CHAPTER I.

A SURPRISING PROPOSITION.

Taps had sounded at the close of the sham battle and all the "dead" had sprung to life. The last note of the call officially brought to a close the work of the year at The Fortress and, together with the larger part of the corps of cadets, Bob and Jack Lakewood were hurrying toward the barracks in their eagerness to "get into cits" as soon as possible. But, just as Bob rushed into the wash room with Jack close at his heels, he felt a strong hand grasp him by the arm, and turning he looked into the face of a tall well built man whose lips were parted in at broad smile.

"Well, of all the----"

"Uncle Silas!" Jack interrupted with a shout as he threw his arms about the man's neck and treated him to a bear-like hug.

"Sa-save the pieces," the man gasped as he returned the caress with one arm while Bob pumped the other up and down.

"When did you get here?" he asked a moment later.

"About an hour ago," his uncle told them. "And I'll say you kids sure do know how to drill."

"Where you bound for?" Jack asked.

"Why, I suppose you're going home and I kind of thought I'd drift along with you. You see, it's been quite some time since I've been up in Maine."

"That's great," Bob declared. "You come up to the room while we get dressed and we'll be off in no time. Trunks went this morning. We'll get supper in Philly and catch the Bar Harbor express in New York. Father and mother'll be tickled to death to see you."

While he was talking, Bob was leading the way up stairs to their room and, a moment later, the two boys were stripping off their uniforms, while their uncle sat by the window asking them a steady stream of questions regarding their life there.

"Like it here, do you?" he finally asked, just as Bob was taking a final look around to see if he had forgotten anything.

"It's the greatest school in the world," he replied.

"Hum, well, I believe you," Mr. Lakewood smiled. "I've always said that if military training of the right sort wouldn't make a man of a boy nothing would, and you two sure are good advertisements for it." And he gazed with much pride at the well knit bodies of his nephews.

An hour later, the three were eating supper together in Philadelphia, and between bites, as Jack put it, were talking over old times.

"We'll show you some real woods up in Maine," Jack told his uncle while they were waiting for dessert. "And some real fishing too," he added.

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I won't have time for that, much as I would enjoy it," Mr. Lakewood smiled.

"Why not? You're going to spend the summer with us, aren't you?"

"I'm afraid not this time. If all goes well, I shall sail from New York a week from next Tuesday."

"Where to?" Bob asked disappointedly.

"For the South Sea Islands."

"Gee, do you mean it?" Jack asked.

"I sure do," his uncle smiled. "And I was just wondering if you could tell me where I could find two boys around nineteen years of age to go with me."

Bob looked first at Jack and then at his uncle and Jack, after nearly choking on a bit of bread, which, he afterward declared "had gone down the Sunday road," finally gasped: "D-did you say two boys?"

"Two boys. Yes, I said two boys. You see, I want them for company and to help along certain lines. Do you know of any?"

"I don't suppose it would do to have them related to you," Bob grinned.

"Well, of course, we might run into a bit of danger down there, but I know the ropes pretty well, and if they weren't too closely related, why I don't know but it might do," Mr. Lakewood spoke slowly as though carefully considering the case.

"You think nephews would be too close?" Jack laughed.

"You--you mean you'd like to go, you and Bob?" Mr. Lakewood pretended to be greatly surprised.

"Oh, no, we wouldn't like to go, not a bit more than a bear would like to eat a pailful of honey," Jack again laughed.

"But I thought bears liked honey," Mr. Lakewood's face was perfectly sober as he spoke.

"It's the one thing in the world they like better than anything else," Bob told him.

"Then I am to understand that you might be induced to consider the proposition?"

"Would a wild cat consider a proposition to tackle a mink?" Jack countered, whereat they all laughed.

"Think your folks will let you go?" Mr. Lakewood asked.

"Father'd let us go anywhere with you," Bob assured him.

"And so would Mother," Jack added. "But, come on, we've only got ten minutes to get the train in Broad Street."

As soon as they were seated in the Pullman and the train had pulled out of the station, Mr. Lakewood turned to the boys and said: "Now, I suppose you want to know what it's all about?"

"I reckon we are more than a bit curious," Bob confessed.

"And I don't blame you. In fact, I wouldn't give a hill of beans for a boy who wasn't curious. Well, it's a pretty long story but, seeing that we've got this compartment all to ourselves, I reckon now'll be as good a time as any to spin the yarn, as a sailor would say. This story begins back before you boys were born. I wasn't as old then as I am now and, believe me, I don't consider myself an old man now. Probably your father has told you that I've always been something of a rover and, as a matter of fact, I have. There aren't many countries that I've not been in one time or another. I always did have a longing to travel, and when I was about your age I quit school and started out to see the world. My first trip, but, there, I'll have to spin that one some other time and stick to the one I started out on.

