CHAPTER XXI
"IF I WAS SUPERSTITIOUS-----"
"What is this?"
"An earthquake!"
"The island is sinking!"
"We'll have to get out of this!"
Such were some of the cries of the treasure hunters as the earthtrembled beneath them.
For perhaps twenty seconds the sickening vibration continued. Then itstopped as suddenly as it had begun. The swaying trees finished theirdizzy dance, and the rocks that had seemed to be bowing to each otherlike so many mummers resumed their impassive attitudes. Their lawlessfrolic had ended!
Drew had caught Ruth by the arm as she went down, and thus had brokenthe violence of her fall. But all were jarred and shaken.
As the more agile of the quartet, the young man was first on his feet.He tenderly assisted Ruth to rise, while the others scrambled upunaided.
"Are you hurt?" Drew asked the girl solicitously.
"Not a bit," she answered pluckily, and Drew reflected on what athoroughbred she was.
The others also had sustained no injury. But their forebodings as totheir safety on the island had been quickened by this striking exampleof nature's restlessness. The giant in the volcano was not dead. Hewas uneasy and had turned in his sleep. It was as though he resentedthe coming of these interlopers, and was giving them warning to go awayand leave him undisturbed.
"Now if I was superstitious," remarked Tyke, "I should say thatsomething was trying to keep us from getting this treasure."
"Let it try then," said the captain grimly. "We haven't come as far asthis to turn tail and run just when we're on the point of getting whatwe came for."
"Good for you, Daddy!" cried Ruth gaily. "We're bound to have thattreasure."
They quickened their steps now. This was no time for leisurelyinvestigation of the phenomena of earthquakes. They soon reached thepoint they had attained the day before. But as they had explored thatsection of the hillside already, they did not halt there, but pushed onto the west.
"Now," said the captain, as he and Drew disburdened themselves of thespades and mattocks they had brought along, carefully wrapped under theguise of surveyors instruments, "we'll go at this thing in a scientificway. We'll make a rough division of this whole section"--he includedwith a wave of his hand a space half a mile square--"into four parts.No, three parts. Tyke must rest his leg. Then each must search hissection to find some rocks that look like those beauties marked on themap."
The three scattered promptly, and began the search. They lookeddiligently, but for a long time found nothing to reward their efforts.Drew tried as conscientiously as the rest, although at times he couldnot make his eyes behave, and his gaze would wander over in Ruth'sdirection. It was in one of these lapses from industry that he saw herlift her arm and wave eagerly in his direction. He did not wait for asecond summons, but hurried over, after calling to the others to follow.
The girl was flushed and excited.
"What have you found?" Drew asked, as soon as he got within speakingdistance.
"Look!" she answered. "Doesn't that big rock over there seem to youlike a witch's head--wild and ragged locks, and all that?"
From where he was then standing, he could trace no resemblance, butwhen he reached her side and looked from the same angle he raised ashout.
"The very thing!" he cried. "There can't be any doubt of it."
The rock in question stood apart from the rest on the slope of thehill. Nature had carved it in a moment of prankishness. There wereall the features of an old crone, forehead, nose, sunken mouth,nut-cracker jaws, while small streams of lava, hardening as they hadflowed, gave the similitude of scanty tresses.
Tyke and the captain, soon came up, and all their doubts disappeared asthey gazed.
"The Witch's Head!" they agreed exultantly.
"With that to start with, the rest will be easy," cried Drew. "TheThree Sisters can't be more than a few hundred feet or so away."
Ten minutes' further search revealed a group of three rocks, which,while having no resemblance to female faces, were the only ones thatstood apart from all the rest as a trio.
The hands of the three men trembled as they got out the old map andpored over it.
"Thirty-seven big paces due north from the Witch's Head; eighty-ninebig paces due east from The Three Sisters," muttered the captain.
"Paces, even big paces, is rather indefinite," commented Drew. "If itwere yards or feet, now, it would be different. But one man's pacesdiffer from another's, and a short man's differ from a tall man's."
"It was very inconsiderate of that old pirate not to tell exactly howtall he was," jested Ruth.
"Well, we can't have everything handed to us on a gold plate," said thecaptain. "We may have to dig in a good many places before we strikethe right spot."
"Let's do this," suggested Tyke. "Each one of us men will mark off thepaces, taking good long strides, an' see where we bring up. Then we'llmark off a big circle that will include all three results. It's amoral certainty that it will be somewheres in that circle if it's hereat all."
They acted on this suggestion, Ruth, with pencil and paper, serving asscribe, while the men did the pacing. She was elated at the part shehad played in the discovery.
It was an easy enough matter to make thirty-seven big paces from onepoint and eighty-nine big paces from another, but, as every student ofangles knows, it was very difficult to make the two lines converge atthe proper point. But though their methods were rough, they succeededat last in getting a very fair working hypothesis. A rough circle offorty feet in diameter was drawn about the stake Drew set up, andwithin that circle they were convinced the treasure lay.
By this time the sun had reached the zenith, and before they started todig they retreated to the shade in the edge of the jungle and ate theirlunch.
"Hadn't you better wait until it gets a little cooler by and by?" askedRuth anxiously. "It will be frightful under this hot sun. This is thehour of siesta."
"I guess we're too impatient for that," answered her father. "Butwe'll work only a few minutes at a time and take long resting spellsbetween."
Fortunately the ground was moderately soft within the circle, and theirspades sank deep with every thrust. Tyke was not allowed to share inthis work of excavation, much to his disgust. As for Drew and CaptainHamilton, their muscular arms worked like machines, and they soon hadgreat mounds of earth piled around their respective pits.
But fortune failed to reward their efforts. One place after anotherwas abandoned as hopeless.
They were toiling away with the perspiration dripping from them, whenDrew was startled by a cry from Ruth. He leaped instantly out of hisexcavation, and ran to her. Ruth was standing in the shade of thejungle's edge; but she was staring across the barren hillside towardthe 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. "Andyet----"
"Some of the seamen?" demanded Drew. "I've been expecting that, thoughyour father is so sure that Ditty and his gang will remain at theeastern end of the island."
"Oh, Allen! Not Ditty! Not one of the sailors! I--I could almostbelieve in--in ghosts," and she tried to laugh.
"What is it, my dear?" asked Tyke, who had come over. "What'shappened? Did you see something?"
"Yes. It moved. It was there, and then it wasn't there. The space itstood in was empty," said the girl earnestly.
"For the love o' goodness!" cried Tyke, mopping his brow. "You've gotme all stirred up. Now, if I was superstitious----"
"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 CaptainHamilton was still at work.
"It must have been the spirit of the old pirate come back to guard hishoard," Drew said lightly.
Ruth looked at him very oddly.
"What do you think?" she whispered, when Tyke was out o
f hearing. "Whyshould 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 voicefrom trembling.
"Yes," she said. Then she flashed him a sudden smile. "Of course, itwas merely an hallucination. But, 'if I was superstitious----'" andshe quoted Tyke with a look which she tried to make merry.