“I wouldn’t like any better fun,” answered Andy promptly. “An ocean trip always did suit me right down to the ground.”
There followed a conversation lasting over an hour, during which time Captain Corning unfolded his plans while the boys listened eagerly and even the men were interested, though they could not get their minds altogether off of their financial troubles.
According to what the captain had to tell, Miguel Torra had set sail from a small port near Vera Cruz in Mexico at a time when a revolution was just coming to an end and he was very much in disfavor with those in authority. There had been a fight and it was not definitely known how many on shore and on the steam yacht had been killed or wounded. Then the yacht had sailed eastward with the evident intention of landing somewhere in the West Indies or on the upper coast of South America. But there had been mutiny and a great storm, and from what the captain had been able to learn from an old sailor who had since died in a seamen’s home down East, the Margarita had been driven on either a sandbar or the rocks off the coast of Yucatan.
“As near as the old sailor could figure it, the spot was directly north of a place called Vera Sura.”
“But isn’t it very deep in the Gulf of Mexico?” questioned Jack. “When we studied geography I remember there was one place there where the water was terribly deep.”
“That’s true, lad. But along the coast of Yucatan it’s quite shallow and there are numerous sandbars and submerged rocks. So I have come to the conclusion that if the Margarita is really there, she may be in water from twenty to one hundred and fifty feet deep.”
“How did this old sailor, Henry Swall, come to tell you all this?” asked Sam Rover.
“I helped the old fellow financially. I rather liked him, and I got him into the seamen’s home. And not only that, I also helped his old mother who was blind. That made Swall very grateful and that is why he gave me all these particulars. He had hoped to go on a search for the Margarita himself. Before he died he signed a paper in which he left everything he had to me.”
“Well, all this certainly sounds very interesting,” mused Sam Rover. He turned to the boys. “It’s just the kind of a hunt you’d like to go on, isn’t it?” he added, with a little smile.
“You bet it is, Uncle Sam!” cried Andy.