"I'll bet, if he knew what we are on our way to talk over, he'd give a few dollars to be present at the conversation," remarked Billy.

"You may well say that," laughed Frank, "anything that there seems to be a dollar in, is old Luther Barr's highest ideal."

By this time they had pa.s.sed through the village and, after walking about half a mile down a country road, they emerged on a green, park-like meadow, at the further side of which stood a neat cottage.

Portions of a whale's huge bones dotted either side of the path as ornaments, and in front of the cottage stood a flagpole from which fluttered the Stars and Stripes. The cottage was painted white and was as neat and ship-shape as the quarterdeck of a man-of-war.

As they walked up the path the door opened and a grizzled face, set in a perfect forest of white whiskers, protruded itself with a smile of welcome.

"h.e.l.lo, boys--welcome to my cuddy," cried Blue-water Bill's hearty voice. "I've a fine dish of lobscouse, a raisin pie and some cider from Farmer Goggins's press all ready for you. Come in--come in."

He ushered them into a small sitting-room, furnished with all sorts of sea curiosities, and, after explaining several of the curios to the boys, he announced, following an interval of visiting in the kitchen, from whence proceeded an appetizing odor, that the meal was ready. The boys were nothing loath to fall to on the sea banquet the old salt spread before them, and so busy were they despatching the sailor's cooking, that it was not till after they concluded the meal and Bluewater Bill had his old brier pipe going that they came down to the discussion of what each of the boys had uppermost in his mind--namely, the history of Bluewater Bill's discovery of the lost treasure galleon of the Sarga.s.so Sea.

As for Bluewater Bill he was delighted to spin his yarn to such sympathetic listeners and told it with so much embroidery and discursive oratory that to repeat it in his words would be tedious. We shall therefore condense it as follows:

Bluewater Bill had been mate on the Bath, Me., barque, Eleanor Jones.

They were bound for South America with a cargo of chemicals and a.s.sorted canned stuffs. From the first day out misfortune a.s.sailed the vessel. She encountered heavy weather and, during a towering climax of the storm, part of her deck load of American lumber fetched away and carried with it three of her crew of ten men. Shortly after that the cook's big copper boiler ripped loose and fell on him, scalding him so badly that when the ship finally emerged from her storm-battering he died and was buried at sea.

The captain of the craft, however, was what Bluewater Bill termed "a masterful man." Despite the urgent entreaties of his depleted crew to put into some port and refit, he kept on, with favoring breezes, and soon entered what are called the "doldrums" in which fierce hurricanes alternate with periods of dead flat calm in which a ship will float on a rippleless sea "as idle as a painted craft upon a painted ocean."

The Eleanor Jones drifted about in one of these flat, hopeless calms till the pitch boiled in her seams and the sails seemed dried to tinder.

After a week of this, without the slightest warning, one of the sudden storms, that are common to the region in which she was navigating, came up.

"Caught aback," as they were, with all canvas set in the hope of catching what breeze might come to disturb the flat calm, the Eleanor Jones' main and fore masts were ripped out of her as if by a giant's hand. The crew managed to cut the wreckage away before it had pounded a hole in her side, and with what canvas they could set on the mizzen the captain attempted to drive her before the wind. But naturally enough the ship had no steerage-way and simply revolved in the huge seas.

Every time a comber caught her broadside, the water swept over her decks in tons of overwhelming fluid. As they fought desperately to retain footing, under the constant a.s.saults of the waves, there came a sudden cry of:

"Heaven help us!"

More from instinct than anything else Bluewater Bill cast himself flat on his face, clinging to a ring-bolt in the deck. Dazed and almost senseless, he felt the mighty onslaught of the wave, which, strong as was his grip, plucked him from his hold and sent him tumbling and half drowned into the lee scuppers. Fortunately he managed to get a firm grip on the mizzen shrouds and clung there till the wave had pa.s.sed.

As he staggered to his feet he gazed about him on the seemingly doomed ship.

He was alone.

Every soul on board but himself had been swept from the deck by that mighty ma.s.s of water.

For two days the storm tossed the ship about like a plaything. Her lone voyager had no means of knowing whither he was being driven. He ate at times mechanically and scarcely emerged on deck at all. The fear of sharing the fate of his comrades possessed him and he remained in the cabin, not knowing from one minute to the next whether the succeeding instant would not prove his last. At last, however, the storm blew itself out and Bluewater Bill ventured on deck.

What a sight met his gaze!

At first he thought he was dreaming.

All about him for miles--as far as he could see in fact--stretched a gently-heaving, brown expanse. It looked like a vast prairie. From it rose the sharp, pungent odor peculiar to seaweed and the old mariner had no difficulty in recognizing the stunning fact that he was adrift in the Sarga.s.so Sea of which he had heard so many ominous tales.

