Sure enough, we had circled until now we were not more than thirty or forty rods from the pirate’s house, in a low strip commonly called the “Weir jungle.” And were we ever excited! Oh, boy! As the saying is, we were getting “warmer” every minute.
It was no trick for us to pick out the exact spot on the creek bank where the boatman had landed. And so frequent had been his trips here during the past month that a path, which led off to the right, showed plainly. Following this path, with a sharp lookout ahead, we soon came to what seemed to be the mouth of an abandoned cement tunnel, similar to dozens of other old tunnels that I had seen in and around Tutter. I never had known, though, that any early tunneling for cement rock, which underlies the floor of the valley, had been done here.
“I wish we had a light,” said Poppy, rubbering into the black hole.
“Gosh!” I sort of held off. “Wouldn’t you be afraid to go in there?”
“What’s the risk,” says he, “when we know that the one-armed geezer is on the other side of the river?”
It was our theory now that the treasure hunter, living in one of the hidden caves across the river, was resting there for a few hours. So I ran back to the stone house for a flashlight, as eager as the leader was to do the exploring act.
Mrs. O’Mally nearly had a fit when she learned what we were planning to do.
“Please don’t,” she begged, thinking, I guess, of the fix that we would be in if the one-armed man came back to the tunnel sooner than we expected. “Ye may be killed.”
But I didn’t let her scare me.
“Don’t you worry about us,” I laughed. Then, ready to go, I told her to listen for us through the cellar walls. We’d give five quick taps, I said.