He pressed a button here, threw a lever forward there, and at once there came the thunder of a motor. Quickly he threw back the lever. “Don’t want to wake them.” He stood up and peered shoreward.
Satisfied that his companions had not been disturbed, he returned to the cabin and put things to rights.
“Wreck’s to the southeast,” said Johnny. “I can see it plainly. Look’s queer, though; all white, as if there had been a recent snow.”
A moment later, as they circled lower, he laughed and exclaimed: “Sea-gulls!”
It was true. The ship, but recently a staunch sea-craft, had become a roost for sea-gulls. Literally thousands of them rose screaming into the air as the “Dust Eater” gracefully glided into the waters of the sheltered bay.
There is no mystery in all the world greater than a deserted wreck. An old house, an abandoned mill, a cabin in the forest, all these have their charm of mystery, but the wreck of a ship, laden with who knows what treasure, and abandoned by her master, a wreck so remote from inhabited lands that it has not been visited since the night of its disaster, here was mystery indeed.
So eager were they to board the craft that they could scarcely wait until the plane had been made fast and the canvas boat lowered.
One question troubled Johnny: The seamen, taken from the wreck, had reported no native inhabitants of the island, yet some might have been hiding out in the rocky portion of the place, for this island was some three times the size of the island they had just left.
As he climbed up the rope ladder which still dangled from her side, and sprang upon her deck, slippery with guano deposited by the gulls, he kept a sharp watch for any signs of depredation done to the ship since she was deserted. He found none, and no signs of life on the main deck, but as he went down the hatch, he fancied he discovered the faint mark of a bare foot on one step.
Their first thought was of the four chests.