-country hikes. When I was ten I could beat both the boys at sprinting, though they could tire me on long distance runs.

I still like tramping better than parties and dancing, which Andrée is crazy over. But then Andrée’s pretty, in a really lovely pink and cream and golden fashion, and sure to be popular wherever she goes, and I’m not. I’m little and skinny, and have half a million freckles, and a turn-up nose, though I have nice eyes—hazel, with long lashes. I can say that without being vain, because Aunt Mollie says I’ve got my mother’s eyes, and everyone admits she was a beauty. I’m like my daddy, and what can be all right in a man, you know, can be quite plain in a little girl.

However, I’ve never cared much about it one way or the other. I’ve been too busy, I guess. And I remember my father a little—he died when I was six—but I know how wonderful he was, and I’d rather look like him than be pretty like Andrée. Honestly I would. Because Daddy was the bravest and finest man I’ve ever heard of, even counting in the famous heroes in books and histories.

He was a sea captain, just as Uncle Joe is, and lost his life in a dreadful storm at sea, saving one of his sailors who had been washed overboard. Daddy dove right into that raging sea, Uncle Joe wrote Aunt Mollie—Uncle Joe was his first mate at the time—and reached the man, and held him up safely till a boat could be lowered away. But a heavy crate that had been washed overboard, too, struck Daddy’s head just as he was being lifted into the lifeboat. He never recovered consciousness again, and died the next morning, and they had to bury him at sea.

So maybe you can understand why I’m proud of looking like him, and always will be. A girl with a father like that has got something big to live up to all the rest of her life. And I’m certainly going to do it if I can.

Up to six months ago, we’d all been just about as happy in the old-fashioned grey and white house on State Street, as any family could ask to be. Uncle Charles wasn’t a rich man, but he was president of the First National Bank in Braeburn, and his salary must have been a pretty nice one, for we children had everything we wanted in the way of clothes and toys, and Aunt Mollie had a car of her own. Andrée and I went to Miss Porter’s private school on Elm Street, instead of to the public school, and Dan was expecting to go to Andover that fall.

And then, the spring before, Uncle Charles had what the doctors called a nervous break-down, and had to give up his position at the bank. Aunt Mollie told me a little about it—you see, she’d gotten in the way of treating me almost like an older person, and talking things over with me that she never told Andrée.

It seems Uncle Charles had been working awfully hard at the bank, which was going through some kind of crisis. I didn’t quite understand that part, but I know it had something to do with someone’s bad judgment in investments, and that, though the fault really wasn’t his, Uncle Charles had insisted on giving up all his own fortune so the bank’s depositors shouldn’t lose a penny. Aunt Mollie was so proud of him for doing it that she never seemed to realize it meant we would have to sell the old house on State Street we loved so much and be quite, quite poor people.

But I guess Uncle Charles realized it all right, and probably he blamed himself for not somehow knowing what the other man was doing. Anyhow, there we were, all at once, with no money except a few hundred dollars of Aunt Mollie’s in the savings bank, the house having to be sold just as soon as we could find a buyer who would pay a fair price, and poor Uncle Charles so ill and nervous and unlike his usual jolly self that Dr. West began to talk about the possibility of his having to go to a sanitarium.

Of course there was Syd’s little income that his own father had left him, but neither Aunt Mollie nor Uncle Charles would touch a penny of that, though Sydney begged and begged them. Anyhow it wasn’t much, just enough to send him to boarding school later, and college, with a bit left over to start him in some good business afterwards.

Aunt Mollie put her arms around me the night after Dr. West first hinted at the sanitarium, and for the first time in my life I saw her give way and cry as if her heart were broken.

“Oh, Gay, darling, what are we going to do?” she asked in a trembly sort of voice that made a big lump come in my own throat to hear. “I’d do anything, anything to make your uncle well. But where are we going to find the money to pay for a sanitarium?”

“Maybe it won’t be necessary after all,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “I thought he seemed a little better today, didn’t you?”

Aunt Mollie’s never been the kind to look on the dark side of things, but though she tried to cheer up and smile, I could see she hadn’t much heart in it.

“Wel-ll, perhaps so, dear,” she replied with a little sigh she tried to smother. “But he’s been ill for over six months now. I can’t seem to see any real improvement.”

“And perhaps a nice rich buyer will come along soon,” I hurried on, “who’ll want this house so badly he’ll give a whacking big price for it—oh, lots more than we’re asking. Then we’d have money enough to live on for the next few years, while Dan and Sydney and I are growing up and learning to support the family.”

She kissed me then, and called me her blessed little comfort, and blamed herself for being, as she put it, “cowardly and lacking in faith.” And we didn’t talk about it again for several days. But I thought and thought, trying to think up a way out, until my head felt actually dizzy.

Only, when you’re just fifteen, and a girl, what can you possibly do in a situation like that? It looked pretty hopeless, but I knew it wouldn’t help matters any if I gave in and cried, too, so I set my teeth hard, and Syd and Dan and I talked and talked and talked, though none of it seemed to get us any nearer the edge of our Slough of Despond.

And then, tumbling on each other’s heels, as you might say, right out of a blue sky, two wonderful things happened. We found a buyer for the house, at a fairly good price, though not quite what Aunt Mollie had hoped for. And Uncle Joe’s ship, the Myra, came into New York after five years up and down the South Seas and the Indian Ocean, and Uncle Joe, without waiting to send a telegram, took the first train out to Braeburn and walked in on us just as we were sitting down to supper.

I don’t think I would have remembered him, because I wasn’t quite ten the last time I’d seen him, but of course the minute Aunt Mollie jumped up from the table, crying, “Joe, Joe!” in that excited, breathless way, I knew who our unexpected visitor was.

He was a big man, with broad shoulders, and a sort of squarish, red face with a grey mustache, and the twinklingest, jolliest grey eyes I’ve ever seen. I knew right off that I was going to like my Uncle Joe, even before we’d had a chance to speak a word to each other.

Aunt Mollie was hanging on to his arm with both hands as if she never meant to let him go again, and I guessed she was not far from tears, too, though, as I said before, I’d never seen her cry but once in my life. She kept repeating, softly, almost as if she were saying a prayer in church, “Joe, I’ve needed you so! I’ve needed you so!” And he just patted her shoulder and cleared his throat two or three times.

The boys and I hung back a little, at first—I don’t know exactly why—probably shyness, for I could see by their expressions that Dan and Syd were as excited as I was over his arrival. In fact I was so excited that my knees suddenly felt so weak and shaky under me, I couldn’t have moved if I’d tried. It was the queerest feeling.

You see, it came to me the minute I heard Aunt Mollie call him Joe, and I looked up and saw him beaming at us all with that nice smile of his, that he’d been the last person to see my daddy alive, and that he could tell me, if he only would, so many things I’d always simply ached to know about the part of his life he’d spent at sea. I made up my mind then and there that when we got to know each other better, I was going to take Uncle Joe off alone somewhere and ask him about a thousand questions.

But Andrée apparently wasn’t the least bit shy. She went up and kissed him as calmly as if she’d known him all her life, and said, “Welcome home, Uncle Joe! I’m your niece, Andrée. Don’t you remember me?”

Andrée can always be counted on to do the pretty, polite thing no matter how surprised she is. I can’t seem to think fast enough.

Uncle Joe put one arm around her and kissed her, at the same time holding out his other hand to me.

“Then this must be Gay,” he said in a nice, deep, gruff-ish sort of voice, and I was scooped up beside Andrée in a regular bear’s hug, right off my tip-toes, too, because I’m little and Uncle Joe is simply huge. When I say huge, I mean across and up-and-down, both. He’s one of the biggest men I’ve ever seen, I think, but he carries himself so straight, and moves so lightly and quickly, you don’t quite realize at first just how enormous he is, he’s so perfectly proportioned.

Then he spoke to the boys, and made some funny sailor jokes that set them grinning, but he kept one arm tight about my shoulders all the time, and somehow I knew it was because of Daddy. Aunt Mollie had told me he simply worshipped Daddy, and had refused to be made captain of another ship, which he had a chance of being, because he preferred to keep on sailing as mate with Daddy. They’d been at school together, and college, and it was through Uncle Joe that Daddy first met my mother at a Fraternity party in their freshman year.

Finally we somehow got settled down to supper once more, with Uncle Joe between Aunt Mollie and me, and for a while everybody tried to talk at once, and the bedlam was awful. Uncle Charles was upstairs asleep—he’d been having one of his bad days—and when things grew too noisy, Aunt Mollie hushed us for fear we’d wake him, and told us no one but Uncle Joe was to open his lips, except for eating purposes, for the next fifteen minutes.

“So now, Joe, you have a clear field,” she laughed. She suddenly looked almost as pink-cheeked and young and unworried as Andrée. “Tell us all about yourself, and how you happened to come home and surprise us this way.”

Uncle Joe smiled that specially nice smile of his back at her.

“Well, I had two perfectly good reasons, Mollie,” he chuckled. Then his eyes stopped laughing, and grew quite grave all at once, and he put his hand on Aunt Mollie’s arm. “I somehow felt you might need the wanderer back for a while, when I heard about Charles, my dear. And—number two—” his eyes crinkled up at the corners again, “I’ve got a plan to propose.”

Syd started to shout “Hoo-ray!” and stuffed a big piece of biscuit into his mouth in a hurry, remembering we weren’t to speak for another ten minutes or so yet.

“Well, well! Not a comment,” Uncle Joe laughed. “Mollie, you’ve got them well trained. I suppose, then, since they can’t ask questions, I’d better end the suspense at once, so here goes! I brought the Myra back especially to take a certain family not far off at the moment, on a cruise of three or four months down to the nice, hot tropics, away from snow, ice and winter worries, to search for rest and health for my brother-in-law, Charles Jennings, principally; and for the rest—” he hesitated teasingly, and glanced deliberately about the table at each of us in turn. He had to grin, then, at the expressions of our faces. Syd and Dan looked as though they’d explode in another second if Aunt Mollie didn’t give in about talking, or Uncle Joe didn’t hurry and finish what he’d started to say. Even Andrée’s blue eyes were shining, and I know I felt excited the way Syd looked.

“Excuse me, that wasn’t quite fair of me,” Uncle Joe apologized, still chuckling. “I was thinking we might head for the Caribbean, and make our headquarters on Sunset Island.”

And then I simply couldn’t keep still another instant. I was so excited that I was trembling again. “Sunset Island,” I burst out. “Oh, Uncle Joe, it sounds like all the treasure-island stories I’ve ever read—and even nicer! What is it?”

“Why, some people believe it is a treasure island,” Uncle Joe said quickly. “But I can’t guarantee that. Still, there’ll be no harm in having a hunt, of course. It’s a small island, not far from Martinique——”

“Where your great-great-great-grandmother came from,” Syd interrupted breathlessly in his turn. “The one Andrée’s named for, you know.”

“And who used to play with the Empress Josephine when they were children, before she was Empress of France,” I supplied eagerly. “I always wished they’d named me for her instead of Andrée. She doesn’t care.”

“I do, too,” Andrée said indignantly. “You always say that, Gay Annersley, just because I don’t like to read stupid old history books all day.” She pouted and her eyes filled. Crying makes me homelier than ever, because I scowl and my eyes get red, but Andrée looks like a pathetic, pink and white baby when she cries, and strangers think she must be horribly abused and will do anything to cheer her up again.

Uncle Joe evidently reacted in the usual way, for he looked rather alarmed and terribly sympathetic, and hurried on with his explanations about the island before the tears should actually spill over.

“Yes, yes, that’s the place,” he assented. “Makes it all the more appropriate for us to be going back there, doesn’t it? Of course Sunset Island’s not really Martinique, but Martinique’s the nearest land. We had to send there to have my deed to the island recorded.”

“You mean you own this island, Uncle Joe?” Syd demanded, staring with round, amazed eyes. (Of course, after being one of the family all these years, he considered Uncle Joe his uncle too.)

“Yes, sir,” Uncle Joe said promptly. “Though I’ve never set foot on my property. It’s not a long story,” he added, twinkling again. “A few words will tell you how I became a landed proprietor, and then we’ll get down to discussing plans and sailing dates. The former owner was a Frenchman by the name of Jean Carreau, who had a fine old plantation house, in the Spanish style, and an orange grove on the island, besides growing some sugar-cane, too, I believe. The war ruined him financially and he lost his only son at Mons, which seemed to take all the courage out of him, poor fellow.

“It cost too much to operate his plantation, with the market and the price of labor what they were after the war, so in the end, after making a losing fight for a year, he just quietly pulled up stakes one day, took his wife—who wasn’t strong, and had come to hate the island and its loneliness—and they went abroad with what money they had left; it was mighty little. There they wandered about from place to place, getting poorer and more discouraged all the time, and two years ago I met them in India, pretty much up against it, as I soon discovered. I’d known them years before, when they spent a winter in the States, and Mr. Carreau had done me a favor—a very great favor, but no matter about that now.”

“Joe, I can finish your story,” Aunt Mollie said gently, shaking her head at him. “You found your chance to repay that old favor, by buying his island, house, plantation, orange grove and all the rest of it, though you hadn’t the slightest use for any of them.”

Uncle Joe blushed fierily through his mahogany-colored tan.

“At a ridiculously cheap figure,” he said, then. “I couldn’t make the honest old fellow take what I was sure the island ought to be worth. And, Mollie, you’re wrong about not having a use for it. I’m going to take you all down there to spend the winter hunting that old pirate Morgan’s treasure which tradition says is buried somewhere on that very island of mine. Don’t you see, it will give us all time to think things out, and will do more for Charles than a hundred sanitariums. I never did believe in sanitariums,” he finished, and blew his nose loudly, because I think he was afraid Aunt Mollie was once more on the edge of tears.

“Buck up, old girl,” he told her, and patted her hand as though she’d been Reddy’s age and had bumped herself on something hard. “It may not be too luxurious—the house has been deserted for years, you know—but it’s a splendid climate, and we can live on the schooner if necessary till we get things patched up shipshape ashore. Come now, say you’ll go, Mollie! I can see these girls and boys aren’t going to put any difficulties in the way.” And his jolly, rumbling little chuckle boomed out so contagiously that we were all one broad grin around the table, including Aunt Mollie who had forgotten she wanted to cry as suddenly as she’d thought of it.

“Oh, Joe, it—it sounds like a little bit of heaven on earth after all these long months of worry,” she said in a voice that shook. “I’ll say yes, dear boy, of course, if—if Charles is willing.”

CHAPTER II
OFF FOR SUNSET ISLAND!

UNCLE CHARLES proved willing enough to go on the cruise, when the plan was explained to him. He’d hated the idea of a sanitarium all along, and declared that he felt better already at the thought of the sea voyage and the warmth and peacefulness of Uncle Joe’s tropic island. He certainly looked brighter, just talking of the change, and the brighter and more hopeful he seemed, the more Aunt Mollie threw off care, and bustled about packing and planning with her old light-hearted smile that we’d seen so seldom since Uncle Charles’ illness.

As for the boys—even Reddy—they were absolutely mad with excitement, and there was mighty little talked about in the Jennings household until the day for sailing came, that wasn’t in one way or another connected with the voyage and Sunset Island.

At first even a week seemed ages to our impatience, but after we got fairly into the midst of our preparations, the time flew so fast that Friday, the day we were to leave for New York, arrived long before it seemed possible.

Uncle Joe had decided that we were all to take the noon train from Braeburn for New York, and spend that night at a quiet little hotel he knew of downtown. In this way we could make an early start Saturday morning for the schooner, which was tied up at a wharf in the East River. Uncle Joe wanted to sail about eleven on account of the tide.

I had never been in New York before, and never on a ship, to remember it, that is. I’d been told that once, when Daddy’s ship came into Boston harbor, Aunt Mollie took me down to see her and we had our lunch on board, but I was so small at the time I don’t—very much to my regret, as you may believe—remember one single little thing about it.

Ordinarily, then, I’d have been crazy to see all I could of New York, but as matters stood I was saving all my curiosity for the Myra, and our trip to Uncle Joe’s pirate island. The boys and I had taken to calling it a pirate island because of that story about Morgan’s treasure being buried there; and oh, didn’t we make plans for finding golden ducats and pieces of eight after we reached it. It was all so gorgeously thrilling, it simply didn’t seem possible it could be actually happening to us.

Somehow, being a sea captain’s daughter, I felt as if I ought to know about ships by instinct, but of course I didn’t, and was just as mortifyingly ignorant as Andrée herself, about everything on board, when we went up the gangway and stood at last on the Myra’s beautiful spick-and-span deck.

The Myra was a sailing schooner, with an auxiliary engine for calms, or for coming into port. She had three masts, which Uncle Joe explained were called fore, main and mizzen. The fore-mast is the one up nearest the bow—which is what they call the front of a ship. The main-mast is the big one in the middle, and the mizzen-mast is the one behind—aft is the proper sea word.

I felt quite proud of myself when I’d picked up a few real nautical terms and decided I was going to listen and watch all I could on the trip south and see how much I could remember.

It was a beautiful morning when we cast off our mooring lines (I’m not quite sure that’s the right way to say it, but I’ll let it stand till I can ask Uncle Joe some day, privately). We used the engine for going down the bay, but we hoisted some of the sails, too—one on each mast I think.

So much that was exciting happened in the weeks following our departure from New York, that I’m not as certain of my memory for details of the voyage itself as I’d like to be. Anyhow, I know the sails shone very white and beautiful against the blue sky and the blue water of the bay, and I can still hear how the wind made a pleasant little humming sound in the canvas, and among the sheets (that’s sea-talk for ropes; I learned that the first day, too).

Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie sat in steamer chairs up on deck, on the sunny side, all wrapped up in rugs because it was cold, even for late October. But of course the boys and I scorned the very idea of deck chairs when there was so much to do and see; and even Andrée, for once, preferred being with us, and trailed along at our heels, as much interested as the rest of us in learning all she could about the Myra.

If there wasn’t such a lot to tell about what happened after we reached the Island, I might take the time to describe the week we spent at sea, on the way there. But as it was all quite peaceful, and calm and lovely, with no storms and nothing out-of-the-way from start to finish of the voyage, I’ll just say no one was seasick; that Uncle Charles improved simply miraculously, and that we all grew red and brown with sunburn and salt winds, and were hungrier and happier and thankfuller for Uncle Joe’s scr-umptious idea every day of the trip.

It was very early in the morning—only a little after sunrise—when we got our first glimpse of our Island. I was sound asleep, and dreaming I was back in Braeburn, when someone knocked heavily on the door of the tiny cubbyhole of a stateroom Andrée and I shared between us.

At first the sound mixed itself up with the rest of my dream, but when it was repeated I sat up in bed in a hurry, feeling rather frightened.

“What is it?” I called. “Who’s there?”

“Martin, Miss,” came the answer. “The Captain says to come on deck, please. We’ve lifted the Island.”

And of course, at that, I woke Andrée in a hurry, and we fell out of our bunks and scrambled into our clothes faster than we’d ever made it before.

“We’ll be right up, Martin,” I shrieked. “How near are we? Oh, Martin, wait—what does the Island look like?”

But Martin had gone and we had to wait to satisfy our curiosity until we’d followed him up on deck.

Martin, who was the youngest sailor on board, was only a year older than Dan, but he’d been at sea for three years—two of them on the Myra with Uncle Joe and I guess it sort of amused and pleased him to answer some of our million questions about the ship and his own sea adventures.

We realized Uncle Joe would probably be much too busy that morning to bother with us and our curiosity, but if we could keep near Martin we’d know the meaning of everything that was happening. Martin’s patience was endless, and besides, as I said, I think he liked the feeling of importance our asking gave him.

He had called Dan and Sydney first, so we found the boys on deck ahead of us, perched on the port rail, up near the bow, both of them squinting horribly as they tried to look straight into the glare of the sun which was pretty strong already, even if it was only a little way above the horizon.

It took us all quite a while, squinting and straining our eyes, to pick out the tiny, black speck, higher at one end than the other, that lay directly across the sun’s path.

“It doesn’t look like an island,” Andrée said in a disappointed tone. “It’s more like a ship with one tall mast in the stern.”

“Well, it’s not,” Dan said decidedly. “That’s Sunset Island. Uncle Joe pointed it out to me himself. Here, take the glasses, Gay. The glare doesn’t hurt so much through them.”

He passed them over, and I took a long, careful look to get my bearings, but at first all I could see was pink and gold light on the water, and deeper orange and red clouds all banded round the edges with violet, that reached down to the sea. Then, quite suddenly, the glasses caught it and showed up the place so plainly that I gave a gasp and forgot to breathe again for several seconds.

It looked, through the glasses, like a hilly little island, perhaps five miles, or less, long, with a ridge down the middle from end to end that kept you from seeing across it. The ridge rose at the north end to a small, but quite steep, mountain, pointed at the top like those hills that are always called “Sugar Loaf.” We have several in different parts of New England I’ve been in.

The whole island was thickly grown over with trees; I couldn’t make out the kind from the ship, except along the beach where the trees, growing down to the edge, were some sort of tall palms. I’d never seen a palm before, except in books and travel movies, and now, actually seeing them, rows upon rows of them, blowing in the lovely morning breeze right before me, made the whole thing—island, pirate treasure and all—seem actually real for the first time since Uncle Joe had spoken of his plans to us.

Somehow, deep down inside of me, I hadn’t quite believed in them before. I think I’d gone about all those last ten days afraid I’d wake up any minute and find it was nothing but a dream.

But now I stopped quite suddenly being afraid.

There was the Island, getting nearer and plainer and more like an island every minute. There was the same kind of sandy white beach I’d read of in desert-island stories—oh, ever so different from ordinary seashore beaches at home! And there were the palms beckoning us to hurry, hurry; and the curving line of surf a little distance off the shore, appearing to go completely round the island like a long white wall.

That must be the reef—all desert islands you read of have a reef round them—and though I couldn’t see any break in it, even with the glasses, I knew there must be one somewhere that would let us through to the still water of the lagoon inside. It was too good to be true; only, it was true.

Uncle Joe had the man at the wheel lay a course to pass around the southern tip of the island—the end that didn’t have the little sugar loaf mountain—and as soon as the Myra had rounded this, we could all see there was an opening in the reef, just as we’d known there must be.

It looked pretty narrow for a ship as big as the Myra to pass through, and the water was pounding and fairly boiling over the reef on both sides of the break, so that the idea of missing the entrance by some miscalculation wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

But Uncle Joe had no fear on the subject apparently. There was a steady wind blowing, and the Myra raced through the water like a wild thing running for the sheer joy of it.

It was awfully pretty, and sort of thrilling, but I’ll confess I would have enjoyed it more if the Myra’s nose hadn’t been pointed so squarely at a particularly boiling patch of white water to the left of the entrance. She looked as though her first and main object in the race was to climb right over the reef at that special spot, but when we seemed right on the point of doing it, the man at the wheel put it over hard, and the next moment we were through the break in the white wall, with the water thundering and breaking in clouds of spray on either side of us.

Inside the little lagoon there was hardly a ripple, and the Myra stopped like a big gull lighting, her white sails folding exactly like wings. The water was the blue of a lovely aquamarine ring I once saw at a jeweler’s in Boston, and so clear you could look away-way down to a bottom of clean white sand like that on the beach. And across it, from the island itself, there came to us the spiciest, most delicious smell that was like nothing I’d ever smelled or imagined up to that moment—orange blossoms, and new grass, and just a tang of salt air, and wet seaweed, and hot sand, and lots of other things I hadn’t any names for, all mixed up together. I put up my snub nose the way an inquisitive puppy will, and sniffed and sniffed.

Uncle Joe came along at that moment, and how he did laugh at me. But I was so excited. I was past caring about that.

“How soon can we go ashore?” I begged.

He laughed again and shook his head at me.

“Nobody goes ashore from my ship without breakfast,” he told me. “Depends on you and Andy, here, how soon that’s eaten.”

Usually, as I knew perfectly well, Andrée hated his nickname for her of Andy, but that morning she didn’t notice it. She slipped her hand through my arm.

“Hurry up, Gay, and let’s eat quick, then,” she said, and of course I didn’t need any urging when I found that was the condition on which our going ashore depended.

Half an hour later everybody, including Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles and Reddy, were on deck, to find the long boat already in the water, with Martin and another sailor waiting at the oars. It was only a little bit of a row from the schooner to the beach, and we all went, even Uncle Charles, who insisted he felt like his old self, and couldn’t be tired by anything that morning.

The first thing Syd said when he stepped ashore was, “Do you suppose it was here the pirates landed?”

The boys weren’t interested in anything but buried treasure. I don’t believe they’d so much as noticed that lovely fragrance, or the blueness of the lagoon, and how beautiful the palms looked blowing against the blue up above, and the dazzling white sand in what I’ve heard artists call the foreground of the picture.

Still, I suppose boys are made like that, and there’s no use expecting them to be different. Now with me, even if there proved never to be any treasure, Sunset Island was romantic and exciting enough for me just as it was that morning.

Martin answered Sydney’s question quite seriously.

“If they ever came here at all—which ain’t sure, you know—I guess they came same way we did, unless they owned wings ’stead of boats. There ain’t but one entrance through the reef, the Captain says.”

So that was that.

Well, it wasn’t so silly of the boys after all. It certainly added to the thrill to know that maybe Morgan and his men, carrying their heavy treasure chests, had come across the same sandy beach we were standing on, once upon a time.

The Island hadn’t been inhabited for nearly five years, according to Uncle Joe, and five years in the tropics make lots of changes. The jungle grows quickly when it isn’t fought and kept out and trimmed.

Martin was the one who first found traces of what had been the old road from the beach to the French planter’s house. It was pretty nearly hidden with vines and underbrush now, but it wasn’t quite so dense as the rest of the thicket.

“Martin and I’ll go first and cut a way,” Uncle Joe said. They had brought curious looking axes with them in the boat, that Martin told us were called machetes, and were specially useful in clearing wild undergrowth.

“An’ keep your eyes peeled for snakes,” Martin added, never dreaming what a bomb that single word “snakes” was going to cast into the party behind him.

Aunt Mollie looked startled and gathered her skirts about her, as if she were going wading, but she’s a good little sport, Aunt Mollie, if there ever was one, and she didn’t peep, just started pluckily after Martin, holding on to Uncle Charles’ arm.

Andrée, however, isn’t made of hero-stuff. She repeated the word “snakes” in a gaspy sort of voice, and sat down on the sand, drawing her legs up under her dress.

“Why didn’t you tell me there were snakes before?” she asked and hugged her knees tighter with both arms, rocking back and forth. “I won’t go into that place. I won’t—I tell you I never will! I want to go back to the ship.” And she began to cry. I’d have died before I’d have done that, no matter how scared I might be.

“Spoil sport!” Syd jeered at her. “Cry-baby! All right, go back to the ship. But you can’t go till we come back for you. Sit there on the sand alone, if you want to. We’re going on.”

But of course she wouldn’t do that either, and it took us ten solid minutes, all of us pleading and reasoning in turn and together, before she decided she’d rather brave the snakes in our company in the thicket, then have them come out and surprise her on the beach by herself.

So we made a second start. But some of that first flame of excitement we’d been feeling had been nicely drowned now by Andrée’s silly tears. Uncle Charles can’t stand a scene since he’s been sick, and I could see he was already beginning to feel nervous and upset and half sorry he’d ever attempted the trip ashore. But we kept on walking.

There weren’t any more interruptions, and we found the road freer after a while, and at the end of two hundred yards or so we came out of the trees into a beautiful green clearing, in the center of which stood a low, white house that looked from where we were, as though it were made of stucco or concrete. It had a red tiled roof that had lost quite a lot of the tiles in places, and some heavy vines with bright orange flowers were climbing over the corners and dropping down the white walls.

It was the loveliest place you can imagine and yet—in a way I can’t describe—somehow it was the loneliest as well. A house shows so plainly, you see, when there’s nobody living in it and loving it.

There was a wide tiled terrace in front of it, and a million weeds were growing luxuriously out of the cracks between the tiles in every direction. Most of the windows hadn’t any glass in them, and vines had grown across the openings.

