The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest Part 2

Gladwin, who was an experimenter and who, although he had only been up a few times, meant to compete in the big race, was already busy outside his aerodrome, lovingly adjusting the engine of his queer-looking monoplane which had already been wheeled out. Malvoise, his hands in his pockets and a red sash about his waist, was also studying the sky. As Frank gazed about in the crisp morning air a dozen other aviators opened up their sheds and the day-life of the aviation camp began.

After breakfast had been despatched the boys at once went to work on their engine, a hundred horse-powered, eight-cylindered machine which was capable of driving their twin-screwed craft through the air at a rate of sixty miles an hour. One of the cylinders needed a new gasket and they were engaged on the task of fitting it when a sudden hail outside the shed made them look up inquiringly. A short, fat youth with a pair of spectacles bestriding his round good-natured face stood in the doorway. The boys recognized him instantly.

"Why, hullo, Billy Barnes!" they cried, "come on in."

"Hullo, Frank, hullo, Harry," grinned the newcomer, frantically shaking hands. "I'm an early caller, but I slept at the village hotel last night and the beds there are as hard as a miser's heart. So I decided to get out early and take a chance on finding you fellows up and about."

After the first hearty greetings between the boys and the young reporter--with whom the readers of the other volumes in this series have already formed an acquaintances.h.i.+p--the boys started asking questions.

"What are you doing here anyhow?" demanded Frank.

"Yes, you mysterious scribe, tell us what you are after--a scoop or a story of how it feels to ride in an aeroplane?"

"Well," laughed Billy in response, "I've had so many flights in the Golden Eagles--both one and two--that I really believe I've had too much experience to write a story about it from the novice's standpoint. No, the fact is that I am down here on a story--a good one too."

"You can't keep away from the newspaper field, can you?" laughed Frank.

"No, that's a fact," agreed Billy ruefully; "I've tried to, but it's no good."

"Well, you ought to be 'a man of independent fortune' now, as the papers say," cried Harry.

"You mean with the percentage I got of the recovered ivory?"

The others nodded.

"I always felt I didn't really deserve that money," urged Billy. "You fellows did most of the work in Africa, I just trailed along."

"Oh, get out, Billy Barnes!" cried Frank. "You did as much as any of us in overreaching old Barr."

"Go ahead and tell us about this story of yours," demanded Harry.

"Well, it sounds like a weird dream and perhaps you fellows will laugh at me for taking it seriously, but a few days ago an old fellow in a tattered blue suit called at the Planet offices and said he wanted to see the city editor. Of course n.o.body ever does see the city editor, so I was sent out to ascertain what the visitor wanted. I saw at once he had been a seafaring man. He told me his name was Bill Hendricks, known better as Bluewater Bill. He beat about the bush a good while before he would tell me what he was after, and finally he unfolded the wildest tale about buried treasure you ever heard--that is, I don't mean buried treasure--floating would be a better word to describe it.

He told me that he had been one of the crew of a sailing vessel that had drifted, after being dismasted in a storm, into the Sarga.s.so Sea."

"You might tell us where the Sarga.s.so Sea is," struck in Harry. "I never heard of it."

"Why, it's a vast expanse of floating seaweed brought together by circling ocean currents," explained Billy. "There are hundreds of miles of seaweed in it and from the name of the weed it gets its t.i.tle of Sarga.s.so. It is in the north Atlantic, just about off the Gulf of Mexico roughly speaking, though many hundred miles from land. It is s.h.i.+fting all the time though, I understand, and a s.h.i.+p that once gets into it never gets out. The weed just holds her in its grip till she rots. Bluewater Bill told me that, after his s.h.i.+p drifted into it, he counted ten steamers and four sailing vessels drifting idly about on the brown expanse that spread like a desert on all sides. But the most remarkable of all, according to his story, was a high-p.o.o.ped, castle-bowed affair with three masts that the tattered sails still hung to. According to him she was a real, sure-enough galleon. One of the old treasure vessels that used to ply the Spanish Main."

"Oh, I say, Billy, you don't believe such a yarn as that, do you?"

burst out Frank and Harry, both at once.

