The Radio Boys Under the Sea; or, The Hunt for Sunken Treasure

by J. W. Duffield

“They had been having one of these little revolutions when for some reason Uncle Sam took a hand. You know he acts as a sort of policeman to keep those little West Indian countries in order when they get a little too gay and frisky. At any rate, we’ve had a little force of marines there for some years past, and it happened that I was sent down there with the last batch of leathernecks.

“It wasn’t much of a task to keep the bigger towns in order, but it was different when we were sent out to clean up some of the outlaw bands in the interior of the island. There were plenty of these, and we had to watch our step, for they were bloodthirsty rascals and if any of our boys happened to fall into their hands it was all up with him. It wasn’t merely death—that’s part of the game in the marine service—but torture. And those bandits certainly were experts when it came to making a man die slow and hard.”

Phil thought of Espato and his skill in the same gentle art.

“A couple of pals and myself,” went on Benton, “were pushing along one day in a desolate patch of the jungle way off from the beaten road when we heard shrieks coming from a cabin. We made a break for it, and found a bunch of bandits torturing an old Spaniard. He lived alone there, and somehow the idea had got out that he had money concealed about the place. The outlaws had felt so confident that they had everything their own way that they hadn’t set any watch and we took them by surprise. They had the old man bound on his bed, and were burning him with hot irons to make him tell them where his money was hidden. We burst in on them while they were in the very midst of their infernal work, killed two of them and put the rest to flight.

“The old man was pretty well done for. It didn’t seem practicable to get him in his condition to the nearest military post which was some distance away. So I sent the other fellows to report, and I stayed to nurse the old fellow. I didn’t think he’d last out the next twenty-four hours, but he had surprising vitality for a man of his years and it was nearly a week before he passed away. He needed constant attention, and I was kept pretty well on the jump day and night.

“During that time I learned, of course, a good deal of his history. Part of it he told me, and part of it I picked up from what he kept babbling from time to time when he was delirious. It seemed that he had never married and that he had no relative that he knew of in the world. He had lived there for years, doing a little farming on his garden patch and getting barely enough to keep body and soul together. As for money, he didn’t have any. That was where the bandits would have had their troubles for their pains.

“One morning I could see that death was pretty near, and the old man knew it too. He called me to him, thanked me over and over for what I had been able to do for him and then told me that he was going to give me something that would make me rich. I thought his mind was wandering again, but he pointed out a place under the flooring of the cabin and asked me to dig down a couple of feet. I did it to humor him, and fished out an old tin box. I brought it to him and he took out the papers that I have just laid on the table.”

The boys looked with the keenest interest at the package of papers that were mildewed and yellowed by time.

“He put those in my hands,” continued Benton, “and told me they were mine. Said they had been handed down in his family for generations. It seems that the old man himself had had dreams of following up the clues that were contained in them. But it would take capital and he never had one dollar that he could lay on another. And he had been afraid to trust his secret to anyone else for fear that he would be either cheated or perhaps killed by those he might choose as partners. And so the years had dragged on and he had come at last to his deathbed without ever having derived any benefit from them. Now he gave them to me, and the only condition he attached was that if I got any benefit from them I would have a candle burned in some church for the repose of his soul.”

Benton paused for a moment. No one spoke. They were envisaging the scene of that forlorn old life coming to so pitiable an end in the depths of the San Domingo forest.