“Well, well,” Uncle Joe said cheerfully. “We’ll have to turn to and do some quick repair work on our new house. It won’t be hard, folks, don’t all look so discouraged. Wait till you see what Martin and I can do to put things shipshape again!”

It was unfortunate that at that moment a huge land crab came scuttling and clattering across the weedy terrace toward us, and seeing us, turned with a funny sidewise jump and rattled off indignantly into the bushes. I didn’t know then it was a land crab, still, he wasn’t a bit a frightening looking creature to me—he was just funny.

But Andrée didn’t see any humor in the situation. She shrieked and clung to Aunt Mollie.

“Let’s live on the ship while we’re here,” she sobbed. “I hate this place!”

“But look here, Andy-girl,” Uncle Joe interposed gently. “We can’t live on the Myra because she’s bound for Montevideo with a cargo from New York. She’ll call back for us in two months or so.”

Andrée faced him with the scaredest eyes I’ve ever seen.

“You—mean,” she demanded, “that we’ll be left stranded here on the Island for two months in—that awful house? That we can’t leave till the ship comes back? Suppose somebody gets sick—suppose—”

“Andrée,” Aunt Mollie said quickly, “don’t be a goose. Nothing’s going to happen. Hush, my dear!”

I saw Uncle Charles’ forehead crease in that old troubled pucker we had come to dread, and he looked, all of a sudden, so terribly worn it frightened me.

“I think—I’m a little tired, Mollie,” he said slowly. “I’d better sit down for a minute or two.”

And he had started out so full of beautiful enthusiasm and a belief that he was almost well!

I wanted to take Andrée by her shoulders and shake her till her silly head wobbled. It would have done both of us good.

CHAPTER III
PLANTER’S HOUSE

WHILE Uncle Charles rested on the tiled terrace, with Andrée to keep him company (she still refused to go inside the house), Uncle Joe tried to unlock the front door with the big brass key Mr. Carreau, the Frenchman, had given him when he bought the Island.

The lock must have rusted badly, however, in the five years it hadn’t been used, for the key simply couldn’t budge it, no matter how hard Uncle Joe tugged and twisted.

So Syd volunteered to climb through one of the broken windows and see if he couldn’t open the door from the other side.

I didn’t say anything, but I made up my mind I was going to see the inside of the house as soon as Sydney did, and when he pulled himself up to the sill I was close at his heels before Aunt Mollie could say I mustn’t.

The window opened on a stairway, so instead of the drop we’d both expected to the floor, we only had to step over the sill and there we were, standing on a beautiful broad staircase that curved down to a perfectly huge hall below.

The hall ran clear through the house, from front to rear, and the second story opened on it with a sort of balcony going all around. You could come out of any of the upstairs rooms and look right down on the hall over a lovely carved mahogany railing.

The floor of the hall was all tiled, in tiny red and white squares, and in the middle of it there was—yes, honestly and truly there was—a fountain in a creamy marble basin sunk in the floor. Of course the fountain wasn’t playing now, but the little figure of a mermaid holding up a shell for the water to pour through was awfully pretty.

Naturally I’d never lived before in a house with a fountain in the main hall, and I fell in love with the idea at my first glimpse of it. I made up my mind the very first repair work (if I had anything to say about it) that Uncle Joe and Martin did, would be to start the mermaid fountain going again. I could imagine how cool and musical the splashing of the water into the basin would sound in that big room.

Sydney, however, wasn’t interested in fountains. He had run down the stairs at once and after some fussing with the catch, he succeeded in getting the front door open, and letting the rest of the party in.

It took us almost an hour to go all through the house, there were so many rooms, and we found so much to stop and exclaim over in every one. Contrary to what the condition of the house outside had led us to fear, we found the rooms in pretty good shape. Of course, where the windows were broken, storms had rained in and done some damage, warping the floor boards just under the windows, and leaving stains in places on the painted walls. But Aunt Mollie was relieved to find things no worse, and that the furniture was apparently unhurt—even the mattresses on the beds were quite dry and ready to be slept on after they’d had the airing in the hot sunshine out on the terrace that she ordered for them.

Uncle Joe had brought a lot of supplies of all sorts on the Myra, not knowing just what we’d need, and among these were several sheets of plate glass, which could be cut to the right size to replace the broken window panes.

He was anxious to move into the house as soon as possible so the Myra could continue on her way, under command of Mr. Hooper, the mate, to deliver her cargo at Montevideo, way down in Uruguay.

After we’d been all through the house, and Uncle Joe had made notes of what we would need from the schooner, we went out on the terrace again and found Uncle Charles looking much less tired, talking cheerfully to Andrée about plans for our stay on the Island.

Andrée seemed a little ashamed of having made a scene, and laid herself out to be specially sweet to Uncle Joe on the walk back to the beach. By the time then that we were back on the Myra again everybody was almost as cheerful as they’d started out.

Uncle Joe took Martin and the ship’s carpenter—a man named Graham—back to the house right after dinner, and Dan and Sydney and I begged to be allowed to go, too, assuring him we could make ourselves much more useful than he thought. We were, too.

We had brought brooms and pails and dust cloths from the Myra, and Syd and I undertook to sweep out the bedrooms. Dan took the mattresses and pillows downstairs to beat and leave in the sun.

By the time darkness came, and we had to stop work and go back to the schooner, all the broken windows had new panes and the whole second floor was scrubbed and swept and dusted as clean as a new whistle. Even with Aunt Mollie to direct us, I’m sure it couldn’t have been done more thoroughly, for though usually I’m fonder of being outdoors than doing housework, this time it seemed just part of an exciting game.

I had thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night for thinking of what we’d done during the day, and the still more wonderful possibilities that lay ahead in the next two months, but after all, I was so tired that I went to sleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

The next morning Aunt Mollie went ashore with us, taking the blankets and linen and the new plated table silver we’d brought from Braeburn. The minute we reached the house we all fell to, with Martin helping us, to clean the first floor, which had a big living room, library and dining room, besides the hall where the fountain was.

Martin was very understanding for a boy, about how much having that fountain play again meant to me, and after tinkering with it for an hour, suddenly he gave a funny sort of grunt, and jumped out of the basin quickly, as a thin, silvery jet of water leaped high in the air from the mermaid’s shell, and came down in a long arc of spray right on his neck.

After that the fountain went to work as nicely and steadily as you please, sending up its jet of water—that took the loveliest colors from the sun shining in the west window across the hall—and letting it fall with a sound like little tinkling fairy bells, into its white marble basin. I felt as though we were living in some old Moorish palace out of a story-book, and I could have stood there beside it, listening to and looking at it all day, if only there hadn’t been so many more important things to do.

We spent that night on the Myra again, but the morning after, we moved ashore bag and baggage, hung up our clothes in the huge mahogany wardrobes in our bedrooms, put the food stores we’d laid in to last till the Myra’s return—canned things, you know, and ham, bacon, tea and coffee in packages—in the big dark storeroom that opened into a little passageway off the dining room. Last of all, we said goodbye to the friends we’d made on the Myra, especially Martin, and watched the schooner spread her white gull-wings and sail away through the passage in the reef, south to Montevideo.

Then, rather soberly for all our anticipations of good times ahead, we walked back, without talking much, through the thicket along the old Planter’s Road, to the house.

It was too late now for anybody to change his or her mind about staying on Sunset Island. There we were and there we must remain, no matter what happened, until the Myra’s sails showed over the horizon two months later bound north from Uruguay.

Well, I, for one, wasn’t a bit sorry. I loved Sunset Island, and the house had quite lost its deserted, lonely look since we’d mended the windows and fixed blinds to shut out the glare, and had smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney.

Of course, like most houses in the tropics, the kitchen wasn’t in the house itself but in a small outbuilding connected with the house by a covered passage. Still the smoke looked awfully cheerful curling up from the chimney out there, as Aunt Mollie set about getting our supper. She hadn’t gone down to see the schooner sail, because she didn’t want to leave Uncle Charles, who was tired, and so the first thing we saw as we trooped up the old drive about sunset was the curling eddies of smoke from Aunt Mollie’s supper-fire.

Unfortunately, our first night in our new home was also our first experience of a real tropical hurricane. The wind came up while we were at supper, but as we were snugly shut indoors, with lots of lamps and candles, we thought it had rather a pleasant sound in the trees around the house.

But by the time we went to bed it had become a furious roar and the wind seemed to take the house itself in its clutch from time to time and shake it with such force that even the boys, finally, began to look worried. It certainly sounded as though nothing, no matter how solid, could hope to last through constant assaults like those.

Then, after a while, we heard a new note in all that uproar; not coming and going like the attacks of the gale, but a steady din that rose in a kind of high crescendo, and immediately after each outburst started upward again.

We children puzzled over it for a while, until Uncle Joe enlightened us.

“It’s the surf on the reef,” he explained. “There’s a wild sea outside—and bound to be wilder before morning.” He looked rather serious, and suddenly I knew he was thinking of the Myra, heading for Montevideo through all that violence of wind and waves. Probably he was wishing, too, he was on board her. You see, the Myra was Uncle Joe’s very own—nobody else owned a share in her, and he loved her, I honestly believe, as if she were a living thing, and a member of his family.

Syd noticed his expression also, and came over to where I was sitting.

“I bet this is a worse storm than we realize, Sis,” he said in a low voice. He’d always called me Sis or Sissie, since I could remember.

“Uncle Joe’s worried sick about the Myra. He’s trying not to let on, but I’m sure of it.”

“I’m afraid he is,” I replied soberly. “Do you suppose this is a hurricane, Syd? They have them down here, you know, and I think I’ve read somewhere that though summer is the regular time for them, they do turn up as late as October.”

We looked at each other very thoughtfully.

“It sounds like it,” Syd declared then. “But don’t for Pete’s sake mention it before Andrée. She’s such a cry-baby she makes me sick. If it wasn’t for the Myra,” he added, “I’d sort of enjoy seeing a hurricane. We’re safe enough here on the Island—unless maybe the roof blows off, though I don’t guess that’ll happen.”

But several times in the night which followed, I woke up with a start, thinking that probably the roof was coming off, after all. It seemed as if the wind simply dug its fingers under the edges and shook it the way a terrier might shake a helpless kitten. For a wonder Andrée slept through it all; I didn’t see myself how she could, but I was mighty glad she managed it. She’d have just about died over some of that wild howling overhead, and as for the pounding of the surf on the reef, it sounded so close that once or twice I half believed the sea was coming clear over Sunset Island.

The worst of the gale—or hurricane, whichever it was—blew itself out toward morning and when I woke after my last nap the sun was already up, and shining beautifully, and there was only a nice, stiff sailing breeze to keep the palms waving their arms.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and as soon as we’d had breakfast, all of us, including Uncle Charles, started out down the road to the beach to see the surf break on the reef.

The lagoon was as smooth as a piece of shiny blue silk, but out on the barrier reef there was the most glorious big surf lashing and pounding.

We sat down on the sand, which was as dry and hot already as if it had just come from being baked, and watched the waves. Uncle Joe had his glasses and we all of us took turns looking out to sea through them.

It was Syd who first noticed the pieces of wreckage floating way out beyond the reef, but being drawn nearer steadily by the tide.

“It looks like the top of a ship’s mast snapped off,” he announced, after a long look. “And there’s a boat—or at least the stern part of one drifting near it. Have a squint at ’em, Uncle Joe?”

Uncle Joe took the glasses back in a hurry. He focussed them on the bit of row boat for so long that Syd and I watched him feeling sort of anxious. Luckily, none of the others seemed to notice.

When he laid them down, his face was grey instead of ruddy brown, but he only walked off quietly up the beach without a word.

Syd snatched the glasses up, and stared hard at the boat in his turn. Then he passed them to me.

“Sis, see if you can read what the name painted on the stern is,” he whispered. “It looks like—no, I won’t say it. You read it for yourself.”

I did. The boat-end had floated so much nearer now that you could almost read it without glasses. It was a piece of one of the life boats from the Myra.

“But it might have been washed overboard in the storm,” I argued, feeling my heart do a queer somersault. “It doesn’t mean anything. Why Syd, you can’t think——”

“I don’t want to,” he said fiercely. “The boat by itself mightn’t mean anything, as you say, Sis. But there’s that big piece of mast, too. I can see Uncle Joe’s half crazy over it.”

“Well, look here, let’s not tell the others,” I said quickly. “They haven’t seen that wreckage evidently.” (Andrée had started them all on a hunt for shells, and Uncle Charles and Reddy were making a race of it to see which could find the most brightly colored ones). “If Uncle Joe doesn’t speak of it, let’s not either. You see, we don’t actually know anything’s happened to the Myra.”

“You’re a good kid, Sissie,” Syd told me approvingly. “I guess there’s no use starting a panic. It isn’t as if we could help things by telling. But you—you understand what it means, don’t you, if the Myra has gone—to the bottom?”

I nodded dumbly, swallowing hard on a big lump in my throat.

Aside from the loss of our good friends on the schooner, if there were no Myra to call for us in two months how were we going to get away from Sunset Island? No one at home knew when we were planning to return. Probably none of them actually knew the Island’s exact latitude and longitude, and on Martinique, where the deed had been recorded, they didn’t know anything about our movements and likely enough cared less.

I remembered, too, Uncle Joe’s saying once that Sunset Island lay well out of the regular lanes of ocean travel. It might be months—or even years—before a ship happened that way, near enough to signal her.

CHAPTER IV
ROSEMARY’S DIARY

THAT first week on Sunset Island was a busy one for all of us. In fact, there was so much to do that Syd and I didn’t have any time to worry about the possibility of the Myra’s not returning to pick us up two months later. And besides, as I said before, we didn’t actually know anything had happened to her, and as long as we weren’t sure—and couldn’t be sure—there was no earthly sense in wasting all that beautiful stay on the Island we’d looked forward to so, in being miserable.

And Uncle Joe evidently felt the same way about it, for he had more plans mapped out for every hour of the day than you’d believe could be crowded into it.

He declared that the first step was to organize us for work, and he appointed Aunt Mollie captain of the indoors team, with the privilege of choosing two assistants. She chose Andrée, and—after a little discussion—Reddy; because she knew I was awfully keen to be on the outdoors team, and Reddy could be very useful drying dishes and running errands up and downstairs. He could even dust quite nicely, if you gave him plenty of time, and didn’t let him do bric-a-brac or high shelves.

Andrée was a real housewife by nature, and could make beds, hang curtains and oil hardwood floors as well as Aunt Mollie herself. She was very neat about everything she did, and very exact. The indoors team, then, agreed to put the house in its former order and repair inside, as far as possible, and keep it so during our visit to the Island.

Uncle Joe was captain of the outdoors team, which of course included all the rest of us, though he sub-divided us into two smaller committees which had to report progress to him.

Uncle Charles and Dan were gradually—without over-taxing Uncle Charles’ returning strength—to get the old paths and the Planter’s Road to the beach cleared for comfortable walking. And Sydney and I were to be a committee on gardens.

I say gardens, because, though Uncle Joe only stipulated that we must have lots of vegetables, I was set on cultivating some of the profusion of tropical flowers that grew wild all over the place.

I could see how simply gorgeous the grounds must have been once upon a time, and how, with a little work, we could have them looking the same way, or nearly as lovely again.

“It’s like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty—under a spell,” I said to Uncle Joe, a little shyly for fear he’d laugh. “I want to wake it all up and make it beautiful again, as it used to be.”

He laughed, but not in the way I’d have minded. Just a nice, understanding jolly kind of laugh that made me grin with him.

“I’m afraid you’re a romantic young lady,” he warned me. “But, after all, I find I like beauty as well as the next man, and a tropic island certainly does call for a flower garden. If you can persuade Syd to undertake the extra work, go to it, my child!”

After I’d argued with him for a few minutes, Syd saw it from my point of view, and we decided we’d have both vegetable and flower gardens, as big as we two could take care of by ourselves, though Uncle Joe promised to lend a hand whenever we needed extra help.

That was to be his job for the present anyhow: to supervise all the different phases of work, and help each team out with his experience and his strong arms whenever and wherever they were most needed.

The first two or three days were taken up with making plans and getting tools and materials and things ready. But by the fourth day, we were all up early and hard at work the minute breakfast was over.

Syd and I had discovered traces of a garden back of the house—pretty jungly and overgrown, of course, but still showing some faint indications of what it had once been, and that encouraged us to begin there and see what we could make of it again.

Let me tell everybody right here that if they ever feel the need of exercise, the kind of exercise that makes your back ache till it feels ready to break in two, and your knees tremble from sheer exhaustion, they can’t do anything more effective than grub up weeds that’ve been growing unchecked for five years in a garden in the tropics. My! but Syd and I were two weary, weary laborers that first evening.

“I feel as if somebody’d been beating me with a hundred clubs,” Syd groaned. And I wasn’t much better off.

But we went right at it again the next morning and by afternoon, though we were tired enough, the stiff, achey feeling had begun to wear off, and by the third evening we were regular veterans.

The garden was showing the results, too, of all our hard work. The weeds were gone, and in their places were nice rich patches of earth which our spades had turned up, all fresh-smelling and sweet.

This had been a flower bed, and quite a number of blossoms I didn’t know the names of, but evidently annuals—and hardy ones at that, to withstand all the choking pressure of those weeds—were blooming today as proud and utterly gorgeous as they ever could have looked when the first gardener planted them.

Uncle Joe had offered to start clearing a big patch for the vegetable seeds we’d brought South with us, while we were working on the other bed, which helped a lot.

I wondered a little whether he was so specially anxious about getting a big vegetable crop because he was afraid the Myra was never going to sail in through the opening in the reef again. In that case we’d need all the food we could raise, though it was comforting to remember that I’d heard, or read somewhere, that no one ever starved in the tropics, because things grew so easily and fast. I certainly hoped that was true.

In the meantime, Aunt Mollie and her team had accomplished real wonders inside the house, and Dan and Uncle Charles had several paths cleared, which made a most surprising difference in the homelike appearance of the place.

Of course we were all fairly on pins and needles with curiosity to explore the Island, but beyond a few short walks, Uncle Joe wouldn’t hear of our doing anything that would interfere with the tasks he’d assigned to each of us.

“Finish the planting of the garden, children, and get the house shipshape and livable,” he would tell us, shaking his grey head. “Then we’ll go treasure-hunting to your hearts’ content.”

And we had to be satisfied with that promise.

It was not until our vegetable garden was spaded up, and planted in neat rows, and our reclaimed flowers were blooming beautifully, while waiting for the seeds we’d put in to come up and join them, that Andrée made a discovery indoors which was to go a great way toward making our stay on the Island more exciting even than we’d expected.

It happened at about the end of our third week on Sunset Island. Syd and I were grubbing weeds in the yam patch, for in the tropics you can’t give the weeds—or yourself—a breathing spell, unless you want all the original hard work to do over again.

I had my back to the house, but I saw Syd straighten up suddenly, and whistle.

“Hey, look at Andy!” he said in a surprised voice. “Something’s happened to get her excited good and plenty. She’s running, and she’s forgotten to put on her hat.”

We had teased Andrée a lot about her hat. No matter what hour of the day, early morning when it was still cool, midday or sunset, she had never once since we landed on the Island, ventured outside the house without her big Panama shade hat.

Of course the boys pretended she was afraid of freckles and sunburn for her complexion, but I think she was really afraid of sunstroke. It seems some silly person at home had warned her of the terrible things the sun did to you in the tropics, and the poor kid was half scared to death, though I only found that out much later. So when Syd said she’d forgotten her hat, I turned around in a hurry.

Andrée flung herself down on the grass at the edge of the garden and panted. Her blue eyes were shining and she had the loveliest color in her cheeks that matched exactly one of the climbing roses in the garden.

“Mother and I have been cleaning out the storeroom—not the one where we put the provisions, but the big one in the wing, where the old furniture and the trunks are,” she announced breathlessly. “And way back in a corner—I found an old chest with the most wonderful clothes in it. Silks and brocades and velvets—my stars!” Andrée breathed ecstatically, clasping her hands. “You never saw such things, Gay! Mother says that they’re what is called Empire, the style of dress the Empress Josephine introduced. Come and look at them. I wanted to get you before we went down deeper than the top layer. They’ll be grand for dressing up.”

Of course I dropped my trowel and jumped to my feet double-quick. Even Syd decided he’d come, too; not, as he explained carefully, that he cared for clothes, no matter how ancient or fine they were; but because there might be other interesting discoveries in the chest.

Neither Andrée nor I had thought of that, but we saw at once the possibility, and scurried back to the house in a flutter of anticipation.

We found Aunt Mollie and Red still in the storeroom, before the chest, which was of some dark, very hard wood that looked like ebony, and had brass hasps and lock.

Andrée had been right. I’d never even dreamed of anything as lovely as those old, high-waisted gowns with their narrow skirts and short puffed sleeves. There was one blue and silver brocade that almost took my breath away it was so exquisite.

It had a knot of blue forget-me-nots and tiny pink roses, made of velvet, on the bodice, and there was a blue feather fan with ivory sticks lying near it, and the wee-est blue slippers without heels and laced with silver ribbons.

Andrée looked at the whole collection longingly, and sighed.

“She—whoever owned these things, I mean—must have been little like you, Gay,” she said. “I couldn’t get into that dress in a thousand years.”

I lifted it out of the chest very, very carefully, and as I did so something small and flat, rolled up in a big white silk kerchief, slipped out of its folds and fell to the floor.

Syd picked it up and unwrapped a little book, bound in ribbed white silk that had grown frayed and yellow with time. It was tied with a white silk cord that had tiny yellow-white rosebuds for tassels, and on the cover were the words in gold, old-fashioned curly-cue lettering:

Rosemary Carreau—Her Diary
and under them the date: “1804.”

“My stars!” said Andrée again, breathlessly. “She must have been Mr. Jean Carreau’s grandmother.”

“His great-grandmother more likely,” I corrected her. “Look at the date—over a hundred and twenty years ago!”

“Maybe it was his great-great,” suggested Syd, grinning. “Don’t scrap, you girls. Let’s sit down and read it out loud. It may tell us all kinds of things we’d like to know about our island.”

Aunt Mollie looked sort of troubled.

“But I’m not sure we ought to read it, children,” she objected. “A diary’s a private matter, and it seems to me only one of Rosemary’s descendants ought to open it. Sometimes there are—well, family secrets in a diary, you know. Perhaps Mr. Jean Carreau wouldn’t like our doing it.”

“Then he ought to have taken it away with him,” I argued, in a disappointed tone. If Aunt Mollie said we mustn’t, it was going to be simply fearful to go on living in the house with all those thrilling secrets of the past locked up in that little white book, and us not having a peep at them. Besides, wasn’t it Sunset Island history and wasn’t the Island our very own now? Or at least our very own uncle’s very own.

Then I had a bright thought.

“Can’t we leave it to Uncle Joe to decide?” I begged. “After all, it’s his house, and I guess he bought this chest from Mr. Carreau just as much as all the rest of the furniture.”

Aunt Mollie finally agreed to that, and Reddy was sent post-haste to find Uncle Joe.

He came back in about five minutes with not only Uncle Joe, but Dan and Uncle Charles as well. Reddy had blurted out a confused account of what we’d found and roused their curiosity to boiling pitch.

After some arguing back and forth, Uncle Joe decided that Mr. Carreau wouldn’t have left any very private family papers behind, and that—since no one knew where he was now to ask about it—we might start reading the little book, but must stop if we came to anything of a private nature, in which case, he added gravely, we would all, of course, be on our honor never to repeat what we had stumbled on inadvertently.

“But I don’t believe there’s anything there he’d mind our knowing,” he informed us, after he had turned over a number of the pages, and read a bit here and there. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s all right to go ahead,” he said, and handed the book to Andrée, since she had been the first one to discover the old chest. His eyes twinkled at us as he added, “I caught a glimpse of a sentence or two about old Morgan’s treasure that’ll probably interest you youngsters. From what I can make out, this Rosemary Carreau was the wife of the first Carreau to settle on Sunset Island. She speaks of being half-French and half-English herself, and living on Martinique before her marriage. Her mother who went back to England then, appears to have asked her daughter to keep a diary in her new home, in order not to forget the English tongue. Judging by stray specimens I’ve noted here and there, Mrs. Rosemary’s English was quite French, if I’m allowed to be Irish for once.”

We laughed, and Syd put in eagerly: “But what does it say about the treasure, Uncle Joe? The girls may like wading through all that fine, scrawly looking writing, but I want to know about the treasure first.”

Uncle Joe reached for the diary and began flipping over the pages.

“It was somewhere toward the end—here it is.” He paused teasingly and studied our strained and anxious expressions with his grin, that’s as young as Reddy’s. Then he began to read:

“‘My dear husband, knowing of how my always interest in the legend concerning the treasure of the great and so-dreadful buccaneer, Sir Henry Morgan, which is connect with this our Island where we now live, did give me for souvenir of our wedding day the map he had from the English sailor on his gallant barque that died at Saint Pierre’—Hold on,” Uncle Joe gasped, “this is growing complicated with a vengeance. Was it the ‘gallant barque’ or the ‘English sailor’ who died at Saint Pierre? Never mind, somebody died and gave a map to the first owner of Sunset Island, or I suppose I should say he gave it to the owner and then died. I’m getting as confused as poor Rosemary. Still, the main point is, there’s, a map, and it was in Rosemary’s possession as a souvenir—quaint word that—of her wedding day.”

“Oh, please go on!” we shouted in chorus. A map! It was getting more gorgeous by the minute, this Island of ours.

Uncle Joe obediently resumed his reading.

“‘It is a strange map—very old, very yellow and most merveilleux in spelling. The English sailor was a very old man when he came to die, and for cause of favors my dear husband had showed to him, he delivered into his hands the map—his most treasure possession. It is supposed to have been made, a copy, by a traitor among the buccaneers following Sir Henry Morgan. The man meant surely to return and retrieve part of the treasure, but, hélas! Morgan did discover his act, and punished it by a death most terrible. One buccaneer who acted as guard to the man condemned was kind to him, and the poor wretch gave to him in thanks the dangerous map, Morgan never discovering. That guard was the great-grandfather of the English sailor from whom my husband had, in turn, the very map. It lies in my lap, as I write. But though of a rare curiosity to behold, I much fear me—and so does my dear husband—that the thief-buccaneer was not so accurate in his copying as could be desire. There is no sign of Morgan’s great treasure—not one little moidore or golden guinea near the spot it marks. But I keep the map for a souvenir.’ There’s that word she’s so fond of again, and that’s all she says about the treasure.”

“Well, but,” I exclaimed, “where is this map? We—we’ve simply got to find it. Maybe we could read it differently, or maybe—oh, anyway, we must have it.”

“Perhaps it’s here in the chest somewhere,” Uncle Joe offered thoughtfully.

But it wasn’t. We took every gown, and wrap, and piece of lace out of that ebony chest of Rosemary’s; we shook them all out, and felt them over carefully, inch by inch. But there was no “strange map, very old, very yellow,” anywhere to be found among them.

We sat back and stared at one another, solemnly, with very woebegone faces. It was simply maddening to be so near and yet so hopelessly far from our one and only clue to the secret of Sunset Island.

CHAPTER V
AN EXPLORING PARTY

IT was soon after the excitement of our finding Rosemary’s old diary, and our unsuccessful hunt for the map it described, that Uncle Joe decided the time had come for us to explore the Island.

At first his idea had been for just Dan, Sydney and himself to go, but the rest of us set up such a howl of dismay, he had to revise his plans.

Even Aunt Mollie and Andrée declared they weren’t going to be left out of the fun, and promised they wouldn’t mind hard walking, or getting tired, or anything. While as for Uncle Charles, he insisted that sleeping out of doors in that warm balmy air was exactly what he needed to entirely complete his cure. Dan and he had done such steady work on the path-weeding lately that Uncle Charles said his muscles had grown nearly as hard as when he was a track-man at college, and offered to bet us he’d come pretty close to tiring any of us out at tramping over rough ground.

So, in the end, the entire party started out one morning just before sunrise, in order to cover as much distance as possible before the heat of the day set in. We each had a small pack strapped over our shoulders except Aunt Mollie, who wasn’t allowed to carry anything but a heavy stick to help her in walking, and a small canvas bag on her arm, which she jokingly called “Mother Robinson’s bag” after the famous one in “The Swiss Family Robinson” that contained such a marvelous assortment of necessary articles.

