This high-handed behavior dumbfounded poor Papa Bazán. He dashed the cork helmet to the deck and kicked it like a football. Ricardo pleasantly suggested tucking him in and locking the door. This ended the tantrum. The owner of the Valkyrie curled up in the chair and disconsolately talked to himself.
The boyish chief engineer, Charlie Burnham, came strolling along, bright-eyed and eager to insert himself into whatever ructions might show above the horizon.
“Come along with me, Charlie,” said Captain Cary. “Let’s take a look at this Cocos Island. I may pay Don Miguel O’Donnell a social call. Keep a sharp watch, Mr. Duff, and let nobody aboard from the schooner.”
“Atta boy!” blithely exclaimed Charlie Burnham. “Why not take the whole crew and run these Ecuador outlaws plumb off the island? They have had a fair crack at it, haven’t they? Three months is enough. Time’s up.”
Woefully forlorn, Señor Bazán watched them set out for the beach in the skiff. Before striking inland they paused to examine the boulders strewn above high-water mark. On this one and that were roughly chiseled the names of ships which had visited Cocos Island at various times. It had become a custom singularly interesting. Richard Cary felt a thrill when he discovered a massive stone on which the weather had almost obliterated the lettering, but it was possible to decipher this much:
“H . . J . . . N-1-7-9—”
“Here we are, Charlie,” cried Richard Cary. “We couldn’t ask anything better than this. This must be ‘H.M.S. Jason 1789.’ Now we head due north to what the chart calls ‘the hump of the hill.’ We are going at the thing backward, but this is good enough for to-day. I want to work out a rough position and select a place for a camp. We may have to cut a trail and so on.”
To their surprise and uneasiness, a trail already led due north from the stone on the beach. The trees and undergrowth had been chopped out, holes filled with broken stone, two or three small water-courses bridged with logs and plank. Wheeled vehicles had worn deep ruts in the soil. The crew of the schooner must have dragged heavy burdens over this pathway through the cocoanut groves and jungle. Observant Charlie Burnham picked up an iron bolt and a pipe coupling of large dimensions. He remarked that it knocked the romance out of treasure hunting when you made an engineering job of it.
Curiosity urged them along at a breathless gait. They emerged into the wide bed of a dry ravine and followed the path until it climbed to a small plateau or level area barricaded on one side by crumbling cliffs. They could hear the noise of rushing water. It was as loud as a cataract. They halted to reconnoiter. Charlie Burnham craned his neck to stare up at the broken slope of the great hill that towered far above the cliffs, the hill that loomed so conspicuously from seaward like a dead crater.
“Do you see that rusty streak that runs down the hill, Captain Cary? I’ve guessed it. This Don Miguel O’Donnell has tapped the little lake way up yonder. That streak is a line of pipe. He has a dandy head of pressure for hydraulic mining. Tearing the island to pieces? I’ll say he is. He’s trying to wash the treasure out. Some stunt!”