“And,” resumed Ross, impressively, “I’d give my right hand to know just what those things were.”
His hearers sat for a moment stunned and bewildered by this sudden ending.
“What!” gasped Teddy. “Do you mean that you don’t know what happened?”
“No,” was the reply. “I don’t know. From what I’ve been able to learn I can make a pretty good guess. All I know is that my father was picked up a week later in an open boat, wounded and starving and delirious.”
A gasp of wonder and pity ran around the little circle.
“From a letter found in his pocket they learned who he was, and after he had partially recovered they sent him home to us,” Ross went on. “But from then to the day of his death, which took place a year later, he was insane.”
“The scoundrels!” muttered Fred, clenching his fists in indignation.
39“We tried to get at the facts by piecing together what he said when he was quieter than usual,” Ross continued. “Again and again, he would speak of ‘the lighthouse’ and ‘Bartanet Shoals.’ Then he would imagine himself in a fight with the mate. Many times he spoke of ‘burying the box.’
“All these of course were slight things to go on, but by putting them all together and looking at them from every side, we figured out something like this:
“The mate probably had his suspicions aroused by the weight of the box that held the gold. Father must have come upon him when he was trying to open it, and there was a fight in which the rest of the crew joined. They were probably somewhere near Bartanet Shoals when this happened, and they put in at some quiet place along here to think over what they’d better do. They finally decided to bury the box and leave it there until the matter should have blown over and been forgotten. The men probably intended to put father out of the way, and, after the search for him had been given up, to come back and get the box. Father either tried to escape in the open boat, or the crew, not quite willing to kill him in cold blood, set him adrift, knowing that in his wounded condition it would probably amount to the same thing.”