Aunt Mollie wouldn’t tell us what was in her bag, but it looked quite fat, though it didn’t weigh much when I lifted it once. She informed us mysteriously we’d find out, all in good time.

Mr. Jean Carreau had told Uncle Joe the Island was about five miles long by three wide, and, as we wanted to make the circuit of it on the beach first, before striking inland at the hilly end, we figured we had about a sixteen-mile walk ahead of us.

By taking things easily, on account of the heat and Uncle Charles, Aunt Mollie and little Reddy, we’d probably average about five miles, or possibly six, a day, which meant three nights, at least, out in the open.

I had always longed to sleep out-of-doors—right under the sky, you know, without even a tent to shut me in, and I guess probably I was the most excited member of the party when we started.

Dan and Syd had camped out in the woods for a week every summer, back home, and Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie had done it often when they were first married, while Uncle Joe was as used to sleeping without a roof over him as with one.

Andrée seemed a little doubtful, I thought, as to just how much she was going to enjoy the new experience, but she was very sweet about wanting to do her full share of carrying our camp stuff, and made no fuss over snakes or the other crawling creatures she was afraid of meeting.

Perhaps one reason for that was that we kept to the beach, and there wasn’t much chance of running into anything alive there, unless it were a turtle or some kind of stranded jelly-fish left by the tide.

It was beautiful, walking along the water’s edge, on the firm, wet sand in the coolness of early morning. On account of the barrier reef that went all the way round the Island there wasn’t any surf on the beach, just a pleasant gentle little lapping sound of ripples curling against the shelving sand.

The sky was all lit up with the glory of the sunrise—pink and gold and purple and flaming red-orange along the clouds, and then quite suddenly the big red ball of the sun poked its edge over one monstrous, darker cloud to look at us.

We walked south along the beach, steadily, until the sun grew too warm for comfort, which was about ten o’clock. By that time we had rounded the little promontory which up to then had cut off our view of the beach beyond it, from our landing place.

The trees grew closer to the water at this point, and seemed freer of underbrush, so Uncle Joe picked it as a good place to camp until afternoon. Dan and he took their machetes and went ahead of us to clear a space big enough for us to spread our blankets in, in the shade. Also, to relieve Andy’s fears of snakes, they made a thorough search of the thicket around the little clearing and pronounced it free from dangerous inhabitants.

At first we were all glad just to sprawl out on the blankets and rest, but after our backs and legs had stopped aching (walking on sand is terribly hard on the muscles, till you’re used to it), we youngsters began to get restless. We hadn’t been idle as long as that since we left the Myra, and we couldn’t seem to settle down to waiting, with nothing to do, for four or five hours till it was time to go on to our next camping place for the night.

But Aunt Mollie didn’t let us fidget long. She picked up the little canvas bag we’d been so curious about, and opening it, took out a whole bunch of neatly sharpened pencils and a large pad of yellow paper, sheets of which she passed around to everybody.

“You’ll have to contrive something hard to write on,” she said. “A flat piece of driftwood, or your packs—whatever you like. But we’re going to hold a sort of outdoor gypsy school. Your Uncle Joe and I have been talking it over, and we decided that there ought to be a few lessons—even on Sunset Island—and one of the courses we elected for you is astronomy. Uncle Joe, who knows the stars like old friends, from his ship’s bridge, is hereby appointed teacher, and it seemed to us that tonight, when we’re all going to sleep without anything between us and the planets and constellations, would be a very good time to begin learning to know them all by name. What do you think of the plan?”

As this sounded quite a different thing from ordinary stuffy school rooms and exercise books, we were enthusiastic about trying it, and Uncle Joe, with our help, cleared a patch of sandy soil about three feet square, smoothing it out all flat and hard.

Then we sat about in a circle, and with a sharp-pointed twig he began to draw little crosses in the sand, each of which represented a star, or planetary system, and we copied them off, in exactly their positions and relations to each other, on our yellow sheet writing after each cross the name of the star as he told it to us.

After we’d studied them for a few minutes, he made us reverse the papers, then he’d quiz us in turn on the names, jumping here and there over the three-foot sky map.

It was great fun, when we began tripping each other up and asking questions about what lay beyond the limits of our map, and from that we got Uncle Joe reminiscing about sea days, when he first learned to know the stars.

Before we knew it, it was time for our noon meal; then we all felt hot and sleepy and took cat-naps for an hour, after which we were ready to pack up and continue our exploring tour.

That night we camped on the warm sand beyond the high water-line, and slept as cosily, wrapped in our blankets, under the eyes of our new friends, the stars, as if we’d been in our beds at Planter’s House, now more than six miles behind us.

The second day of our walking trip was much like the first, except that the beach we found on the opposite side of the Island was much richer in beautiful and unusual shells than our side.

We could hardly go on walking at times, we kept finding so many lovely things to hold us at every step, and we had to throw simply pounds and bushels of shells away from time to time, because we accumulated so many more than we could possibly carry.

That night we slept on the beach again, and Uncle Joe held a class on shells and the queer sea animals that live in them, before he went to sleep.

All the morning after we made a game of this; so many counts to anybody who knew the name of a shell he or she picked up; of course allowing more credits for the rarer shells, or the more brilliantly colored ones.

Andrée, to everybody’s surprise—including her own—came out with the most credits, but she took her honors so modestly and prettily that we couldn’t begrudge her the prize of a tiny carved silver conch shell Uncle Joe had bought years before in India, and which he always wore on his watch chain.

We had often admired the lovely, delicate fluting on the shell, and Andy was tickled to pieces, now, as you may imagine, actually to own it. Aunt Mollie found her a length of narrow black watch ribbon in her Mother Robinson bag, and Andy promptly hung the shell around her neck for a good luck piece.

That third day we made such progress, having by that time got our muscles hardened up a bit, that Uncle Joe told us if we kept on an extra hour or two after our usual camping time, we’d be able to sleep in Planter’s House instead of outdoors that night.

But somehow, we all wanted one more camp, and voted to stop walking earlier and find a specially good place. Then we could start for home about sunrise next morning, and be in the house before the heat commenced.

All the way, after our noon rest, we searched the jungle growth along the beach, each of us hoping to be the one to discover the ideal camp site for the end of our hike.

Of course we realized that maybe nobody would find it, and we’d have to be content with the beach for the third time, but since we’d sort of formed a habit of making a game of everything we did on this trip, we made a game of “Find-the-Camp-Site” too.

And sure enough, we did find it, or rather Reddy did—quite unintentionally.

We were at the hilly end of the Island, where the slope, instead of being a gradual one, went up pretty steeply almost from the edge of the beach, in a series of bush-grown cliffs.

The boys, including Reddy, had been amusing themselves for half an hour or so, by climbing up the sides of these cliffs a little way, and jumping down on the soft sand below, daring each other every time to go higher and higher.

All at once there was a frightened scream from Reddy, and he disappeared backward into the low brush, exactly as if the earth had opened suddenly and swallowed him up.

Everybody exclaimed and scrambled up the cliff, catching at vines and bushes to help them go faster. But when we got to where Reddy had been, there was no one to be seen—only a big black hole in the side of the hill, with some loose sandy earth sliding down the sides of it.

But if we couldn’t see Reddy, we could hear him howling vigorously, so we knew he was alive, and not far away.

Syd got there before anyone else, and flung himself flat on the ground, with his head thrust into the hole through which the smallest member of our expedition has disappeared.

“Reddy!” he shouted. “It’s all right; we’re coming. How far down do I drop? Stop bawling, kid. You’re not hurt really.”

We heard a sound like sniffing, and guessed, with huge relief, that Reddy was more frightened than hurt after all.

By the time we were near enough to look into the hole, Syd had let himself down, feet first, into the darkness inside, holding with both hands to a particularly tough vine that hung over one of the edges. Then he, too, had disappeared, but the next moment his voice came up to us excitedly:

“Sa-ay, there’s a huge big cave in here, folks! Uncle Joe, reach me down your pocket torch, please, I want to look the place over before any more of you come down.”

Uncle Joe complied, and crowding close about the opening, we could see the flicker of the flashlight moving about like a giant firefly, as Syd and Reddy circled the cave.

Then Syd called to us again:

“Come on in, everybody, the water’s fine! We’ve got our camp site all right! There’s a big cave here, as dry and nice as you’d want, with a sandy floor. Be careful to hold on to that vine coming down, and it’s not much of a drop.”

One by one, beginning with Gay Annersley, and ending with Uncle Joe, who had stayed behind to steady the rest of us down the steep slope, we climbed carefully down to the level of the cave floor.

As soon as our eyes became accustomed a bit to the dimness inside, we could see that it was indeed, as Syd had said, a huge cave.

The floor was soft sand, cool and clean when you touched it, and as smooth as if it had lain there undisturbed through centuries of time. The roof was so far above our heads we couldn’t see it.

“Why, you could camp a whole ship’s company in here,” Uncle Joe said in a surprised tone. And added thoughtfully, “You’d never in the wide world find them either, unless they meant you to.”

A sudden thought made my heart beat so violently it seemed to jump right up into my throat.

“What ship’s company?” I stammered eagerly. “Not—oh, Uncle Joe, you don’t suppose it could have been—Morgan’s?”

CHAPTER VI
A NIGHT IN THE CAVES

WHEN I gasped that breathless question at Uncle Joe about the possibility of the cave having been used by Morgan’s men, there was a sort of stunned silence for a moment. Then Dan and Sydney burst out with a regular war-whoop, in which Reddy—who by now had forgotten he’d believed himself hurt by his fall—joined shrilly.

“Boys, for goodness sakes, do stop that awful racket,” I begged. “I want to know what Uncle Joe thinks about it.”

I had to put my hands over my ears for a second or two, till things quieted down, and then I looked up at Uncle Joe and repeated my question.

“It might have been—oh, Uncle Joe, say it would be just exactly the kind of place to find buried treasure. Because, really it is!”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said cautiously, “never having buried any. It certainly looks like a pretty good spot to hide anything, from a band of smugglers to pieces of eight. We’ll camp here tonight, anyway, and have a look-see. But there may be a dozen other better hiding places on the Island that we haven’t found yet.”

“Not so nice and convenient to the beach though,” I said firmly, for I couldn’t bear to give up the notion, or even admit a doubt of its probability until we’d at least made a thorough search.

“Why—don’t you see, Uncle Joe, how easily the pirates could have brought the stuff ashore in boats, and carried it these few hundred feet up here to a perfectly safe secret cave like this? Treasure is heavy, you know,—it would be so much easier to bury it as near the landing place as they could. Very likely they stumbled on the cave by chance, just as we did, and then realized it was exactly what they needed.”

“You’d make a great little lawyer,” Uncle Joe laughed. “However, it’s all right with me. You’ve convinced me Sir Henry Morgan’s golden loot is lying somewhere near us at this very moment—that is, until we don’t find it.”

I pouted, but had to grin a little, too. Ever since I can remember I’ve been teased about my enthusiasms. Still, I don’t really mind. Who wants to be a lettuce—cool and green and undisturbed by nice things and sorry things both.

But the boys were as excited as I was, this time.

Aunt Mollie, who had taken possession of the flashlight, and was busily exploring the corners of the cave, now gave a little exclamation that brought us all running to her.

“Look what I’ve found!” she cried delightedly. “Another cave—light, too!”

Sure enough, there was a slightly smaller cave opening out of the big one, that was lighted quite brightly by a long narrow aperture up near the roof, which probably looked out into another clump of bushes higher up the cliff.

The floor was as dry and sandy as in the outer cave, and as a room it was certainly more cheerful in there, though perhaps not so mysterious.

“This will make a nice bedroom for you and the girls, Mollie,” Uncle Joe said at once. “Pirates or no pirates, these caves are a great find considered as a camp site. We might even fit them up as a permanent headquarters for outdoor picnics and hiking parties. Let’s go and collect blankets and the rest of the stuff.”

We hurried back to the outer cave and, as the first step in making camp, Uncle Joe, Dan and Sydney began to enlarge the entrance and pile the loose earth removed in doing it inside the cave to form a narrow sloping path from the floor level to the mouth. This certainly made entering and leaving camp easier, especially for Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles. Then they cut down some of the thickest bushes and underbrush around our new doorway, which let more light into the cave, changing the interior from almost dusk to a cool and pleasant twilight.

We cooked supper on the beach because there wasn’t any proper vent for the smoke inside the caves if we’d lighted a fire in there. But as soon as the meal was over, instead of lingering round the fire and talking, as we usually did, we washed up our few plates, cups and cooking utensils at top speed, so we might hurry back to our latest find.

It was while Syd and I were scrubbing our one and only camp frying pan—both of us working at it together, because Aunt Mollie insisted on its being scrupulously clean and shining—that Syd brought up the subject of the Myra’s return. By a sort of unspoken understanding we hadn’t mentioned it since that morning after the hurricane when we spied that piece of snapped-off mast and the wrecked lifeboat floating beyond the reef. I think we felt, instinctively, that putting our fears into words made them seem that much more real and alarming.

But now, as if the bare possibility of our being suddenly rich had made him think of home, Syd spoke, rather hesitantly.

“Gay, if we don’t find Morgan’s cache before the Myra comes—” he broke off, and I said softly, “If she comes, Syd dear.”

He gulped and tried to turn the sound into a laugh.

“Well, we’ll try to believe she will till we know—she won’t. What do you think Uncle Joe believes, Gay?”

I shook my head and suddenly the lovely twilight sky and the bright reflections on the waters of the lagoon blurred together in a silvery mist of tears across my eyes.

“Of course I haven’t said anything to him, Syd, because we promised each other not to. But I’ve been watching him a lot——”

“So’ve I,” Syd said, in a low voice, huskily.

“And when he doesn’t think anyone’s noticing him,” I went on, more slowly, “he looks so troubled, and—and sort of anxious. And remorseful, someway. Do you know, I think he’s blaming himself, inside, all the time, for bringing us down here and letting us in for what we may be up against if the Myra doesn’t—come back. And Syd, if he’s really feeling that—and he is—it’s because he lost hope of the Myra after seeing those pieces of wreckage that morning.”

Syd nodded without speaking. I think I had half expected him to contradict me, and this unprotesting agreement with my words came with a funny sense of shock. It was like finding those floating bits of wreckage all over again and realizing what they might mean to us.

All the delicious excitement of our discovery of the caves faded out in an awful numbness that closed my throat up uncomfortably. My heart began to pound against my ear-drums.

“Oh, Syd,” I said forlornly. “Oh—Syd!”

He put his hand on my arm, and squeezed it hard, which—from Syd—meant more than a whole speech from most people.

“We’d better not talk about it, Sis,” he said, quite decidedly. “I oughtn’t to have started the subject. But I was thinking how—how queer it would be if we really did manage to find old Morgan’s treasure and then couldn’t ever get away to—to spend it.”

The others had gone up to the caves without waiting for us, and looking after them, we could see a cheerful little glow of light stream suddenly out of the black entrance-hole; the lantern, probably, that Uncle Joe had insisted on bringing with us and Dan had carried in addition to his own pack. It certainly would come in usefully now, to make the caves more cheerful that evening.

We packed up the pans and as many of the dishes as Aunt Mollie had left for us, and made our way up the steep hillside to the glow of lantern light. But half way up, something dark, crouching in the bushes, stopped us. Syd went over to investigate and I heard him say, in a startled voice, “Why, it’s Andy—crying. Andy, you hurt anywhere? Are you sick?”

He sounded frightened and I ran over to them as fast as my legs would carry me.

Andrée was lying in a huddled little heap, her face down in her arms, and her shoulders shaking in convulsive heaves. Funny, strangled sounds came from her that were more like a hurt baby crying and trying to catch its breath than a big girl of fourteen. It made me feel toward her just as I would have if she’d really been a baby in trouble,—all shaken up inside and sympathetic and anxious to comfort her.

I put both my arms around her and got her head out of the leaves and brambles onto my shoulder, and hugged her close for a few minutes, without trying to say a word. She felt so soft and scared and limp in my arms that I had to put my face down against her wet cheek, and kiss her two or three times, hard.

“Andy, what’s the matter?” I asked her after I’d waited a while, and she seemed to be crying more quietly. “Tell Gay, honey. Syd and I’ll do anything—please, Andy!”

She wouldn’t say a word at first, though she still held on to me with a desperate sort of hold, but little by little the sobs quieted down and at last she pushed me back from her and sat up, rubbing her eyes with both fists—which again was exactly like a frightened baby.

“Nothing’s the m-matter,” she said, not too steadily. “I’m such a goose about getting scared—you know I do, Gay. That’s all it was. It—it just came suddenly. I was s-scared of the dark and—and those c-caves—” she caught her breath, and I felt a shiver go through her.

“Oh, Andy, you’re not afraid of the caves,” I cried in a dismayed tone. “Why, we’ve been all over them—in every single corner, and there’s not a thing to hurt you.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of things in the caves,” she interrupted me quite scornfully.

“But you said—” I began.

“No, I didn’t,” she insisted. “I only said I got scared easily. I—I like the caves. I’d much rather sleep in there than out on the beach, as we did the other nights. Come on, Mother’ll be waiting for us, Gay. I’ll carry the coffee pot.”

She turned and started up the cliff at a brisk climb, leaving Syd and me to follow, both of us so puzzled by her contradictory words and actions that we hadn’t even a word left to comment on them to each other.

The cave was so enormous that Uncle Joe’s lantern only succeeded in making a round splash of yellow light in the very middle of it, leaving the walls far-off patches of greyish dusk.

But Aunt Mollie and Red had spread all our gay scarlet and tan camping blankets in a circle on the sandy floor around the lantern, as if it were a camp fire, and we sat down, each on our own particular blanket, in our own particular attitude of comfort, ready for the latest of Aunt Mollie’s study hours. She’d had a new one for us at each halt on the entire trip.

That night was the best of all—for me, anyhow. It was supposed to be a history class, but it was the most fascinating way to study history I’d ever tried.

Aunt Mollie called it the “History of the Spanish Main” and it was all about the part of the world we were in right then—the West Indies, the Caribbean Sea, and the coasts of Central and northern South America. She and Uncle Charles told us things they’d read in books and histories, but Uncle Joe’s were the sea stories that sailors hand down to one another in the long, lonely voyages in sailing ships. There were pirates ancient and modern—rum-runners and smugglers of our present day, and the deliberate losing of a ship at sea for the insurance money the owners could collect on her, when she’d stopped being a paying investment as a trader or freighter. I wish you could have heard the scorn Uncle Joe boomed out in his big voice for the captains who let themselves be bribed by owners to commit that lowest-of-all crimes in the sea calendar.

And then, there were stories of the old pirates and buccaneers we’d read about at school in our history books—Captain Kidd, and Blackbeard, and Sir Henry Morgan who was the one we kept the tales going about longest of all; and half a dozen others. They were wicked, cruel men, of course, every last one of them, and we’d have hated terribly to have met them in the flesh on our beautiful Sunset Island, but now we drank in the old sea yarns about them that have come to be sort of legends. Wouldn’t anyone have been thrilled!

There we sat, about our lantern fire, in the very cave, the very circle on the sandy floor where—maybe—once upon a time nearly four hundred years ago Morgan himself and his men had sat before us, and counted pieces of eight, Spanish doubloons and moidores. (I don’t know how much or what nationality a moidore is even now, but I adore the sound of the word!)

And then, much too soon, the evening was over and it was time for our blanket beds.

The boys had brought in soft brush and spread three thick luxurious piles of it in the inner cave for Aunt Mollie, Andy and me. And when we had laid our blankets over them, we couldn’t have envied the richest millionaire at home in the States his most expensive mattress and box springs.

I dropped right off to sleep at once, I was so tired, and I don’t know how long I had slept when I found myself broad awake again, listening to some faint, smothered sort of sound quite near me that was repeated steadily over and over again.

For a while I couldn’t place it, and raised my head on my elbow to listen harder. Then I reached for the flashlight that lay on the floor beside me and turned its light cautiously into the darkness where the sound came from. It was Andy, sobbing into the thick folds of her blanket she’d pulled over her face.

I let the light go out, and reaching over put my arm around her.

“Andy,” I whispered. “Andy, you’ve got to tell me what’s the matter.”

An uneasy little suspicion had occurred to me that she might possibly have overheard Syd’s and my conversation about the Myra down on the beach after supper. If she had, poor kid, it would be natural enough if the knowledge of the uncertainty confronting us had made her cry. But it wasn’t natural for Andy to keep a thing like that to herself, and cry over it in the dark, alone. So I decided it wasn’t that, but I kept getting more and more puzzled as to what could be wrong.

She pulled away from me, shaking her shoulder free of my arm with a little shrug that I knew of old meant “let me alone.”

“Go to sleep, Gay, I’m only—h-h-homesick,” she whispered in a cross voice. But somehow I didn’t mind the crossness as I’d ordinarily have done—being rather quick-tempered myself—because, in spite of its crossness, it was the forlornest and most miserable voice you can imagine.

I deliberately moved my blanket closer, spreading it on the sand of the cave floor, because I was afraid if I moved the brush, too, I’d surely wake Aunt Mollie.

“I’m going to sleep over nearer, where you can grab me in the night if you wake again,” I said cheerfully. And when she didn’t answer I set about scooping some of the sand together in a little mound for a pillow.

There was a small flat pebble in the sand I was sifting through my fingers, and I was about to toss it to one side, so I shouldn’t hurt my cheek against it, when something tiny and round at one end of it moved loosely as I touched it. It felt exactly like the little ring in the top of a watch to snap the chain into.

I twisted about so my back was toward Aunt Mollie, and using my body to screen the light from her, I held the pebble-thing I had in my hand under the light of the electric torch.

It wasn’t a pebble at all, or, if it was, it was a golden pebble that sent back a flicker of sparks at the flashlight.

It was about the size of a United States fifty-cent piece, only a second look showed me it wasn’t round, but heart-shaped, with a gold ring at the top to slip a chain through. Andrée, seeing the light and hearing me give—I suppose I must have—a little grunt of astonishment, turned over quickly, and together we studied the heart-shaped thing in the light of the torch.

“Is it a—a piece of eight, do you suppose?” she asked in an awed voice, but remembering to speak softly because of Aunt Mollie.

“No!” I whispered back; my breath was coming in gasps as if I’d been running a race. “Don’t you see—it’s a locket! A gold locket.”

We both bent closer to stare at our surprising treasure-love lying on my shaking, outstretched palm.

“It’s got a name engraved on it,” Andrée murmured, and put out the tip of a finger that was trembling as hard as my own.

I held the locket nearer to the flashlight, and together we made out the name, engraved in flourishing old-fashioned lettering that looked somehow familiar.

It was “Rosemary.”

CHAPTER VII
WE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE

OF course after finding the locket, Andy and I lay awake a long time and talked our discovery over in whispers. But at last weariness won out over excitement and we fell asleep long before either of us meant to drop such a fascinating subject.

In the morning we showed the locket to the rest of the party, and the thing had to be thrashed out all over again.

By using Uncle Joe’s thinnest knife blade we finally pried the pretty trinket open, and found inside a lock of straight, very black hair, which we assumed to be that of Monsieur Carreau, “my dear husband.” Also a stiff and yellowed orange blossom, pressed flat—probably from Rosemary’s bridal bouquet. We wondered whether the blossoms had come from the grove on Sunset Island.

Aunt Mollie thought—and we finally agreed with her—that the cave probably had been the spot marked on the English sailor’s map and that Rosemary had lost the locket while conducting the unsuccessful search party the diary told about.

But since the diary had also stated that they had hunted most thoroughly, we could only come, reluctantly enough, to the same conclusion Rosemary had: that the buccaneer who made the copy of the map, had not been as accurate as he ought to have been, considering all that was at stake; and that the treasure was not here.

Uncle Joe had another theory to account for this which, however, we were none of us willing to accept at present. He held that the buccaneer was much more likely to have made a mistake in copying the sailing directions—the latitude and longitude of the Island—than the actual measurements in regard to the place to dig after the Island was reached.

He explained to us that in all probability the man was an ignorant hand before the mast, with no education, and that while he could have read off and copied understandingly so many feet north, south, east or west, and so many right or left turns from the place of landing, the more complicated directions for setting a course—which must have been on the map, or on a paper attached to it—would be only so much Greek to him. He might easily, then, in his hurry and excitement, (expecting every moment to be caught red-handed, no doubt, by the terrible Morgan himself) have copied wrongly the part he did not comprehend.

But that, we pointed out to Uncle Joe protestingly, would mean that the treasure wasn’t on Sunset Island at all.

In that case the real hiding place of the golden loot might be in a quite different and distant corner of the Caribbean.

We couldn’t subscribe to such a simply devastating theory, and we told Uncle Joe so in no uncertain tones.

He laughed and flung up his hands.

“Sorry, children, to disappoint you all like this,” he said apologetically, though his eyes still twinkled. “However, that’s my honest opinion of how the case actually stands, if you ask me.”

Well, there wasn’t any way of proving him either right or wrong without the map, and that seemed as impossible to locate as the treasure itself.

And after spending the whole morning searching the caves vigorously and with most minute attention to corners and possible obliterated traces of ancient excavations, and finding, of course, nothing at all to reward our hard work, we ate our lunch, packed up our camp kit with reluctance, and as soon as the afternoon grew cooler, set out for Planter’s House.

Much as we had enjoyed our trip around the Island, we decided by common consent, to put off exploring the hill at the north end, and the interior of the Island until another day. We had all discovered a queer sort of homesickness for Planter’s House, and wanted to be back there. We had lived in it less than a month, but, perhaps because we had worked so patiently to make it livable and homelike, it already seemed almost as much home to us as the Braeburn house we had left more than a thousand miles behind us up north.

That evening after supper I called Syd into the library. The Carreaus had evidently liked books, and the shelves were well stocked. I had been so busy up to now I hadn’t had a chance to look them over thoroughly before.

Even if I do care more for outdoor things than indoor, I’ve always loved books. And here I found there was a regular feast spread out waiting for me. Only I’d read them out in the garden, I decided, or on the beach.

“I’ve thought of something I want to talk to you about,” I told Syd solemnly.

He was looking at the shelves hopefully. “Maybe there are some books there on pirates,” he suggested.

“Ah’mm,” I said impatiently, for though usually I was keen enough on that subject, I had my mind on something quite different at the moment. “There are a few—I looked. But see this shelf, Syd.”

He bent over and read several titles, and his face looked awfully puzzled.

“They’re all about orange-growing, Sis,” he objected. “What do you want with them?”

I tried to speak slowly, and not let my enthusiasm run away with me this time, so he’d take me seriously.

“Well, we have a big orange grove to be looked after on Sunset Island, haven’t we?” I asked significantly. “Uncle Joe and I walked over part of it the first week we were here, but it’s fearfully rank with weeds, and the jungly growth is creeping in on all sides. You can see, though, it’s been a beautiful well cared-for plantation once, and we oughtn’t to deliberately waste the—the real gold we might be able to take out of a good orange grove, in our efforts to find old Morgan’s, that mayn’t ever have been near the Island. Now, ought we?”

Syd caught my idea at once.

“You mean in—in case the Myra doesn’t—we’d be building up a—a sort of business against the time a vessel will touch here some day in the future. Is that it, Gay? Because, of course, if we’re only going to be here six weeks or so longer, it wouldn’t be worth while.”

“Perhaps Uncle Joe won’t give up the Island even if the Myra does come,” I said firmly. “He might decide it was a good proposition to leave a manager here, and some men to work the plantation. If he does, I—I wish we could all stay on in Planter’s House, and help build the Island up again. I love it here, Syd. I don’t ever want to go back to Braeburn, at least not to live. But of course, I want ships to call at the Island at intervals, to bring letters, and keep us in touch with the world.”

He stared at the floor as if he were thinking hard.

“It’s funny, your saying that, Sis,” he said then, looking up at me. “I couldn’t feel half as badly about the Myra maybe not coming back as I—I know I ought. ’Course I’d hate for anything to have happened to her, but I don’t want to go back to Braeburn to live, any more than you do. We’re all lots happier and busier here, seems to me, and Father’s certainly better. He’s stronger and more hopeful and interested every day. Say, Sissie, that’s sure some swell plan of yours about the orange grove. Let’s study up on it a bit; find out a few of the simple things that ought to be done in caring for the trees first. Then, p’raps we could get the others interested, too, later.”

