Peter Cotterell's Treasure

by Rupert Sargent Holland

VI—THE CLIPPER SHIP

Ben Sully was a boy who would rather work out a puzzle than do almost anything else. He had a tremendous amount of patience, which possibly explains why he was such a successful fisherman, since he could wait longer, dangling a piece of bait in the water, than nine out of ten fishes could resist the temptation to find out what the bait tasted like. Any kind of a puzzle, from cut out sections of cardboard that fitted together to make a picture all the way to ingenious contraptions of metal links that didn’t want to come apart, was a delight to Ben. He had boxes and boxes of them stored away in a closet at home. He had invented secret codes and cryptograms by the score, and when he was only ten years old had constructed a private language of twenty-five words that he had taught to Tom and David and which the three of them had used among themselves to the great admiration and envy of all the rest of their school.

Naturally then Ben felt that this puzzle of Peter Cotterell’s treasure was right in his line, and the finding of the half-sheet of parchment whetted his appetite to discover more. He walked about the room, whittling shavings right and left, he sat down and kept on whittling, he stood up again, and since by now the willow-stick had been whittled down to almost nothing, he threw what was left in the fireplace.

That done, he went to a bookcase and took down from the shelf on top the old notebook that Tuckerman had found in his uncle’s bedroom. He thumbed the pages until he came to the place where Tuckerman had inserted a slip of paper. Ben read the words at the top of the page out loud. “Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket. That’s a saying my father handed down. What can it mean?” Ben looked at the desk. “Well, we’ve done that, anyhow.” He shook his head in deep thought. “I don’t understand why that piece of parchment wasn’t discovered before. They might not have taken the desk to be the mahogany man; but surely Crusty Christopher or his father would have known of those three little drawers. However, they might have found that writing and left it there. That’s possible, of course. Probably it didn’t tell them any more than it’s told us so far.”

Turning again to the notebook, he ran his eye down the page. Nothing but Christopher Cotterell’s comments on all sorts of subjects, nothing that interested Ben. He turned a page, two pages, another, and then his glance fell on this: “I’ve heard that the old clipper ship got some of the cargo that the mahogany man carried. But if she did, what use is that to us now? She sailed out of Barmouth Harbor during the Revolution.”

On and on down the page Ben’s eyes traveled, but lighted on nothing that caught his special attention. So he went back and reread that passage. Then he closed the book, replaced it on the shelf, stuck his hands in his pockets, and stared through the window.

“I wonder if there was a real mahogany man,” he mused, “and a real ship. There might have been. There were men from the West Indies in this part of the country in those days. One of them might have had valuables in his clothes, and part of the things he was guarding might have been carried off in the hold of a ship. Was there a real man, or was it that secretary? And how about the ship?”

Presently Ben walked around the drawing-room, as if he were searching for something. From there he went to the dining-room and the kitchen, and then upstairs to Christopher Cotterell’s bedroom. He looked into closets and behind curtains, he pulled open wardrobe doors and peered in at the shelves. But each time he shook his head, as much as to say: “There’s nothing there that I want.”

Under the slanting roof at the top of the house was an attic, already explored by Tuckerman and the boys. It was filled with every kind of thing, from an ancient lacquered Indian temple—the green and gold of the lacquer now sadly tarnished and chipped—to a collection of Red Men’s arrowheads, neatly fastened to a board by small straps of leather. Ben looked around at the strange medley of objects, thinking how many countries and how many different races of men had contributed to the furnishing of this attic; and then his roving eyes lighted on something that made them glisten—on a bracket against the wall sat the model of a ship.

Ben knew the model to be that of a Yankee clipper—three masts, loftily rigged, with three sky-sail yards, and a long mainyard. She was beautifully built, every detail complete, the deck and hull shining with varnish. “Hello,” sang out Ben, “clipper ship ahoy!” And pushing a box close against the wall he stepped up opposite the bracket.

In the deck of the model was a little lid. He pried this up with his knife-blade. There was just room for him to squeeze his fingers through, and when he drew them out again they held a small roll of paper.

“Yes,” said Ben, “it’s parchment,” and very much thrilled he took his find over to the window and smoothed it out.

The ink on this parchment was faint and purplish, like that on the sheet already found in the desk, and the left hand words were close to the edge. Ben read them aloud:

to the north

the boat

cape with it

off the shore

it in the

rocks. There

veins that

like a cross.

