"Now, if I was superstitious——" began Tyke in a quavering voice.
"Never mind any 'ifs' just now," interrupted the captain. "We've got to get away from here just as fast as the good Lord will let us. I don't believe in tempting Providence."
"And leave the doubloons?" queried Tyke, in dismay.
"Yes, and leave the doubloons," replied the captain stubbornly. "If Ruth weren't here, we men might take a chance, but my daughter is worth more to me than all the pirate gold buried in the Caribbean."
Drew, if inaudibly, agreed with him. "Let's get Ruth down to the shore, anyway," he said. "Then, if you'll come back—— I saw something just at that last crash."
"By the great jib-boom!" roared Tyke, "so did I. What did you see, Allen? Something shot up out o' one o' them pits we dug yesterday. I saw it. An' it wasn't a lava boulder, neither!"
"You're right, there," Drew agreed. "It was a box or something. Too square-shaped to be a rock."
"We can't fool with it now," Captain Hamilton said, with determination, though his eyes sparkled. "Come, Ruth. I must get you down to the boat."
But here the girl exercised a power of veto. "I don't go unless the rest of you do—and to remain, too," she declared. "I am not a child. Of course, I'm afraid of that volcano. But so are you men. And it's all over now. If Allen really saw something that looked like a box or a chest thrown out of that opening, I'm going to——"
She left the rest unspoken, but started boldly for the barren patch where they had dug the day before. It looked now like a piece of plowed ground over which were scattered blocks of lava of all sizes and shapes.