“It’s worth trying,” I agreed eagerly, feeling tremendously relieved because Syd was back of me in the new plan. “Suppose we each choose one of these books now, and read a few pages whenever we get a chance and there’s no one round to ask questions.”

We had a wide choice, for a twelve-foot shelf was completely filled with hand books of all descriptions on the single subject of orange-growing. After looking through a number of them, we picked out the two we thought looked least dry reading, and took them up to our rooms, promising each other to make a start that very night.

Thinking it over in bed afterward, I was surprised to realize what a lot of brand new subjects we’d become interested in learning more about, in the short time we’d been on the Island. Study had always seemed, before, a thing to be rushed through as quickly as possible, in order to get at something more interesting. But the kind of learning we were doing on Sunset Island sort of teased you on to wanting to know more about it.

Take our interest in astronomy; we hadn’t stopped with that one lesson, and I’d already been through the shelves in the library to hunt for some books on the subject. I found half a dozen, too. That was how I happened to come on the orange-books.

And there was our History Course on the Spanish Main, that Uncle Joe had promised to enlarge to a “Sailor’s History of the Seven Seas,” as he put it. We were planning to study that every evening after supper.

And our course on shells and the animals that live in them. We learned a new lesson in that every time we walked on the beach.

And now our latest—orange culture.

Life on Sunset Island was most awfully interesting. There was something to do every minute of the day and evening, and all of it worth doing. You never had to stop and wonder what would come next—it was always ready and waiting before you’d quite finished the last one.

The best part of it was that it didn’t wear off with the passing of the first novelty of our island life.

In making that list of our interests and studies, I find I’ve forgotten to include the most important of all, as far as Syd and I were concerned: our garden-making.

We were pretty successful with it, and had a splendidly assorted crop of vegetables coming along, some of which were almost ready for picking. And as for our flowers—well, words aren’t equal to describing the gorgeous color and brilliance of them. I’d have to have a huge palette splashed over with a mass of the vividest colors known to an artist, to give just the faintest idea of what we saw every time we went out to work in those flower beds.

At the end of ten days of really concentrated reading up on oranges—it was exactly the kind of thing Syd and I’d both done to cram for school exams—we felt so simply stuffed with facts on the subject, not to mention theories of our own, galore, that we took Uncle Joe aside and explained the plan to him in great detail.

He seemed quite struck by it, and nodded very emphatic approval as we went along. He only made one comment, but that hit what Syd called the crux of the whole situation.

“The Myra’s due back here in another month, or six weeks allowing for head winds. This is a several years’ proposition, youngsters, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said softly, and Syd added, “It wouldn’t hurt, would it, Uncle Joe, to be prepared in case—in case something happened and she didn’t?”

Uncle Joe looked at us both keenly.

“You saw those pieces of wreckage,” he stated, rather than asked. “I thought so at the time. And you’ve never worried Mollie, or even spoken of it to Dan. Good children!” His tone was so hearty and yet so moved that silly tears came into my eyes, and I couldn’t see him for a second or two.

“Yes,” we said quickly, together. And Syd went on, “What is your opinion, Uncle Joe? Do you think she’ll—come?”

“I don’t know, Sydney,” was his reply. “We can only wait and see. And it’s a good thing to say a bit of a prayer about it, once in a while,” he added gravely.

We said nothing more on the subject then, but instead went back to making plans for rescuing our oranges.

“And maybe,” I said hesitatingly, “maybe, Uncle Joe, you might want to put a manager and some workmen on the Island sometime, and make the grove pay you a nice fat income so you can retire from being a sea captain, when you get old, and live in luxury. Wouldn’t that be worth while?”

“Of course it would,” he agreed cheerfully, “and I seem to have a niece with a very wise little business head on her young shoulders. Let’s start work on the grove tomorrow, and see what we can accomplish in the next few weeks. And you might pick out one of those orange-books of yours for me to read, while you’re about it.”

So, with our new work at the grove, and our old work in the house and the gardens, another month slipped by before any of us realized it, and still no Myra showed her white gulls’ wings over the blue horizon to the south.

We hadn’t paid much attention to calendars since our arrival, except to mark off weeks in a vague sort of way. And I was so surprised I couldn’t do anything but gasp stupidly when Aunt Mollie asked us one evening at supper, how many of us realized that Christmas was just three days off.

“But it’s summer!” Reddy protested, looking out the open window at a vine, that flung big golden trumpet-flowers over the sill. “Christmas comes in winter—when it snows,” he explained carefully, as if he were afraid we wouldn’t understand.

We all laughed except Uncle Charles who went into the reason for this mix-up in seasons with great thoroughness for Reddy’s benefit, until at last the little fellow was convinced, but somewhat wistful over the missing snow.

“Will there be any Christmas tree?” he asked finally, his blue eyes wide.

“Not the kind you’ve been used to, I’m afraid, Reddy-boy,” Uncle Joe said. “But there’ll be a tree, I promise you that. And we can make it as jolly a holiday season as ever.”

“Oh, Uncle Joe, let’s cut down one of the small orange trees and use it in place of an evergreen,” I begged eagerly.

“An’ maybe the Myra’ll be here by Christmas,” Reddy exclaimed, “an’ Martin can see the tree. Let’s hang up a stocking for Martin, too, Mother.”

I felt a big, hard lump suddenly in my throat, and I sat there staring at the table, not daring to meet Uncle Joe’s pitying eyes, or Syd’s.

Where was Martin right now, was the thought in their minds, as well as in mine, I knew. Would he ever see our Christmas tree, or poke exploring fingers into the stuffed and bulging Christmas stocking we’d hang up for him?

CHAPTER VIII
SIR HENRY MORGAN’S MAP

CHRISTMAS came and went without the Myra. We had our orange tree decked out in its hundreds of little golden balls, that were real fruit instead of the colored glass ornaments we’d been used to at home. It was awfully pretty. And we gathered armfuls of red and yellow flowers from the garden and the vines on the house wall, and wove garlands to hang on the tree between the oranges, and over the doorways.

After Reddy had gone to bed on Christmas Eve, we filled the stockings, one for each of us, and one for Martin, as Reddy had begged us to do. We hadn’t been able to make any real presents, but we had managed to collect lots of little things that served as pretty good substitutes.

Aunt Mollie had made a big fruit cake, and several pounds of simple sugar candies, and of course there were oranges in plenty, so that much at least was like the usual Christmas “trimmings.”

Then she had cleverly ripped up one of Rosemary’s pretty gowns—a thin pink silk, with velvet roses appliquéd on it, and had made two simply ducky scarfs for Andy and me. And from her famous Mother Robinson Bag (which was still dealing out surprises) she had produced some spools of heavy dark blue silk which she had turned into knitted ties for Dan and Sidney.

We young folks had a little trouble planning our gifts, but in the end we achieved a window box for Aunt Mollie’s room—Dan and Syd made the box out of an old crate, and painted it with some white enamel paint left over from the supply the ship’s carpenter had brought ashore from the Myra to freshen up the bedroom woodwork at Planter’s House.

Syd and I filled it with our choicest blooms from the garden, and Andy gave up her newest, broadest scarlet hair ribbon to dress the whole up in a Christmas bow.

The boys whittled two sturdy walking sticks for Uncle Joe and their father, and Andy and I boiled an awful-looking (and smelling) mess of bark most of one long hot day to get the right shade brown to stain them when they were finished.

Things like that, you know. But we got the real Christmas thrill out of making them, as well as from opening the bundles we received when the day itself finally arrived.

Yet in other ways we couldn’t make it seem to ourselves like Christmas. And when, after dinner, we went out on the terrace and sat there, with the scent of a hundred tropical flowers all about us, watching a gorgeous sunset, (no wonder the first discoverer named it Sunset Island! We had a new and super-variety every evening) it was just perfectly fantastic to connect the day with our cold, white Christmases at home.

Somebody suggested getting Rosemary’s diary, and taking turns reading it aloud. We hailed this as a brilliant suggestion, and Andy ran for the little book, which she had kept jealously in her own possession ever since the day she discovered it.

She had hardly been gone three minutes when we heard her feet flying across the hall behind us, and she burst out the front door like a small, excited rocket, and tore over the terrace toward us, her heels clicking on the tiles at every leap she took. She was waving the diary above her head in one hand, and something white in the other.

Instinctively everyone sat up, holding his or her breath. It couldn’t be bad news, we knew, because you never saw such a shining face as Andy wore at that moment.

She literally fell over Uncle Charles’ feet, and sat down on the terrace, panting, without strength apparently to get up and find the chair she’d been sitting in before.

“What’s happened?” we chorused.

She waved the white thing weakly again, and we saw now that it was a folded piece of heavy paper, rather dirty and worn along the edges. And suddenly I was as sure of what it was she was flourishing as if she had already told me.

“You’ve found the map,” I faltered. “Oh, Andy! Is it?”

She tried to answer, laughed, choked, and tried again.

“The map! Morgan’s map—or—or the copy of Morgan’s map. Look here!” She opened the paper with a dramatic flourish, and it was a map. A rather crude, unremarkable map, except for the romance it stood for and the sprawled names on it: “Morgan’s Beach,” “Gold Hill” and “Dead Men’s Inlet”—which last was kind of gruesomely suggestive to say the least. The points of the compass were given, and in one corner a jumble of figures—latitude and longitude—rather smudgy, and erased, and made pretty well undecipherable by a big blot of ink.

On the map, at the north end, just where it would correspond with our cave, there was a row of three crosses and under them two letters that looked like H—M.

“Henry Morgan,” Syd whispered quickly. “Look closer, there are some words and figures, half blotted out. Those’ll be directions if we can only read ’em. Looks like ‘200 paces from beach, north end lagoon’—Yep-py, that’s it—‘20 right’—we did go to the right to the cave. Yess-sir! And look here, too. ‘Cave entrance up 30.’ That’s where we climbed the cliff. It was the cave. It must have been. Let’s have another search tomorrow!”

“Hold on a moment, Syd,” Uncle Joe put in, smiling. “Give me a look at that longitude and latitude, first, before we jump to conclusions.”

“But the places are all here,” Andy urged anxiously. “Our cave, and the lagoon, and the hill. It must be, Uncle Joe.” She was as excited as Syd and I were.

“Quite true, Andy; but what about ‘Dead Men’s Inlet?’ We’ve been entirely around the Island, and we didn’t find an inlet, or even any signs that one might originally have been there.”

We stared at him in silence. It was true. There was no inlet on Sunset Island.

Andy handed the map to him, and we continued to stare while he puzzled out the blurred figures in the corner.

“If this figure’s a one, then the map is of Sunset Island, but it’s possible it’s seven—after looking at it through my glasses, it seems more like a seven after all,” he pronounced slowly. “That throws the calculations away—way out, youngsters, much as I hate to admit it. Maybe, too, some of the other figures aren’t right. And that matter of the inlet is certainly disturbing.”

“And the worst of it is there’s no possible means of telling, is there, unless we had the original map,” I mourned. “Still, we can take shovels up there tomorrow and dig all the floor of those two caves up,” I added, brightening. “It’s soft sand mostly, till we get down to rock, and even the pirates couldn’t have gone through that. Uncle Joe, please say it’s worth trying! It’ll be good exercise for our gardening, too.”

It wasn’t until then that we remembered to ask Andy where she’d found the map. It had been sewed inside the silk cover of the diary, the back cover, all the time, and in Andy’s hurry to take the book out of her bureau drawer, a torn edge of the silk had caught on the drawer key and ripped, and a corner of the map had poked through. It was all as simple as that. Blind luck! Well, maybe we’d find the doubloons by help of the same sort of lucky chance, I thought—for I, at any rate, hadn’t given up hope of their being on Sunset Island, inlet or no inlet.

That was the final excitement of our first Christmas Day on the Island. We went to bed fairly early, in order to be able to start by sunrise the next morning for our second treasure hunt in the caves.

But though we dug, and probed and dug again, and carted basketsful of loose sand and earth from one end of the caves to the other, we found no traces—not the littlest silver three-penny piece, or the biggest golden doubloon—not even a rusty knife or a broken axe head—to hint that Sir Henry Morgan’s men had so much as heard of those caves, not to speak of considerately burying their treasure there for us to find.

We even, as a last desperate measure, dug in the cliff outside the cave entrance, and when that failed, explored the whole side and top of the cliff for signs of another suite of caves, without finding them.

On New Year’s Eve, exhausted, hot, dusty and disillusioned, we gave up the expedition, and trooped back to Planter’s House and warm baths.

“So it wasn’t Sunset Island—drat that ignorant buccaneer!” Uncle Joe grumbled quaintly, trying to make us laugh.

We were too weary to achieve more than a feeble chuckle, but we loved his spirit, and rallied to meet our own disappointment in the matter as gamely.

I whispered to Syd as we went up the wide staircase of Planter’s House together, “Let’s put as much energy and hard work on the gold we know is on Sunset Island, and we’ll make honester fortunes than with that bloody old pirate’s stolen treasure.”

“You mean the oranges?” Syd asked, squeezing my arm sympathetically. “All right, Sis; we will.”

And we did. Another month went by—a little more slowly than the preceding two, because by now everyone in the party was keeping an anxious eye out for the Myra, and those who were not in the secret did a good deal of speculating as to what could be detaining her.

But the work we had laid out for ourselves progressed encouragingly. The gardens were a delight both to our eyes and our tummies, for the flowers grew as I’ve never seen flowers grow before, and our vegetables were so varied and delicious that we never once missed fresh meat.

We had brought some chickens to the Island with us, and before the Myra sailed, the carpenter had built us a nice little wire-enclosed run for them. So we had eggs for breakfast, and for cooking, pretty steadily. You see, in the usual desert-island story I’d read people were always cast ashore without tools or food or clothes. But though we were almost as hopelessly marooned on our Island, as Robinson Crusoe on his, at least we had come prepared to stay two months, and had outfitted ourselves accordingly.

We had about a quarter of the orange grove cleared, too, and had pruned dead branches, and done what we could to make it all what Uncle Joe calls “shipshape.” The oranges were as sweet as honey to eat. I’d never tasted an orange ripened on the tree, before coming to the Island, and there’s simply no comparison between them, and the kind sold up north.

Uncle Joe was almost as enthusiastic now as Syd and I, over the prospect of building up a big, paying plantation again on Sunset Island. But, of course, to do this, we had to establish communication with the outside world, somehow.

We needed men to work in the grove, and in the bigger produce gardens we were planning. And even more, we needed fertilizer, and new tools, and—of course—a market to ship the results of our labors to, when they were ready.

At the beginning of our fourth month on Sunset Island, Uncle Joe faced the necessity of telling the rest of the family his fears—which were pretty much a certainty now—concerning the Myra’s fate.

He told the facts simply, not exaggerating, but not making light of the matter, either. He went on to say that Syd and I had known all the time, and had pluckily kept still about it in order not to worry the others in the party until it was sure the schooner was not coming.

No one made an outcry, or even spoke, for a long minute. Aunt Mollie grew very pale, and set her lips firmly together, and Uncle Charles reached out and took her hand in both of his. But it was Andy who astonished us utterly. She looked straight at Uncle Joe and smiled.

“I knew, too,” she said quietly. “Not as long as Gay and Syd did, but quite a while. I overheard them talking about it on the beach the first night we spent in the caves.”

So that was it, after all. And she’d kept it to herself even when I caught her crying in the dark that night. I felt awfully mean and remorseful, to remember the things I’d thought about Andy’s selfishness and lack of consideration, I can tell you, and judging by Syd’s amazed expression, he was feeling the same way.

He said to me, later that day, referring to Andy, “It’s the Island, Sis. I can’t describe it, but somehow it’s—it’s been doing things to all of us. Changing us—well, making us—a little bigger, I guess, since we’ve lived on it. Do you get what I mean? Andy couldn’t have kept a secret that scared her half to death, at home in Braeburn.”

“I don’t believe we could have, either,” I reminded him. “Yes, I reckon it is the Island.”

When I get excited, I usually say “reckon” as Aunt Mollie does sometimes. Aunt Mollie and my own mother were from Georgia and even after living all her married life in New England, some of Aunt Mollie’s pretty Southern expressions still slip out at times. None of her own children have caught them from her, which seems odd, but I’ve always been as imitative as a monkey.

However, to go back to Syd, and the subject of the Island, after the above digression (as I’ve seen real authors say sometimes in books).

It was perfectly true, all that Syd had said, and he was pretty smart, for a boy, to have reasoned it out like that. The Island had done something to every one of us.

Look at the change in Uncle Charles! Not only in health, I mean, but in giving him back his courage and steady nerves. And Aunt Mollie had regained all the pounds she’d lost while Uncle Charles was ill, and she seemed most of the time as young, and untroubled as Andy or I.

Then, there was the way we’d all learned to work—constructively is the word Uncle Charles would use, I think. And working outdoors the way we had, had made us awfully fit physically, and sort of mentally alert, too, if you can understand what I mean.

You had to keep right on your mental tip-toes, every minute on Sunset Island, if you were going to get along.

The others must have been thinking very much the same thing, for one evening after supper, Aunt Mollie brought up the subject.

“Joe,” she began, wrinkling her forehead up as she does when she’s thinking specially hard. “If the Myra should come back in the near future—and she may, you know, there might be all sorts of reasons for this delay—or if she doesn’t, but we succeed in hailing another vessel that’ll be sure to pass some day, why, I—” She stopped, and thought again, harder.

“I know,” Uncle Charles put in eagerly, “what you’re trying to say, Mollie. Or I believe I do. You don’t want, even if the chance comes, to go back to Braeburn. Well, what’s more, I don’t want to, either. I’ve found health and peace of mind here; plenty of work for my hands, and not too much for my brain—it was the other way about in Braeburn. I hope Joe will decide, if—and when—a ship touches here, to let the Jennings family stay on in Planter’s House, and oversee his plantation. What do the other members of my family say to such a plan?”

We chorused it quickly, and very decidedly.

“We want to stay. We—want—to—stay!”

“We’ll talk of this again, Charles,” Uncle Joe said, but I noticed his face smoothed out as if someone had removed a big weight from his shoulders. He knew now we weren’t in our hearts blaming him for stranding us on his Island.

I might almost end the story of this part of Gay Annersley’s life on Sunset Island right here, with that conversation out on the tiled terrace. Because, after all, things worked out exactly as we’d said then that we wanted them to do. It was almost like the old fairy tales of the three wishes coming true.

We’d wished the Myra would come back safely; we’d wished we needn’t go away in her, but could stay on, on Sunset Island; and we’d wished to make our plantation a success, so we could remain at Planter’s House and all of us have enough money to live on, and perhaps leave the Island every few years for a trip somewhere—just so we wouldn’t entirely lose sight of our old world.

Now see how they were answered—those three wishes that the whole family wished in concert that evening.

I was usually the first person up and out in the mornings, and on the morning after that talk of ours, I was sort of restless, and woke particularly early.

Scrambling into my clothes, I caught up a bath towel, and stole downstairs and out of the house, meaning to go down the Planter’s Road—now beautifully cleared and leveled—to the beach for a morning dip in the lagoon.

I reached the beach, according to plan, but I never got that swim—at least not that day. For there, about a mile beyond the barrier reef, heading straight for me, cutting the clear blue water with a sharp black bow, and showing all her white gulls’ wings against the blue sky, came the Myra herself. I knew her at my first glimpse of her. I guess I’m not a sailor’s daughter for nothing, after all, for I’ve got a real seaman’s memory for the identity of ships even from a distance.

I don’t know how I got back to the house. I remember I was crying so I couldn’t see where I put my feet, and once fell down, hard, sprawling out flat on my hands and face.

I began calling the news when I was way across the tiled terrace, at the top of my voice, and by the time I reached the front door the family were already tumbling down the stairs in bathrobes and slippers, and for a minute ’most everybody was crying on each other’s shoulders, and it was bedlam, nothing less.

Then we calmed down, went back to our rooms, put some clothes on and hurried to the beach.

By the time we reached there the Myra was just coming through the opening in the reef, and a few moments later she was riding at anchor in the identical spot she’d anchored in four months ago, and a boat was pulling ashore from her.

The first person we recognized in it was Martin, and how we shouted and clapped when we saw him. Poor Reddy burst into tears and tried to explain to him, all that distance across the lagoon, that he’d saved Martin’s Christmas stocking for him.

We had the entire crew of the Myra ashore for breakfast in Planter’s House—they were all old hands who had sailed for years with Uncle Joe and seemed to him sort of like one big family.

Aunt Mollie and Andy and I cooked the most enormous breakfast for them, and the two uncles and Syd and Dan waited on them, while Reddy, who was much too excited to be trusted with anything breakable to carry, sat beside Martin at the table and entirely forgot his accustomed appetite for griddle cakes in listening to the story of the Myra’s adventures since she left us.

Naturally, when the three hot and weary cooks came out of the kitchen, the whole story had to be repeated in great detail for their benefit.

It seems the Myra nearly did founder that awful night of the hurricane. She snapped off one of her masts—which we later saw floating near the reef—and lost her deck railing and all her life boats. She sprang a bad leak, too, and had to put in at Barbadoes for repairs. Well, from then on, everything seemed dead against the poor Myra.

As Martin put it, “We had head winds, and no winds, and another hurricane. And the water supply gave out, and two of the crew came down with what we were afraid first was yellow fever, and they quarantined us when we put into Bahia, finally. But we kept a-going—there wasn’t nothing else for us to do, and we got to Monte at last, and delivered our cargo. If we’d been a single day later the consignees wouldn’t have accepted it, for another ship was expected with the same stuff in a few days, and they’d about given us up for lost, as they hadn’t received the cable from Bahia.”

Of course, then, nothing would do but we must all go out and look the Myra over, after her hard-luck adventurings, and afterward, Martin must come back, to Planter’s House with us, and spend the night. On his part, he was as anxious to hear what we’d been doing on the Island, as we had been to have his story, only so far we hadn’t given him a chance to do anything but answer questions.

When he heard our plan to make our home permanently on Sunset Island, for the next few years, Martin looked very thoughtful for a while, and later came rather shyly to Aunt Mollie and begged her to ask the “Cap’n” to let him—Martin—remain as part of our little pioneer colony. He declared that last voyage had given him all of the sea he wanted for years to come, and he’d love to work in a garden again, ashore. He told us he’d been born a farm boy, and he guessed it was “back to the farm for him,” after this.

Of course Aunt Mollie did as he wanted, and pleaded his cause with Uncle Joe so successfully that Martin was forthwith transferred to shore duty, as he called it, and Uncle Joe appointed him his own special representative on Sunset Island, when the Myra sailed in the due course of events, for the North with Uncle Joe himself on board, and the Jennings family and one Gay Annersley (who has used the word “I” a disgraceful number of times in these pages) stood on the lagoon beach and waved a rather tearful goodbye.

CHAPTER IX
THE MAP IS STOLEN

WE missed Uncle Joe dreadfully that month. It was the first time we had been on the Island without his wise head and experienced hands to help us over all emergencies, and we felt a bit forlorn and “lost” every time we stopped to realize he wasn’t with us.

But Uncle Charles was stronger now and able to assume more and more responsibility and Martin was a real joy, he was so eager to do more than his share always, instead of less. The boys too, had grown very experienced in the routine work, and Aunt Mollie, Andrée, Reddy and I all had our special duties, so we got along as well as could be asked.

There was only one unpleasant happening in the month the Myra was away, but that worried us a good deal for many a day afterward, so I might as well tell it here.

It was about the middle of the third week after the schooner’s departure for the North, that we woke up one morning to see from our east windows a long trail of black, smudgy smoke across the clear blue of the sky. Under the smoke trail was a low, raky-looking boat, built somewhat on the lines of a yacht, heading directly in toward our Island.

Of course we all forgot completely about breakfast, and as soon as we had scrambled into our clothes in the shortest time possible, we raced each other—at least we children did,—down the Planter’s Road to the lagoon beach. Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie followed at a more sedate pace, yet even they were excited, because it was so long since any of us had seen people from the outside world, that the bare possibility that this strange boat meant to pay us a visit was actually thrilling.

But of us all, it was Martin who was the most excited. He had brought a pair of Uncle Charles’ binoculars down to the beach, and now he was studying every line of the oncoming boat, his forehead puckered into a funny scowl of anxiety.

“She’s coming fast—oh, boy! Watch her bow cut the water!” Dan ejaculated, whistling. “D’you suppose she means really to come inside, Martin? And why should she?”

Martin put the glasses down, and shook his head doubtfully.

“Maybe she needs fresh water—or thinks she can pick up a load of cocoanuts and oranges for the crew,” he offered. “Most of these islands have wild fruit growin’ on ’em, handy for the pickin’. And if a ship runs short on fresh vegetables, fruit’s a necessity. But she may not be comin’ in after all.” She was though, as we all knew within the next five minutes. Straight ahead, her sharp black bow shearing through the curling blue water, she came on at what looked almost like locomotive speed, heading apparently right at the reef over which high tide was boiling. Her heading so straight for the reef made us guess—even before she made the abrupt manœuvre we’d seen the Myra make on similar occasions—that she knew her way in through the reef-opening.

Sure enough, just at the proper moment, she nosed sidewise, and slipped through, into the quiet water of the lagoon. Then there was a splash as her anchor ran out, and we saw several men—not in the trim uniform of a yacht’s crew however—moving about her deck.

Someone on board had caught sight of us gathered on the beach, for we saw the man who was evidently in command, beckon two of the others to him, and they held a sort of consultation. Meanwhile, the crew had swung a small boat overside, and then the man I’d decided was captain, and the two who had been consulting with him, got into the little boat, and were rowed ashore by two of the sailors.

Uncle Charles with Syd and Dan on either side of him, walked down to the water’s edge to meet them, and the Captain—who we now saw wore some kind of uniform cap, even if he couldn’t boast a uniform to match—raised one hand in a kind of rough salute, and called out to know if they might land.

Of course Uncle Charles consented, not being able to prevent their doing it even if he’d wanted to, and as soon as the boat grounded, the three men who weren’t rowing climbed over the side, and waded ashore.

Uncle Charles, making the best of the matter, held out his hand and the Captain met it with his own, which was huge and extremely dirty.

None of our unexpected visitors were what Aunt Mollie calls “prepossessing” looking. In fact, to be quite frank about it, they were as tough and hard-faced a group of men as I’d ever pictured Sir Henry Morgan’s pirates. But the Captain was polite enough though, from what I heard him saying to Uncle Charles, decidedly astonished to find anybody living on the Island.

As Martin had guessed, they had put in for fresh fruit, the Captain explaining they had obtained a supply here on several occasions before in the past two or three years. He said he’d always found the place deserted before, and hadn’t known anyone had taken possession since. He apologized for trespassing, as nicely as you could have asked—if only his face had been more naturally reassuring.

Uncle Charles told him he could send his men down to the orange grove to pick, under Syd’s and Dan’s direction, as much fruit as they were likely to need. And at that, Aunt Mollie, who wouldn’t have sent Morgan himself away from her property hungry, asked the Captain whether he and the men with him would come up to the house for a home-cooked breakfast. There were some fresh-baked yam pies in the storeroom—and though the Captain couldn’t have known then what Aunt Mollie’s yam pies were, he must have guessed by the way Reddy smacked his lips involuntarily, and the older boys grinned.

Anyhow he accepted with alacrity, and sending the sailors to the grove with Dan and Syd, followed the rest of us up to the house. Reddy who seemed to be fascinated by the salty flavor of our visitors—or maybe he was wisely keeping in the near vicinity of the yam pies—tagged at the Captain’s heels, his blue eyes round with curiosity and wonder.

In the big hall of the fountain, Uncle Charles produced a box of cigars, and Aunt Mollie, Andy and I hurried off to the kitchen. Under Aunt Mollie’s capable direction, a hearty breakfast was soon under way; sliced oranges, cereal (with evaporated cream: fresh milk and butter being something we had had to learn to do without on Sunset Island, so far); eggs and hot, sizzling ham; wheat cakes with a golden cane syrup, coffee—and the pies!

