J. Duffield - The Radio Boys Under the Sea - or, The Hunt for Sunken Treasure

Then followed wild imprecations on the fate that had doomed him to be marooned on that desolate island, while just beyond his reach were riches almost beyond the dreams of avarice.

Other parts of the writings were in calmer mood and abounded in plans that he purposed carrying out for the recovery of the treasure, if he were ever rescued. But as time passed on, he seemed to have abandoned hope, and it was evident that his mind was giving way, for certain scraps of paper were full of incoherent exclamations and vague maunderings.

When Benton came to the last of them and gathered them up the room was so silent that the boys could almost hear the beating of their hearts. Their thoughts were in a tumult.

Benton was the first to break the silence.

“There’s just one thing to be added,” he said. “The old Spaniard who gave me these papers told me that the family tradition, as it had come down to him, was that his ancestor had finally been rescued, but only when his mind was almost gone. But he still had sense enough to guard jealously these papers, which he bequeathed to his son with injunctions to go and find the treasure. Nothing however had ever come of it, I suppose from time to time some of the family had vague notions of doing something about it, but they never materialized.

“Now to sum the thing up. It seems to me perfectly clear that these things actually happened. The papers on their face bear evidence of their truth. This old pirate lived and sinned and cursed and suffered and died on an island somewhere about latitude 14, longitude 81 in the Caribbean Sea. He saw the sinking of the Sea Rover a little way off from the island. The ship was laden with a large amount of treasure. The waters where it sank were comparatively shallow.

“There’s the story, and the only living people that know anything about it are gathered at this moment in this room.”

“Except perhaps Ramirez,” put in Phil reflectively.

“Oh yes, Ramirez,” corrected Benton with a slight start. “But he just got a hint of it. He hasn’t the papers and he’s probably forgotten most of what he did read. He’s just a worthless, ignorant half breed anyway. I think we can dismiss him from our calculations.”

“I’ve told you now all I know. What about it?”

“Let’s go!” cried Phil.

“I’m with you,” exclaimed Dick.

“Count me in,” added Tom.

Benton jumped to his feet.

“Hurrah!” he cried, as he shook hands with each in turn. “I knew I wasn’t making a mistake. You’re all wool and a yard wide-fellows after my own heart – a red-blooded bunch of young Americans who are not afraid to take a chance!”

“And now,” said Benton, after the excitement had somewhat subsided, glancing at his watch, “I’ve kept you fellows up till the wee sma’ hours, and I guess we’ve had enough for one night. We’ll sleep over it and get together to-morrow and see how things look in the cold grey dawn of the morning after.

“Mind,” he continued, as he gathered up his papers and made ready to depart, “I don’t want to sweep you fellows off your feet. There are a whole lot of things to be considered, and while I’m tickled to death by the way you feel about it, I don’t hold you to the decision that you’ve made tonight. I take that just as the statement of your personal attitude toward the matter. If on thinking it over more carefully you should change your minds, I’d be horribly disappointed, but I wouldn’t feel a bit sore. In other words, I want the decision to be not a matter of momentary enthusiasm but of cool judgment, after you’ve considered all the pros and cons.”

“It’s bully of you to feel that way about it,” responded Phil warmly, “but we’ve got used to making rather quick decisions, and so far we’ve won out. Besides our decision wasn’t made at the minute you asked for it. It had been forming in our minds all the time we were going through those papers. Of course we’ll have to talk with our folks about it, but we’ve persuaded them before to let us have our way in these matters, and I guess we can again. At any rate if we don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying.”

“One other thing,” broke in Dick. “There’s a pal of ours named Steve Elwood. Just at present he’s in New York. He’s no end of a good fellow, and I’m sure he’d like to go along with us. Would you have any objection?”

“Not if he’s like the rest of you and you will vouch for him,” replied Benton with a smile. “We’re rather shorthanded as it is, and five won’t be too many.”

“We’ll vouch for him, all right,” said Phil, and the others seconded him enthusiastically. “He was with us in Florida and Mexico, and he just eats up danger.”

“That’s the kind we want,” replied Benton. “Go to it then and get in touch with him as soon as you can. So long, fellows. See you tomorrow, and we’ll get busy on the question of ways and means.”

There was very little sleep for any of the Radio Boys that night. They had been too stirred up by the vista opened up by their interview with Benton. And when toward morning they dropped off into a troubled slumber, their dreams were a jumble of pirate ships and lonely islands and tumbling waters and coins that gleamed and shimmered in tropical sunlight.

But the morning saw no slackening in their resolution of the night before. A strong appeal had been made to their imagination and their love of adventure, and that appeal persisted.

Naturally, the appeal was much less strong to the members of their families, when with considerable mental misgivings the boys opened up the subject to them, after having enjoined them to strict secrecy as far as outsiders were concerned.

There was a chorus of expostulations and objections, to all of which the boys made answer as best they could. But the strongest arguments lay in the way they had come through the perilous adventures they had previously undergone. Their folks had to admit that in these they had shown qualities of coolness and good judgment, in addition to courage, that had extricated them from all their difficulties. Why was it not reasonable to believe that the same qualities would stand them in good stead in their present venture?

In the end, Phil and Dick prevailed, as they had felt sure that they would, although the consent was a grudging one. Tom had a harder task, as his father was in Chicago, and their talk had to be over the radio, concerning which the elder Hadley was as ardent a “fan” as the son himself. They had a code of their own, but naturally even with that the talk had to be a guarded one, and dealt with the matter in a much more general way than would have been the case in a personal talk, where Tom could have brought his big guns to bear. The result was that Tom got a qualified consent, which was not to be regarded as final however, until the elder Hadley had received full details in a letter which Tom was to write to him at once.

“So far, so good,” remarked Tom, at the end of the struggle, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow. “Now I’ll have to give my natural eloquence a chance and spread it all over my letter. Just wait till you see that letter. It’s going to be a cuckoo. But I haven’t any doubt as to how it will turn out. Dad’s a good sport, and he’s taken chances himself all his life. I’ll bet he’d like to be in on this himself.”

Phil in the meantime had been writing to Steve, laying the matter before him, and enjoining him by all that was good to let him have an answer in twenty-four hours.

“Humph!” sniffed Dick, as he glanced over Phil’s shoulder. “Twenty-four hours! He’ll telegraph an answer in five minutes after he reads the letter. I know Steve.”