The Happy Adventurers by Lydia Miller Middleton (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📖

her to go?” asked Jerry. “We couldn’t swim fifty miles; half a mile is my limit at a stretch; Dick can do three-quarters.”

“We’d have to use the sail and tack a bit, and we’d have the oars.”

“What about food?” asked Prudence.

“We’d sling it in a can on the mast. Water’s the trouble; we’d have to distil sea-water, and that takes coal and might be a bit difficult; there isn’t a place for coal on board yet.”

Mollie remembered the attar of roses and decided not to embark upon that voyage. “We would be pretty thirsty before there was enough water distilled for us all to drink,” she thought to herself.

“Well, we’ll have to be getting home now,” said Prudence, with a sigh. “It will be dark before so very long.”

A somewhat silent and subdued party set out on the homeward scramble, the boys in front, Mollie and Prue together, and Grizzel in the rear, being hampered by her bootfuls of periwinkles, which would keep falling out. She stopped at last, and, sitting down, she laced her boots tightly up and tied the tops round with the lace ends. When she looked up from this task she stopped again to admire the gorgeous sunset. The whole sky was ablaze, and the sea had changed from blue to crimson and gold; the wet beach was gleaming like an opal, pale-rose and lavender, with fiery amber lights shimmering on the rippled sand. The brilliant glow of the western sky was reflected in the east, and the cliffs stood out sharply against the light, themselves flushed with pink. Grizzel’s keen young gaze ran along the outline, black where it cut the sky.

“There’s nothing there,” she said to herself, “only that flagstaff hut, and it’s as square as square.”

As she watched, a door opened in the side of the hut and a man came out, swinging a billy-can in his hand. Suddenly Grizzel caught her breath. Where had she heard someone say that that hut was a tiny refreshment-bar, where a man could go in and get boiling water for his tea—that everlasting tea which the Australian drinks at any and every hour of the day? It was Papa, and he had said they called the hut ‘The Nose’—short, Grizzel felt sure, for The Duke’s Nose. Her eyes ran quickly down the cliff underneath—yes, she could see the cave quite plainly when she looked hard, though to the casual glance it looked like a deep crevice in the cliff.

She looked after the others. They had scrambled on ahead while she was tying up her periwinkles, and were now too far away to hear anything but a shout. She put her two hands up to her mouth and gave the long shrill “Cooo-eeeee!” of the Australian-born child, which caused five heads to be turned in her direction instantaneously. Prudence started running back, fearing that her sister had fallen and hurt herself. Grizzel’s gesticulations made things no plainer to the others—when she pointed to the hut they thought she meant them to get help, so that Hugh and Dick set off towards the cliff, while Jerry came on with Mollie and Prudence in case there should be a broken limb.

Even when they got within hailing distance they did not understand, for what between keeping a foothold on the slippery rocks, hanging on to her periwinkles, and her excitement over her discovery, Grizzel was getting breathless and incoherent, and all she did was to point a small forefinger at the hut and say: “Duke’s-nose-you-know-duke’s-nose-you-know-your-nose-dukes-know.”

“She is delirious with pain,” said Mollie, “and she is mixing the Duke’s Nose up with ‘She sells sea-shells’.”

However, it was not very long before they reached her side, and she was able to explain the situation. A few more excited coo-ees brought the boys back, and the question became: What to do next? The sun was getting perilously near the horizon, and once it dropped behind the sea, darkness would fall rapidly and the rocks be really unsafe, especially as the tide was now coming in.

“We must get up frightfully early in the morning,” said Dick at last, “and come along before breakfast. Nobody is likely to find that treasure in the next ten hours or so.”

With many backward looks they resumed their homeward trek. It was hard luck to have to leave the treasure when, perhaps, they had almost found it, but Mamma’s word was law, and if they broke their promise about getting home, or at least meeting Papa, it was quite possible that tomorrow would be spent by the girls in doing French verbs and making buttonholes.

The children slept soundly all night in their funny little bunks. Early in the morning a small figure slipped into the boys’ room and shook first one boy and then another by the shoulders. Dick and Jerry woke up after a few grunts; Hugh as usual was a sleepy-head.

“Leave him to us,” Dick said confidently, “we’ll get him up— you’ll see.”

“Tell him to come by Gobbler’s Hollow,” ordered Grizzel; “you’ll find us there. Don’t stop to wash.”

When the boys were halfway across the sandhills, they saw a thin column of blue smoke rising from somewhere among the low scrubby trees, and a minute after a delicious smell greeted their unducal noses—a smell of wood-smoke and toast combined.

