CHAPTER XXVI

“THE TRUE SIGN OF THE ‘DRAGON’”

The story of the treasure of Las Golondrinas was not to be thus easily dismissed from the minds of the Wayfarers. Quite the contrary, it became paramount as a topic of conversation. The journal of the unfortunate Englishman, Sir John Holden, and the letter written by Don Camillo de Fereda were duly exhibited to and read by Miss Martha and Mr. Carroll.

Though both were considerably impressed by the girls’ find neither was in sympathy with Patsy’s half-jesting, half-earnest assertion: “It would be fun to poke around in the woods a little and hunt for the treasure, if we had the least bit of an idea what ‘the sign of the _Dragon_’ was.”

Miss Carroll had promptly vetoed the “poking around in the woods” plan, appealing to Mr. Carroll to support her in prohibiting such a proceeding. He had been equally ready on his own account, however, to decry Patsy’s proposal.

“Don’t allow this treasure story to take hold on your minds,” he had discouraged. “It’s highly interesting, of course, but that’s all. You’re not apt to discover a treasure that generations of Feredas failed to locate. They knew the ground thoroughly and failed. You know nothing of that jungle behind the beach.”

With no one save Bee as an ally, Patsy’s ambition saw no prospect of realization. Still the treasure story remained uppermost in her mind. It haunted her, particularly during the morning excursions to and from the bathing beach. The portion of jungle through which the white, sandy beach-road ran became invested with new interest. Its green depths concealed a treasure, once the treasure of the Dragon, now the treasure of Las Golondrinas.

“Do you suppose this part of the coast has changed very much since 1618?” Patsy reflectively questioned one morning, as she and Bee lay on the warm sands sunning themselves after a long swim.

“I don’t know.” Bee was gazing absently seaward. “You’re thinking about the treasure, of course,” she added with a smile.

“Yes,” Patsy admitted. “Too bad Sir John wasn’t captain of the _Dragon_. He’d have kept a log instead of a journal, and in it he would have set down the ship’s exact position. How far it was from shore, I mean, and all that.”

“I have an idea that the _Dragon_ anchored quite a way below this part of the beach,” declared Beatrice, “and not so very far from land. It’s just as Sir John said, the beach along here curves a little like a new moon. The upper end of the curve runs farther out into the water than the lower end. Above the upper end is the little bay where the galleons must have anchored in the night. You know how deep the water is there. If the _Dragon_ had been directly opposite this curve, those on board would have probably sighted the galleons and the captain would have tried to get away when the first one attacked him. They’d been fixing up the ship all that day, you know.”

“Yes, that’s so,” nodded Patsy. “But where do you think the men landed who went ashore in the row-boat?”

“That’s hard to guess,” returned Bee. “If the ship were anchored down there, they might have rowed in a straight line to land without being seen by the Spaniards. If the beach was then just as it is now, right along here would have been a better place for them to land than down there. Maybe the Spaniards had a lookout posted in the woods watching them.”

“If they had, it’s funny that Don Camillo didn’t send some of his men to follow them right then, instead of waiting until after the attack,” argued Patsy.

“I suppose he thought he had those poor Englishmen just where he wanted them,” replied Bee. “He knew that they couldn’t escape him. He thought, perhaps, that it would be easy to make them confess where they’d buried the box. You know history says that the Spanish adventurers who first came over here made a practice of torturing the Indians to find out where they kept their gold. Sir John and his men knew they’d be killed by Don Camillo even if they confessed, so they preferred to die by torture rather than tell the secret.”

“It’s horrible to think of, isn’t it?” shuddered Patsy. “I’m glad we were born three hundred years later than those dangerous times. No one’s life was safe then. Say, Bee,” Patsy sat up with sudden energy. “I’m going to ask Auntie if we can’t walk a little way down the beach this morning. If she says ‘yes’ we’ll change our bathing suits and ask Dolores to go with us. I’m anxious to see how it looks down there at that lower end of the curve. Come on.”

