“Well, what are you boys hunting for? Pirates’ gold?” Captain Mansfield asked, with a hearty laugh, as he looked over Gil’s shoulder.
“We came here for this old chest, because our trunks won’t hold all we want to carry, and in it found these things, which I don’t suppose amount to anything; but I can’t make out why you or any one else would want to keep them.”
As he spoke, Gil laid on the lid of the box the different, apparently useless, articles which had fallen out when the hasp was broken. They all had that peculiar musty, salty odor, which tells of months spent in the forecastle, while the good ship plows her way across this or that ocean, one day aided by favoring winds, and on the next battling for life with the spirit of the tempest.
First the newspaper story was placed before Captain Mansfield; then a small coil of thin, well-waxed cord; then a piece of hard, dark-colored wood about four inches long by two wide, with the following marks rudely cut, as if with a sheathknife:
A fragment of an old British admiralty chart, showing a portion of the northwestern end of the Island of Hayti, was next examined, and then Gil unfolded a rough drawing, of which the sketch below is an exact copy:
“Do you know where these things came from?” Gil asked, after his father had gazed at the odd collection for several moments in silence.
“I never saw them before.”
“Wasn’t this your chest?”