“All alone?” wailed Jerry, who, like all colored folks when they seek buried treasure, preferred to be fortified with rabbit’s feet, dried frog skins or the powdered bones of an owl. “Ah done gib yo’ all a chanst to go wif me.”
“It reads ‘alone’,” explained Bob, with a straight face. “You ain’t scared, are you?”
“Who? Me scairt? Ah ain’t scairt, but Ah reckon dey is ’nuff gold fo’ all of us.”
“We wouldn’t think of it,” explained Hal. “This is a message to you from your relative. If he can change that paper, he could strike us dead. I wouldn’t go near it.”
Jerry shifted his feet nervously. “Mebbe dat ole pirate lyin’ to me,” he ventured, with new nervousness.
“Well, you can’t lose,” argued Bob. “If you do as he says and don’t find anything, that’s his fault—not yours. Anyway, you’ve convinced us that you’re tellin’ the truth.”
“Yas, sah,” spoke up Jerry, with sudden determination to carry his bluff to the end. “Whar’s de shubble?”
After three hours of tedious waiting, in which time Jerry’s companions sat about the flickering campfire and discussed grewsome and ghastly tales of bewitched pirate gold, the boys announced the hour of the search. The colored boy, trembling and speechless, was given the lantern and dispatched on his quest.
No sooner had he taken the path along the west shore of the island than the three jokers, carrying a white sheet, a freshly loaded revolver and Captain Joe’s conch shell, lit out with racehorse speed along the east beach for the ridge slope opposite the big oaks. Captain Joe followed in the rear, but even he was concealed behind the rise of ground when the faltering Jerry could be made out gingerly approaching the little wave swept inlet at the foot of the oaks.