"It was the twenty-fifth day of February of the year 1899 that I started from New York on a five-masted schooner bound for Australia. You may think it strange that I can tell you the exact day, but it was my birthday and it was the winter after the big storm when the Portland went down off Cape Cod and everyone on board was lost. I was a pretty husky lad in those days and had the reputation of being about as capable a sailor as the next one. We had about the usual crew, a mixture of Swedes, Half-Breeds and Yankees with an Irishman or two and a Scotsman thrown in for good measure. They were a pretty rough crowd, but no more so, I reckon, than the ordinary run of sailors. The old man, as we called the Captain, was a typical Down East Yankee from somewhere on Cape Cod. I remember he was a short stout man with an arm as big around as an ordinary man's leg, and hands almost as big as hams. He was a God-fearing man, and I never heard him cuss but once, and that was the time a big Swede stepped on his pet corn, and then he let loose for about ten minutes; but he didn't use the Lord's name once but the devil sure did come in for his share of mention.

"Well, we had bad weather from the start, running into one storm after another, and one night, off Hatteras, I thought she was going down. But Cap'n Ezra sure knew how to manage a ship, and we pulled through. After that we had better weather and everything went along just lovely and we made excellent time down to the Horn. Then we ran into another storm and it was five days before we got around and into the Pacific.

"The Second Mate was a big Irishman by the name of Mike Mulligan and he seemed to take a fancy to me from the first and by the time we had rounded the Horn we were more than ordinary good friends. Mike was a real man, let me tell you. Six feet three he stood in his stockings and weighed 260 pounds and there wasn't a pound of fat on him. Strong? Why, man alive, I've seen him take a barrel of salt horse and put it on his shoulder as easily as I could a barrel of flour, and I used to be called more than middling strong.

"Well, once fairly around the Horn the wind, which for five days had been dead against us, changed and we bore away for Australia on a straight course. As if to make it up to us for blowing so long and so hard against us the wind held fair day after day and the blue waves slipped beneath our bow at a rate which bore us rapidly toward the big island. Already we had sighted several of the small islands on the outskirts of the South Sea group when, early one morning, the barometer began to fall rapidly. How well I remember that morning. Not a cloud showed in the sky and the wind, which had held fair and strong for so long, had fallen to a light breeze which barely filled the sails. It didn't seem possible that a storm was brewing, but we knew that the barometer was more to be trusted than any outward signs. At eight o'clock the glass had registered thirty inches and two hours later it had fallen to 29.75. I knew the old man was worried when he gave orders to take in sail. In another half hour, a dirty bank of clouds was rising in the west, and by eleven o'clock the entire sky was overcast. The light breeze had entirely faded away, but the barometer had fallen to 29.60, and we knew it was only a question of minutes when the storm would strike, and the glass indicated that it would be a bad one.

"When the first whisper of the coming gale stole over the sea, the old man took the wheel and ordered one of the men to put the gilguy around him, so that there would be no danger of being swept overboard. Then it came with a suddenness I had never seen before or since. One moment we were lying lazily floating on a perfectly calm sea, and the next we were scuttling under bare poles over and through waves which looked like mountains. Now we were mounting up the side of an immense wall of water until it seemed almost as though the ship would stand on her tail, and then she would lift by the stern and dive, a mountain of sea coming over her bow, until it seemed that we were all bound for Davy Jones's Locker. My, how that wind howled and shrieked. One by one the breaking waves carried away our life boats, until not one was left. There was absolutely nothing we could do save cling on to something and pray that we would outride it. It was dark as night, and it was hardly possible to see the length of the ship. Then came the rain. Not in sheets, as we say, but in a deluge. We hoped that the falling water would lessen the size of the waves but if it did, it was not noticeable, and for hour after hour we drove on expecting that every plunge would be our last.

"Then suddenly the end came. I remember the ship seemed to stand almost on her beam's end, as she rose to the top of a giant wave and she seemed to have hardly begun her dive when she struck with a shock which must have broken her clean in two. I had been clinging to the mast, well up in the bow, and, in some way, the shock threw me clean over the rail and I went down until it seemed that my lungs would burst. All the time I was, of course, struggling to reach the surface and finally my head popped out above the water, but I was almost instantly nearly smothered in a whirlpool of salt spray as I was dashed forward at express train speed. But I had managed to fill my lungs with air, and held my breath as the undertow dragged me back and down a moment later. I never knew how many times this was repeated, but at last I felt bottom beneath my feet, although I was unable to get a foot hold against that fearful back-wash. But the next time I was carried farther up, and managed, in some way, to hold against the drag, and to crawl up beyond the reach of the breakers. For a long time I must have lain there, too tired and sore even to move. But finally a beam of sunlight brought me back to the world and, opening my eyes, I saw that the storm had cleared and that the sun, almost directly over head, was peeping out through the clouds.