By the time it was set on the breakfast table which we had moved out onto the tiled terrace, the four sailors returned from their orange picking, all with ravenous appetites to judge by the way their eyes glistened at sight of that heaped-up table.

Andy and the boys and I ran back and forth between kitchen and terrace with the trays, and the amount those men ate was something to wonder at! Reddy sat at the table, close beside the Captain—Captain Rawson, his name was—not eating much, but hanging on every word that was said, his round, rosy little face quite solemn, and his blue eyes shining.

After they had eaten all they apparently could, the men went back to the beach, and lay on the sand for a while, smoking their pipes, and Reddy carried Captain Rawson off to show him the garden at his—the Captain’s—particular request. The Captain seemed to be sort of flattered by Reddy’s hero-worship, and as he treated the little fellow gently, Aunt Mollie made no objections to the expedition.

There was quite a lot of confusion and running up and down the Planter’s Road by the boys, superintending the transferring of the oranges to the ship’s boat, and Aunt Mollie, Andy and I had retired to the kitchen to wash up the mound of soiled breakfast dishes, so we none of us noticed that Reddy hadn’t gone down to the beach with the others.

It wasn’t till the oranges had been put aboard the ship, and she had steamed out through the opening in the reef, and so to sea, that Andy came upon Reddy in his own little bedroom upstairs, crying as if his heart would break.

His face wore such a woebegone and frightened expression, it frightened Andy, and she called for Aunt Mollie. I heard her, and ran upstairs too, and after a lot of soothing and coaxing from all three of us, we finally wormed what had happened out of Reddy’s unwilling lips.

He had told the Captain about Sir Henry Morgan’s treasure, and about the map. Probably the poor baby had had some notion of impressing his new hero, but if he had, the results of his confidence were totally unexpected. The Captain had been flatteringly interested, and had wondered if Reddy knew where this wonderful map was kept, and if so, would Reddy let another admirer of the great pirate, have a peep at it?

Poor Reddy! He fell for that hard! He hadn’t even known he was doing anything he shouldn’t. We had never made a secret of the map’s whereabouts, because there was no one on the Island except ourselves, to see it. It was always kept in the big escritoire in the library, that had belonged to some dead-and-gone Carreau.

Reddy had led his visitor straight to the spot and proudly exhibited the map, which the ungrateful Captain had proceeded, to Reddy’s horror, coolly to tuck away in his pocket.

“Cut on upstairs to your room, young ’un, and don’t try to blab till you see that boat of mine pass through the reef,” the Captain had warned him roughly, and had added a sharp clip over the ear for extra measure. Imagine it! Our Reddy, who had never been struck before in all his ten years. He’d been rather a delicate child and Aunt Mollie had perhaps babied him a bit. It made me hot all over with rage to picture that big bully daring to touch him. And I guess by the way Aunt Mollie’s lips went together, she felt just the same about it.

Our visitor had muttered a string of ugly words that had scared poor Red more than the blow itself, and had wound up by insinuating that besides punishment done to Reddy’s small self in the event of his “blabbing,” there might also be quite a few unpleasantnesses due to happen to the house and the rest of the family as well.

Well, of course, that had effectively sealed Reddy’s lips, and he had knelt, crying bitterly, at the window, straining his eyes to watch the ship’s departure through the barrier reef, and out to sea. Then Andy had found him, before he could run to Aunt Mollie with his story.

He was frightened, but not yet quite sure whether he had been naughty to show the map, and in face of his remorse, and the scare he had been through, none of us had the heart to scold him. Andy and I finally left him with Aunt Mollie to comfort him, and tumbled downstairs, bursting with indignation, to pour out the story of our loss to the boys and Uncle Charles.

They heard us with a running series of astonished exclamations, and when we had come to the end, Syd had struck an angry fist down on the arm of his chair, his face clouding anxiously.

“Dad, the loss of the map’s not the worst of it,” he said slowly. “Of course, we know by now, the map isn’t accurate, probably, but those—those pirates—Martin’s sure they’re rum-runners, by the way, and a pretty dangerous crew!—they’ll be bound to believe they’ll find Morgan’s treasure if they look for it where the directions show.”

He stopped, and glanced about our little group, his brows drawing together still more anxiously.

“Don’t be scared, girls, it’ll turn out all right. And of course the Myra’s due to return almost any day now.”

“You mean,” I asked, keeping my voice quite casual and steady by an effort, I was so excited, “that we may expect a return visit from Captain Rawson?”

Syd nodded soberly. “I’m afraid so. But it’ll take some time for him to make his plans, and decide what to do,” he said reassuringly. “And Uncle Joe and the Myra’ll surely be here before then.”

CHAPTER X
THE Myra BRINGS VISITORS

WE had hardly dared to hope the Myra would be back promptly at the end of four weeks, remembering that long, anxious delay on her former voyage, but she surprised us by showing her top-sails over the blue horizon-line three full days before we had dreamed of her being due.

Of course we were all clustered in mad excitement on the beach, waving frantically, when she slipped through the break in the barrier reef and into the smooth, transparent water of our little lagoon, where she came to anchor. Uncle Joe was in the dinghy when it pulled ashore, and with him we saw an elderly couple—neither of whose faces we knew—the lady being dressed in deep mourning.

Naturally enough the first greetings were for Uncle Joe, but a moment later he shook us aside, something the way a big, playful bear might have done to a lot of bothering cubs, and turned to the little black-gowned old lady beside him.

“First,” he said, in the deep, hearty voice we had learned to love the sound of, “you must meet the finest and dearest sister a wandering sailor ever possessed. Mollie dear, I have brought you as visitors the former owners of Sunset Island, Monsieur and Madame Carreau.”

Aunt Mollie took the little frail looking old lady’s hands—which were trembling pitifully—in both hers and then, somewhat to my astonishment, because Aunt Mollie’s not usually demonstrative with outsiders—she bent over impulsively and kissed Madame Carreau.

“Welcome home, Madame,” she said warmly. “I feel as if we had been your very happy, grateful guests all these months. How nice to be able to enjoy this beautiful old house with you! How did Joe happen to find you both? He told me he had seen you last in India.”

She was shaking hands now with Monsieur Carreau, who looked almost as frail and tired as his wife, I thought. Then Uncle Charles was introduced, and finally Andrée and the boys and I. We were half dying of smothered excitement and curiosity, by the time it came our turn, over the advent of visitors—particularly visitors about whose identity we had speculated as often and heatedly as we had on the former owners of our Island.

“It was the luckiest chance you ever heard of, my meeting these good friends again,” Uncle Joe spoke up promptly. “It seems they’d got homesick for the Island, and decided that somehow they must find me and win my permission to come back—as if that were necessary, of course it’s their home still!” Here Uncle Joe laughed and blew his nose loudly, to cover up his real sympathy I guessed. “Anyhow,” he went on, “they thought they were getting along in years, and that the world had been a pretty rough place of late, and they wanted nothing so much as to come home to Sunset Island and end their days here peacefully, with their memories of their son, Raoul, and the happiness of that time when he was alive and the plantation prosperous.”

I saw Aunt Mollie’s arm go quietly about Madame Carreau’s thin little shoulder and draw her nearer.

“Yes, that was it,” Monsieur Carreau broke in, his voice trembling. “We thought never to return to this island where so much of sorrow came to us. But in the end, one desires always to go home. We can remember better here, as our good friend Monsieur le Capitaine says, the times when we were very happy and Raoul was young.”

“And by the merest chance we found each other in New York,” Uncle Joe took up the story cheerfully. “They had been inquiring for me at a sort of sea-faring club they knew I used to belong to, but which I haven’t been near in ten years or more. The secretary of the club, however, who follows the shipping news, had seen the arrival of the Myra listed, and got word to me. And of course the moment I found out how they felt, I bundled Monsieur and Madame aboard the schooner, hardly giving them time to send for their luggage. And here we are!”

“We have been protesting all the way down,” Madame said in her soft, gentle little voice, “about being inflicted on strangers in this fashion. We did not know the Capitaine’s family were living on the Island. We hoped perhaps we could have been of service in overseeing the plantation for its new owner.”

“But that’s just what you can do—better than anyone else,” Aunt Mollie said quickly. “To speak in the American slang of my sons, you and Monsieur, here, ‘know the ropes,’ and can help us to many short-cuts we would otherwise have to work out for ourselves. Besides, think of the company you will be for us all!”

“And perhaps,” I was bold enough to say excitedly, thinking of that chest in the storeroom with the fascinating old clothes and Rosemary’s diary, and all the rest of it, that had helped to make our stay on Sunset Island so like a book. “Perhaps when you’re rested, Madame, you’ll tell us stories sometimes, about the history of the Island. And—and about Rosemary. You see we found her diary, and some of her lovely clothes and—and Morgan’s map—but we’ve lost that!—We’ll save that part to tell you later, when things are quieter—Uncle Joe will have to hear it too.”

The smile she gave me was so sort of grateful and pleased, it actually made the tears come to my eyes, and I’m not the kind of girl that cries easily either.

“You dear child,” she half whispered, and patted me on the cheek, as if I were five instead of fifteen—only I didn’t mind that.

“Jean,” she said, turning to her husband, her big, sad looking dark eyes bright and excited, “she wants to know about Rosemary—and the treasure.”

Monsieur nodded, almost as excited and eager as she was. “They are like Raoul,” he murmured. “He was always hunting for Morgan’s doubloons.”

They beamed at each other so delightedly that I was glad I’d mentioned the map, guessing that the reference to it had brought back the happiest time in their lives, and broken the ice of formality between us.

Then Aunt Mollie insisted that further conversation must be left until our new visitors had been installed in their old bedroom in Planter’s House, and we all clamored to go along as escort.

Monsieur and Madame Carreau protested anxiously, in the same breath, that they would on no account consent to dislodging anyone who might now be occupying their room. That they knew and loved all the rooms in the house, and would be comfortable and at home in any that was vacant.

Fortunately it turned out that theirs was the room we had saved for our “guest room”—wondering at the time, when we’d ever have guests to put in it; so everyone was satisfied.

Uncle Joe had two of the sailors from the Myra carry up the one shabby trunk the Carreaus had brought to the Island, and Andrée and I, at our earnest request, were allowed by Madame to unpack it, and hang the clothes in the two big closets in the room, under her direction.

Of course we didn’t comment to each other, either then or later, on the shabbiness and old-fashioned cut of both Monsieur’s and Madame’s wardrobes, but we couldn’t help noticing and guessing at the struggle they’d had, not only with their sorrow for their dead son, but with poverty as well.

I certainly did feel glad we’d got them safely on Sunset Island, where we could try to make up to them for all the bad times that had gone before. Naturally it would have been rude to venture to refer to their troubles, but I tried sort of stumblingly, to tell her how happy we were that she and Monsieur had come back to the Island, and Andy came to my help with a pretty little speech such as she can be counted on to make when the occasion requires it. I’ve always envied her the positive genius she has for saying the right, graceful thing at the right time.

Madame blushed like a girl. She had a soft, delicate white skin that showed every little fluttering change of color.

“You’re dear children,” she told us, and reaching up laid one of those wrinkled, blue-veined gentle old hands of hers against my cheek, and the other under Andy’s chin, and drew us both down to kiss us.

“So you are interested in finding that treasure, mes enfants, n’est-ce pas?” she asked us, smiling. “So was my Raoul. Always he talked about the great Morgan’s hiding place. And when he was a little boy—about so tall—” she measured off three feet from the floor—“he would make maman to hunt with him. I will show you all the places, mes chéries. Perhaps—perhaps after all, one day we find that treasure, non?”

“Uncle Joe doesn’t believe it’s on the Island at all,” I said doubtfully. “He thinks the old sailor who copied the chart made a mistake in copying the latitude, or the longitude—I never know which is which. The figures are so blurred, you know. They might be almost anything. And besides, there’s no inlet on the Island, like the one marked ‘Dead Men’s Inlet’ on the map.”

Andy looked anxiously from me to Madame, her eyes sparkling. I’d never thought before she was quite as keen as the rest of us on the treasure hunt, but suddenly I felt a little ashamed to realize that perhaps I hadn’t bothered to find out just what this particular young cousin of mine was thinking and feeling. Andy had a way of keeping her thoughts to herself, but that wasn’t any real excuse for leaving her out of things as maybe Syd and I had been doing unconsciously.

“But I never believed that there was a mistake in that map.” Madame answered my last remark very emphatically. She nodded her head with great assurance at each word. “It has always been the—how do you say—tradition, that it was here on the Island Morgan made his cache. Let us not consult those wise persons, children, like my husband and Monsieur your oncle. Let us make our own hunt for the treasure.”

She thought a moment, and then added:

“There may be another way of reading that map—well, we shall see. And—here is a secret—I have sometimes thought what if the little plateau on top of the high ground—You have not hunted there yet? I thought not. The other search parties always claimed it was too far from the beach.”

Andy and I looked at each other, our breath coming faster. I had often wanted to explore that jungly patch of high ground, but it was such hard going we’d kept putting it off, before. Of course probably Uncle Joe was right; he usually was; but another treasure hunt would be a glorious lark, whether we found anything to reward us or not.

When the unpacking was finished, we persuaded Madame to lie down for a little nap, and Andy and I hurried downstairs to find Uncle Joe.

We both wanted to be present when he heard about Captain Rawson’s visit and the theft of the map. To our disappointment we discovered we were too late for that, but the whole family, including Monsieur Carreau, were gathered in the hall, still talking the matter over.

Uncle Joe, though of course he was a good deal surprised by the news, was the calmest of us all—But that’s the way Uncle Joe is. He never loses his head, and just because of that very calmness, and self-assurance of his the people round him begin to feel pretty sure that everything’s quite all right after all—and that even if it’s not, Uncle Joe’s able to make it so.

Syd says that is the quality that makes great leaders, and I guess he’s right. I know Uncle Joe’s crew on the Myra adore him, and would follow him into any danger, sure he’d find a way to bring them safely through.

In a different fashion, Aunt Mollie’s the same. The whole family has always turned to her instinctively when we’re in any trouble.

Almost the first question Uncle Joe asked when the story had been told, was addressed to Martin.

“Didn’t know the ship, did you, Martin? Get a look at her name?”

Martin tried to nod his head and shake it, both at the same time in answer, and he was so in earnest none of us saw anything funny in the way he did it.

“I didn’t see her name, sir,” he said. “That was one point made me kind o’ suspicious things weren’t all clear and aboveboard. She was a sloppy lookin’ craft—not in her lines, which was pretty as you could ask. Somebody’s racin’ yacht she’s been, once upon a time, sir, if you ask me. There’s real class to her, an’ no mistake. But, say, it’d have made any yacht owner’s heart real sick, to look at the way that crew kept her. Things layin’ ’round on her deck, an’ a long tarpaulin trailin’ over her stern so it hid her name plate entirely—’Course it might have been an accident, but she didn’t have no name on her for’ard, and no name on the dinghy neither. Still an’ all, I kind o’ got a feelin’ I’ve seen her before but I can’t rightly say just where nor when.”

Uncle Joe thought this over carefully for a full minute.

“You think she’s a rum-runner, eh?” he asked then. “Sounds as if she might be some kind of tough customer, judging by her Captain’s actions. Poor Reddy! Well, maybe we’ll find out more about her antecedents and mission later on.”

At this Syd gave me a significant look. So Uncle Joe expected our modern pirates back again, too! I felt pretty thankful that if they were really coming they’d been considerate enough to wait till Uncle Joe was at the helm.

But here Uncle Charles changed the subject by asking a question about the result of the trip north, and Uncle Joe had so many interesting things to tell of the arrangements he had made in New York for disposing of our oranges, and the various tools, stores, etc., he had brought back for the plantation in the Myra, that we forgot all about Captain Rawson for the time being, and when Madame Carreau came downstairs an hour later, looking rested, and bright, we forgot entirely to tell her anything about the map being lost.

Later we were all glad of this, because Monsieur, seizing a moment when Madame had left the room for something, asked us very earnestly not to mention the subject before her.

He told us she had always had a weak heart, and it had been his particular care, as it had been their son’s also while he lived, to keep all worry and anxiety from her as far as it lay in their power.

Of course, it wasn’t the theft of the map that would worry her—Monsieur Carreau expressed his belief, proudly, that his wife would be entirely able to draw that map line for line, from memory—but the apprehension connected with the possibility of a return visit from Captain Rawson’s vessel, might prey on her imagination. For his part he added, he very much doubted whether we should ever see anything of those ill-mannered gentry again. But I think we all felt he was only saying this because he wanted to believe it—not because he really did. Naturally, we all promised solemnly we wouldn’t mention the matter before Madame.

“But suppose she asks to see the map,” Andy reminded us suddenly. “She’s awfully interested in the whole idea of a new treasure hunt, so she probably will want the map to study over—don’t you think so, Gay?”

I had to admit that after what she had said to us upstairs, it seemed very likely.

Monsieur Carreau frowned in a troubled fashion. Then his face cleared.

“But I heard Mademoiselle Gay tell her, down on the beach when we arrived, that the map was lost,” he exclaimed triumphantly. “We can tell her just that. She will think it mislaid somewhere. That will not be a lie, my friends. It is lost—quite thoroughly, I should say. My wife is too polite, I hope, ever to ask impertinent questions as to how you contrived to lose it.”

It was beautiful to see how proud of her, and careful and considerate for her he was, even in the smallest details. But then, somehow, I couldn’t have imagined anyone who had lived in the same house with Madame Carreau for long, being anything but devoted to her.

It was just as well Monsieur Carreau had warned us when he did, for as soon as the shadows began to lengthen out on the terrace, Madame brought out some exquisite embroidery she was working on, and asked Andy and me to draw up chairs beside her.

“How pleasant it is to be home again,” she said softly, with a little half sigh. “There is just one thing I want to see, to make me feel natural, mes enfants, and that is Morgan’s map. Raoul and I were forever puzzling over it.” There were sudden tears in her eyes, which Andy and I pretended politely not to see.

Andy spoke quickly and sort of carelessly, while I was still wondering how to begin.

“We’re awfully ashamed, Madame, to have to tell you that we’ve managed very stupidly to lose your map—yes, of course it’s really yours. It was poor little Reddy—he took it out of the escritoire one day about a week ago, without permission, and now he doesn’t know where it is.”

Every word of which was literally true, but I resented her blaming it on Reddy’s supposed carelessness. Of course, he shouldn’t have shown the map to Captain Rawson, but he hadn’t just carelessly mislaid it, as her version of the affair seemed to imply. However, I couldn’t think of anything to improve the story without coming out with all the facts, so I kept still.

To our surprise and relief Madame took the loss matter-of-factly.

“That is too bad, but it will turn up somewhere. Lost things always do,” she said smilingly. “I hope you didn’t scold the poor little fellow. All boys adore a treasure map. And at any rate it can’t have got off the Island.” Little did she guess how far off the Island it had gone.

CHAPTER XI
A SWIM IN THE LAGOON

WE made a celebration of dinner, that first night after the Myra’s return from New York. Besides our own family, there were the two Carreaus and Mr. Hopper, the mate from the Myra, so we were quite a big party.

Martin refused to sit down at the table, saying it wasn’t for a “hand before the mast” to dine with the Captain and Mate, and nothing we could say to him—about his being no longer connected with the schooner, but a member of the Island colony now—made any difference in his determination.

“I began as a mess boy,” he said. “And I guess I ain’t forgot how to wait on table. I’ll be your butler, Miss Gay, for the party.”

So, since he seemed to have set his heart on it, we finally let him have his way, and Aunt Mollie, who’d trained a good many waitresses in the old days before we left Braeburn, had to admit that Martin was a perfect butler, which made him blush fierily all over his freckled face in a most un-butlerish manner.

We had vegetables from Syd’s and my garden; oranges served in several varieties of styles, from the Sunset Island grove; and eggs, laid by our own chickens, cooked according to a brand new, sc-crumptious recipe Aunt Mollie had made up specially for the occasion. We hadn’t any fresh meat, but the Myra had brought us a new supply of hams and bacon, and we had roast ham, Virginia style, with yams—candied. Yum-yum! as Reddy remarked feelingly when he first caught sight of the dish being carried in by Martin. And it certainly tasted as wonderful as it looked.

Andy, who’s an artist when it comes to flower decorations, had made the table a perfectly gorgeous riot of color, and at Madame’s place she had laid the sweetest little old-fashioned posy of the hardy perennials that must have once formed part of the original garden. It was a pretty little attention. I was disappointed for a moment I hadn’t thought of it myself, when I saw how touched Madame was as she picked it up and buried her nose in its colorful sweetness before pinning it on the front of her gown.

After dinner we sat around and talked, everybody trying to tell what had happened to them during the month we had been separated, and the hub-bub was awful. However, after a while Aunt Mollie declared that both Monsieur and Madame Carreau had had enough excitement for one evening, and that it was high time all of us were in bed.

I hadn’t had a chance to say anything to Syd yet about Madame’s suggestion of another treasure hunt, but as we were going up the broad stairway, I managed to whisper him a hurried account of our talk.

“That plateau is pretty far from the beach, you know,” he reminded me doubtfully. “It’s a bad climb too, and it would have taken a lot of hard work to clear a path through the jungle, for carrying treasure chests up there.”

“But maybe they had some other way of going, that we don’t know yet,” I insisted eagerly. “And, besides, they wanted a hard place to get at, didn’t they? The harder the better, I should say. Old Morgan didn’t want anyone walking in sort of easy and casual and making off with his pieces of eight. And he had plenty of men in his crew to carry out orders, no matter how difficult they might be.”

Syd nodded. “Yes, that’s all quite true,” he agreed. “Of course, it doesn’t correspond with the map at all, but I’ve always had a hankering to look that plateau over. There must be a mighty fine view from there anyhow. As soon as we get a chance to clear a path, let’s organize another treasure hunt, and take it by easy stages so Madame Carreau can go too. She seems a good little sport, by what you tell me.”

I had to laugh at that description of the dainty, fragile looking little old lady, with her Dresden china coloring and her manner of being a sort of grand duchess of what Mademoiselle, at Miss Porter’s School, used to call the old Faubourg Saint Germain. But all the same I knew what Syd meant in spite of his slang. She was just as young and eager underneath her delicate outside, as any of us. If we had to take turns carrying her up that jungly climb to the plateau, I was resolved she shouldn’t miss the fun of going with us.

That night I dreamed a whole series of exciting dreams about almost finding the buried treasure, and always just missing it by a silly little bit of bad luck at the end. I woke from the last of these to find that morning had come. The sun wasn’t up yet, but my window, which looked out to the east, showed long pink and golden streaks across the sky, and a lovely rose-tinted glow on the water—low down, where the clouds and ocean met.

This was the nicest hour of the whole day on the Island, because it was so fresh and cool and clean, somehow. You had a feeling that overnight the whole world had been scrubbed after the hot yesterday, and before the hot tomorrow. I didn’t always wake early enough to see it, but when I did, I never failed to spring out of bed, gather up a kimono and towels, and run down the old Planter’s Road to the beach, for a morning dip in the lagoon.

I was up out of bed in a jiffy that morning, and as I was stealing down the hall toward the stairs, trying to walk softly so as not to wake anyone else in the house, I was startled to see the door of Madame Carreau’s bedroom open, very carefully, an inch or two at a time, and Madame’s white head, covered with a gay lavender and rose bathing cap, peep out.

She smiled in a funny, half guilty manner at seeing me, and put her finger to her lips cautiously.

Then she opened the door wider, and slipped out into the hall to join me. She looked very tiny and doll-like, somehow, in a fleecy lavender kimono wrapped tightly round her, and with her bare feet in little high-heeled lavender silk mules that seemed just big enough for a six-year-old child.

She carried a huge Turkish bath towel over one arm, and I guessed at once that she was bound for the lagoon and a swim, just as I was. Probably it was an old custom of hers when she used to live on the Island.

Without either of us saying a word for fear of waking the sleepers round us, we tip-toed down the stairs side by side, and out across the terrace in front of the house. There Madame stopped and drew a long breath of the wonderful morning air. Her black eyes were shining.

“I had forgotten how beautiful it was,” she whispered. “You love it too, little Gay? This is the best time of the whole twenty-four hours, and those sleepy-heads waste it in bed! Pouf! We are wiser, you and I!”

“I’m afraid I don’t always wake in time to come down here at this hour,” I said honestly. “But when I do, I’m up in a hurry. I’m glad you swim too. It’s lot nicer to have company. Andy’s too lazy for early morning exercise, and the boys like to wait till the middle of the morning when they can stay in longer. They say it’s so hot then they need to be cooled off more than now. But I like this time best.”

She put her hand out and pinched my cheek, but I noticed suddenly that her kind, faded, old eyes were looking at me sort of keenly.

“It is too beautiful, this morning, to keep all to ourselves,” she suggested, smiling that warm friendly smile of hers. “Why don’t you go upstairs—oh, very softly,—and bring that pretty little cousin Andrée down to share our swim with us? I have been more used to boys than young girls, all my life, but now that I have a chance, I propose to become acquainted with my own sex. Don’t you think if you wake her, Andrée would enjoy all this—loveliness?” She made a gesture that took in the morning about us, and with that funny, new feeling of having been unconsciously a bit unfair to my girl cousin, that I’d experienced yesterday in Madame’s room, I nodded and ran back into the house.

When I woke her, Andy was inclined to grumble just at first and roll over for another forty winks. But when she understood Madame wanted her, she sat up in a hurry.

“Why didn’t you tell me that at once?” she demanded rather crossly. “Isn’t she a wonder, Gay? Fancy her going swimming at sunrise, when she must be pretty nearly seventy years old.”

“She’s seventy years young, I guess,” I corrected her. “But, you’ve got to hurry if you’re coming. We can’t keep her waiting down there alone. Where did you put your Annette yesterday, it’s not in the closet—Oh, here it is, back of this door—grab a towel now and come on!”

Madame had a quick approving little smile for me when we came hurrying across the terrace to join her.

“Isn’t this a morning of mornings?” she greeted Andy. “Little Gay here, and I couldn’t bear to have you miss it.”

I was surprised to see Andy flush, and her lip start trembling unexpectedly at the words, but she looked away so we shouldn’t see and pretended to be fussing with a loose thread on her bathing suit.

“It was sweet of you not to forget me,” she said, still not looking up, and again I had that feeling of having been unkind without meaning it. It was a horrid, uncomfortable feeling, and it made me sort of half mad with myself for having had to be reminded about Andrée, and half mad with her for always waiting to be singled out, instead of joining in naturally like the rest of the family.

“Let’s start,” I said impatiently, deciding it was pleasanter to be doing something than to think just then.

So we three trotted along together down the Planter’s Road, and came out on the cool white sand of the lagoon beach. The sky and ocean were both quite a deep rose in the East now, and there was that lovely, spicy little breeze blowing from the land behind us that I’d smelled the first day the schooner lifted the Island.

No matter how many times I’d smelled it since, I had never got over feeling it meant romance and adventure, desert islands, buried treasure and all sorts of wonderful, unreal things that don’t happen in an every-day world.

I saw Madame lift her head suddenly, and sniff, and I knew she recognized the odor too.

“Once,” she said to us, “way out in India, I smelled something like it, at the edge of the jungle. We were traveling from a small native village, and had to cross quite a strip of real jungle to get to our next stopping place. It made me so homesick, I cried when my husband wasn’t looking. It was after then I began to want to come home to Sunset Island.”

She took off her lavender kimono and underneath it she had on the funniest, most old-fashioned bathing suit of black silk I’d ever seen, but somehow it suited her—all bunches and ruffles and little bows. I felt Andy and I were awfully modern in our Annettes, but she seemed to like them, and told us she knew one couldn’t swim really far in skirts. Anyhow, she just liked now to paddle about and lie down in the shallow water.

But when we were actually in, I found she swam a good deal better than she’d led us to suppose.

“I taught Raoul to swim when he was only five,” she told me shyly. “We used to swim out to the reef every morning, when he was a little older. I’d like to do that again.”