The realization was a shocking one. It meant, as he knew, that he was to all intents and purposes a doomed man. Despairingly he gazed about him and almost uttered a shout as at a distance of not more than a mile or two he made out the outlines of a queer-looking three-masted ship. Here at least was company. Obtaining the gla.s.ses, which the ill-fated skipper had left in his cabin, the mate of the Eleanor Jones scanned the neighbor vessel eagerly. She was as motionless under the cloudless blue dome of the sky as the ship on which he stood.

But she seemed to have men on board of her.

At least there were figures leaning against her rail.

The castaway lost no time in lowering the one boat that had not been smashed and sliding down the "falls" into her. Then he sculled, not without difficulty, through tangled weed to the side of the strange vessel. But a strange sight met his eyes as he drew nearer. His neighbor in the vast entangling expanse was a high-sided craft with great ports, of which one or two had fallen away, revealing the grinning muzzles of great guns. Her sails hung in torn fragments from her square yards, and on her lofty p.o.o.p the gilding had faded from three big battle-lanterns and the carved scroll work surrounded her name, El Buena Ventura. (The Fortunate Venture.)

But the men leaning over the side?

Alas for poor Bluewater Bill's hopes of human companionship.

It was many long years since they had been men, and it was a dozen or more grinning skeletons in time-tattered garments that gazed over the galleon's faded side at the lone castaway in his c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l. How they had died, the sailor, even after he had clambered on board, could make no guess; but there they stood, a ghastly row of dead sailors, held upright, as they had died, between the big gun-carriages of the lost galleon's deck carronades.

Whatever Bluewater Bill's failings might have been, he was no faint heart, and despite the shock of the gruesome discovery he continued his investigation of the silent ship. Apparently some attempt had been made when first the Buena Ventura was caught in the deadly embrace of the Sarga.s.so to convey her treasure to the boats, for, at the head of the main companion-way, Bluewater Bill found a chest of antique pattern, the lid of which he ripped open without much opposition from the moldering lock.

He staggered back at the sight that greeted him as the lid fell open.

Within the chest were gold pieces, jeweled candlesticks and other costly articles. A score of other chests examined by the castaway, in what had evidently been the officers' cabin, yielded like discoveries.

The galleon was a veritable treasure ship.

The castaway was examining a marine candlestick that fairly blazed with its setting of precious stones when he dropped it with a crash.

A hoa.r.s.e cry from outside the cabin had caused his scalp to tighten and his heart to start pounding like a trip-hammer.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GOLDEN GALLEON.

With his seaman's knife drawn ready for action--the badly-scared sailor rushed out on to the deck prepared to sell his existence dearly. To his amazement the deck was empty of all life, however.

Suddenly the hoa.r.s.e cry sounded again, and this time he located its source correctly. Seated on the crumbling maintop of the ship was a huge, evil-looking bird of the kind called "Gallinazos" in South America. The carrion creature eyed the newcomer with a red malevolent eye and again gave voice to its harsh croak--the sound that had so startled him at its first utterance.

"Ah, you old death bird, so you think you are going to get me, do you?" shouted the indignant castaway, as the bird looked at him with unpleasant antic.i.p.ation.

"Well, you're not. Not if I have to shoot you."

With a heavy flop of its wings the carrion bird soared slowly away toward the west as the sailor fairly shouted his defiance.

"Ah, my fine fellow," cried Bill to himself, "you have given me renewed hope. I know that birds of your feather are good strong flyers, but you've got to light somewhere. I judge from the fact that you came visiting here that I can't be more than two hundred miles from land--maybe not so much."

The thought was a cheering one and as the sailor, having filled his pockets with doubloons and other coins, and given the dead men a sea-burial by consigning them to the deep, sculled slowly back to the Eleanor Jones, his mind was busy with plans of escape.

Now it chanced that among the cargo carried by the barque was a small launch intended for the use of a plantation owner in South America.

Bill recollected it with peculiar vividness on account of the peculiar shape of its propeller, which he could see through the crate that surrounded it when it was hoisted on board. He had asked the manufacturer's representative, who had superintended the loading of the motorboat at Bath, why the wheel was shaped in such a queer way.

He recollected the answer now with joy, for he had conceived a daring plan.

"Why, Mr. Mate," the manufacturer's representative had replied to his query, "that's what we call a weedless wheel. That is, it is specially designed for service in South American rivers of shallow draught where an ordinary propeller would soon get entangled in the weeds and water plants and stop. We guarantee this wheel to go through any tangle, just as an eel would."

"To go through any tangle."

The words sang in Bill's brain.