"If you've paper an' a bit o' pencil," said Skipper Joe, "I'll draw you one."
Here is what he drew:
Skipper Joe, of course, carefully explained his drawing. "Does you see where the arrow points?" said he. "Well, 'tis there. You gets the head o' that little rock in line with the point, at high water, an' there you are. The cliff is rough, an' covered with a growth o' spruce. The hole is about half way up, openin' off a mossy ledge. You'll have t' pry around a wonderful lot t' find it."
"What's it like inside?" Tom asked, eagerly.
"Well, they is a deal o' birch bark scattered around, an' a lot o' broken rock. I saw that by the light of a match; but I was too scared t' stay long, an' I haven't never been there since."
Billy Topsail agreed to sail the sloop to Little Tickle Basin on the next day. Then the boys walked home by the road, much excited. Indeed, Tom, who was of an imaginative and enthusiastic turn, was fairly transported. No flight of fancy was too high for him—no hope too wild. The chart passed from his hand to Jack's and back again a hundred times. The crude, strange drawing, with its significant arrow, touched all the pirate tales with reality.
"If it had been only a cave, without a rusted mooring-ring, it wouldn't have been so much," said Tom. "But with the ring—with the ring, my boy—a narrow, hidden passage to a cave means a great deal more."