“It’s the girls making grub,” Hugh explained to the other two; “they’re great on grub.” He might have added that he was great on it himself, so far as eating it was concerned. Certainly Dick and Jerry were very pleased to know that they had not to wait until half-past eight for breakfast, for the fresh sea air had given them ravenous appetites. They found the girls in Gobbler’s Hollow—appropriately so named by Hugh—bending over a gipsy fire. The inevitable billy-can hung from a tripod, and the steam from it mingled with the smoke of the fire. Mollie was toasting bread, which Prudence buttered with a lavish hand, and Grizzel was shelling hard-boiled eggs.

“I call this top-hole,” Dick announced, as he squatted down on the sand and took his tin mug from Mollie, who had begged to be allowed to make the tea as she had seen Grizzel make it before. “It will buck us up no end and make us as sharp as needles.”

They were in a hurry to get on; so when breakfast was done they pushed the mugs and knives into the hollow of a bush, which Grizzel explained was their storeroom. Later in the day the girls would come back and tidy up; for the present the great thing was to get to the cave as quickly as possible. They had two clear hours before them in which to make their search.

The tide was at its lowest, and there was a broad stretch of wet sand between the sandhills and the sea. Wide shallow pools of water had been left behind by the receding waves, while here and there lay long heavy drifts of seaweed, shining darkly in the early rays of the morning sunlight. The children splashed their way along, their eyes fixed on the flagstaff hut. As they drew nearer they left the sea and steered for the cave, the entrance to which was plain enough now that they knew where to look for it.

“It’s such a conspicuous sort of cave,” Hugh said, “I don’t see how anyone could miss finding treasure unless it is buried very deep.”

Caves have always a certain amount of mystery about them, but this one was undoubtedly as ordinary looking a cave as one could find. It did not burrow very far back into the cliff side, and what there was of it was open to the daylight and contained no lurking dark corners. The walls were rough and rocky but not high; the roof was, as Jerry said, nothing particular, and the floor was of shingle and rather wet, as if the sea, now so far away, had paid it a visit not so very long ago. But, as the rocks and stones before the entrance were dry, it was obviously not the tide which had washed the floor.

“It must be a spring or something,” Hugh said; “let’s taste and see—” he stooped as he spoke and scooped up a handful of water, which he put to his lips.

“Thought so; it’s quite fresh and sweet—that’s rather a find—jolly useful for picnics, it will save us carting water about—by jinks!” he exclaimed, looking round at the others with an expression of blank dismay; “do you suppose that’s what we were to find to our advantage?”

They all stared hard at the shining wet stones, through which the trickle of water was now plainly discernable. Then they stared round the cave again. There did not seem to be a place where treasure could be hidden. Moreover, there were traces of a not very remote picnic—the dead ashes of a gipsy fire, one or two crumpled-up balls of paper, some broken bottles!

“That’s it,” said Jerry at last. “It was probably the people who had that picnic—those broken bottles are the same as the one we found. They played cock-shy with them, and then thought it would be a lark to chuck one into the sea. What a jolly old sell!”

“We’ve had a nice morning anyhow,” said Prudence, “and the spring certainly will be an advantage when we’ve got used to it not being a sewing-machine and bull-dogs and things.”

“I somehow don’t believe it is the spring,” said Mollie thoughtfully, still staring about her. “There is something about the way that paper is written; it doesn’t look like the writing of the sort of person who plays that kind of joke—and of course it would be meant for a joke. Let’s all stand quite still in a circle back to back, and each stare hard all over the bit of cave that comes in front of us, and see if there isn’t a sign of some sort.”

They agreed that there would be no harm in trying this plan, though the boys’ hopes were small. Dick and Jerry were uneasily conscious that they were “the sort of person” who would have thought that bottled message an excellent joke—to play on someone else!

So they stared. They even circled slowly round so that each part of the cave was examined with meticulous care by six pairs of eyes in turn. But it was all in vain; the cave only seemed to become more and more ordinary the longer they looked at it.

“There’s not a place where you could hide a thimble,” Prue said sadly, “let alone a treasure.”

“What’s that?” Grizzel called out suddenly, pointing to the broken bottles in the corner.

After all there had been a dark spot, and with the brightening daylight that dark spot had all at once lighted up, and there lay a bottle, the very twin of the one they had found in the sea, red sealing-wax and all. The boys made a dive for it, but Dick stopped abruptly and held back the others: “Grizzel saw it first, let her open it too,” he said.

Grizzel advanced, and picking up the bottle held it to the light— yes, there was a message plainly to be seen.

“I think one of you had better break it open,” she said; “I’d probably cut my fingers.”

Hugh solemnly knocked off its head and drew out the paper. It was written in the same round, clear handwriting:

IF THE PERSON WHO FINDS THIS BOTTLE WILL ASK FOR MR. BROWN AT THE DUKE’S NOSE, HE WILL HEAR OF SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE.

“Why the dickens couldn’t they have said that first shot?” Jerry exclaimed.

“I expect Mr. Brown will tell us to go to the Duchess’s Toes and hear of something to our dis-advantage,” said