Miss Carroll had promptly vetoed the “poking around in the woods” plan, appealing to Mr. Carroll to support her in prohibiting such a proceeding. He had been equally ready on his own account, however, to decry Patsy’s proposal.
“Don’t allow this treasure story to take hold on your minds,” he had discouraged. “It’s highly interesting, of course, but that’s all. You’re not apt to discover a treasure that generations of Feredas failed to locate. They knew the ground thoroughly and failed. You know nothing of that jungle behind the beach.”
With no one save Bee as an ally, Patsy’s ambition saw no prospect of realization. Still the treasure story remained uppermost in her mind. It haunted her, particularly during the morning excursions to and from the bathing beach. The portion of jungle through which the white, sandy beach-road ran became invested with new interest. Its green depths concealed a treasure, once the treasure of the Dragon, now the treasure of Las Golondrinas.
“Do you suppose this part of the coast has changed very much since 1618?” Patsy reflectively questioned one morning, as she and Bee lay on the warm sands sunning themselves after a long swim.
“I don’t know.” Bee was gazing absently seaward. “You’re thinking about the treasure, of course,” she added with a smile.
“Yes,” Patsy admitted. “Too bad Sir John wasn’t captain of the Dragon. He’d have kept a log instead of a journal, and in it he would have set down the ship’s exact position. How far it was from shore, I mean, and all that.”
“I have an idea that the Dragon anchored quite a way below this part of the beach,” declared Beatrice, “and not so very far from land. It’s just as Sir John said, the beach along here curves a little like a new moon. The upper end of the curve runs farther out into the water than the lower end. Above the upper end is the little bay where the galleons must have anchored in the night. You know how deep the water is there. If the Dragon had been directly opposite this curve, those on board would have probably sighted the galleons and the captain would have tried to get away when the first one attacked him. They’d been fixing up the ship all that day, you know.”
“Yes, that’s so,” nodded Patsy. “But where do you think the men landed who went ashore in the row-boat?”
“That’s hard to guess,” returned Bee. “If the ship were anchored down there, they might have rowed in a straight line to land without being seen by the Spaniards. If the beach was then just as it is now, right along here would have been a better place for them to land than down there. Maybe the Spaniards had a lookout posted in the woods watching them.”