“Come here Nicky—Tom!” he urged. “Easy, so as not to tip the boat! Do you know what? That is the Dipper, and we have run aground right where the line would show we ought to stop in the chart—and yonder is ‘the bottom of the Dipper!’”
Excitedly his fellows scrambled over the intervening seat and crouched at his side.
“That’s right, I do believe!” agreed Nicky. “The reason the line stopped is because the channel stopped. This is where they must have come to a standstill in the old boat—those castaways!”
“Yes,” added Cliff, “they couldn’t go any further. And the bottom is level here. We could climb out and walk along it.”
“It’s just the place to unload chests of treasure,” Tom agreed. “If only there was some place to hide it in——”
“What about that?” cried Nicky, pointing straight ahead. “There on that islet that’s really at the bottom of the Dipper.”
“But it said ‘in’ not ‘at’ the bottom of the Dipper,” reminded Tom. Nicky nodded, scrambling out into the shallow water. Cliff followed, and Tom delayed only long enough to draw the nose of their tender far enough onto the shelf of limestone to prevent any chance of a slight current drifting it out of easy reach while they walked along carefully on the coral bed, avoiding jutting prongs and dodging the menacing little spaces into which a foot could slip so as to twist an ankle.
“We’re in the bottom of the Dipper, at least,” Cliff declared after a few minutes of cautious wading.
“I don’t see anything to write home about,” Tom said morosely, wincing from the pain of a slightly twisted foot. “All our trouble—for what?”
“Stand here a minute,” urged Nicky. “Let’s think. Now, fellows, you know that the treasure wasn’t buried yesterday. Maybe the whole top of the archipelago has changed since the castaways’ day. But this looks like the place they told Captain Kidd about, and unless some one else has taken it away, their treasure ought to be here, if we just know how to locate it!”