"Not a sign of the ship was to be seen, and my heart sank as I realized that, in all probability, I was the only one left alive of the crew. But, a moment later, glancing along the beach, I saw an object lying on the sand just at the water's edge, which brought me to my feet. I was so weak that I could hardly stand, but I managed to walk and creep until I was bending over the form of a man. He was lying face down, and when I had turned him over I saw that it was my friend, Mike Mulligan. At first I thought he was dead from a nasty cut over the right ear, but my ear over his heart caught a faint beat and I knew that he still lived. But it was over an hour before he opened his eyes, and not until several more had passed was he able to stand. But once on the mend, his wonderful constitution made his recovery rapid, and by sundown he was much himself again.

"But we were both weak, and more than half sick from the salt water we had taken in, and, dragging ourselves up well beyond the reach of the tide, we slept on the sand through the night.

"The sleep and rest made new men of us, and, when we awoke at sunrise we were, physically at least, but little the worse for the terrible experience we had gone through, except for Mike's sore head.

"'Faith an' I reckon we're all whot's left,' was his first word as he got to his feet and stretched himself.

"'It looks that way,' I replied sadly.

"Naturally our next thought was about food, for we had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours, and my throat was parched for lack of water. Inland the ground rose slightly and, perhaps a quarter of a mile away we could see a few trees growing in a clump.

"'If they're cocoanut palms we won't starve to-day,' Mike said as we set off toward them.

"They were cocoanuts, as we had hoped, but there were only a half dozen of them and the nuts were few and far between on them. But we got about twenty, and ate one apiece, drinking the milk. It was not much of a breakfast, but a whole lot better than nothing. Then we cached the rest in a little pile at the foot of one of the trees and went on to the top of the rise, which was only a few hundred feet away. From here we could see the whole island, which wasn't more than a mile long by about half that wide, and it looked to consist of nothing but sand, except that at the end toward the north it looked as though it might be rocky. Not another tree or shrub was visible and I'll never forget the look on Mike's face as he turned to me.

"'Si, I reckon we're in Dutch,' he said.

"Well, it sure did look that way. With no water, or, at least, little prospect of any, and only a matter of twenty cocoanuts between us and starvation the prospect wasn't what you'd call alluring. And there wasn't another island in sight. Nothing but blue water as far as we could see in every direction. Of course we could only guess at the distance we'd been driven in the storm, and we hadn't much idea of the direction, so we didn't know whether we were in the path of ships or not.

"'Well, let's amble over to the end there and see what's what,'" I suggested, and we started off, walking slowly through the sand, for by this time the sun was well up in the sky and it was mighty hot.

"When we got to the end of the island, sure enough it was rocky all right. In fact we stood on a ledge of rock and looked straight down into what looked like deep water twenty feet or more below. But that was all. I had hoped that we would find at least a spring of water hidden among the rocks, but there was none, not a drop, and already our tongues were hanging out of our mouths.

"'Faith an' we moight as well jump off and say here goes nothin',' I remember Mike said bitterly as he stood there gazing down. But I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back, for I could see that he was in a bad way in his mind.

"'Never say die while there's life,' I told him. 'We've got enough nuts to keep us going for a few days, and no telling when we'll sight a ship.'

"'Sure an' it's nuts we'll both be afore we see one,' he groaned as we started back the way we had come, knowing that we must drink the contents of another cocoanut soon or go crazy. Will I ever forget that walk back? The last hundred feet or so I had to pick Mike up and carry him. You see, although normally possessed of great strength and almost unbounded endurance he had lost a lot of blood from the cut on his head, and I knew that he was mighty weak. Well, he was unconscious when I got him there and put him down in the shade of the thickest of the trees, but after I had opened one of the nuts and poured some of the milk down his throat, he opened his eyes and, for a little while, seemed to be regaining his strength. But I didn't like the flush on his face, and it wasn't long before I knew that the fever had him."

For a moment their uncle paused, and the boys could see tears in his eyes, but he dashed them away with the back of his hand and went on.

"No use going over details. I did what I could do, which God knows was little enough, but he passed out two days later. I dug his grave with a flat stone scooping out the sand and resting when I had to. It wasn't very deep but it was the best I could and I buried him there, one of the best friends I ever had.

"I hadn't had much time to think of myself until it was all over and then I had slept for I never knew how many hours. But when I awoke, I found that there were but four of the nuts left. You see I'd had to get the milk for Mike and, in that hot sun, the meat of them didn't keep long after the nut was opened. From the position of the sun, I judged it must be about nine o'clock in the morning when I opened my eyes and, after I had taken stock of the number of nuts left, for a moment I really envied Mike in his last bed beneath the sand. Four cocoanuts between me and a lingering death from starvation. Can you wonder that I was pretty well down in the mouth?