James Sampson.

“Good enough!” said Ben, and ran down the stairs to the first floor.

The little drawer in the secretary was again made to disgorge its half-sheet of parchment and Ben laid the two papers side by side on the desk-lid. They fitted perfectly; now their message was complete.

I took the box to the north

cliff where was the boat

meaning to escape with it

but they were off the shore

and so I hid it in the

pocket in the rocks. There

are two big veins that

make a mark like a cross.

James Sampson.

“Well, that’s clear enough,” said Ben, “though why anyone should cut James Sampson’s writing in two is more than I can understand.” He copied the words on a sheet of paper and put the two pieces of parchment in the secret drawer. “Now let’s see what we’ve got. Sampson meant to leave the island with his box at the northern end, but he saw some enemies waiting there, so he hid the box in a crevice where the rocks are marked like a cross. All right for Mr. Sampson. That’s easy sailing. But why didn’t some of the Cotterells find what was in the hold of that little ship’s model long before this? Funny—that is.” Again his brows bent in thought. “Was James Sampson the real mahogany man? Was there a real clipper ship?” At last he shook his head. “I don’t know. But at least I’ve found something.”

Ben left the house. It was noon, and warm. The others were sailing around the island; there was no knowing when they would be back. He debated whether to go fishing, and finally decided against it. Without any definite purpose in mind he took the path at the back of Cotterell Hall that led toward the little creek.

It was only a short distance across to the inlet where David and he had landed. He went through the bushes and trees until he saw the water before him. There was the creek and there was the marshy ground where they had found the footprints. He descended the bank to look at the marks again.

There were no footprints there now: they had utterly vanished!

Ben hunted along the edge of the creek, although he was positive where the marks had been. There was not a sign of them. There had been no rain to wash them out. The soggy ground was above the reach of the tide. There was only one explanation: someone had been there since David and he had landed and had carefully removed any sign of footsteps.

To discover footprints on a supposedly uninhabited shore is thrilling, but to discover that those footprints have disappeared is even more exciting. What did it mean? Well, to Ben it clearly indicated that the person who had made those marks in the first place had some very good reason for wanting no one to know that he had been there.

Cotterell’s treasure was an ancient mystery; but this was a new one, no older in fact than the day before yesterday. This was new matter over which to cudgel one’s brains, and Ben, sitting on the bank, gave deep consideration to it until he saw the sail of the Argo creeping up from the south.

Should he tell the others of his discoveries or not? He decided to keep them a secret, including the vanished footprints, for a short time at least. But he jumped up, and ran down to the shore, and sent an ear-piercing yell across the water. The answer was a wave from Tom, and presently the Argo drew closer inland and laid her course for a small, grass-topped headland on Ben’s side of the creek.

“Don’t jump; slide down, Benjie, slide,” directed Tom.

“And slide gently,” added David. “Not as if you were making for third base with the ball getting there before you. Remember the Professor’s at the helm and we don’t want to tilt the boat.”

“Don’t you worry,” sang out Ben. “I’ll drop in so you’ll think I’m as light as a feather.” And as the Argo slipped along under the headland he let himself down, lightly and easily, but, as it happened, right on the shoulders of David.

The big fellow gave a growl. Ben’s legs had somehow contrived to twine themselves around David’s neck, and Ben was sitting there on the broad shoulders, his hands on the other boy’s head.

“Hi there! Look out!” cried Tuckerman. “You’ll upset the whole shebang!”

But Tom came to the skipper’s rescue. A steadying hand on the tiller and the Argo moved out from the shore.

Slowly Ben pushed David forward until they both came down in a heap in the little cockpit. “Behave yourselves,” ordered Tom. “I’ve got a dipper here and I’ll souse you both with cold water!”

The threat was enough. The two sat up. David grinned. “The little feller’s all right; he’s got some muscle. I shouldn’t wonder if I could make a real man out of him some day.”

Under Tom’s teaching John Tuckerman was learning something about handling a sailing dory, just as Ben had given him lessons in flounder fishing, David in making flapjacks, and the three in various swimming strokes. It was true that he still regarded the Argo’s sail, when a sudden puff of wind filled it, as an inexperienced driver regards his horse when the animal shows signs of shying—his muscles grew tense, and he frowned, and stopped talking—but he didn’t ask Tom what to do and he managed to keep the dory fairly close to the course he intended. And he was a good sport! He didn’t try to crawl out of his mistakes by arguing about them; he admitted them with a grin, and that grin was always so whole-souled and hearty that it made one want to slap him on the back and tell him that he hadn’t really made a mistake after all.

