“It is a most wonderful thing,” he declared earnestly. “There is nothing in the kaiser’s land like it. You Americans are a wonderful people.”
Frank was besieged with hundreds of applications for various purposes.
Hosts of cranks applied for permission to accompany him. Some letters were beseeching, some threatening.
One mildly insane woman wanted him to recover her son from the clutches of an octopus.
Another asked that her husband might be brought back from the realm of old Neptune.
But one applicant, at least, received consideration at Frank’s hands.
He was a bearded sea captain, who told of the sinking of a pirate ship in a certain latitude with a vast treasure aboard.
Here was a reasonable request, and Frank agreed to look for it.
He took the bearings as given him by Captain Bell and said:
“If possible I will find your sunken treasure. It may be, though, that time and the action of the tides have buried it so deep that I will not be able to reclaim it.”