“Locating sunken ships,” murmured Benton reflectively, almost as though he were talking to himself. “That sure is a new thing to me, though I try to keep pretty well up with things. I sure am glad to know it.”
“Lost any ships lately?” asked Dick with a grin.
“Not exactly,” replied Benton, “but I’m mighty interested in one that was lost a good long time ago.”
“You’re talking in riddles,” laughed Phil. “Why not let us in on the story?”
Benton studied their faces for a full minute without replying. Then he straightened bolt upright in his chair as though he had reached a definite decision.
“I will,” he said. “It’s a queer story and perhaps you think I’ve gone loco before I get through with it. But first I want to ask a question. Are you fellows game for an adventure?”
The boys looked at one another and it was Phil that answered.
“Yes,” he said, “if it’s straight and legitimate and seems to us worth while. Of course we’ve got to know what it is first.”
“That goes without saying,” replied Benton. “It’s perfectly straight, and I think I can prove to you that it is worth while. I don’t disguise from you, however, that it’s attended with great risks. But it also has great rewards if it is successful.”
“We’ve taken risks before,” laughed Phil.
“I know you have,” answered Benton. “I was sure that I had sized you boys up right last night, and that’s why I nearly told you then what I’m going to tell you now. But this thing means so much to me that I couldn’t afford to act on first impressions. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve been making inquiries about town today, and everything that I’ve learned proves that my first impressions were right.
“I’ve heard about your work in running down the counterfeiting gang in Florida. And I’ve learned about your adventures with the Mexican bandits and the way you rounded up ‘Muggs’ Murray. Perhaps you don’t know it, but the people in this town think that you’re about the finest fellows on the footstool.”
“You must take that with a grain of salt,” said Phil deprecatingly. “Local pride and all that, you know. We’ve just got into a few scrapes and had the luck to come out of them with a whole hide. That about lets us out.”
“I prefer to take their verdict,” smiled Benton, “and I have further proof if I needed it in what happened yesterday afternoon. At any rate, I’m perfectly satisfied in my own mind that you’re the fellows I want to share my plan if it appeals to you. You see I’m somewhat in the position of a man who thinks he has a gold mine but can’t work it alone.”
He took a package of papers from his pocket and laid them on the table.
Tom nudged Phil mischievously.
“Say ‘pirate’” he said, “and see Benton jump.”
Benton looked puzzled for a moment. Then he laughed.
“I catch on,” he said. “Well, there’s a pirate in this story all right, but he’s been a long time dead. Now just one other little thing. If after I’ve told you my plan you don’t want to go in with me on it, I want you to promise me on your word of honor that you won’t mention the matter to a living soul.”
CHAPTER IV
STRANGE HAPPENINGS
The Radio Boys solemnly gave the required promise, and listened with breathless attention to the story that Benton unfolded.
“As I told you yesterday,” he began, “my last term of service was in San Domingo. As you know, that borders on the Caribbean Sea, the old Spanish main that the buccaneers roved on for centuries. It’s a tropical country, and to my mind a God-forsaken place, whose chief products are tarantulas, spiders, centipedes and scorpions. Most of the people are blacks or half-breeds, and of course revolutions are happening there every little while. Their armies are only mobs that a squad of American policemen could put to flight, and the chief difference between generals and privates is that the former have shoes while the latter are barefooted.
“They had been having one of these little revolutions when for some reason Uncle Sam took a hand. You know he acts as a sort of policeman to keep those little West Indian countries in order when they get a little too gay and frisky. At any rate, we’ve had a little force of marines there for some years past, and it happened that I was sent down there with the last batch of leathernecks.
“It wasn’t much of a task to keep the bigger towns in order, but it was different when we were sent out to clean up some of the outlaw bands in the interior of the island. There were plenty of these, and we had to watch our step, for they were bloodthirsty rascals and if any of our boys happened to fall into their hands it was all up with him. It wasn’t merely death – that’s part of the game in the marine service – but torture. And those bandits certainly were experts when it came to making a man die slow and hard.”
Phil thought of Espato and his skill in the same gentle art.
“A couple of pals and myself,” went on Benton, “were pushing along one day in a desolate patch of the jungle way off from the beaten road when we heard shrieks coming from a cabin. We made a break for it, and found a bunch of bandits torturing an old Spaniard. He lived alone there, and somehow the idea had got out that he had money concealed about the place. The outlaws had felt so confident that they had everything their own way that they hadn’t set any watch and we took them by surprise. They had the old man bound on his bed, and were burning him with hot irons to make him tell them where his money was hidden. We burst in on them while they were in the very midst of their infernal work, killed two of them and put the rest to flight.
“The old man was pretty well done for. It didn’t seem practicable to get him in his condition to the nearest military post which was some distance away. So I sent the other fellows to report, and I stayed to nurse the old fellow. I didn’t think he’d last out the next twenty-four hours, but he had surprising vitality for a man of his years and it was nearly a week before he passed away. He needed constant attention, and I was kept pretty well on the jump day and night.
“During that time I learned, of course, a good deal of his history. Part of it he told me, and part of it I picked up from what he kept babbling from time to time when he was delirious. It seemed that he had never married and that he had no relative that he knew of in the world. He had lived there for years, doing a little farming on his garden patch and getting barely enough to keep body and soul together. As for money, he didn’t have any. That was where the bandits would have had their troubles for their pains.
“One morning I could see that death was pretty near, and the old man knew it too. He called me to him, thanked me over and over for what I had been able to do for him and then told me that he was going to give me something that would make me rich. I thought his mind was wandering again, but he pointed out a place under the flooring of the cabin and asked me to dig down a couple of feet. I did it to humor him, and fished out an old tin box. I brought it to him and he took out the papers that I have just laid on the table.”
The boys looked with the keenest interest at the package of papers that were mildewed and yellowed by time.
“He put those in my hands,” continued Benton, “and told me they were mine. Said they had been handed down in his family for generations. It seems that the old man himself had had dreams of following up the clues that were contained in them. But it would take capital and he never had one dollar that he could lay on another. And he had been afraid to trust his secret to anyone else for fear that he would be either cheated or perhaps killed by those he might choose as partners. And so the years had dragged on and he had come at last to his deathbed without ever having derived any benefit from them. Now he gave them to me, and the only condition he attached was that if I got any benefit from them I would have a candle burned in some church for the repose of his soul.”
Benton