Hugh, being the nearest, caught it by its red neck, and the whole party collected on and about the raft to see what would happen next. But Hugh refused to break the bottle until they went ashore again.
"The sea might get in and spoil the paper, and the broken glass would get on deck and cut us; we'll pull her in now and read the message on the beach," he decided.
They got under way and, practice making perfect, were soon high and dry on the beach, and the Nancy Lee dragged up and comfortably moored. The children seated themselves in a ring, and Hugh cautiously knocked off the neck of the bottle with a stone. He drew out a paper, which had been carefully rolled round a thin bamboo stick and tied with a red ribbon. There was no date on the paper, nor was there any sign to show where the bottle had been thrown in, but written in large, clear round-hand was the following message:
IF THE FINDER OF THIS BOTTLE WILL SEARCH THE CAVE UNDER THE DUKE'S NOSE HE WILL FIND SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE.
"Hidden treasure," said three boys all at once. "Where is The Duke's
Nose?" asked Dick.
"Never heard of it," answered Hugh, looking hard at Jerry, whose nose was distinctly aquiline and promised to be more so in the future. "You aren't a duke by any chance, I suppose?" he asked.
"No, old sport, I'm not," Jerry answered, with a grin, "and if I were, the only treasure you would find in the cave under my nose would be some jolly sharp teeth, and they wouldn't be at all to your advantage either."
"It's probably among those rocks over there," Mollie suggested; "I expect if we went there and walked round we would see something that looked like a duke's nose."
"But there aren't any big enough to have a cave under them," said
Prudence; "they are all quite little rocks."
"It will be a bit of the cliff, most likely," said Dick, "in fact it is almost bound to be if there is a cave."