"Well, I opened one of the nuts and drank the warm fluid and ate the meat. Then, for want of something better to do, I started off toward the rocky end of the island. I remember it was not quite so hot as it had been most of the time, and, although I was feeling none too strong, I finally got there. It was low tide and, as I looked over the cliff, I gave a great shout of joy, for there, at the foot of the rocks, half out of the water, with her nose wedged in between two rocks, was a life boat. I saw at once that it was one of ours which had been carried away in the storm and I hurried to find a way down. I had to go some way to the right before I found a break in the cliff, but I finally got down, and, to my great joy, found that the boat was uninjured. Better still, the small sail with its mast was wedged beneath the seats, and the usual tin of hard tack and keg of water were there and unopened. The oars were also in their place. By this time, I was pretty sure that the island was out of the track of ships, and I resolved to set out at once. But first I could not resist drinking some of the water which, though warm, tasted better than I ever thought water could taste. There was about a gallon of it, and I knew that I must be very sparing of it and only drink when I had to. Well, I hurried back to get the three remaining nuts, munching a piece of the hard tack which I had taken from the tin. The discovery of the boat and its promise of escape had put new life in me, and it was but a short time before I was again making my way down the narrow pass carrying the three precious nuts in my hands.

"I had gotten about half way down when my eye caught sight of something which had escaped me before. It was a small opening in the wall of stone not more than eighteen inches wide and perhaps four feet high. At first I determined to pay no attention to it, for I knew that time was precious, but, on second thought, I told myself that it wouldn't take but a few minutes to investigate, and a few minutes more or less would probably make little difference. So I placed the nuts carefully on the pathway and, stooping, squeezing myself into the opening. Almost at once the passage widened out and, before I had gone a dozen steps I was able to walk upright. Of course it was pitch dark before I had gone ten feet and I had neither match nor flashlight. So I advanced very slowly testing every inch of the way before putting my foot down and keeping one hand against the wall. Although it was hot outside it was actually cold in there and the side of the wall was damp with cold moisture. More than once I was half minded to turn back, but each time curiosity got the better of my judgment and I went on.

"I guessed that I had gone from eighty to one hundred feet along the narrow passage when my hand came to a break in the wall, and, reaching out with my other hand, I found that the opposite wall also had come to an end. I turned to the right, still keeping my hand on the wall, and soon was convinced that I had entered into a chamber of some sort. Then my foot struck something which slipped from beneath it and, reaching down, I picked up what I judged from the feeling to be a very large oyster shell. I got down on my knees, and groping about soon learned that the floor was covered to a depth of a foot or more with the shells, although there were but few of them close to the wall.

"It didn't take me long to make the circuit of the chamber which I found to be nearly square and, so far as I could judge, about twenty feet across. The shells seemed to cover the entire floor except near the walls and there must have been many bushels of them. I broke one of them open and the oyster was perfectly fresh, a fact which led me to believe that at high tide water came in and covered them, though I found no trace of an inlet. Well, I took off my shirt and packed in it as many of the shells as it would hold and made my way out. Raw oysters would, I knew, make a very welcome addition to my menu.

"The tide had turned by the time I reached the boat and it was no hard job to push it free. A good breeze was blowing toward the South, so I decided to go that way. I stepped the mast and in a few more moments I was well away from the island. Sometime I may tell you something about that sail, but not now. It would take too long. Suffice it to say that it was six days before I saw land again, and then I had been without food for nearly thirty-six hours and without water nearly as long, and was about at the end of my rope, when another island came in sight. It was inhabited and I was saved, but it was nearly three months before I got passage on a ship.

"And now comes the most interesting part of the story. I found that I had carried away twenty of the largest oysters I ever saw and in an even dozen of them I found a pearl and each one was a beauty."

"But how did they get there, the oysters, I mean?" Bob asked.

"I don't know, but I've made a good many guesses since then and I think the best one is that they were put there by someone who had an object in keeping it a secret. Of course, how he got them there I have no idea and I may be away off."

"And you're going there again to get some more?" Jack asked.

"That's the idea. I suppose it seems strange that I've waited so long, but there's a reason. In the first place I've got all the money I want, and I'm only going for the fun of the thing. And then, while I always intended to go sometime, I wanted to wait long enough to give the owner of them, provided there is anyone who owns them, a chance to get them. If they're still there, after more than twenty years, I think we can safely say they belong to whoever gets them first."

"I should say so," Bob agreed.

"So I've bought a boat, and I'm going to try to find that island again and it's likely to prove a man-sized job," Mr. Lakewood assured them with a smile.