CHAPTER XXVII GREEN-EYED MANSION
"A Barrel of gold!" Florence cried as the music ceased and she sprangashore. "Come on! A copper-bound barrel! A barrel of gold!" She was ableto keep her secret no longer.
Forgetting all else, Jeanne, Swen and Vincent followed her. Not so Greta.She had found her mysterious friend once more. She would throw discretionand all conventions to the wind.
"You--you will tell me?" She hurried up to the musician smiling there inthe moonlight.
"Why, yes, my sweet little girl, if it will bring you joy I will tell youmy secret which, after all--" he motioned her to a seat on a log by thefire. "Which, after all, is truly no secret at all.
"Being famous," he said, smiling in a strange way, "is not all that menthink it. To hear people say, 'Here he comes! There he goes!' and to knowthey mean you, to be stared at all day long! Who could wish for that?"
"But you charmed them with your music," Greta said in a low tone.
"Yes," he agreed, "that was not so bad. To stand before thousands, toknow that you are truly bringing joy to their lives, that is grand.
"But even that--" his voice took on a weary note. "Even that loses itscharm when you are weary and they still say, 'Play for us. Play here.Play there.' Then you long to be away from it all, to forget, and to makea fresh start.
"And so," he added, smiling down at her, "so I ran away to GreenstoneRidge.
"One more thing--" his tone became more deeply serious. "I wanted tocreate a little music of my own, all my own. I suppose the desire tocreate is in the heart of all. Up there alone on Greenstone Ridge I wrotemusic. I played it to the birds, the wolves, the moose, but mainly to thetwittering birds. You have heard some of it. How--how do you like it?"
"I think," Greta whispered, "that it is divine!"
"But now--" Greta's tone was wistful. "Now you will come back and youwill play again! And you will teach others?"
"Yes." There was a touch of tenderness in his voice. "Yes, dear littlegirl, I will go back now. I will teach others, and you shall be my veryfirst pupil."
"Oh!" she breathed. "How--how marvelous! But--" her voice sank to awhisper. "We--we are not rich."
"Rich? Who spoke of money?" Once more he beamed down upon her. "No trueartist wants money from his disciples. All he asks is that his pupilshave the touch divine. And that, my child, is yours. It is your verygreat gift."
For a time there was silence beside the campfire. That silence was brokenby a shout of laughter. It came from the party of treasure hunters.Florence's barrel had been dragged from its sandy hiding place.
"I'll just break in the head with the spade," she said as it lay on itsside.
"No! No!" Vincent Stearns took the spade from her. Setting the barrel onend, he rubbed the sand away to find a wooden cork. With the heavy handleof his hunting knife he drove this in, and at once a pungent odor filledthe air.
"Rum!" said Vincent. "Very old rum!"
"And not gold?" Florence's hopes fell.
"Just rum," the photographer repeated. "Some trader buried it years ago.Poor fellow! He never came back!"
"I--I'll pour it out." Florence's hand was on the small barrel.
"Oh, I--I wouldn't do that!" Once again Vincent intervened. "They say oldrum is very good for colds. That right, Swen?"
"Sure it is, in the winter." Swen smiled broadly.
"Leave it to Swen and me," Vincent suggested. And so it was left.
"But those green eyes I saw up on the ridge," Greta was saying to PercyO'Hara. "I saw them twice. They were horrible."
"That," Percy O'Hara chuckled, "was the light from my green-eyed mansion.
"You see," he laughed again, "I found a great many greenstones on theridge. One day I got a grinding wheel from Swen's little store."
"He told me," she murmured.
"I left money for it. I polished the stones and set them in some softsort of rock for tiny windows to the crude cabin I built. When my lampwas lit they shone out green in the night, those eyes to my green-eyedmansion."
"A green-eyed mansion on the ridge of Isle Royale," Greta said in a lowtone. "Perhaps some day the whole world will learn of it and make apilgrimage to it."
"God forbid!" said Percy O'Hara fervently.
CHAPTER XXVIII TREASURE AT LAST
Vincent Stearns and Percy O'Hara bade their young friends farewell atdawn. With Swen they went gliding away toward Rock Harbor Lodge. Theywould wait the coming of a passing steamer that would carry them home.
When the chill damp of morning was gone, the three girls spread blanketson the sand and fell fast asleep.
It was mid-afternoon when they sat down to the first meal of the day. Itwas a regal feast, for Swen had left two large, juicy steaks, and Vincenthad contributed a large box of chocolates.
While they were in the midst of this repast there came from the bay apiercing scream. It was followed by a most ludicrous laugh.