When Tuckerman had the Argo well in hand again and could think of other matters, he said to Ben, “We’ve seen plenty of rocks and ledges, but nary a thing that could properly be called a cliff. A cliff, I take it, is something fairly high and mighty, not so steep as Gibraltar perhaps, but as large as a good-sized barn-door.”

“While we’ve been hunting for cliffs,” said David, “I suppose Ben has worked this all out. What are your conclusions, oh wise one?”

“Never you mind, my boy. The clever magician waits till he has everything in order before he performs his trick.”

“Ben’s got something up his sleeve,” put in Tom. “I can always tell when he talks in that grand way. But there’s no use trying to make him tell us, Dave. The way to make an oyster talk is to pay no attention to it.”

Ben said nothing, though the temptation was great as the Argo reached the northern end of the island, where high rocks came down to the water.

Tuckerman admitted these were cliffs, but there were a number of them, and how was he to tell which was the one they wanted? They sailed slowly along, watching the shore and speculating as to what the message in the desk referred. And while the other three talked Ben sat silent, trying to picture what had happened to James Sampson there more than a century before.

Ben had a good imagination, and it led him to see Sampson as a servant of Sir Peter Cotterell, a faithful serving-man, who always did what his master told him. When the men of Barmouth threatened to take Sir Peter’s treasure the old Tory gave some of his most valuable possessions to Sampson, and the latter carried them to this end of the island where he had a small boat that should carry him to the mainland. When he reached the shore, however, he saw other Barmouth men patrolling the coast in their own boats and so his escape that way was cut off. With quick wit he hid the treasures in a cleft of the rock and blocked up the hiding-place. Ben could see it all, even to Sir Peter, in knee-breeches and wig, commending James Sampson when the man returned and related what he had done. “Good and faithful servant,” said Sir Peter; “the rascals are outwitted again!” And doubtless Sir Peter took Sampson into the dining-room and poured him out a glass of rum. Ben wasn’t sure about that; it might not have been rum; but rum sounded well, it smacked of old-time adventure. Yes, probably it was rum; and Sampson had wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and laughed with his master at the thought of the men of Barmouth sitting out there in their boats, like so many cats waiting outside a mouse-hole.

“Come out of it, Ben! Wake up!”

Ben looked up with a start. Tom was laughing at him. “Where are you, Benjie? A million miles away!”

“No,” answered Ben, “I was listening to Sir Peter talking to a man you don’t any of you know anything about.”

“Your precious mahogany man?” asked Tom. “Don’t tell me you learned something more about him while you were up at the house.”

“He means the man with the big feet,” said David. “Did you find his prints in the house?”

“David,” said Ben solemnly, “you’re absolutely certain you saw those footprints of a man on the bank of the creek, are you?”

“Absolutely,” David stated. “You don’t think it was some animal wearing a man’s shoes, do you?”

“No. I thought you saw them. But I looked this morning in the same place, and there aren’t any prints there now.”

There followed a moment’s silence; then Tuckerman exploded a loud “What?”

“Vanished, vamoosed, flown away,” Ben said with a nod.

“My eye!” exclaimed David. “This is too horrible! Is the island haunted?”

“It is peculiar,” said Tuckerman, frowning at the shore.

“Look out!” sang out Tom.

The Argo, her helmsman unheeding his business, was slowly coming about, with a ledge of rock dead ahead. Tuckerman wheeled around, put the tiller over—the dory righted again.

“Ben,” said Tom, “don’t you spring anything like that on us again, with the Professor sailing this boat. If you’ve got any other fairy tales, you keep them till we’re on shore.”

“My fault,” said the skipper. “I’m learning. My first business is to bring us safe up to the dock.”

“And my first business,” added David, “is to get something to eat. Mysteries may come and go, but three square meals a day are always needful. How about that, Ben, my son? What did Sir Peter and this other friend of yours live on?”

“Rum,” said the solemn Ben.

“Rum! You’re a rum one! Are you sure you didn’t drink some of Sir Peter’s rum before you went to the creek and found that the footprints were missing?”

But Ben only smiled. He could afford to smile when he knew that he, and he alone, had a copy of James Sampson’s complete message tucked away in his pocket.