“That’s true, but the story goes that the old chap saw the constables coming and hurriedly dug a hole and hid his wealth. Well, if that is so he wouldn’t have climbed to the top of the hill in plain sight of the officers; now would he? He’d probably have dug a hole behind the house or—That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“Why, very likely he didn’t have any floor to his cabin and he just dug a hole in the dirt inside! How’s that?”
“Sounds likely enough,” Jack agreed. “But you don’t want to lose sight of the fact, Bee, that maybe there wasn’t anything buried, after all. If they didn’t see him do it, how did they know? And if they did see him do it they’d have dug it up. I wouldn’t bank too much on that yarn.”
“I know,” answered Bee untroubledly. “Still, it’s just as likely that there was treasure of some sort as that there wasn’t. If the old villain was piling ships up on the rocks here for twenty years or so, as the book I read said he did, he must have got something from them.”
“Well, if they were all schooners, and I guess they were, he wouldn’t find very rich pickings aside from the cargoes. Skippers don’t carry diamonds and gold around with them much.”
“They don’t now, maybe, but perhaps they used to. They traded around at different ports, didn’t they? Well, didn’t they have to have money with them to pay for things? Jack, I’m plumb sure there’s something buried on this island, and if I can find it I mean to. And, look here, you said awhile ago that he might have buried the stuff under a tree. Didn’t we decide that the trees weren’t there then?”
“I believe we did,” laughed Jack. “We don’t know that for certain, though. Maybe he buried it alongside a rock, Bee.”
Bee pondered that, his gaze sweeping the slope for likely boulders. “It wouldn’t be hard to dig beside the few rocks here,” he muttered, “and if everything else fails we’ll try that. Well, I suppose we’d better be getting back home. We can’t do any more here today, I guess!”