I was a little bit worried over this, because though it wasn’t a long swim across for me, or for the boys, Madame was a different matter. Even Andy, who wasn’t a strong swimmer, had never attempted it yet. However, Madame looked so little and light, I finally decided I could tow her safely ashore if she did give out on the way, so we set out, swimming slowly, a few feet apart, leaving Andy splashing lazily near the beach.

The surf was breaking over the barrier reef, but not as strongly as it would later when the tide was high, and we found a place where we could climb up and rest on the rocks without getting more than an occasional splash of spray. The first rim of the sun was showing through the clouds behind us, and when we sat facing the shore there was a wide gold pathway right across the lagoon, from our feet to the white sand of the beach.

The Island itself looked awfully deserted and mysterious from the reef. The undergrowth was so thick that you couldn’t see the house, or any of our improvements and outbuildings. The land sloped upward from the beach to the north, to the pointed hill I’d always called Sugar Loaf, on top of which was the small, jungle-covered plateau Madame wanted to search for the treasure.

Uncle Joe had estimated the height of that hill at about three hundred feet or so, but from the reef, and in the early morning light, it looked higher—and sort of dark and forbidding as well. You could easily believe, just looking at it, that it had all kinds of secrets to keep. So why not Morgan’s too?

Madame Carreau pointed it out with her small, wrinkled hand.

“Raoul climbed it several times,” she said. “Do you see that little break in the jungle growth—over there to the right? You can scarcely find it—as if there’d been a road cut through once. It’s nearly grown over now, I suppose. Raoul cut that path so I could go exploring with him, but my husband was always worrying about my heart—he thinks because I look frail I must be delicate. My family have always tried to make an invalid of me by too much care and pampering. But I’m really as strong as—as a carthorse.” She ended so emphatically, and the comparison was so utterly absurd applied to her, that I had to laugh. She joined me a second afterwards but kept nodding her head determinedly.

“Now don’t you get to fancying, Gay, that my husband is right,” she warned. “He finally succeeded in frightening Raoul so he would never take me up there.” Once more her hand pointed to the top of Sugar Loaf. “But now I’m going, and I’m counting on you, bébé, to help me. I want to see that view from up there, and have one more hunt for Morgan’s gold pieces before I die.”

After that we slipped into the water again, and swam comfortably back to the beach. She seemed a little out of breath, I thought, when we reached the sand, and I insisted that we should lie there a while to dry off and rest, before going back to the house.

I scooped up the sand into a high chair-back for Madame to lean against, and Andy and I sprawled out luxuriously, on either side of her and talked for nearly an hour, till we heard the sound of the breakfast gong clanging faintly down the Planter’s Road through the woods to us, and all jumped to our feet guiltily.

But in that hour Andy and I learned to know Madame as an old friend. We said afterwards we couldn’t quite believe she had arrived on the Myra only the day before, and that in reality we had known her for less than twenty-four hours.

She told us such vivid, quaintly worded stories of Sunset Island—the traditions about its former pirate visitors, the building of the plantation house by Rosemary’s husband—the first Carreau to settle on the Island over a hundred years ago—and last of all, but scarcely less interesting, her own life in Planter’s House, and Raoul’s boyhood.

In return I told her of Braeburn—Andy as usual preferring to sit back and listen—and how Aunt Mollie had taken me in when my mother died and my young father was drowned at sea rescuing one of his own men. Except for that part about Daddy, the rest of what I had to tell sounded pretty tame to me, compared with Madame’s stories, but she really seemed interested, and kept asking questions that finally drew Andy, too, on to talk about Dan and Sydney, and little Red, and all our good times together.

Then while we were both still chattering like magpies, finding something new to remember at every pause, that gong rang, and we were suddenly reminded that we were starved for breakfast.

So we started back up the road, and Madame thought of the little side door that led into the passageway behind the back-staircase, and let us slip up to our rooms without meeting any of the family.

Monsieur Carreau, seated at Aunt Mollie’s right, looked up with a twinkle in his black eyes when we appeared in the dining room.

“Now, Mademoiselle Gay and Mademoiselle Andrée, I am wondering which of you three led the others into mischief,” he said. “You will find that this wife of mine, although she may appear to be sixty, is in reality no more than six, and liable to get into all sorts of scrapes unless you keep an eagle eye on her.”

The family laughed, and Madame, her own eyes twinkling as brightly as Monsieur’s, sat down in her place by Uncle Charles, and attacked her orange with a hungry air.

“You should know my habits after forty years, Jean,” she said with pretended severity. “I was taking my morning swim in the lagoon, and these young ladies have also the same excellent and healthful custom. Voila! We swam together.”

Perhaps it went through Monsieur Carreau’s mind, as she spoke, that she had formed her habit of swimming years ago, with a much nearer and dearer companion than either Gay or Andrée, for his face softened, though he merely nodded and resumed his breakfast.

“We discussed the treasure cache,” Madame went on with her brave little air of gaiety. “We are going to make a real business of the search. I warn you all that this time we are going to accomplish something.”

“Hooray for Madame Carreau!” Syd cried impulsively, and then blushed scarlet for fear he’d be thought forward and disrespectful. But Madame looked as pleased as Punch.

“Will you join our search party, Sydnee?” she asked him. She had queer, unexpected little touches of accent at times, especially in saying names, and at others she would talk ahead without giving a sign that she had been brought up to French as her mother tongue.

“You bet!” Syd said with emphasis, and only grinned when Aunt Mollie arched her eyebrows at him as she does when we get too slangy. It’s the nearest she ever comes to actual scolding.

“Madame doesn’t mind—she’s used to boys,” Syd said quickly, and then stopped short, for fear his reference to Raoul might hurt our guests.

“Yes, I am used to boys,” Madame wasn’t hurt, but pleased. “As I told you I am not so used to girls,” she added apologetically, smiling at Andrée and me. “But I am already very fond of two.”

That day Syd, Andrée and I appointed ourselves a committee of three to show Madame and Monsieur all the changes we had made in the house and grounds, and our plans for the future. They were as interested and excited as we could have asked, and every once in a while would stop to point out something to each other, and say softly, “You remember? See—this is different—Why did we not think of doing so?” Or else—“Here it is the same. We could have remembered no better ourselves.”

After the midday meal, Madame rested, and Monsieur sat in the big, cool hall by the fountain, and read during the heat of the early afternoon. But about the time the shadows had lengthened out along the Planter’s Road, and walking was pleasanter, Madame came downstairs—in old-fashioned lavender sprigged dimity—and they set out together for the beach, arm in arm.

“I guess maybe they want to talk about Raoul and old days,” Andy said with a quick sympathy that surprised me a little from her. “Suppose we stay away a while, and let them get accustomed to things.”

CHAPTER XII
“DEAD MEN’S INLET”

BOTH the Carreaus were very much interested in our plans for making a real business of the orange grove, and shipping to the States as often as we could arrange for vessels to stop and load a cargo at the Island.

During their ownership of Sunset Island, they had been content to sell the fruit at Martinique, and occasionally make a shipment to Cuba or Jamaica, when opportunity offered. Their market hadn’t been big, and neither had their profits, but they had had few real expenses, and until the death of Raoul, which had taken the heart out of them both, they had evidently been satisfied to drift along getting what they could for their crops.

But Uncle Joe and Uncle Charles were planning to ship on a really big scale. Uncle Joe had brought back a little group of workers with him—all hands who had been used to the work in Florida groves—and the first labor he had set them at was building a row of neat little cabins down at the other end of the garden, to serve as quarters.

Monsieur Carreau, in spite of his rather indolent management of the grove originally, possessed a good deal of valuable knowledge of orange-growing, and spurred on by our enthusiasm, he offered his services as advisor and instructor, and pretty soon had worked out a number of very helpful plans that Uncle Joe and Uncle Charles immediately acted on.

The Carreaus had been living on the Island about two weeks, and the Myra was preparing to sail north again (she had been chartered months beforehand to carry lumber from Savannah to Boston at this time), when Madame Carreau came to Andy and me with a new proposition.

“I am so amazed and delighted, children, with all this businesslike activity on the Island,” she began in her pretty, fluttering voice. “But thinking it over—oh, so very hard—it has occurred to me that you two enfants and your good Aunt, and I might organize ourselves as business women, and build up what your oncle would call a—I have it! a little side line business.”

“Let’s go down to the beach and talk it over,” I suggested eagerly, for when Madame proposed anything, we had learned already it was only after much careful consideration, and would be sure to be interesting.

So we each took a big sunshade and started down the Planter’s Road. The sun had dropped behind the Sugar Loaf plateau, and there was a nice long strip of shade at our favorite end of the lagoon beach. Andy and I had brought several pillows for us all to tuck ourselves up on cosily, while we discussed plans.

From a deep pocket in her grey linen dress—I guess Madame’s the one woman left today who has that kind of pockets in her gowns—she drew a little book, about the size of Rosemary’s diary, and bound like it, in yellowish-white silk.

“You missed this, Andrée, when you found the diary in Rosemary’s chest,” she said, smiling at our exclamations. “This was Rosemary’s cook book, and each housekeeper of each succeeding generation of the Carreaus, has added new recipes. There are several of my own in it.” She laid it on Andy’s lap, and leaning over, I helped her turn the yellowed, neatly written pages, curiously.

“I was sure it had been packed away in the old chest before we left the Island, so this morning I made a search, and fortunately it was still there.” She took the little book back, and turning over the leaves hurriedly, found what she was looking for.

It was headed, in the same old-fashioned, curly-cue lettering of the diary: “Candied Orange Peel à la Josephine,” and there were two closely written pages of explicit directions that it would take too long to set down here. Besides, as Madame reminded me, it’s our business secret now, so we can’t give it away for outsiders to read.

“It is supposed, by family tradition,” Madame informed us, “to have been a sweet of which Josephine—afterward Empress of the French—was inordinately fond. It has come down in our family through all the generations since. This afternoon, if you agree, chéries, we will gather some suitable oranges, and prepare everything to commence the preserving and candying tomorrow morning. Ah—but wait only, until you have tasted this delicious confection!”

“I love candied peel,” I sighed, my mouth watering. “I suppose though, this is something specially wonderful.”

She laughed, and made a little face expressive of just how wonderful it was going to be.

“Wait until you taste—that is all,” she said very impressively. “Then we hold, perhaps, a family council—just the feminine members—and decide whether we might not build up our own little business for shipping sweets, à la Empress Josephine, to your big New York and Chicago and Philadelphia. We must make charming little boxes to hold the sweets, and imagine some pretty sentiment for a—what do you call it—trade mark, n’est-ce pas? We shall become immensely wealthy—oh, but immediately!”

We laughed, but Andy and I were at once as fired with enthusiasm for the new project as she was. And I couldn’t see any reason either, if the recipe was really as wonderful as Madame declared, why we shouldn’t find a market for it.

It was pretty to see how pleased she was because we were pleased. She insisted on reading the recipe over to us, and explaining with great care and detail every stage of the candying process, although as I’m not much of a cook myself, it didn’t all make as much sense to me as she thought it did. I can’t speak for Andy.

We decided not to tell the rest of the family what we were planning; we just told them we were candying some orange peel by an old recipe of Madame’s and everyone’s mouths watered in anticipation, just as mine had—we’re a family with an awfully sweet tooth, all of us.

Later that day, when it grew cooler, Madame, Andy and I went down to the grove, and Madame selected the oranges herself, to be used for the experiment, so there shouldn’t be any chances of a slip the next morning.

There’s a sort of large alcove to the kitchen at Planter’s House—almost a second kitchen in itself, for it has a big table, cabinets, and everything complete except a stove. So we took possession of this, and made it our work shop.

Here on the big center table, Madame spread the oranges, after first carefully washing them, and drying them with a soft, clean towel. Then all the ingredients for the recipe were checked up, and measured out in cups and jars and set out on the table—covered of course—all ready for us to start work the first thing in the morning.

I’d watched candied peel made before, but I certainly had never seen so many spices and different kinds of sugar, and other fruits included in the recipe. But it sounded scr-r-rumptious, I can tell you! I went to bed that night so excited, and anxious for the morning to come, that it seemed as if the night would never be over.

However, I did fall asleep at last, and then the next thing I knew was Madame knocking on my door, and whispering that it was time to get up. I tumbled out of bed, snatched a towel, and pulled on my Annette in a hurry—for of course we weren’t going to miss our morning dip because we were starting in business that day.

Andy had been waked too, and was just coming out of her room in her bathing suit and kimono, and we all stole down the stairs softly, letting ourselves out into the beautiful early morning. Every day was beautiful on Sunset Island at this season, but most beautiful at this hour of the day, and later, at sunset.

We didn’t linger over our swim; just took several plunges, swam a hundred yards or so, and then hurried back to the house to dress. We were out in the kitchen within half an hour from the time Madame had waked us, and had the great work started before anyone else in the family had thought of getting up.

Madame showed me just how the rind must be cut, and after a few clumsy attempts I caught the idea, and got under way fairly fast, while Andy and she mixed spices, and measured and weighed. My land! it was a complicated performance, that candying, yet Madame went at it so easily and as if she knew each motion by heart—as she undoubtedly did—that after a while I began to look on it too, as simply part of a familiar routine.

After about three-quarters of an hour, Aunt Mollie came into the kitchen to start the breakfast, and was astonished not only to find us already at work, but that we had the breakfast half cooked as well.

It took three days—of course working only a few hours at a time—to complete the job, but the results, when we tasted them, certainly justified any amount of time it might have required. Don’t ask me to describe the taste; it’s beyond me. But if you want to try it for yourselves, go into almost any big candy shop or fancy grocery in the larger cities and ask for “Orange Peel à la Josephine.”

The only thing I can think of to compare it with is that spicy little Island breeze I love. The Orange Peel tastes, to me, exactly the way that smells. If you have any imagination you’ll get an idea of it; and if you haven’t, then no words will help you anyhow.

The boys were wild about it, and that first batch we’d made didn’t last long. The evening the last crumb of it disappeared, Madame called the whole family to a council, in the big hall by the fountain, and in her pretty half-French English, laid our plan before them and asked for volunteers to help us see it through.

Well, when she finished, it seemed as if everybody present had something to say—all of them excited and pleased and anxious to do anything they could. Syd suggested that Dan and he should make the boxes, just as we’d hoped they would, and they went off in a corner and had a sort of council-within-a-council about the materials they meant to use—what would prove most durable and air-tight.

Finally they came back, very enthusiastic, with broad grins on their faces, and announced that they had a real inspiration. To keep the peel fresh for the long trip, they said it ought to be packed in air-tight tins first, and for this they could use small round baking powder boxes—we had an enormous supply of these in the house, and when the Myra went north again she could order us as many empty tins as we’d need, of course.

They were going to paint the tins green outside, and then use strips of palmetto to weave cunning basket-work around them. They even offered to make several samples so we could choose the most effective design, and promised to begin work at once.

On the Myra’s return from New York, she had brought us, along with the new supplies, a lovely birch-bark canoe, painted a dull green, which the boys had been crazy to have for fishing in the lagoon.

I had been out in it several times with both Syd and Uncle Joe but I had never paddled it alone. It takes quite a lot of skill to propel and steer a canoe with one paddle, and though I’d been wanting to try it, so far the opportunity hadn’t happened to come. That night, when our exciting conference about the candied-peel business was over, I ran down the Planter’s Road to the lagoon beach for a last breath of sea air, to cool off before turning in.

I didn’t think to stop and tell anyone where I was bound, as I’d done this, either alone or with the others, so often before. But I had no sooner reached the beach on that particular evening, and seen the green canoe pulled up above high tide mark on the sand, with the big, tropical golden moon shining down enticingly on it, than I was seized with a perfectly irresistible temptation to launch it, and paddle about the lagoon alone for ten minutes or so before going back to the house.

Even if I didn’t manage specially brilliantly at paddling by myself, I couldn’t come to harm in the quiet, reef-enclosed lagoon, I argued with an exasperating little doubt that pricked me. Why, even if I contrived to upset myself, which wasn’t likely, I could swim across the lagoon and back several times without tiring—I’d done it too, in my morning swims.

And if I were going to make a joke of myself upsetting, I’d much rather have no witnesses about to jeer at me afterwards.

The canoe was quite deeply bedded in the sand, but I’m a pretty strong girl, and after a lot of heaving and pulling, I got it down to the edge of the water and was just about to climb aboard when somebody called me and I nearly jumped out of my skin, with the start I gave. But it was only little Reddy, who had evidently seen me slip out of the house and followed me.

As he was there, there wasn’t anything to do but take him along. He was so excited when I told him he could come, that I felt selfish at having tried to steal such a gorgeous night all for myself.

We kept the paddles in the canoe, since there was no chance of thieves on the Island, but foolishly I tossed the second one back on the sand as I got in and then, seating myself on the stern seat, and with Reddy on the floor facing me, we pushed off.

It gave me a real thrill of adventure being out there in the bright moonlight, with the black shadows making the shore look unfamiliar and sort of dangerous. I hadn’t seen the Island from the lagoon before at night, except from the Myra’s deck, which was quite different again.

It was so lovely and cool, with that spicy little land breeze I loved, blowing across my hot face, and filling my nose with its delicious tang of spices and moist warm earth, and tropical gardens, and all the rest of it.

Reddy sat on the canoe floor as quiet as a little mouse, letting one fat hand trail over the side in the warm water.

For a few minutes we just drifted lazily. I dipped the paddle in a little half stroke that kept the canoe barely moving, and after a while I noticed that we had got into the current that sets seaward through the opening in the reef. However, it was always such a gentle little current, except in storms, that that didn’t worry me.

Swimming in the lagoon as much as we did, we’d discovered that there were quite a number of little cross currents always moving the water—sometimes seaward, sometimes north or south along the inner line of the reef. This one that had caught Reddy and me was the strongest, but I knew it wouldn’t mean exerting hardly any effort when I got as near the reef-opening as I wished, to paddle across the current, and so back to shore outside its influence. I’d seen the boys do it hundreds of times.

At last I decided that it was time to turn back, and dipped my paddle deeper, putting more strength into my strokes. Just as I’d expected, I won free of the current’s pull easily enough, but to my surprise, beyond it, the bow of the canoe was snatched sharply round by a new current, much, much stronger than the old one. The suddenness of it jerked the paddle from my fingers, and before I could reach for it, it was swirling away, tantalizingly, just ahead of us, bound northward at a sort of right angle to the reef, inside the shadow of the shore-line. And close after it, bobbing gaily in its wake, went the canoe with Reddy and me as helpless and astonished passengers.

I knew I could have gone overboard and swum to the paddle, but while I was doing that the canoe might be hurried on by the current beyond my swimming speed—which is slow. And I daren’t risk that with Reddy in it. I’ll confess I was a tiny bit scared, just for a minute; then I decided, as long as this new current appeared to be carrying us shoreward anyway, my best course was to sit tight and see what would happen.

This north end of the lagoon we seemed bound for, was the part we hadn’t really explored from the shore, for the jungle grew very close to the water here, and was impenetrable without machetes. The time we’d all made the circuit of the Island on our three-days’ walking trip of exploration, we had skirted the water’s edge at this part of the journey. The tide had happened to be low too, so we’d had no trouble passing over this stretch.

For that reason I wasn’t over-keen about landing at this end of the lagoon, unless I could find the paddle somewhere along the edge of the water when we grounded, and paddle back. But just as I was thinking this might be possible, the moon that was lighting the way so splendidly went under a big black cloud, and instantly everything—lagoon, shore, and the dark outline of Sugar Loaf above me, all melted into a solid wall of inky blackness. At the same moment I felt a little grating jar under me, and knew the canoe had run its nose aground on the beach.

Reddy, who—after one anxious glance at me when the paddle went overboard—had sat perfectly still, offering no comments or advice, now burst into a relieved little crow of delight.

“There’s the beach, Gay,” he shouted triumphantly. “Let’s get out an’ see if we can find the ol’ paddle.”

I thought that might be good advice, and got to my feet, carefully feeling my way forward, and climbed over the bow down on the wet sand. A long ripple, like a miniature wave, washed up over my feet, wetting my white canvas pumps and splashing up my legs. But a wetting was the least of my worries just then, and clutching the painter with one hand firmly, cautioning Reddy to sit tight, I continued to walk up the shelving beach, dragging the canoe and its small passenger after me.

A hanging vine, with a long, scented flower at the end, swished across my face after I’d gone five steps, so I knew I was approaching the jungle. Instinctively I swerved to the right, still pulling the canoe, and found the way clearer before me. I took five more steps, and at the fifth plunged into water up to my waist.

It surprised me so that I lost my balance, and as I went under I heard a frightened little squeak from Reddy when he saw me disappear; I had no trouble picking myself up, spluttering and drenched from head to toes. I remember my first amazed realization was that the water I wiped from my face and my lips was fresh—or at most had a faintly brackish taste instead of the salt water of the lagoon.

And then, just when I needed it most, the moon came out from the clouds, and flooded down through the interlaced branches of the jungle that made a sort of open-work roof above us. By its light I saw that what I’d thought was the beach was a narrow sand bar across the mouth of what looked like a small stream, flowing out from the blackness of the jungle, toward us.

But in the darkness, and with the responsibility of Reddy on my hands, this was emphatically no time for exploring. So, holding by the painter, I scrambled back to the sand and pushed the canoe backward into the lagoon. Reddy, who hadn’t been out of it at all, was still perfectly dry, and to my delight, right beside me the lost paddle was drifting on the little ripples. I held the canoe steady, while Reddy leaned over and rescued it, and in another minute we were paddling south along the shore to our familiar landing place.

There hadn’t been any real danger in our little adventure, but even if there had I’m sure I’d have forgotten it in the mad excitement that was filling me at the discovery I’d made that night.

That brackish stream, slipping so quietly out of the jungle, and sinking into the sand of the bar across its mouth, was—must be the “Dead Men’s Inlet” of Morgan’s map, that we’d been so certain wasn’t on our Sunset Island. Not finding the inlet had been the principal proof to Uncle Joe and the rest of them that a mistake had been made by the old buccaneer who copied the map, and that Sunset Island wasn’t really the famous treasure island at all.

It was simple enough to reason out now how the inlet had escaped us, and how even the Carreaus, who had lived on the Island so long before us, had missed it too. The silting up of the sand across the inlet mouth, and the heavy jungle growth on the shore, had proved as effective a screen for his secret as even Morgan himself could have desired.

I paddled with frantic haste, on fire with impatience to get back to Planter’s House and spring my wonderful find on the assembled company, who must by this time be a little uneasy as to our whereabouts.

CHAPTER XIII
ALONG MORGAN’S TRAIL

WHEN we got to the house, instead of finding the family worried by our long absence as I’d been afraid would be the case, they hadn’t missed us at all—evidently taking it for granted we’d both slipped off to bed. They were still gathered in the big hall, discussing our candied-peel scheme, and judging by some of the remarks I overheard as I entered, they had been advancing suggestions, and thrashing out ways and means at a great rate.

So suddenly the idea came to me that I wouldn’t blurt out my discovery of the inlet—Reddy of course had guessed nothing of what it meant—but would take only Syd into the secret, and we’d explore a bit further by ourselves, before springing the surprise on the family.

I beckoned him over to a corner of the hall, and as the family were used to our having a hundred secrets together, no one commented on this either. Well, when I told him what we’d been doing that evening since Reddy and I left the house, and what a gorgeous find we’d literally tumbled into, he gave me one astonished look, and then pursed up his lips in a long whistle.

“I’ll hand it to you, Sis, for luck!” he ejaculated enviously. “Gosh, why wasn’t I with you tonight? Say, let’s keep mum about this till we’ve hunted about a bit. If we take the whole bunch along there’ll be an awful lot of time wasted.”

“That’s just what I thought,” I agreed. “It will be ever so much more exciting if we can have a real discovery to report, won’t it?”

“What d’you say we start early tomorrow morning?” Syd suggested eagerly. “We’ll tell mums we’re going out in the canoe before breakfast, and she’ll put us up a snack to take with us. She won’t ask questions.”

She wouldn’t, I knew. That was one of the dear things about Aunt Mollie. She just trusted us to have our little plans and secrets, and to tell her about them when we got ready. I suppose—having been used to us children for a good many years—she probably “smelled a rat,” as the saying goes, when we suggested the picnic breakfast, but she only pulled Syd’s hair teasingly, and rubbed her cheek against mine when she kissed us goodnight.

“If you’re going in the canoe,” she added casually, “you might take your fishing tackle, and see if you can bring us home something good for supper.”

I was almost sure then that she guessed our expedition had something to do with the treasure hunt, her eyes were twinkling so. Besides, the excuse she’d provided us with would keep the rest of the family from suspecting anything out of the ordinary. That was Aunt Mollie all over again. I just hugged her hard, for goodnight, I was so relieved we needn’t try to make up excuses.

As a rule, the boys are awful sleepy-heads about getting up early, but that next morning I didn’t have to pound on Syd’s door more than once. We met downstairs by the side door, Syd armed with the machete, and I with a heavy cane that would be good either for climbing, or for killing snakes—supposing we met any. Aunt Mollie had put some sandwiches, hard boiled eggs and a thermos bottle of cold milk in our smallest picnic basket the night before, and we found that and Syd slung it over his shoulder by the carrying strap.

Then we let ourselves out the door, and raced each other down the Planter’s Road to the lagoon and the canoe. Stowing our provisions and weapons (we always called them that on our picnics just for the “desert-island” sound of it!) under one of the seats, we pushed the green canoe down to the water’s edge, and I climbed aboard.

Syd gave it another strong push, and handed me my paddle, wading out into the lagoon a few feet before he followed me into the canoe.

“You’ve got to be guide on this expedition, Sis,” he reminded me when we were safely afloat and paddling north along the shore-line. “Sure you remember your land marks from last night?”

It hadn’t occurred to me to doubt before, but now at his question I began to wonder uneasily if I really did recall my directions as clearly as I’d like to be certain of doing. I had drifted with the current the evening before, not paying much attention to where it was taking us, and when I’d finally landed on the shore the moon was under the clouds, and I hadn’t had a good look at my surroundings.

So in rather a meek voice for me, I suggested that we paddle north, keeping a look-out for signs of where the canoe had grounded last evening. I knew high tide would have washed away the marks near the water, but I had dragged the canoe clear across the sand bar, and there were bound to be some traces left of that, that must be visible from the lagoon if we kept in close.

Syd assented to this, and we paddled steadily, not doing much talking, but using our eyes as busily as our hands. Finally, just as I was beginning to fear we’d overshot our mark, Syd—whose eyes are like a hawk’s for keenness—pointed excitedly with his dripping paddle.

“In we go, Sis! There are the marks on the sand—No, farther in—where you dragged the canoe. Steady now, girl! Don’t dump us and spoil the breakfast, just when we’ve found our landing place.”

A long sweep of his paddle sent the canoe gliding shoreward, and with several energetic thrusts with my own to help, we soon had the bow pushed up on the sand, and were over the side.

“Sure this is a sand bar?” Syd asked doubtfully, looking about with a critical eye. “Looks to me just like the rest of the beach.”

The sun had risen above the distant horizon-line now, and was pouring a gorgeous path of gold and red and bright orange across the sea toward us. It even jumped the barrier reef, and made a smaller, fainter glow across the lagoon, right to our feet.

In its light, the place looked a whole lot different from last night by moonlight, of course, but I recognized certain land marks never-the-less—much to Syd’s relief when I pointed them out.

“There’s that hanging vine, with the big trumpet flower at the end that tickled my face when I landed,” I exclaimed. “And here are my footprints, where I walked round the canoe, and here—oh, Syd, look! Here’s where I walked off the other side into the inlet. Try it yourself, if you’re not convinced. Maybe a cold bath will prove to you I know what I’m talking about.”

First pulling the canoe safely up on the sand bar, Syd walked over to stand beside me, pushing aside the hanging vines that formed a regular curtain-screen across the inlet mouth. There, sure enough, as I’d known it would be, lay a broad, dark-looking stream stretching between the side walls of jungle undergrowth, backward into the thicker jungle behind.

Syd whistled again, and I heard him mutter something under his breath. Then, as if we’d both had the impulse at the same moment, we turned and grabbing the painter, dragged the canoe across the bar, and launched it in the stream on the other side.