Springing to her feet, Patsy raced across the sands to where her aunt and Dolores were quietly sitting, each absorbed in a book. Dolores’ fondness for Nature did not include any desire whatever for a close acquaintance with the ocean. No amount of persuasion on the part of the Wayfarers could induce her to go bathing with them.

“Auntie, dear,” began Patsy in coaxing tones, as she and Bee came to a pause before the two on the sands, “do you care if we change our bathing suits and go for a little walk down the beach? We want you to go with us, Dolores. We won’t go far, Aunt Martha, and will be back in just a little while.”

“Very well.” Miss Carroll looked up placidly from her reading. “I trust you, Dolores, to keep these two reckless girls out of mischief,” she added, turning to her companion.

Dolores laid her book aside and rose in instant acquiescence to Patsy’s plea.

“Surely, I will go with you, Patsy, _querida_,” she said in her soft voice. “Have no fear, Señora Martha, that I shall not keep the very stern eyes upon these two,” she mischievously assured Miss Carroll.

“Wait a minute till I see if Mab and Nellie want to go,” Patsy said. Running down to the water’s edge, she called out her invitation to the Perry girls, who were industriously practising a new swimming stroke which Mr. Carroll had taught them on the previous day.

“No, we don’t want to go,” declined Mabel. “We’re just beginning to get this stroke down fine. Go away, Patsy Carroll.”

“Come along, Bee. The Perry children don’t appreciate us,” Patsy commented satirically.

A little later, Bee and Patsy emerged from the bath house, ready for their walk. Accompanied by Dolores the trio started off down the beach.

“We’ve been quite a little way up the beach, Dolores, but we’ve never gone a dozen yards down it,” remarked Patsy, as they strolled along in the sunshine. “We’re going as far as that point down there and maybe farther. We want to see how it looks on the other side of it. We were talking about the _Dragon_ this morning and----”

“I beg of you, Patsy, _querida_, think no more of that horrible treasure.” Dolores had stopped short, her dark eyes full of distress. “It is forbidden by the _señora_ that you should walk in the jungle. I have given the promise to keep the care of you. So must I----”

“Come along, goosie, dear.” Patsy laid gentle hold on Dolores’ arm. “We’re not going into the jungle to hunt for the stupid old treasure. We just want to go a little way and see things. Bee and I have an idea that the men from the _Dragon_ might have touched shore on the other side of the point when they rowed to land. We only want to see how it looks there.”

“It is not so different from this,” Dolores declared, “except that beyond the point is the small inlet.”

“Is that so?” Bee remarked in surprise. “I supposed that beyond the point was only a little bay. The beach is narrow at the point on account of the woods coming down so close to the water. That’s the way it is with the upper end of the curve, you know. Can we walk around the point and along the shore of the inlet for a little way without actually getting into the jungle?”

“_Si_,” returned Dolores, “but not very far.”

“Then let’s go as far as we dare,” proposed intrepid Patsy. “You lead the way, Dolores.”

Presently arriving at the place where the beach itself was merely a strip of sand extending out into the water, the three girls rounded the point and walked along the sandy shore of the inlet.

They had gone only a few steps when Bee stopped short and pointed out to sea.

“The _Dragon_ might have been anchored right over there, Patsy,” she asserted. “This would have been a splendid place for the men in the row-boat to land.”

“Maybe they did land here, and struck off into the jungle, right there, where the inlet begins,” surmised Patsy. “Let’s follow the shore of the inlet. It’s almost as wide as this bit of beach and doesn’t look snaky. As long as we don’t get into the jungly part of the jungle we’re safe enough.”

“I think it will be all right for us to go up it a few rods if we stick to the shore,” decided Bee. “It looks so pretty up there under those trees that hang over the water. Truly, Dolores, we’re not thinking about the treasure now. It certainly wasn’t buried along the shore of the inlet. Why, the journal never mentioned an inlet. You go ahead and we’ll follow. You know the ground.”

