There were two clumps, one consisting of two and the other of three trees, at a little distance in from the beach. To the right was a huge rock that rose like some giant sentinel and seemed to mark the entrance to a bay or cove. A series of waving lines appeared to indicate the water, and a more heavily shaded part was evidently meant to denote the land. There was no artistic element in the drawing, but just then the boys would not have exchanged the rough scrawl of that knife blade for a painting by Titian or Raphael.
“Glory, hallelujah!” shouted Teddy, who had by this time recovered his power of speech.
“Eureka!” cried Lester.
227“We’ve found it,” translated Fred.
“Joy!” exulted Bill, his habitual caution swept away in the flood of his excitement.
Ross alone said nothing, though his trembling hands and moistened eyes betrayed the depth of his emotion. To the Rally Hall boys this meant a tremendous step forward, they hoped, toward the achievement of their ambition. It meant all that, too, to Ross, but it meant much more. He was on the spot where his father had been foully assaulted and brought to his death. Somewhere in this ship there had been the scuffling of feet and the thud of a deadly weapon, as his father had fought for his property and his life.
The other boys were quick to recognize his feeling, and with the true courtesy that marked them, they strove to restrain their exultation for a time, and to talk among themselves until Ross should have had time to get a grip on himself.
Bill, as usual, was the first to put a brake on their optimism and subdue their enthusiasm by questioning cautiously the real value of their discovery.
“It’s splendid, of course,” he ventured to suggest, “but, after all, what does it give us that we didn’t already know? To be sure, it shows that the sailor was telling the truth. But there doesn’t seem to be anything in the map that he hadn’t already described.”
228“That’s so,” admitted Teddy, his enthusiasm a little dampened.