Syd held the stern while I got in, and a moment later we were off. My land! If I live to be a hundred, it doesn’t seem as if I could ever forget the thrill of that moment when we pushed up that jungle-enclosed stream, and began paddling into unknown country on the trail—or so we believed—of old Morgan’s lost treasure.

I twisted cautiously about to glance over my shoulder at Syd, and his face looked exactly as excited and sort of breathless as I felt inside.

The stream ran straight ahead for several yards, and then swung about a bend, under another hanging curtain of tropical vines. Being in the bow, it was my place to push these aside with my paddle as best I could, while Syd propelled us through. The vines grew pretty solidly for about twenty feet, and going was difficult. We got scratches across our faces from the whipping ends, but at length we were through, and into clear water again.

The stream was narrower here, and the banks ran straighter up and down, and with every yard we paddled they grew steeper and higher. Then came a third unexpected turn, and before we realized it, we were heading into the black mouth of a low cave, out of which the stream flowed.

Syd called to me hurriedly to back water, and we both put all our strength into swinging the canoe’s head about, out of the full force of the current that ran stronger here—particularly where we were, in the middle of the stream.

“We’d better not go on, don’t you think, Sissy?” Syd asked, his voice all mixed up between regret and a kind of hopeful expectancy. He knew I wouldn’t agree with any such safe and sane policy as that, but I guess he didn’t want to take the responsibility on his own shoulders where I was concerned.

“I’m going on—right to the end of the stream—or I guess maybe it’s really the beginning I mean,” I retorted. “You can get out and wait for me here, if you want to.” That was mean of me, only I knew he was dying to keep on, and I wanted his conscience to be clear about doing it. Because, of course, if I went on, he’d have to go along to take care of me.

I chuckled to myself over the sigh of relief he gave, even while he was trying to frown disapprovingly at me.

“I’m not sure we ought to, until we’ve got Father or Uncle Joe with us,” he added as a last feeble protest, but I noticed that he already had his paddle dipped in the water again, ready to start.

“If the pirates went this way, why can’t we?” I argued, splashing my own paddle in vigorously, and pushing us out into midstream once more. “What are you afraid could happen to us, Syd? There isn’t current enough to be dangerous—and besides, what there is sets away from the cave, so we can’t be sucked down any rapids, if you’re thinking of that.”

“That’s true. You’re a bright child, Sis,” he said approvingly. “I guess I was picturing us being drawn over waterfalls, and things like that, into all kinds of horrible dark regions. Shows what reading adventure stories can do to your common sense. Paddle ahead—faster—we’re going to follow this trail to the end now, and if anything we don’t like crops up, we’ll only have to let go and drift out the way we came.”

Yet for all our brave words, I guess we both felt a wee little sinking of the heart as we slipped from the daylight outside, into the dusk of the cave.

At first it was just a grey twilight inside, that grew deeper and deeper as we proceeded. The rippling of the current made a soft, gurgling noise against the bow of the canoe and our dipped paddles, that sounded cool and pleasant. The water was clearer, and we could see down to the sandy bottom of the cave floor until we got so far from the mouth that it was too dim to distinguish anything except vague outlines.

The stream had spread out too, inside the cave, until it looked like a small, underground pond, with dark walls on either hand, and a rock roof that seemed to dip down lower, and nearer the water, the farther in we paddled.

The water kept getting shallower and shallower, and after a while it was hard to paddle without danger of striking the blade and breaking it on the rock beneath us. Just at that point we ran aground, grating horribly in a way that set our teeth on edge, and made us sure the whole bottom of the canoe was being ripped out under us.

We had come to the end of navigable water at any rate, that was certain. And unless the contour, of the cave had changed drastically since Morgan’s time—a thing that wasn’t probable—if the pirates had also come by our route, their trail must have ended right here.

Syd was explaining this to me—quite unnecessarily—as he sprang over the side of the canoe and into the water, with me at his heels as fast as I could steady myself out of the wobbly little craft.

“But of course, they may have carried the treasure farther, on foot,” I was beginning to argue, when my own foot slipped and I found myself stumbling helplessly down the sloping side of the cave floor, on something that didn’t feel like rock bottom, but softer, and slimier—a half-rotted wooden cask of huge proportions, laid sidewise on the bottom of the stream, was the only simile that occurred to my astonished brain.

“Syd-d-d-d!” I stuttered wildly, waving my arms as I tried vainly to stop my rush down-hill, and then my toe caught in a kind of hole or crevice in what I was walking over; and down I went, full length in the shallow water.

The next moment Syd, stepping gingerly over the tricky surface, was beside me, and hauling me to my feet, so excited that he didn’t realize he was almost jerking my arm off.

“Hurt, Sissy?” he demanded anxiously, when I was at last standing upright, dripping water, and choking over the half-gallon or so I’d swallowed in my involuntary dive.

I choked again, shook some of the water out of my eyes, and clutched Sydney in a sudden panic as a sharp pain darted through my left ankle.

“Oh—oh, Syd,” I groaned, “I’m afraid I’ve broken my ankle—sprained it badly anyhow. What—what’ll we do?”

“Hold on to me—hard—and don’t let it scare you,” Syd said in his usual, comforting, matter-of-fact voice. I guess inside he was a bit scared too, at the fix we were in, but he didn’t let a sign of it show.

“Take it a step at a time, and we’ll be back at the canoe in half a minute. Then all you’ll have to do is sit tight, while I push off, and we’ll float back to the inlet mouth. It’s all right, Gay. There’s nothing to worry about, but I’m mighty sorry about the ankle,” he added in awkward sympathy.

I gritted my teeth and obeyed, holding on to his arm with both hands, and feeling each painful step with as much care as if I’d been walking on egg-shells. It was really only six or seven steps to the canoe, and Syd helped me over the side, making me sit in the bottom where I could stretch my aching foot out before me.

Once safely settled, my silly panic was gone as quickly as it had seized me, and I was ashamed enough, I can tell you, over having let it show.

“Before you push us off,” I suggested, “why don’t you try and see if you can find out what that thing on the cave floor was I tripped over. It felt like—like——”

“Like the upturned bottom of an old ship’s boat, which is exactly what it is,” Syd announced in a triumphant tone. He had been stooping down, feeling about in the water while I spoke. Now he straightened up, and rubbed his wet hands on his equally wet knickers, evidently under the absent-minded conviction that he could dry them that way.

“Sis,” he said quite solemnly—and somehow I knew perfectly well what he was going to tell me next before he added another word—“I believe that—that’s Morgan’s jolly boat—the one that carried the treasure up here. Why should it be here otherwise—I ask you!”

“I’ll bet you anything you like it is,” I cried, bouncing up and down in the canoe till it was a wonder I wasn’t back in the water again quicker than I got out of it. “Maybe they overturned the boat here, and buried the treasure somewhere under it. Feel about and see, Syd!”

I groaned again, furious with myself for breaking my wretched old ankle just when I’d never needed it half so much to carry me.

“The water’s quite deep underneath,” Syd declared after a few very tense minutes of investigation, in which he had been lying flat in the water, feeling about and kicking out under the wrecked boat.

“We’re aground on the bottom of the boat,” he announced further, when he rose at last, dripping as hard as I had a moment earlier. “It looks to me as if the floor of the cave had either been hollowed out, or there had been a natural depression here originally—maybe it’s where the spring that feeds this stream rises. Then the boat’s been overturned above it. Shall I try a dive? I don’t think there’s anything down there to hurt me, only I wish there was a bit more light.”

I leaned over the side of the canoe, and seized him firmly by his wet jacket. Something I had read about desert islands long ago, had suddenly popped into my mind, sending a cold chill of terror up my spinal column.

“Sydney, don’t you dare attempt such a thing!” I gasped. “We’re two little fools to come in here alone in the dark, with no one knowing where we’ve gone, and try a stunt like this. How do you know there isn’t some—some dreadful sea animal down in that black pool under the boat? Haven’t you ever read that the giant squid—that’s an octopus, you know—lives at the bottom of deep pools just like this, and—” I stopped, shivering so I couldn’t go on for it seemed to both of us that something had set the quiet water of the pool stirring ever so faintly.

Syd wasted no time in argument, but pushed off the canoe and sprang in. Evidently he was remembering the same desert-island story I was. We’d read it together several years before.

“I guess we’d better get Uncle Joe in on this,” he muttered in agreement, and began to paddle.

The current more than made up for the loss of my rather amateurish attempts at paddling, and we floated down the stream to the inlet mouth in much faster time than we’d made coming up with two of us working.

Syd managed to pull the canoe across the sand bar alone, and then to half carry, half drag me after it. The ankle wasn’t hurting quite so badly now—though perhaps that was due to the excitement taking my thoughts off it—and I had begun to hope it was only a bad wrench, not a sprain after all.

Twenty minutes later saw us running the canoe’s nose ashore at our landing place, at the foot of the Planter’s Road, where I sat down meekly on the sand, as Syd commanded me, while he went to get Uncle Joe or Dan to help him make a chair of their crossed hands, to carry me to the house.

CHAPTER XIV
THE TREASURE HOLE

IN about ten minutes I heard footsteps coming back along the Planter’s Road, and Syd reappeared with Uncle Joe beside him.

“Well, well, Gay honey, what’s all this about a broken ankle?” Uncle Joe demanded, as soon as he was within speaking distance.

He came over to me and kneeling down, slipped off my canvas pump very gently, and began feeling my foot and ankle all over. But gentle as his touch was, I couldn’t help wincing a little though I gritted my teeth hard together and didn’t make a sound. At last he finished his examination, and we each gave a little sigh of relief.

“No bones broken, young lady, for which you may be duly thankful,” he told me cheerily. “It’s rather a bad sprain, I’m afraid, but rest and bandaging will set that right in two or three weeks.”

“Two—or three weeks!” I gasped in dismay. “Oh, Uncle Joe! D’you mean I’ll have to be quiet for three weeks? Why—why, I simply can’t! Syd and I’ve just made the grandest discovery, and I’ve got to go back and see it through.” I was babyishly near tears, but I fought them back with all my might. Not for all the disappointments in the world would I have let Uncle Joe and Syd see me cry.

Syd looked as dismayed as I, and Uncle Joe shook his head at us both, pretending to be stern.

“That was a nasty wrench you gave your ankle, Gay my dear,” he said. “It’s swelling pretty rapidly, you see.” It was. Now that I looked at it, it was about twice as big as it ought to have been. “You’ve probably torn some of the ligaments, if you haven’t actually fractured a small bone. So, as we haven’t an X-Ray to make sure, we can’t take chances. The boys and I will try to improvise a pair of crutches, and you must keep off the foot as much as possible.

“Even three weeks,” he added with a twinkle, “will pass in time. Now suppose I give you a seat on my shoulder, youngster—I don’t need Syd’s help with a featherweight like you.”

Before I could answer, he bent over and swung me up to his broad shoulder, as easily as if I were a baby.

Aunt Mollie, Madame Carreau and Andrée were on the terrace as we came up the Planter’s Road.

“Nothing to worry about,” Uncle Joe called out reassuringly, before they could even exclaim. “The girl’s twisted her ankle climbing over some rocks somewhere. She’ll just have to play the fine lady for a few weeks, and ‘sit on a cushion, and sew a fine seam’, while the rest of us try our hands at entertaining.”

“But how did it happen, darling?” Aunt Mollie asked tenderly when we were all in the big hall of the fountain, and Andy and Syd had run upstairs for bandages, liniment and hot water.

“Call all the family,” I suggested, “and while Uncle Joe is putting on the bandages—” he’d had to learn to be a pretty good doctor and surgeon both, in his long sea voyages—“Sydney and I’ll tell you about our big adventure.”

So Monsieur, Uncle Charles, Dan, little Reddy and Martin—whom we never left out of any of our conferences now, because he had come to seem just like one of the family—were summoned, and by the time they had all assembled, Uncle Joe had finished bathing and massaging my ankle and was putting on a sort of boot of narrow strips of adhesive tape, with over this, tight strips of bandage that made me feel lots more comfortable. When it was finished I was in a much better frame of mind to enjoy the excitement and speculations Syd’s and my story produced.

Aunt Mollie and Madame could only see, at first, the possible danger we had been in, when we went overboard in the cave. But the boys and Uncle Joe were terribly worked up at the account of the overturned, half-decayed ship’s boat.

“Of course we’ll have to go back and investigate it further,” Dan cried eagerly. “Let’s start right off. Why, Uncle Joe, maybe the treasure’s actually there waiting for us to find. Think! We’ll all be millionaires several times over now!”

Little Reddy joined in with a shrill “Hurrah,” and even Andy was so thrilled, she leaned forward with sparkling eyes, drinking in every word.

“Yes, let’s get off right away,” Syd was agreeing with Dan breathlessly. “The canoe’ll hold four—we’ll take Martin too—Dan and Martin, and Uncle Joe and I—Like to go, wouldn’t you, Mart?”

“You bet!” Martin said emphatically, flushing all over his freckled face with pleasure.

The most awful hollow sort of feeling struck me suddenly in the pit of my stomach. Something like when you dream you’re falling off the top of a high cliff, and there isn’t any bottom to anything. It choked me till I couldn’t have uttered a single word of protest if I’d tried.

This was my discovery originally—I’d found that lost “Dead Men’s Inlet,” and led Syd to the place—I’d helped paddle up that stream to the cave with him. It was I who’d tripped over the old boat, so we’d discovered it was there. And now, here they were all coolly proposing to go off without me, to make the final search for the treasure! Just because I’d hurt my wretched old ankle, that wasn’t any good reason for leaving me out this way. The treasure wouldn’t run off, if they waited till I was well enough to walk. But apparently no one had thought of suggesting it. They hadn’t even said they were sorry I couldn’t go.

I was horribly ashamed of my silly resentment a second afterward, because Uncle Joe turned to look at me, with those kind understanding eyes of his, that I felt were reading me through and through like a book, and at the same moment Syd and Dan cried together, in conscience-stricken tones: “Gay! We forgot Gay!”

And Uncle Joe said quietly, smiling at us all, “Yes, I thought you’d forgotten Gay.”

Well, of course, when they turned to look at me, sort of guilty, and ashamed and astonished at themselves, all together, I couldn’t feel sorry for myself any longer,—I had to laugh at them instead. I felt warm and happy again inside. They just hadn’t stopped to think. They hadn’t meant to leave me out.

“Of course we’ll wait till Gay’s able to go along,” Dan said quickly. “She can have my place then. This is Syd’s and her party. I’ll go next trip. Think there’s any danger of octopus, Uncle?” he went on, changing the subject, as I knew, so I wouldn’t have a chance to thank him.

Uncle Joe shook his head. “No—the stream up there in the cave must be fresh water and it’s a long way from the sea. I don’t think there’s any real chance of an octopus, children. But it’s just as well to go prepared—you can’t always tell what you’ll run up against in these tropical waters.”

I drew a long breath, and swallowed hard two or three times before I could say what I meant to. But if they could be generous, why, so could I, too!

“Uncle Joe, I don’t want you to wait for me,” I said then, steadily. “The suspense would be too much for all of us. I’d rather know quickly whether Morgan’s treasure is up in that cave, than wait three weeks to help find out. Besides, I guess this is a man’s job. You’d all rather feel you hadn’t a girl along, if you think there’s a chance of fighting cuttlefish. Though,” I added, not willing to have them think me a coward just because I was trying to do the fair thing all around, “I’d honestly not be scared with Uncle Joe and Martin.”

Of course they protested a while, but I stuck to it that I wanted them to go. And at last it was decided they should make the trip early the next morning. Besides exploring that deep hole under the boat they would push on farther into the cave on foot and see where it led. They would take the machete, and Uncle Joe and Martin would have their revolvers, and a lead and line for sounding that big hole, and of course, things like a compass, and lantern, and a shovel in case they had to dig. It would be a pretty big load for the canoe, but by being careful they could manage.

Another reason for making the trip at once had to do with the possibility of Captain Rawson and his rum-running pirates returning for the same purpose. Of course we didn’t believe they’d attempt to force their way in to the Island openly while the Myra was in the lagoon, but there was a bare chance they might try to sneak in, in a small boat at night.

And if there was any finding of that treasure to be done, naturally we were going to be the ones to do it if we could.

I think that Aunt Mollie was a little nervous over having the boys go, after she’d heard about the possibility of some strange sea monster lurking in the cave, but she’s the best little sport in the world, Aunt Mollie is, and she wouldn’t say one word that might have spoiled even a little bit of their pleasure in the expedition. Besides, she had such faith in Uncle Joe, she knew he wouldn’t take them if he really thought it dangerous.

That afternoon Uncle Joe rowed out to the Myra, and returned with a pair of crutches he had found among the schooner’s hospital supplies. Of course they were much too big for me, but he spent the whole evening cutting them down to my size, and adjusting new, more comfortable cushions on the tops.

The last thing before he carried me upstairs to bed, he gave me a lesson in handling them, which to my surprise, proved a lot harder to do than I’d supposed.

Aunt Mollie purposely didn’t wake me in the morning to see the exploring party off. I guess she understood how I felt underneath my efforts to appear unconcerned, and knew it would be easier if I didn’t have to watch them bustling off, all high spirits and anticipation, while I stayed behind, propped up between my two crutches.

When I did wake, it was to find the sun well up, and Andy coming into my room with a daintily-set breakfast tray. My, but I felt grand and luxurious having breakfast in bed! I sat up against the pillows with the tray balanced on my knees, and ate every single thing Aunt Mollie had sent me, while Andy perched on the foot of the bed, and in answer to my questions told me how the boys and Uncle Joe had started out.

Suppressing a little sigh of envy, I pushed the tray aside, and with Andy’s help, managed to get into my clothes. Then Uncle Charles appeared and carried me downstairs picka-back, while Reddy trailed behind us, much amused, carrying my crutches.

I had thought it would be a long day, waiting for the search party to come back, and trying not to feel abused and sorry for myself. But Madame Carreau had planned differently, bless her darling kind heart! Instead of setting me down in the hall, or out on the terrace as I’d expected, Uncle Charles carried me into the kitchen alcove, where I found Madame, Aunt Mollie and Andy waiting, with all the material and utensils for making candied orange peel on a large scale, spread out.

“We thought, chérie,” Madame explained, beaming at me, “that this would be a most excellent time to set about making our samples of Orange Peel à la Josephine to send north on the schooner’s next trip.”

Of course, after that, there was no chance for any brooding or feeling injured. I sat on a high chair by the table and cut the clean rind into the proper size strips as fast as my fingers could fly, while the other three measured, mixed, sugared, beat and boiled—all working so smoothly under Madame’s orders, that there really didn’t seem to be a single waste motion among the four of us.

We served Uncle Charles and Reddy a cold lunch, being far too busy and interested to stop to cook our regular dinner, and when that was eaten and the dishes washed the longest part of the day was over. Our orange peel was safely past the first stage of candying, and we had time to freshen ourselves up, put on clean dresses, and be waiting out in the cool of the terrace for the return of our explorers.

They came just about sunset—four bedraggled, grimy, tattered looking figures, but with grins on their faces.

“My—my,” Aunt Mollie greeted them, chuckling a little. “Do I see four scare-crows coming to supper, or what? But I suppose that is how proper explorers should look.”

“Did you find the treasure?” Andy and I shrieked wildly, in duet, while Red broke in with,

“And was there an octopus truly?”

“No octopus,” Uncle Joe answered the last question cheerfully. “But as for finding the treasure, well, we did—and we didn’t!”

He pulled up a chair and sank into it with a big sigh of satisfaction, mopping his hot face vigorously.

We all stared doubtfully from him to the other three members of the party.

“How could you find it, and not find it?” Andy demanded practically.

“You mean—” I asked quickly, “that you haven’t actually found it, but you know where it is?”

All four nodded at once, very emphatically.

“Something like that, Gay-girl,” Uncle Joe assented, lighting his faithful pipe, which as we all knew by experience, was the prelude to a story.

“If you know where it is, why didn’t you get it?” Reddy asked, his face screwed up into a puzzled pucker.

“Well, it might have been like this—” Dan was beginning, his eyes dancing tantalizingly.

I interrupted him impatiently, “Oh, Dan, please don’t tease! Let Uncle Joe tell it!”

“I shouldn’t have said we really know where the treasure is,” Uncle Joe began, slowly puffing at his lighted pipe. “We haven’t actual proof Morgan ever saw those caves, but we pried up that old boat, and judging by what’s left of it, and from what I know of boats of Morgan’s period, it might easily have belonged to one of his ships.

“Then, when we’d settled that point to our satisfaction, we explored further into the cave, on foot. And where do you suppose it came out?” He glanced at our faces, and laughed. “No, it’s too bad to keep you in suspense—I vow it is. That cave of the stream opens by a small passageway, that was partly blocked by fallen rock, into Reddy’s caves, where we camped the last night of our walking trip around the Island. Remember? And we had worked out—remember this too—on that map of old Morgan’s that the treasure should be located somewhere in those very caves if it was anywhere on Sunset Island.”

“Perhaps,” put in Syd excitedly, “before the passage was blocked, the pirates came by way of these other caves first. Found the stream, and followed it back to the lagoon. Then, when they’d decided—or Morgan had—that it was their best bet for a hiding place, they rowed up from the Inlet—which wasn’t hidden by that sand bar then, and sunk their treasure chests in that deep pool at the source of the stream, overturned the boat, to mark the spot, and went back to the ship. Or maybe,” he added darkly, “Morgan was the only one who went back. Those old pirate captains thought nothing of three or four murders to insure keeping the secret of their treasure. Maybe there are more than doubloons down in that pool, if we could only see to the bottom.”

“Ughh,” Andy chattered, and I felt a sort of chilly creepy sensation myself, prickling the back of my neck.

“Don’t scare the girls, Syd,” Uncle Joe laughed. “Those old robbers would have been just as dead, anyhow, by now, if they lived to swing from a gibbet—as they every man jack of them deserved. Don’t waste any pity on them, girls. They were all as cruel, black-hearted ruffians as the world has ever seen. Let’s just forget that side of it. It’s past and gone these four hundred years or more.”

“Yes,” Aunt Mollie said hastily, “let’s forget it, children. Tell us instead, Joe, why you think the treasure was sunk in that pool, not buried farther in, in the caves?”

“Because it’s the logical, safest place,” Uncle Joe returned, thoughtfully. “And we hunted those other caves over thoroughly, you remember, and couldn’t find a trace of any possible hiding place. The Carreaus hunted too, many times during their ownership of the Island. Remember Rosemary’s diary. It’s mostly hard, volcanic rock anyhow, that would have been almost impossible to dig into. Then, today with the help of our lantern, we made just as exhaustive a search of the stream-cave, and there literally isn’t another spot that’s possible.”

“But where are the chests, then?” I begged eagerly. “Couldn’t you fish for them at the bottom of the pool, Uncle Joe?”

“My dear, that’s just the trouble,” he said. “The pool hasn’t any bottom.”

We sat and stared at him unbelievingly, thinking it was only more of his teasing. But his face was quite sober.

“Oh, I don’t mean it didn’t have a bottom when the pirates sank their chests there,” he explained. “They must have made sure of that before taking any such chances of not recovering their booty when they wanted it. But that cave gives every evidence of fairly recent volcanic disturbances—an earth-shock probably, that tumbled down those rocks, blocking the passage to the other caves, and opened a deep crevasse—perhaps clear down to the sea bottom, under the old boat. That is my best deduction at any rate. There’s no way of proving it. But if the treasure ever was there, it’s unreachable now. Another thing—” he went on before anyone could speak. “That would explain also the stream being so much shallower and narrower, that the sand could silt across its mouth, and the water find some subterranean drainage into the lagoon. Probably three-quarters of the original spring or underground lake—whichever it was—that fed the stream, now flows down that bottomless crevasse under the boat into the sea. The rest of it finds the old way down the stream to the lagoon. We all noticed the sound of falling water, though it was pretty muffled and faint, when we were in the cave.”

Monsieur Carreau held up his hand with an authoritative gesture that made us all turn to him.

“And the earth-shocks, to which Monsieur le Capitaine refers,” he said solemnly, “occurred within the memory of all of us elders, at any rate. Who has forgotten that awful disaster of Saint Pierre in Martinique, my friends, when a whole city was hurled into ruins by volcano and tidal wave combined? Here on Sunset Island we are so near Martinique, we felt the shock severely. Rocks fell from that hill over there, and part of the Planter’s House was wrecked.”

“I remember,” Madame murmured softly. “It was a terrible time. And to think the treasure was so near us until then! If my Raoul had only known!”

CHAPTER XV
CAPTAIN RAWSON RETURNS

AFTER the excitement of the expedition to the cave of the stream had died down, our life ran on more or less uneventfully for a while. I say more or less, because it seemed to us that, compared with our old life in Braeburn, there was always something new and interesting to make each day different on Sunset Island.

There was our candied orange peel which turned out even better, if that were possible, than Madame’s first batch. It looked so perfectly luscious we could hardly bear to pack it away in Syd’s and Dan’s tin containers for shipment to New York. And speaking of those containers, the boys certainly had made good their promise to turn out original and artistic looking boxes for the peel. They had woven palmetto strips into a cunning, twisted design, and thought up a way to braid the ends to form a handle for the cover. They were the prettiest things you can imagine, those boxes, and we felt sure we could sell the candied peel just on the outside of the package.

Uncle Joe was optimistic about securing orders from a big commission house he knew of in New York, for as much of the peel as we cared to make, and altogether the outlook in that direction was quite rosy and satisfactory.

Then, there were other pleasant happenings, such as picnics. We are a great family for picnics and exploring expeditions, and now all these affairs were planned near enough to the house for Uncle Joe to carry me on his shoulders, so I shouldn’t be left out of anything on account of my ankle.

On one occasion we had a whole day’s sea voyage on the Myra, just before she left us for her second trip north. Maybe it’s partly because of my sea-captain daddy, but I love the ocean and ships more than almost anything in the world, and I’m never quite so happy as when I can see a white sail straining in a heavy breeze over my head, and curling, white-edged water rolling back from the bow.

If I were a boy, I’d certainly want to go to sea, and carry on our family tradition of at least one sailor in every generation. None of Aunt Mollie’s boys seem to have any ambition in that direction.

Sydney asks for nothing better, he says, than to live on the Island all his life, and build up a big, flourishing plantation. He loves to grub in the earth, and watch things grow—and really, it’s wonderful, the results he can coax out of a few seeds, a spade, a small patch of ground, and endless patience. Lots of times it’s been only shame of falling behind, that has kept me working away beside him at that endless weeding.

Dan thinks he’ll be a doctor, and is already planning to go back to the States to college next year. I don’t know what we’ll do without him, but it’s a splendid profession as Aunt Mollie says, that he has chosen, and he must have his chance to make good.

Of course Reddy’s much too young yet to have any ideas on the subject that are permanent; and though Andy and I wonder about our own futures once in a while, she doesn’t seem to have many more definite notions about it than little Red. As for me, I don’t talk much of my plans, because it sounds silly,—or I’m afraid of its doing so—to talk of what you haven’t proved yet you can carry out. But ever since I was a tiny scrap of a girl, I’ve wanted some day to write stories, as I can’t follow Daddy and sail a ship. Not big, important stories—I’ll never be a genius, I know that. But stories that boys and girls, and maybe grown-ups too, will find worth reading. That’s one reason I’m practicing writing down here all the details of our first year on Sunset Island. Whether anyone else ever reads it or not, I’ve loved the doing it, and that’s something.

But I guess that’s enough about the future, because there are still quite a lot of exciting events to tell about that have already taken place.

The next of these to come along, was about a month after our discovery of Morgan’s hiding place in the cave. In the meantime, the Myra had sailed for New York with our first cargo of fruit—and of course the precious candied peel all done up in the boys’ fancy containers.

Uncle Charles, who is clever at pen and ink sketches, had made adorable labels for them, showing a tropical island, with palms and orange trees just vaguely hinted at against the skyline, and underneath—copying Rosemary’s curly-cue lettering—the words: “Candied Orange Peel à la Josephine.”

He had done the sketches by hand for our samples, but Uncle Joe was to have a plate made in New York from the original drawing and several thousand labels struck off. Because of course when we got to selling on a big scale, it wouldn’t be possible for one person to draw each individually.

