Part 39 (2/2)

If Old Spitfire keeps on the way she has to-day I shan't need much more.

It would be a raw jest to be burned or swallowed up with a month's supply of unsmoked cigarettes on one. Cave getting shaky. Still, I think I'll stick there. As between being burned alive and buried alive, I'm for the respectable and time honoured fas.h.i.+on of interment. Bombardment was mostly to the east to-day, but no telling when it may s.h.i.+ft.

”June 7. This morning I found a body rolling in the surf. It was the body of a young man, large and strongly built, dressed in the uniform of an ensign of our navy. Surely a strange visitor to these sh.o.r.es! There was no mark of identification upon him except a cigarette case graven with an undecipherable monogram in Tiffany's most illegible style of arrow-headed inscription. This I buried with him, and staked the grave with a headboard. An officer and a gentleman, a youth of friendly ways and kindly living, if one may judge by the face of the dead; and he comes by the same end to the same goal as Handy Solomon. Why not? And why should one philosophise in a book that will never be read? Hold on! Perhaps--just perhaps--it may be read. The officer was not long dead. Ensigns of the U.

S. navy do not wander about untraversed waters alone. There must be a wars.h.i.+p somewhere in the vicinity. But why, then, an unburied officer floating on the ocean? I will smoke upon this, luxuriously and plentifully. (Later.) No use. I can't solve it. But one thing I do. I put up a signal pole on the headland and cache this record under it this afternoon. From day to day, with the kindly permission of the volcano, I will add to it.... Bad doings by Old Spitfire. The cloud is coming down on me. Also seems to be moving along the cliff. I will retire hastily to my private estate in the cave_.

”That's all, except the scrawl on the last page,” said Trendon. ”Some action of the volcano scared him off. He just had time to scrawl that last message and drop the book into the cache. The question is, did he get back alive?”

”I doubt it,” said the captain. ”We will search the headland for his body.”

”But the cave,” insisted the surgeon. ”We ought to have found some sign of him there.”

”Slade is the solution,” said the captain. ”We must ask him.”

They put back to the s.h.i.+p. Barnett was anxiously awaiting them.

”Your patient has been in a bad way, Dr. Trendon,” he said.

”What's wrong?” asked Trendon, frowning.

”He came up on deck, wild-eyed and staggering. There was a sheet of paper in his hand which seemed to have some bearing on his trouble. When he found you had gone to the island without him he began to rage like a maniac. I had to have him carried down by force. In the rumpus the paper disappeared. I a.s.sumed the responsibility of giving him an opiate.”

”Quite right,” approved Trendon. ”I'll go down. Will you come with me, sir?” he said to the captain.

They found Slade in profound slumber.

”Won't do to wake him now,” growled Trendon. ”h.e.l.lo, what's here?”

Lying in the hollow of the sick man's right hand, where it had been crushed to a ball, was a crumpled ma.s.s of tracing paper. Trendon smoothed it out, peered at it and pa.s.sed it to the captain.

”It's a sketch of an Indian arrow-head,” he exclaimed in surprise, at the first glance. ”What are all these marks?”

”Map of the island,” barked Trendon. ”Look here.”

The drawing was a fairly careful one, showing such geographical points as had been of concern to the two-year inhabitants. There was the large cavern, indicated as they had found it, and at a point between it and the headland the legend, ”Seal Cave.”

”But it's wrong,” cried Captain Parkinson, setting finger to the spot. ”We pa.s.sed there twice. There's no opening.”

”No guarantee that there may not have been,” returned the other. ”This island has been considerably shaken up lately. Entrance may have been closed by a landslide down the cliff. Noticed signs myself, but didn't think of it in connection with the cave.”

”That's work for Barnett, then,” said the captain, brightening. ”We'll blow up the whole face of the cliff, if necessary, but we'll get at that cave.”

He hurried out. Order followed order, and soon the gig, with the captain, Trendon, and the torpedo expert, was driving for the point marked ”Seal Cave” on the map over which they were bent.

VI

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