“Well, you might help me if you could find the lost treasure.”
“What lost treasure?” asked Dr. Rudd, and Bunny and Sue remembered a sea story their mother sometimes read to them about a shipwreck in which treasure had been lost and later was found on a desert island.
“The treasure was lost on the Mary Bell,” murmured Mr. Pott. “She foundered, the Mary Bell did, down in southern waters. I was first mate aboard of her and my son Harry was second mate. But I guess he’s lost too—my boy Harry. He was sick just before the Mary Bell began to sink. I haven’t had any word from him since.
“But I thought maybe he got picked up at sea somehow, and I’ve been going about ever since, trying to find him. Every time I heard of a place where a sailor lived I went there, thinking it might be my son Harry. I thought maybe he might have the lost treasure. I heard there was a sailor living here, so I came to this port.”
“I guess I’m the only sailor living here,” said Mr. Winkler. “But I’m not your son and I haven’t any treasure.”
“You have Wango, your monkey,” said Bunny, for he and Sue liked the queer, fuzzy, little animal that Jed had brought back with him from one of his voyages.
“Yes, I have Wango, but he isn’t any treasure,” chuckled the old sailor. “Anyhow, my sister Euphemia doesn’t think so.”
Bunny and Sue well knew this. They wondered what else the injured sailor would say. They had listened to his strange story, and they wondered what his treasure was and if he would ever find his lost son Harry.
After telling this much about himself Mr. Pott became unconscious.
“I wanted to ask him how it was he came to be riding that horse,” said Mr. Winkler. “A horse is no sort of craft for a sailor.”