"Well, I don't know," replied Billy, "the fellow seemed serious enough and I am half inclined to believe he was telling the truth. He wanted to get somebody to finance an expedition to go down there and prove that he was not falsifying, and give him a small share of the treasure he is sure the vessel is laden with, in return for his information."

"In other words he is seeking a backer for an enterprise that looks ridiculous on the face of it," commented Frank.

"I'm not so certain of that," went on Billy. "Look here," and with the air of a conjurer producing a card from the empty air, he dived into his pocket and then, after a moment's fumbling, held out a round gold coin for the boys' inspection.

"A Spanish pistole!" exclaimed Frank, as his eyes fell on the dull yellow metal of the golden coin.

"That's right," said Billy. "I took it to a coin-dealer and had him give it a name. Of course the paper laughed at the story, so I'm after it now on my own hook. I got a leave of absence to dig it up.

Bluewater Bill lives in Mineola and I'm going to see him later to-day and get more details from him. The more I think it over the more I think it's worth looking into."

The boys, whose opinion of the old sailor's story had been much altered by Billy's production of the indisputable evidence of the gold coin, agreed with him that it was indeed worth investigating further.

"But you haven't told us half the story, Billy," objected Frank. "How did Bluewater Bill escape? What became of the other men on the s.h.i.+p?

How did he get aboard the galleon and get the coin? Oh, and heaps of other hows? and whys?" he broke off, laughing at Billy's serious face.

"I haven't got time to tell you all that now, and besides I am not clear on many of those points myself," replied Billy. "Suppose, if you are not doing anything this evening, you come round with me to Bluewater Bill's home and talk to him about it yourselves."

"Say, are you trying to lure us into any fresh adventures?" said Frank with mock seriousness. "Didn't we have enough of them in Africa?"

"I don't see how we could get at the galleon, supposing there is one there, even if we did go after it," chimed in Harry, whose active mind had already jumped ahead of the boys' conversation.

"Why not?" demanded Billy.

"Why, you chump, if s.h.i.+ps get in there and can't get out, how are we going to sail in there--get the treasure--always supposing there is any--and then return to civilization?"

"Do you mean to say that your gigantic brain can't grasp that?"

demanded the reporter.

"No, my brilliant literary friend, it cannot--can yours?"

"It can."

"Well, let us have it."

"Well, in the first place," began Billy, "if--I only say if--the galleon is there and--if--please remark I say 'if' once more--if we should decide to go after the treasure--if (useful word that) we did do so, we wouldn't have to sail INTO the Sarga.s.so Sea at all."

"No?"

"No. We could sail OVER it."

"By George! that's so, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," concluded the young reporter; and he artfully added, "it would be a great chance to demonstrate Frank's pet theory that an aeroplane that can float on the water on pontoons would be as easy to construct as one that will fly in the air."

"What if a storm came up?"

"It is always calm in the Sarga.s.so Sea, so Bluewater Bill told me. The great ma.s.s of tangled weed prevents the waves breaking while the severest storm may be raging all about. Nothing more alarming than a gentle swell ever disturbs its repose."

Frank, the mechanical-minded, already had fished out an envelope, and on its back was scribbling the rough outlines of the aluminum pontoons, he had frequently made a mental resolve to attach to the aeroplane, so as to render it safe on the water as well as over the land. He had no intention then of embarking on the enterprise that Billy had outlined--at least he didn't think he had--but any suggestion of aeroplane improvement always interested the boy keenly and set his inventive mind at work.

While the three boys had been discussing Bluewater Bill's strange tale there had been a fourth auditor whose presence, had they known it, would have caused them to talk in lowered voices. Sanborn, the mechanic, from behind the canvas screen where he was supposed to have been eating his breakfast, had been listening greedily to every word the young reporter said. His eyes fairly burned in his head as he listened and a half-formed resolve entered his mind.

There might be other persons who would be interested in learning of the treasure s.h.i.+p which Sanborn's greedy mind already had regarded as a reality.

"Guess I'll take a run down to Bluewater Bill's myself to-night," he said to himself as he prepared to go to work on the aeroplane, at which Le Blanc had been busy tinkering during the boys' talk.

"Well, Frank," said Billy at length, "what do you think of it?"