Aunt Claire blinded her eyes and waited until she heard Rose call, “Coo!” like a pirate. Then she looked up, and Rose was standing in the deep, soft sand not very far away. But Aunt Claire knew that she had not hidden the treasure so near. Oh, no! Rose was too sly a pirate to do that.
Aunt Claire peered all around very carefully, and finally she spied the marks of little bare toes in the sand near the spot where Rose had stood when they first began to play. And she followed the tracks down to the water and up again, winding about in the funniest way,—something like this:—
Up and down and round about, twisting in and out, went the funny little marks, till Aunt Claire’s head whirled dizzily. Rose clapped her hands and laughed to see her trying to set her tennis shoes exactly in the track of those crazy wanderings. But at last, close by the water’s edge, Aunt Claire saw a little something which rose up like a bump on the sand; and about it were the marks of finger-scrapings. She stooped down and dug with her fingers, and soon she cried: “I spy!” and held up the pretty shell which Rose had hidden. “The treasure is found!” said Aunt Claire. “But what a search you made for me, wicked Pirate!”
“It is a lovely game,” said Rose, hopping up and down with excitement. “Now you hide, Aunt Claire,” Rose put her hands over her eyes, and her auntie came back to the soft sand in order to start fair on a smooth piece of beach. Pretty soon she cried, “Coo!” And the marks of her shoes looked something like this:—
“Oh, I never, never can find the treasure in all that whirly-whirly!” cried Rose, shaking her curls like a Skye terrier. And indeed, it looked very hard. But Rose walked right along in the big prints of her auntie’s shoes, and without much trouble she found the shell where it was hidden in the middle of the whirly-figure.
“That was a good hide,” she said.
They played the pirate game for a long time, until the sand was covered up and down with the strangest patterns, and there was hardly room for a fresh footprint anywhere; for this was not a large beach.
“We shall have to stop, now, I suppose,” said Rose with a sigh, “and wait until Mr. Sea has washed out all our marks with his ocean sponge. See, he is creeping up and has begun already. To-morrow the beach will be all smooth and white again so that we can show Kenneth how to play buried treasure, too.”