Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure

Scoop Ellery, our leader, reached for a rock the size of his fist and sent it crash-bang! against the side of an old clay scow that was moored to the dock.

We call it the Tutter canal, for the reason that it runs through our small town. Over in Ashton, a neighboring small town, the kids call it the Ashton canal. It is a hundred mil...

It was dark as pitch. The moon and stars were hidden behind a black wall. I couldn’t see a thing—not even my hand when I held it within an inch of my nose.

Scoop was on hand the following morning at five o’clock. Peg and I were glad to see him. For our stomachs were empty and we wanted to go home to breakfast.

Having dirtied only a few dishes, we put these in a pan in the kitchen sink; then I hurried over to Red’s barn with a screw driver and a handful of wrenches.

The next morning I was so stiff that I hated the thought of getting up. But I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to have breakfast with Dad and Mother. They were laughing...

In line with our leader’s plans, we had a rehearsal that afternoon, running the show boat a short distance out of town, so that we could do our rehearsing undisturbed.

“If we camp on Oak Island,” I said, “we can stop at Ashton on the way to the wide waters and give our show. And once we get to the island, it isn’t so very far to Steam Corners.”

It was a few minutes short of twelve o’clock when we drew up at the Ashton dock. Red wanted to turn the organ on immediately, to sort of hilariously announce our arrival in town...

I was scared. I can’t deny it. However undeserving I was of arrest, the fact remained that I had been picked up by the law. And innocent though I was, it might not be easy for m...

Into the night, in the direction of the Oak Island wide waters, four miles ahead, the Sally Ann slowly and steadily made its way, the engine throbbing under its load, the rudder...

We made short work of getting into our clothes—all except Red. Having stepped out of his pants without any recollection of where he had dropped them, he was having a sweating ti...

Two—three minutes passed. I could hear Scoop tiptoeing about the boat. He would take a few guarded steps, then pause. I could imagine that he was boring the darkness with his pr...

It had taken us the better part of two and one-half hours to make the run from Oak Island to Steam Corners, a distance of possibly five miles. That was slow traveling, to be sur...

What gave me that feeling was the unhappy thought that it wouldn’t please Mother and Dad a little bit to learn, upon my return home, that I had been picked up twice in daily suc...

I knew what was in my companion’s mind. He was tickled in the thought that it had been taken for granted, from the seeming vacancy of the room, that we had vanished from our pri...

In unscrewing the marked leg of the lock tender’s old fashioned piano, it had not been the intention of my curious companion to run off with it. For he had no right to do that....

Peg told us that the Strickers’ camp was without a guard, but, even so, it was wise for us, we concluded, to approach the island in secrecy. For in a boys’ camp it is not uncomm...

Afterwards, when our adventure had come to an end and I was home again, with my stomach crammed full of Mother’s grand cooking and my left foot done up in arnica bandages, Dad a...

Tired as we were, we experienced a lively thrill at sight of the grain elevator and the other towering landmarks in our home town. A number of people came running to the canal d...