"That," exclaimed Florence, jumping up, "is old Dizzy, the dear, crazyold loon! He survived the storm."
She threw him a large piece of fresh meat. After swallowing it at a gulp,he favored her with one more burst of laughter, then went splashing away.
"Do you know," she said as she resumed her place, "we've got a few daysleft here? I, for one, am through with mysteries. I'm all for having ahilarious good time--boating, swimming, fishing, hiking, and never acare!"
This program was carried out until quite suddenly out of a clear skymystery once more caught them. Nor will any of them live to regret it.
It all came about because Florence suggested that they row out to thereef where the unlucky _Pilgrim_ had gone aground.
To them the reef was a mournful sight. Nothing appeared above the placidsurface. A little way down on the jagged rocks were the boilers andengines of the _Pilgrim_.
"And look!" Florence exclaimed. "Barrels down there. Three barrels. Notvery far down either. Barrels of oil, Swen said they were. Must haveshaken out of the hull, like peas out of a pod. But barrels of oil. You'dthink they might be worth something."
Then, like a flash, a thought came to her. "That man on the schooner, thediver, what was he after? Could it be--?" She dared not trust herself tothink further. Swen was coming that night with supplies. She would tellhim about the barrels.
"Yes," Swen agreed at once when he had been told of the discovery, "thosebarrels of oil are worth quite a little. If it's linseed oil they'd beworth fifty dollars apiece. Lubricating oil is cheaper, but would beworth going after. Dive down and put on grappling hooks. Drag them up onthe reef. That should be easy."
"Well!" Florence exclaimed. "We've been 'three last passengers' andcastaways. Now we are about to turn wreckers!"
And wreckers they were. They found it an easy task to attach thegrappling irons, then with a cable attached to Swen's small power boat todrag the first two barrels to the dry surface of the jagged reef.
The third barrel presented difficulties. It appeared unusually heavy.Twice the hooks slipped off. The third time the capstan on the boat gaveway. But in time this third barrel lay beside its two companions on thereef, well above water.
"There you are!" Swen exulted. "A fine day's work! We'll just tie up andhave a look." He nosed the boat inshore.
"Huh!" he grunted a short time later. "Two barrels of lubricating oil.Not so good.
"But look!" he exclaimed. "What's this? This third barrel has rubbedagainst the rock until it got a hole in its side. No oil in that."
Just at that moment Florence caught sight of something that set her heartracing--a glint of gold from that hole in the barrel.
"Sw-wen!" she said shakily. "Just help me roll that barrel over."
"Why? What?" Swen complied, and as he did so a golden coin rolled fromthe hole in the barrel.
"A barrel of gold!" Florence sat down suddenly. She sat in a puddle ofwater on the concave side of a rock and did not know it.
r /> A barrel of gold it was--no less. The head of the steel barrel had beenremoved. A great number of gold coins, wrapped in paper, had been packedinside, then the head had been sealed up by steel welding. When thebarrel had been painted it looked just like any other.
Three hours later when the little fishing boat pulled away she carried aconsiderable treasure all in gold coins.
"Of course," Swen warned, "it's not our gold. But there's something in itfor us all the same. Salvage, I guess you would call it."
The mystery of that barrel of gold was not solved at once. Little bylittle it became known that a very rich and stubborn man had refused togive up his hoarded gold when the United States Government, for the goodof all its people, demanded that he should. Thinking to evade the law, hehad packed his gold in a metal barrel and had attempted to ship it toCanada, and, as we know, had failed.
Just who the men were on the schooner, with the diver on board, willprobably never be revealed. Were they hired by the rich man to retrievethe treasure? Were they plain thieves who, having got some knowledge ofthe gold, proposed to take it for themselves? Who can say?
Before the girls left the island a rumor was set afloat that there werebears to be found on the island. It was traced to the mainland. It wasdiscovered there that a certain man of doubtful character had started therumor. As proof of his story he displayed scratched hands and tatteredclothing. He had met the bear, he said, by the old lighthouse at the endof Rock Harbor.
"That," Jeanne laughed, "must have been the head hunter. It was my bearhe met. I'm glad, though," she added, "that he escaped with his life. Itis too terrible to die. The bear punished him quite enough."
The three girls were back in their city homes when the salvage on theirbarrel of gold arrived. Finding it to be quite a tidy sum, they promptlydivided it in two parts and sent one part to Swen to be used for the bestinterests of his fisherfolk. That which remained they placed in the bank,a treasure hoard to be spent, in part at least, on some furtheradventure. If you care to know what those adventures might be you areinvited to read the book called _Gypsy Flight_.
Transcriber's Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text--this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, italic text is delimited by _underscores_.
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