CHAPTER XIV
BURIED TREASURE
WHEN Georgina tiptoed up the walk to the front porch where Belle satwaiting for her in the moonlight, Tippy called down that she wasn'tasleep, and they needn't stay out there on her account, whispering. Itdid not seem an auspicious time to present the bottle of liniment, butto Georgina's surprise Tippy seemed glad to try the new remedy. Thelong-continued pain which refused to yield to treatment made her willingto try anything which promised relief.
It was vile-smelling stuff, so pungent that whenever the cork was takenout of the bottle the whole house knew it, but it burned with soothingfire and Tippy rose up and called it blessed before the next day wasover. Before that happened, however, Georgina took advantage of Belle'seasy rule to leave home as soon as her little morning tasks were done.Strolling down the board-walk with many stops she came at last to thefoot of the Green Stairs. Richard sat on the top step, tugging at aknotted string.
"Come on up," he called. "See what I've taken away from Captain Kidd. Hewas just starting to bury it. Looks like a tobacco pouch, but I haven'tgot it untied yet. He made the string all wet, gnawing on it."
Georgina climbed to the top of the steps and sat down beside him,watching in deep and silent interest. When the string finally gave wayshe offered her lap to receive the contents of the pouch. Twofive-dollar gold pieces rolled out first, then a handful of smallchange, a black ring evidently whittled out of a rubber button andlastly a watch-fob ornament. It was a little compass, set in somethingwhich looked like a nut.
"I believe that's a buckeye," said Richard. He examined it carefully onall sides, then called excitedly:
"Aw, look here! See those letters scratched on the side--'D. D.'? Thatstands for _my_ name, Dare-devil Dick. I'm going to keep it."
"That's the cunningest thing I ever saw," declared Georgina in a toneboth admiring and envious, which plainly showed that she wished theinitials were such as could be claimed by a Gory George. Then she pickedup the pouch and thrust in her hand. Something rustled. It was a letter.Evidently it had been forwarded many times, for the envelope wasentirely criss-crossed with names that had been written and blotted outthat new ones might be added. All they could make out was "Mrs.Henry"--"Texas" and "Mass."
"I'd like to have that stamp for my album," said Richard. "It's foreign.Seems to me I've got one that looks something like it, but I'm not sure.Maybe the letter will tell who the pouch belongs to."
"But we can't read other people's letters," objected Georgina.
"Well, who wants to? It won't be reading it just to look at the head andtail, will it?"
"No," admitted Georgina, hesitatingly. "Though it does seem likepeeking."
"Well, if you lost something wouldn't you rather whoever found it shouldpeek and find out it was yours, than to have it stay lost forever?"
"Yes, I s'pose so."
"Let's look, then."
Two heads bent over the sheet spread out on Richard's knee. They readslowly in unison, "Dear friend," then turned over the paper and soughtthe last line. "Your grateful friend Dave."
"We don't know any more now than we did before," said Georgina,virtuously folding up the letter and slipping it back into the envelope.
"Let's take it to Uncle Darcy. Then he'll let us go along and ring thebell when he calls, 'Found.'"
Richard had two objections to this. "Who'd pay him for doing it?Besides, it's gold money, and anybody who loses that much wouldadvertise for it in the papers. Let's keep it till this week's paperscome out, and then we'll have the fun of taking it to the person wholost it."
"It wouldn't be safe for us to keep it," was Georgina's next objection."It's gold money and burglars might find out we had it."
"Then I'll tell you"----Richard's face shone as he made thesuggestion--"Let's _bury_ it. That will keep it safe till we can findthe owner, and when we dig it up we can play it's pirate gold and it'llbe like finding real treasure."
"Lets!" agreed Georgina. "We can keep out something, a nickel or a dime,and when we go to dig up the pouch we can throw it over toward the placewhere we buried the bag and say, 'Brother, go find your brother,' theway Tom Sawyer did. Then we'll be certain to hit the spot."
Richard picked up the compass, and rubbed the polished sides of the nutin which it was set.
"I'll keep this out instead of a nickel. I wonder what the fellow's namewas that this D. D. stands for?"
Half an hour later two bloody-minded sea-robbers slipped through theback gate of the Milford place and took their stealthy way out into thedunes. No fierce mustachios or hoop ear-rings marked them on thisoccasion as the Dread Destroyer or the Menace of the Main. The time didnot seem favorable for donning their real costumes. So one wentdisguised as a dainty maiden in a short pink frock and long browncurls, and the other as a sturdy boy in a grass-stained linen suit witha hole in the knee of his stocking. But their speech would have betrayedtheir evil business had anyone been in earshot of it. One would havethought it was
"_Wild Roger come again. He spoke of forays and of frays upon the Spanish Main._"
Having real gold to bury made the whole affair seem a real adventure.They were recounting to each other as they dug, the bloody fight it hadtaken to secure this lot of treasure.
Down in a hollow where the surrounding sand-ridges sheltered them fromview, they crouched over a small basket they had brought with them andperformed certain ceremonies. First the pouch was wrapped in many sheetsof tin foil, which Richard had been long in collecting from varioustobacco-loving friends. When that was done it flashed in the sun like anugget of wrinkled silver. This was stuffed into a baking-powder canfrom which the label had been carefully scraped, and on whose lid hadbeen scratched with a nail, the names Georgina Huntingdon and RichardMoreland, with the date.
"We'd better put our everyday names on it instead of our pirate names,"Gory George suggested. "For if anything should happen that some otherpirate dug it up first they wouldn't know who the Dread Destroyer andthe Menace of the Main were."
Lastly, from the basket was taken the end of a wax candle, severalmatches and a stick of red sealing-wax, borrowed from Cousin James'desk. Holding the end of the sealing-wax over the lighted candle untilit was soft and dripping, Richard daubed it around the edge of the canlid, as he had seen the man in the express office seal packages. He hadalways longed to try it himself. There was something peculiarly pleasingin the smell of melted sealing-wax. Georgina found it equally alluring.She took the stick away from him when it was about half used, andfinished it.
"There won't be any to put back in Cousin James' desk if you keep onusing it," he warned her.
"I'm not using any more than you did," she answered, and calmlyproceeded to smear on the remainder. "If you had let me seal with thefirst end of the stick, you'd have had all the last end to save."
All this time Captain Kidd sat close beside them, an interestedspectator, but as they began digging the hole he rushed towards it andpawed violently at each shovelful of sand thrown out.
"Aw, let him help!" Richard exclaimed when Georgina ordered him to stop."He ought to have a part in it because he found the pouch and wasstarting to bury it his own self when I took it away from him andspoiled his fun."
Georgina saw the justice of the claim and allowed Captain Kidd to joinin as he pleased, but no sooner did they stop digging to give him achance than he stopped also.
"Rats!" called Richard in a shrill whisper.
At that familiar word the dog began digging so frantically that the sandflew in every direction. Each time he paused for breath Richard called"Rats" again. It doubled the interest for both children to have the dogtake such frantic and earnest part in their game.
When the hole was pronounced deep enough the can was dropped in, thesand shoveled over it and tramped down, and a marker made. A long,forked stick, broken from a bayberry bush, was run into the ground sothat only the fork of it was visible. Then at twenty paces from thestick, Richard stepping them off in four directions, c
onsulting thelittle compass in so doing, Georgina placed the markers, four sectionsof a broken crock rescued from the ash-barrel and brought down in thebasket for that especial purpose.
"We'll let it stay buried for a week," said Richard when all was done."Unless somebody claims it sooner. If they don't come in a week, thenwe'll know they're never coming, and the gold will be ours."