CHAPTER VIII
THE SCOURGES OF THE SEA
Tyke's eyes were staring and his face was so apoplectic that Drew was alarmed.
"Make out of it?" Tyke spluttered, getting up and nearly overturning his chair. "I make out of it that Manuel was right when he said that the old chest held something worth more'n diamonds."
Grimshaw was so shaken out of his usual calm that Captain Hamilton, too, shared Drew's alarm.
"I tell you what we'd better do," he suggested. "We're all too much excited to discuss this thing intelligently now. We've got a whole lot to digest, and it will take time. This thing will keep. Suppose we have our young friend here take this rough draft home with him and piece out the missing parts as well as he can. In the meantime we'll all mull it over in our minds, look at it from every angle, and meet here fresh and rested to-morrow morning to decide on what we'd better do."
"I guess you're right," assented Tyke, mopping his forehead. "This old head of mine is whirling around like a top."
Tyke locked the map carefully in his safe and committed the other paper and the captain's partial transcription to his chief clerk with solemn injunctions to take the utmost care of them.
But the latter stood in no need of the admonition. He would have defended those papers with his life. They meant for him—what did they not mean?
Romance, adventure, wealth! Now at last he would have something to justify his search for Ruth Adams and his suit for her hand. Now he could frame his jewel, when he found it, in a proper setting.