The next day began uneventfully. Bee insisted on digging, and after breakfast they started operations again. By eleven o’clock there were two more trenches along the hillside and the three boys were about tired out. They went in swimming before dinner, however, and discovered that they were not too weary to eat. It was a frightfully hot day and even Bee hadn’t the heart to suggest more labor after the mid-day meal. Instead, he wandered off by himself on a round of the island. He had begun to lose faith in the locality he had selected to dig in and was quite ready to start operations elsewhere if he could only decide on a new place. But one spot looked as likely to yield buried treasure as another. He strove to picture the island in Old Verny’s day, but try as he might he could not convince himself that the cabin had been located anywhere but on the side of the hill where they had dug. And yet they had already very thoroughly explored a territory some thirty feet by fifty without result and two more trenches would bring them as close to the beach as it seemed advisable to go. After that, then, the next step appeared to be to lengthen the trenches. But searching for buried treasure was beginning to lose its lure even for Bee, while as for the others, they were already exhibiting indications of mutiny. He sighed as he came back within sight of the camp. If only there was a little more certainty as to the existence of the treasure!
Jack and Hal were fast asleep, stretched out on their beds, Jack snoring frankly and vigorously. Bee took a seat outside in the shade where a mere suggestion of breeze crept past him. From there he looked straight down-hill at the trenches which, with their mounds of upthrown earth between, looked unpleasantly like a row of graves on a battle-field! One consolation, he reflected, was that the farther down the hill they went the easier the digging became, and the next two trenches would be excavated in sand. His gaze wandered to the left and fell on the small, grotesquely-shaped tree that stood alone just above the beach at the beginning of the slope. The few leaves it bore hung dejectedly in the scorching heat. Bee experienced a feeling very much like sympathy for the tree when he thought of the winter storms it had stood up against all these years. “Plucky little thing,” he reflected. “I wonder what sort of a tree it is.” His vagrant curiosity got the better of his disinclination to move and he arose and loitered down the slope through the blazing sunlight. The tree was scarcely four inches thick at the base of the trunk and its gnarled branches, the highest of which hardly topped Bee’s head, grew out at all sorts of impossible angles. The leaves were short and ovate and looked—Bee frowned—yes, they really did look like apple-tree leaves! He wished he knew more botany. Of course the tree couldn’t be an apple-tree, for what would an apple-tree be doing here? Perhaps, though, a bird might have dropped a seed or—yes, that was it! Jack had said that picnickers sometimes came to the island. Probably years ago someone had thrown an apple core away. Bee studied the tree again. Somehow, it looked older than its size would indicate. Then he kicked away the sand and earth at the foot and found the remains of a larger trunk, so rotten that it crumbled into brown fragments under his shoe. So, then, there had been a bigger tree there at one time, he reflected. Perhaps a gale had blown it down. At all events, the present tree had grown from the trunk of the former. But was it really an apple-tree? If so the original tree might have been standing when Old Verny lived on the island. Perhaps he had planted it! And in that case—Bee felt a thrill of excitement!—why, in that case maybe the cabin had stood near the tree! What more likely than that Old Verny had planted the tree beside his house? Only—was it an apple-tree? Perhaps Jack or Hal would know. He hurried up the hill and awakened the astonished and protesting boys in the tent.
“Wha—what’s the row?” asked Hal sleepily.
“Do you know an apple-tree when you see one?” demanded Bee eagerly.
“Do I know—Say, what sort of a joke is this? Why don’t you let a fellow alone?”
“It isn’t a joke at all,” replied Bee earnestly. “Come on, you fellows, and look at the tree down there. I want to know if it’s an apple-tree.”
“What if it is?” demanded Hal. “Aren’t any apples on it, are there?”
“No, but if it’s really an apple tree it means that we’ve got a clue at last!”
“A clue? What sort of a clue?” asked Jack. “And suppose it’s a pear tree?”