Aunt Mollie had been rather anxious for Uncle Joe to remain behind on this trip, and let the mate, Mr. Hopper, act for him in the matter of the cargo. But Uncle Charles and he finally decided that it was better to have the owner go, and so—in case of the return of Captain Rawson’s vessel—Uncle Joe left two of his most trusted men behind, and sailed short-handed.

“But I really don’t think you need worry, Mollie,” he had declared. “I don’t believe the old blackguard will come back. Treasure maps and things of that kind have sort of gone out of date. They’re fairy tales nobody believes in. Men like Rawson make their money in more modern pirating. You won’t see him again.”

But we did, all the same. And I was the one who saw his ship first. It happened this way.

Since I hurt my ankle, I hadn’t of course been able to go swimming in the lagoon with Madame and Andy in the early mornings. But I had got in the habit of waking at that hour, and I kept on doing it still no matter how hard I tried to sleep. So, because it was stupid to lie in bed and think of all I was missing, once I found myself really wide awake, I made it a rule to get up and practise using my crutches up and down my room.

The room’s a quite big one, and I’d go up and down it twice the long way, and then across to the window where I had a view of the ocean and the sunrise over the distant horizon.

On this special morning I’m writing of—it must have been about two weeks, or less, perhaps, after the Myra’s sailing—my first glance out the window showed me a steamer, very low and slim, like a yacht, heading in toward the opening in the reef. Uncle Joe once told me I have a good eye for recognizing ships, but I guess, with that dread of Captain Rawson hanging over us, even Andrée or Red would have known that vessel. Our unwelcome visitor had returned.

It didn’t take me long to hobble out into the hall, and wake Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie. I suppose I made more noise with my crutches than I realized, for doors began to pop open all down the hall, and the boys and Andy, and finally Monsieur and Madame Carreau, appeared, one by one, in various stages of undress.

The minute they understood who was on the way to the Island, there was a scramble of everybody back to their rooms to dress in a hurry, and be among the first to reach the lagoon beach.

This last plan, however, Uncle Charles promptly vetoed, as soon as he understood what we meant to do.

“I’d rather have you all wait at the house,” he said. “I’ll take Diggons and Harworth” (the two sailors from the Myra) “and go down to meet the fellow when he lands.”

The boys and Martin pleaded hard to be allowed to go along, but Uncle Charles was firm. For one thing, I think he preferred to take the men, (aside from their superior strength, of course) because they hadn’t been told anything about the treasure or the stolen map. I had an idea he was afraid the boys would be too excited to be discreet, and he believed the less said the better. He may have had some idea of being able to talk Captain Rawson out of coming ashore. Not that there was any danger of his finding the treasure, of course, if he did come. But we didn’t want that crew of his—or the captain himself—making themselves at home on the Island while they looked for it. Any attempt to persuade the captain that there really wasn’t any treasure after all, would naturally be worse than useless. He’d be surer than ever we only wanted him out of the way.

So in the end, we had to obey, since Uncle Charles was in command of Sunset Island and all its little colony in Uncle Joe’s absence. But none of us could stay in the house. That was asking too much. We prowled back and forth, up and down the terrace, or sat sort of tensely on the front steps, waiting for we didn’t know just what. It was awfully exciting and shivery—exactly like the most exciting desert-island-treasure-trove stories I’d ever read.

Uncle Charles and the sailors were gone so long we began to be frightened in good earnest at last, and it was only Aunt Mollie’s flatly forbidding it, that kept Dan and Syd from breaking away after an hour had passed, and going down to the beach to investigate.

“If he doesn’t come in fifteen minutes more, you may go,” she said, and they had to be satisfied with that.

Before the fifteen minutes were up however, we heard voices coming up the Planter’s Road, and all of us stiffened to a sort of agonized attention.

But the procession that appeared around the little bend in the road was something entirely different from what we had any of us pictured to ourselves. First came Uncle Charles, marching along like a general of troops, and behind him, walking like his body guard were Diggons and Harworth, while back of them two strange men—sailors from the rum-running ship, we guessed—carried a covered stretcher between them.

Madame Carreau put her hand on her heart in a frightened gesture, and I saw Monsieur step protectingly up beside her, and slip his arm about her. But the rest of us were too astonished to move or speak.

Seeing us, Uncle Charles hurried on ahead of his procession and drew Aunt Mollie aside.

“Can you and the girls get a room ready at once for a sick man?” he asked. “It’s Captain Rawson. His men either can’t or won’t take care of him on board, so it seems to be up to us unless we want to stand by and see him die. He’s unconscious now,” he added, nodding toward the stretcher behind him, “and doesn’t realize we’re moving him.”

Aunt Mollie turned quickly to Andy and me.

“Gay, your room’s the best for sickness—there are so many windows. You won’t mind giving it up, dear, and going in with Andrée?”

I shook my head eagerly. “Of course not, Aunt Mollie. Shall we run up and put clean sheets on the bed, and take my clothes out of the closets?”

“Yes, do, chicks,” she smiled. But as we moved off, I heard her ask Uncle Charles rather anxiously whether Captain Rawson had anything contagious, and hadn’t she better keep the children away. Both Andy and I hung back a little to hear his answer. “No, pneumonia, I think, dear. I’m sorry Joe’s away—he’s the real doctor of the family, though we’ll do what we can, of course.”

He lowered his voice then, but we were both near enough to catch his next words. “From what I can make out, Rawson hasn’t mentioned the map to anyone on board. Probably was figuring on keeping the treasure for himself if he located it. They say he gave his orders to put back to the Island, and the next day came down with this fever. Apparently he was unconscious almost from the first.”

We missed whatever else he said because Aunt Mollie walked back with him to the stretcher, so we scurried on to the house. Of course we were pretty excited, and I guess we never made a bed or cleared out a closet in such record time before. But our hands being busy didn’t keep our tongues from moving equally fast as we talked the situation over.

“I wish Uncle Joe was home,” Andy said with a little shiver, smoothing a clean pillow slip with fingers that I noticed were trembling.

“Don’t you worry,” I tried to reassure her—not feeling so very sure of anything myself, though. “Uncle Charles will manage it all. And besides, there are Diggons and Harworth, and Martin—and of course the boys.”

She cheered up at that.

“Come along and tell mums the room’s ready,” she said. “And maybe if that horrid Captain Rawson hasn’t told about the map, the fever’ll put it out of his head forever.”

“Maybe,” said I, not too convinced of the probability of this. “There’s nothing we can do about it anyhow.”

At the head of the stairs, we met the two stretcher-bearers with the sick man, and Aunt Mollie, Uncle Charles and Madame Carreau bringing up the rear. Andy led the way importantly into my room, and they carried the Captain in, and laid him down on my bed.

The two sailors came out at once, and went back downstairs and outdoors; and after a few minutes Aunt Mollie opened the bedroom door, motioning us to go away, too.

Andy slipped her fingers through my arm as we tip-toed downstairs after the sailors. Her face was rather white.

“Do you suppose he’ll—die?” she asked me in a shaky whisper.

“I don’t know,” I said impatiently. I couldn’t help feeling that it wouldn’t be such a loss to the world if a man like that did die. Still, the next moment I reminded myself he wasn’t fit to die, and that anyhow, I didn’t want him to do it here, in our dear, beautiful Planter’s House.

“I guess he’s too tough to die easily,” I declared. I hoped it was true. “Do you suppose he was really coming back for the treasure?”

Andy didn’t answer, and we sat down on the steps to wait for news from the sick room. Nobody else was in sight. Evidently the two sailors had kept on to the beach, and the boys and Monsieur Carreau had gone with them.

After what seemed like hours had passed, Syd came strolling up the Planter’s Road, whistling. He hurried a little when he saw us waiting.

“The men have gone back to the ship,” he called. “Kind of a heartless bunch,” he added, dropping down on the step beside us. “You’d think they’d feel it a bit if they really believed, as they claim, that their captain’s dying. Instead, they acted sort of relieved to get rid of the care of him.”

He stopped short because at that moment we heard Aunt Mollie coming downstairs, and we jumped to our feet, crowding round her to ask about the Captain.

“A pretty sick man, I’m afraid,” she said soberly. “But by the greatest good fortune, Madame has nursed pneumonia patients before, so she is taking charge of the case.”

“What can we do, mums?” Syd coaxed eagerly. “We want to help.”

“Nothing, darling. There’s nothing any of the rest of us can do. Just try to keep things quiet,” she said. “And go on about everything as usual. Here comes Monsieur Carreau now. Run and tell him Madame wants to speak to him!”

It was about an hour later, I think, that Reddy, who had been hanging about the Captain’s door upstairs, brought us an astonishing piece of news. Aunt Mollie, Uncle Charles, Andy and I were in the big hall, and we turned quickly at the sound of his clattering footsteps.

“The ship’s going away,” he gasped excitedly. “I saw her from the gallery. She’s almost out through the reef now.”

“But that isn’t possible, Sonny,” Uncle Charles exclaimed, catching Red’s hand and drawing him to him. “Her captain’s upstairs, you know, very sick. She’s probably only changing her anchorage, or something like that. Let’s walk down to the beach and see.”

“No, she’s going away,” Red insisted feverishly. “Will that horrid man that stole our map have to live with us always now?”

He was on the verge of tears, so to comfort him, as well as to satisfy our own curiosity, we all set out along the Planter’s Road to the lagoon, to see what the ship was up to.

And there we saw that Reddy was right. She was past the reef now, standing directly out to sea. Someone on board, spying us, sprang up on the ship’s rail and waved both arms at us, and we heard several of the men laughing behind him.

Uncle Charles cupped his hands into a megaphone, and shouted with all his strength: “Where are you going? When will you be back?”

We heard the man’s reply easily, because the wind was blowing from him to us, but I can’t set down what he said, as Aunt Mollie doesn’t like us even to repeat swearing. But his meaning was clear enough. They were deserting the Captain. They hadn’t any intention of ever coming back. Maybe they really believed he was dying, or maybe the Mate had conspired with the rest of them to steal the ship. Uncle Charles thought the latter was the case.

Anyhow they were gone. That was all we knew. And there were we with a desperately ill man on our hands, and no doctor within reach of Sunset Island.

If it hadn’t been for the Carreaus, I don’t believe we’d ever have pulled him through. But it turned out that Monsieur Carreau had a pretty fair knowledge of medicine—he’d doctored their plantation hands in the old days—and Madame was a natural-born nurse.

We others could only do what we were told, run errands and cook the meager invalid fare Madame allowed her patient. Of course, I don’t pretend to say it was as anxious a time for us as if it had been one of the family who was lying up there in my room ill, but it’s never pleasant to know that someone is suffering, and we were all honestly glad and thankful when the day came that Monsieur pronounced the Captain out of the woods.

CHAPTER XVI
THE LOST TREASURE

ALL the week or more that the Captain was sick, he never, even in his few conscious moments, asked about his ship or where he was. He seemed just to take everything for granted and to have no curiosity about things round him.

Madame Carreau said that sometimes, when he was delirious, he called out orders to his men, but they were always in regard to handling his vessel, and mostly incomprehensible to the Carreaus. Once he muttered something about maps and Morgan, and Madame told us afterward her heart almost stopped beating for sheer excitement. But he only trailed off into grunts and broken words.

After the crisis was past however, and he had begun to pick up strength more and more surely with each day, we all worried a little how we were to break the news to him about his crew’s desertion, and the loss of his ship. When the time came, however, it all happened quite simply and without fuss of any sort.

Madame had brought up his breakfast tray with his first real breakfast of eggs and coffee on it, and he was propped up in the pillows, enjoying every mouthful like a hungry schoolboy, when he turned his head suddenly toward her.

“Sort of funny ain’t it, Anderson and some of the others haven’t been up to see me ’fore this?” he asked thoughtfully. “Or wouldn’t you let ’em in?” Anderson was his first mate. We’d met him at our breakfast party on the Captain’s first visit to the Island.

Madame says she hesitated just a moment, and I guess the Captain’s eyes were pretty sharp, and his wits too.

He drew a quick breath, looking away from her toward the window and then back.

“It would be like Anderson to give me the slip,” he said without any sort of emotion in his tone. “He’s been kind of itchin’ to have a command of his own for some time now. And in this game it’s every man for himself. He wouldn’t find much loyalty in that bunch of swabs we call a crew to hinder him stealin’ the ship, if he was minded that way.” He stared at Madame keenly. “That’s what he done, ain’t it, mam?” he asked. “You got it writ all over your face. I guess you couldn’t lie even if you wanted to, nohow.”

Madame nodded, a little frightened now the secret was out, but he said nothing more except: “You folks here on the Island got a schooner, ain’t you? Calls here every so often?”

She nodded again, and he went on as if he were thinking it all out: “Well, mebbe her cap’n’ll give me a chance to work my passage back to the States. Don’t care much what port.” He gave a long sigh and lay back on his pillows, pushing the tray away. “It ain’t the furst time I’ve been double-crossed, lady,” he told Madame, grinning at the sight of her puzzled expression. “I’ll win out again somehow, an’ then I’ll see that Anderson an’ some of them others sweat for this. But you folks have been real white to me. I won’t forgit that neither.”

He fell asleep after that, so Madame hurried downstairs, and repeated what had passed between them on the subject.

“He’s a rough customer,” Uncle Charles said drily, “and I, for one, wouldn’t care to incur his ill will. I’d hate to be in Anderson’s boots, when he’s well and about again. But I believe the man’s capable of gratitude—perhaps. We won’t trust him too far, but we’ll hope for the best. When he’s able to get outdoors, I propose to tell him frankly our theory about the treasure, and perhaps make up a party to visit the cave and take him along. Just as well to rid his mind of any hankerings after those gold pieces right now, and I guess Gay here, and Madame—not to speak of Mollie and Red, will all be interested in coming too.”

Of course we were enthusiastic about the plan, and Madame was given permission to broach the subject to the Captain, and tell him what we had in mind. She later reported to us that he had been sort of shame-faced when she first spoke of the map, and tried to pass off his action in taking possession of it, as a joke. He pretended to believe that he’d thought the map some play gotten up by the boys and myself to fool Reddy.

Madame let the matter rest at that, without questioning his explanations, but insisted on telling him the whole story, showing him Rosemary’s diary—which made him open his eyes very wide with a kind of blue gleam of excitement she didn’t much care for, she said—and then wound up frankly with the account of our locating the cave of the stream, the old boat, and finally the effect the earth-shocks, and Mt. Pélée’s eruption had had on the cave bed.

“So it’s down there, maybe several hundred fathom,” he had said sort of musingly, when she finished. “Well, life’s a funny business. It ain’t doin’ nobody any good, neither, where it is. And there’s quite a lot of us could use it, if it was in reach, couldn’t we?” He appeared to count himself in as a sharer of the treasure if it were found, though it didn’t seem to us as if he had much to base his rights on.

When he was able to dress and walk downstairs, we found him a very quiet, unobtrusive visitor, anxious to do what he could to save trouble, and expressing himself several times a day as honestly grateful to us for saving his life—that’s what he called it, and what it really was, though the credit for it was due mostly to Madame and Monsieur Carreau.

The first thing he had done, when he could walk about his room, was to rip open the inner lining of his big sea carryall, that the men had brought his clothes ashore in, and bring out the lost map. He had handed this over to Madame Carreau with another apologetic reference to “fooling.” But, as we all agreed privately after she’d told us of his act, he had certainly hidden it pretty securely away for something he regarded as just a children’s joke.

Before either the Captain or my ankle were in traveling trim for the second expedition to the caves, the Myra returned, and with a long sigh of relief all round we shifted our responsibility in the matter of Captain Rawson to Uncle Joe’s shoulders.

Uncle Joe grunted sort of non-committally when he’d listened to the story of the Captain’s return, the way we’d nursed him through pneumonia, and his present expressions of being grateful.

“Maybe he is—for the present, anyhow,” he said with a little shrug. “We won’t strain his gratitude too far. I’ll see he gets a chance to work his way north on the Myra’s next trip—and we won’t put that off too long either, while we’re about it.”

He endorsed heartily Uncle Charles’ plan of showing the Captain the cave of the stream as proof of our story, and two or three days after the Myra’s sails had flashed between the reef-opening, we might have been seen one morning just at sunrise, paddling up the lagoon in the Myra’s dinghy and the green canoe, with plenty of lanterns aboard, and a picnic breakfast to eat in the cave.

Everyone in the family went, even Aunt Mollie, Monsieur and Madame Carreau and little Red. And of course the Captain who appeared in high spirits. As Syd whispered to me on the way, he thought the Captain, in spite of our tale of earthquakes and volcanoes, fully expected by superior cleverness to discover the treasure, and claim at least nine-tenths as a reward for doing it.

Maybe we did him an injustice, but if so we’ll never know it now, for the temptation to show himself in his blackest colors didn’t present itself.

We had no trouble in locating the inlet, or—with the help of all those muscular arms on board—of dragging both the canoe and dinghy across the sand bar in no time at all, and launching them on the other side.

Then we all embarked again, and the journey up the stream began. Aunt Mollie, Madame and Andy were in ecstasies over the beauty of the flowering jungle vines that shut in both sides of the stream, and the effects of light and shadow the interlacing of the trees overhead made on the water. But the boys and I were impatient to get to the cave. We had all been over this route before, and were far too excited to put our minds on the beauties of Nature at the moment.

When we swung around the final bend I found it had suddenly become hard to breathe, and my fingers were clinched so tightly on the edge of the dinghy they were sore for days afterward.

There was the low, black mouth of the cave just before us as I remembered it that first time with Syd. The canoe, which was leading the way with Uncle Joe, Syd, Dan and Monsieur in it, was already disappearing through the cave opening and our dinghy was just behind.

The dinghy, being so much more heavily loaded than the canoe, ran aground about twenty feet before the canoe did. In fact we found, by prodding the bottom with the oars, that we hadn’t grounded on the old jolly boat at all, but upon the floor proper of the cave itself. By the time we’d settled this fact to our own satisfaction the canoe was perched on the overturned bottom of the old boat, and we all proceeded to climb out—all of us, that is, except Aunt Mollie, and Madame, who preferred to keep their feet dry, and look on.

Even Andy, who used to think more of her clothes than being a good sport, forgot herself entirely, and sprang out into the shallow water as quickly as Syd or Dan. It flashed over me as I saw her, that Andy was quite a different girl from the one we knew in Braeburn. She didn’t talk much more, but she was usually ready now for any expedition or fun we others had on foot, and she didn’t hang back, or complain if things went wrong and we got tired or hungry.

And the Andy who came down with us on the Myra nearly a year ago, and who had cried on the lagoon beach when we landed on Sunset Island because she was afraid of snakes, must have had a big fight with herself before she could clamber so unconcernedly out of the dinghy now into cold, black water nearly to her knees, in a dark, underground cave, and never give a thought to possible sea animals under foot. I felt awfully proud of her, all at once.

First of course we explored the cave of the stream, and crept cautiously up onto the overturned boat, to listen to the faint, far-off sound of falling water underground, going down, down into the depths of the sea where Sir Henry Morgan’s treasure lay.

Straightening up from my turn at listening, I found Captain Rawson beside me, his face wearing in the lantern light an expression of disappointment as open and unashamed as Reddy himself might have worn.

“So it was true, after all,” he said. “It’s down there now—millions just waitin’ to be picked up. An’ not a soul can touch a penny of it!”

I felt sorry for him because I knew by my own disappointment what he was feeling.

“I guess it’s there all right,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “And what’s more I guess it’ll stay there.”

He grunted. “A lot of good that does us to know.”

“Come on,” I urged, “the others are going on to the outside caves. Syd says we can squeeze through where the passage is blocked. I guess Madame’ll want to go with us, she’s crazy about this treasure-hunt business. Her son used to take her with him when he was alive.”

“I’ll take care of the little French lady,” Captain Rawson said unexpectedly. His face had softened as much as its natural make-up allowed. He didn’t look quite so villainous when he smiled like that, and for a moment I almost forgot his roughness with poor Reddy, and how he had planned to rob us if the doubloons were found. I guess it’s true after all, that there’s some little hidden-away soft spot in even the cruelest and wickedest folks if you can only find it. I knew then that Captain Rawson’s gratitude was quite genuine as far as Madame was concerned.

She was awfully pleased and touched when he went up to her and asked if he could help her into the other caves, if she wanted to go.

“You don’t weigh no more’n a baby, mam,” he told her, grinning. “You jus’ let me carry you on my shoulder where the walkin’s bad, an’ I’ll promise you you won’t wet the tip of your shoe, nor bump agin nothin’ in the dark.”

She held out her arms to him as trustingly as a baby, saying only, “Thank you, Captain, I am sure you will take good care of me,” and he put her up on his shoulder the way Uncle Joe had carried me when I sprained my ankle.

Syd and Uncle Joe went first, with the lanterns, and the rest of us straggled carefully behind. We made a funny procession, plodding along in that twisty, dark passage, climbing carefully over fallen rocks, and stubbing our toes against crevices in the passage floor.

But after about fifty yards or more of the roughest kind of going, we saw a little glimmer of light ahead. Just in front of us was the hardest blockade to pass we’d struck yet, but we managed it at last, and came through into the inner cave where Andy, Aunt Mollie and I had slept so long ago, and where I had found Rosemary’s locket.

Aunt Mollie, and little Red who was tired, elected to go home by way of the beach, through the outer cave, but the rest of us returned by the passage to the Cave of the Stream, and the waiting boats.

“Syd,” I whispered anxiously, as we passed over the upturned bottom of the old boat, “Syd, don’t you think you could scrape me off a piece of the old jolly boat just for a souvenir?”

He nodded good humoredly and bent down, but, as I had also found it on a former occasion, that half-rotted old wood was slippery flooring to keep your balance on, and with a little exclamation he slid to his knees in the water, dropping his knife.

“And it was my prize whittling knife,” he grumbled in disgust. “Here’s your sliver of souvenir, Sis. Now be a good sport, in return, and help me feel for Old Trusty. It’s bound to be somewheres around.”

Dan, seeing us rooting in the water, came to our help, finally suggesting that we get our hands under the edge of the boat and lift it enough to make anything on top of it slide off into the shallow water. “Only take care to tilt it this way,” he added with a laugh, “or your precious knife will go slipping down to join Morgan’s pieces of eight at the bottom of the sea. The deep hole’s on the other side.”

After maneuvering about a bit, we decided to work our way to the end of the boat, and try to tilt it from there. Uncle Joe and Captain Rawson lent their arms also, and after a good deal of heaving and puffing, we felt the old hulk move. Then I gave a startled scream, as a crumbling piece of the wooden thwart broke off in my hand, and I stumbled backward holding something oblong and heavy.

Examining my catch by the light of the nearest lantern I found that it seemed to be a box, about the size of a quart measure, made of some heavier kind of wood than the jolly boat. It was bound with an iron rim and hoops, and was somehow attached to the piece of wood I had broken off.

“Syd! Uncle Joe! Dan!” I shrieked, as my mind slowly took in the fact of what I was holding. “It’s a box—caught under the edge of the old boat! Bring more light, somebody, please!”

They were round me then, in a second; nobody speaking, but with a circle of curious eyes riveted on the slimy, brown object.

I passed it over to Uncle Joe. “You see,” I begged. “I’m—I’m sort of scared——”

Well, after a while we calmed down enough to pry the rotted wood free of the old hasps, and so, after perfect ages of time to our impatience, got the box open.

The flickering lanterns showed gleams of gold, and other things that were small and hard and sparkled in gay colors where the light fell on them. Pieces of eight—doubloons—some few bits of jewels set in ancient, chased gold and silver pins, a bracelet or two and some rings.

“Watch Rawson,” Uncle Joe said in a whispered aside to the boys and Uncle Charles; but after all, there was no need. It wasn’t a real fortune in that small package, just a few odds and ends of the great pirate’s loot, that had somehow wedged in the bow of the boat when it was overturned, or—as Uncle Joe pointed out was more likely—been secreted there by one of the buccaneers who hoped later to return and retrieve it on the sly.

Anyhow, it proved beyond a doubt to us, the way the rest of the treasure had gone, and after admiring our find a long time in the light of the lanterns, we carried it out to the cave’s mouth, and inspected it all over again in the sunlight.

Uncle Joe held out his two big hands to us filled with the lovely, flashing things.

“First choice to the little lady who found them. Here, Gay-girl—what do you want?”

I drew in my breath and looked—and looked. Rubies, and the green of emeralds, and golden coins, all heaped together in Uncle Joe’s familiar sun-browned hands. It was like a story after all—or the nice kind of dream you hate to wake up and leave.

And then I put out one finger and touched the loveliest thing of all there. It wasn’t the most valuable, or I wouldn’t have been selfish enough to claim it.... A little pink pearl, set in a carved ring that had a dragon’s wings round the finger part, and the pearl itself held in the beast’s mouth. It just fitted my middle finger—not too snugly, perhaps, but Aunt Mollie wouldn’t want me to wear it, I knew, till I was older.

“I wonder,” I said, with a sudden shiver at the thought, “who owned it originally, Uncle Joe?”

“Never mind, honey,” he said quickly, “whoever she was, she’s over all her troubles now, poor soul. And perhaps,” he added smiling, “it never belonged to anyone in especial. It’s quite likely it was part of some big merchant’s stores being brought out to New Spain, when Morgan took them. Now, all the rest of you, make your various choices. There’s just enough to go round.”

So we chose and chose, and exchanged, and made up our minds all over again, until nothing was left but the golden doubloons—worth, Uncle Joe figured, about three hundred dollars.

Then Madame did a surprising thing. But she went over first to whisper in Uncle Joe’s ear, and after a moment of close attention, he nodded back, and laid the doubloons in her hands.

“Captain Rawson,” Madame said clearly, with her pleasant little smile, beckoning him nearer, “you have lost your ship, and are starting life all over again. And you have been very kind to me today. As kind, and as strong as my Raoul could have been. We have all made our choice of the treasure trove, and we’d like these pieces of eight to be your share.”

She put them in his hands, and closed his big fingers down over the coins.

“Now,” she said, with a tired little sigh, “let’s all go home. It has been a wonderful day.”

It would surely be what I’ve seen writers describe as an anti-climax, to carry this journal of Sunset Island beyond our finding the jewels and the pieces of eight in the cave that morning. Of course there’s a lot more that I could tell, like Captain Rawson leaving us on the Myra, our getting a great avalanche of orders from New York for our candied peel and all of us plunging into a regular orgy of boiling and beating. Then there were Syd’s successful experiments in gardening that produced some brand new types of vegetables for our table, and Andy’s developing a positive genius in making over the old frocks and petticoats in Rosemary’s chest into pretty, every-day clothes for herself and me. Things like that—not really exciting except to ourselves, but making life on the Island so busy and interesting we never knew where the days went to.

There was a storm blowing up from the east when I sat down to finish this journal, and sitting at the desk by my window I could see the surf dashing over the reef and hear the wind singing a high note through the palms.

But while I’ve been writing, the wind has veered round again suddenly, and now there’s the fragrant little Island breeze I love blowing across my room, smelling of desert islands and jungle flowers and hot sunshine on tropical gardens. I wish you could smell it too—and open your own windows, every one of you, to see Sunset Island lying just outside, in a blue, blue ocean.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- GAY’S YEAR ON SUNSET ISLAND
- CONTENTS
- CHAPTER I A SURPRISE
- CHAPTER II OFF FOR SUNSET ISLAND!
- CHAPTER III PLANTER’S HOUSE
- CHAPTER IV ROSEMARY’S DIARY
- CHAPTER V AN EXPLORING PARTY
- CHAPTER VI A NIGHT IN THE CAVES
- CHAPTER VII WE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
- CHAPTER VIII SIR HENRY MORGAN’S MAP
- CHAPTER IX THE MAP IS STOLEN
- CHAPTER X THE Myra BRINGS VISITORS
- CHAPTER XI A SWIM IN THE LAGOON
- CHAPTER XII “DEAD MEN’S INLET”
- CHAPTER XIII ALONG MORGAN’S TRAIL
- CHAPTER XIV THE TREASURE HOLE
- CHAPTER XV CAPTAIN RAWSON RETURNS
- CHAPTER XVI THE LOST TREASURE
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE