Chapter 3

It was the strangest document he ever had gazed upon. Half of the
parchment was covered with outlandish signs and symbols. Then there was
a space; then some writing in Spanish, done with ink, perhaps; perhaps
with blood.

The boy could neither decipher the strange and rather ghastly symbols,
nor could he read Spanish.

For a long while he pored over the parchment, his eyes heavy now with
sleep; and at last he placed it on his dresser and laid him down to
dreams of blood and gold.

* * * * *

When Mr. Welper came in the morning to awake the boy he found him still
sleeping.

It was a habit of Mr. Welper’s to satisfy a perennial curiosity
concerning other people’s private business when opportunity offered.

He was a soft-handed, soft-footed, short, stout gentleman with a
sanctimonious face and voice. His hands and feet were so
disproportionately small that they seemed almost dwarfed; but they were
endlessly busy implements in Mr. Welper’s service; and now his little
feet trotted him soundlessly to the open box with its contents of yellow
papers; and his little hands touched and pried and meddled and shuffled
the documents, while at intervals his sly eyes fluttered toward the
sleeping boy.

Presently Mr. Welper discovered the documents on the boy’s dresser; he
approached, and had been cautiously studying them for a minute or so
when suddenly the boy sat up in bed.

Caught in the act, Mr. Welper was, as always, efficient in any crisis.

“The wind,” he explained, “blew these papers into the bathroom.
Supposing that, m—m, they belong to you, I entered your room to return
them.”

Some latent instinct stirred the boy to get out of bed and take the
papers which Welper laid upon the dresser. He got back into bed still
clutching them.

“Where,” inquired Mr. Welper with gently jocose but paternal interest,
“did you collect this ancient box of junk?”

“Oh, it’s just worthless stuff,” said the boy, reddening at the lie.

Mr. Welper stood motionless, a remote expression on his countenance.

“You had better dress and come to breakfast,” he said absently. “We
start back to New York this morning, and our train leaves at ten.”

It was evident to the boy that Mr. Welper attached no importance to the
documents.

V

All the way to New York, Barney Welper was occupied in contriving a safe
and sane way to possess himself of the documents which he had read
sufficiently to realise that he wanted them.

But some blind, odd instinct led the boy to keep them upon his person
night and day—not that it occurred to him to suspect Mr. Welper—

But, if he had anything at all of tangible value in those papers, he had
a fortune! And so vast a fortune that it made him almost uncomfortable
and slightly giddy to try to calculate what a ship loaded to the
gunwales with “soft, pure, Indian gold” might be worth.

One thing in these pirate papers had instantly engaged the boy’s
attention—the mention of False Cape, Tiger Island, and Place-of-Swans.

Because, westward from False Cape and across the sea-dunes, lay those
vast inland fresh-water sounds and bays spreading through Virginia and
North Carolina which he had known from earliest childhood.

And Place-of-Swans was the valuable island property inherited by his
sister and himself from a sportsman father; and which, for two months
every year, had been the family’s home in early winter.

Tiger Island was farther away—a place of no value for shooting, because
for some reason neither duck, geese nor swan haunted the adjacent
waters, nor ever had within the memory of living men.

To see False Cape and Place-of-Swans and Tiger Island mentioned by a
bloody pirate in his own handwriting had thrilled the boy as he never
before had been thrilled.

Suppose—but it would be sheer madness to suppose that the _Red Moon_,
galley—And yet the boy understood that the first thing he meant to do
on reaching New York was to sell enough stock in Orizava Oil to buy
Tiger Island.

And now he began to recollect that in earliest childhood he had heard
mention of the region as an ancient haunt of pirates. . . . There was
the almost forgotten nursery legend of False Cape, and of the aged horse
wandering all alone over the wintry dunes with a lighted lantern tied
around his sagging neck. . . . And the boy now remembered to have heard
his father speak of an ocean inlet which once existed somewhere to the
eastward, and which now had filled up with a solid mile-wide barrier of
snow-white sand, barring the salt sea water from the fresh.

So the long hours in the train wore away for the boy in the endless
glamour of other days; for Mr. Welper in mousy cogitation.

VI

When the boy, to his stupefaction, discovered that his shares in Orizava
Oil were neither regarded as attractive collateral by any financial
institution, nor as salable at any except ruinous figures, he went in
terror to Mr. Welper, and was calmed and reassured at a “confidential”
interview in the private office of that pious financier.

In about six months, it transpired, the “inner interests” would be ready
to start Orizava Oil sky-high. Until then, mum!—not a word, not the
wink of an eyelash!

The boy, tremulous but comforted, resigned himself to await the millions
which, within six months, were certain to be his.

Yet, meanwhile there was Tiger Island. The state owned it, but offered
it for sale. A few hogs pastured in the reeds and the gloomy pines of
Tiger Island. There was no habitation on the snake-ridden place; for
centuries it had been ownerless and common property for any who cared to
pasture hogs or cut logs and float them to the mainland. Which latter
enterprise was more of an effort than anybody ever had undertaken; and
the pine woods were still primeval.

Finally the state took title to Tiger Island; set, arbitrarily, a
ridiculously high figure on it, and offered it for sale, claiming that
the purchaser could cut a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of timber
from the untouched woods.

The boy now suffered deadly fears that either some lumber interests
would buy Tiger Island, or that somebody’s anchor might accidentally
foul the wreck of the _Red Moon_ and drag up golden relics which would
start a gold craze and set the entire region wild.

Somehow or other the boy had to raise enough money to secure Tiger
Island and the adjacent waters, worthless as far as wild fowl were
concerned.

The boy’s sister was still in Europe. He cabled her that he needed a
hundred thousand dollars—without any other result than worrying his
sister and starting a flight of sisterly and admonitory letters.

Then he wrote her and explained the matter in full; and his sister,
thoroughly alarmed at what he had done in Orizava Oil, made preparations
to terminate her delightful sojourn on the Riviera and return to New
York where, it was very evident, her younger brother was attempting to
make ducks and drakes of his inheritance.