Part 31 (2/2)

”Let's do this,” suggested Tyke. ”Each one of us men will mark off the paces, taking good long strides, an' see where we bring up. Then we'll mark off a big circle that will include all three results. It's a moral certainty that it will be somewheres in that circle if it's here at all.”

They acted on this suggestion, Ruth, with pencil and paper, serving as scribe, while the men did the pacing. She was elated at the part she had played in the discovery.

It was an easy enough matter to make thirty-seven big paces from one point and eighty-nine big paces from another, but, as every student of angles knows, it was very difficult to make the two lines converge at the proper point. But though their methods were rough, they succeeded at last in getting a very fair working hypothesis. A rough circle of forty feet in diameter was drawn about the stake Drew set up, and within that circle they were convinced the treasure lay.

By this time the sun had reached the zenith, and before they started to dig they retreated to the shade in the edge of the jungle and ate their lunch.

”Hadn't you better wait until it gets a little cooler by and by?” asked Ruth anxiously. ”It will be frightful under this hot sun. This is the hour of siesta.”

”I guess we're too impatient for that,” answered her father. ”But we'll work only a few minutes at a time and take long resting spells between.”

Fortunately the ground was moderately soft within the circle, and their spades sank deep with every thrust. Tyke was not allowed to share in this work of excavation, much to his disgust. As for Drew and Captain Hamilton, their muscular arms worked like machines, and they soon had great mounds of earth piled around their respective pits.

But fortune failed to reward their efforts. One place after another was abandoned as hopeless.

They were toiling away with the perspiration dripping from them, when Drew was startled by a cry from Ruth. He leaped instantly out of his excavation, and ran to her. Ruth was standing in the shade of the jungle's edge; but she was staring across the barren hillside toward the west.

”What is it?” demanded the young man. ”What do you see?”

”I--I don't know. I'm not _sure_ I saw anything,” she admitted. ”And yet----”

”Some of the seamen?” demanded Drew. ”I've been expecting that, though your father is so sure that Ditty and his gang will remain at the eastern end of the island.”

”Oh, Allen! Not Ditty! Not one of the sailors! I--I could almost believe in--in ghosts,” and she tried to laugh.

”What is it, my dear?” asked Tyke, who had come over. ”What's happened? Did you see something?”

”Yes. It moved. It was there, and then it wasn't there. The s.p.a.ce it stood in was empty,” said the girl earnestly.

”For the love o' goodness!” cried Tyke, mopping his brow. ”You've got me all stirred up. Now, if I was superst.i.tious----”

”You will be if I tell you more about that--that thing,” Ruth said.

She said it jokingly, and Tyke turned away, going over to where Captain Hamilton was still at work.

”It must have been the spirit of the old pirate come back to guard his h.o.a.rd,” Drew said lightly.

Ruth looked at him very oddly.

”What do you think?” she whispered, when Tyke was out of hearing. ”Why should the ghost of Ramon Alvarez look so much like Mr. Parmalee?”

Drew paled, and then flushed.

”Do you mean that, Ruth?” he asked, and he could not keep his voice from trembling.

”Yes,” she said. Then she flashed him a sudden smile. ”Of course, it was merely an hallucination. But, 'if I was superst.i.tious----'” and she quoted Tyke with a look which she tried to make merry.

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