Reassured by Bee’s words, Dolores first hunted about for a good-sized snake stick, then reluctantly took the lead. The trio soon reached the mouth of the inlet and continued up one side of it for a short distance. The farther they went the narrower grew the sandy shore, lying even with the jungle itself. Over the inlet hung a kind of white haze, appearing to rise from the water.

“We’re in the jungle and yet not in it,” cheerfully commented Patsy. “How misty that water looks.”

She had hardly spoken when Bee uttered a sharp exclamatory “Oh!”

Walking ahead, Dolores had come upon a noisy puff adder curled up on the shore. While it puffed its resentment at being disturbed, she deftly caught it up on the end of the stick and tossed it, hissing, into the water.

“It is not harmful,” she explained, “yet I have the sorrow to see it, because it is the snake, and all snakes are the sign of evil. Now we should perhaps turn back. You have seen----”

Her low, musical voice suddenly trailed off into a horrified gasp. Simultaneously three pairs of eyes had glimpsed a terrifying something rising up through the mist from the inlet’s quiet waters. As it continued to rise they caught a fleeting impression of a grotesque, flat, wrinkled head, composed chiefly of a heavy upper lip from which depended a long trail of green. In its flipper-like arms the ugly monster held a grayish object, clasped close to its vast, shapeless body.

“It is an evil thing!” shrieked Dolores. Panic-stricken, she reverted to her old wood nymph tactics and bolted straight into the jungle, Patsy and Beatrice following wildly after.

“Dolores!” at last screamed Bee in desperation. “Wait for us!”

The shrill appeal checked the badly scared wood nymph’s headlong flight long enough for Bee and Patsy to come up with her. Breathless though she was, Bee’s brief terror had apparently taken wing. She was now smiling broadly.

“We’re a set of geese!” she exclaimed. “Do you know what our horrible monster is? I do. It’s nothing but a meek, harmless manatee!”

“What, then, is a manatee?” inquired Dolores, in tones that indicated doubt that so terrible a monster as she had just seen could possibly be harmless.

“Oh, it’s an animal something like a seal, only a lot larger, that lives in the sea. It eats nothing but plants and grass and is as harmless as a kitten. I’ve seen pictures of manatees, but never saw a real one before,” explained Bee. “The minute after we started to run, I guessed what it was we’d seen. They live in lagoons and the mouths of rivers that run into the sea and inlets like this. The poor thing was holding up its baby manatee for us to see and we never stopped to admire it!”

“Let’s go back and look at it,” said Patsy. “We’ve got to get out of this jungle as soon as ever we can. We’ll have to go back the way we came, I suppose. Auntie will be awfully cross with me for this. She’ll blame me for the whole business.”

“From here it is not so far to the jungle road,” informed Dolores. “I know the little path to it. That will be best for us to take, I believe.”

“All right,” acquiesced Bee, “only do let’s stop and rest a little first. That wild run of ours took most of my breath. There’s a nice, clean place under that big tree. A five-minutes’ stop there won’t do us any harm.”

Pausing only to break off a leafy branch from a stunted sapling, Bee walked over to the spot she had designated and energetically swept it, a precautionary measure against lurking wood-ticks and scorpions. Then she dropped down on the dry ground with a little sigh of relief.

Dolores seated herself beside Bee. Patsy, however, made no move to sit down. Instead, she stopped half way to the tree and gazed about her with alert, interested eyes.

“Look at that dandy big rock!” she exclaimed, pointing to a huge boulder a little to the left of where she was standing. “I can climb up on it as easy as anything. It will be a fine perch. No snakes or scorpions or horrid old wood-ticks can get me up there.”

The rock on which Patsy proposed to perch was perhaps five feet high and correspondingly thick through. It measured at least eight feet across. One end of it tapered down to a blunt point, thereby furnishing Patsy an easy means of reaching its rather flat top.

“Hurray!” was her jubilant exclamation when a moment later she stood on top of the boulder and waved a triumphant hand to her companions. “The world is mine!”

Patsy made an elaborate bow, first to the right, then to the left. Her eyes coming to rest on the pointed end of the boulder she called out:

“What does this end of the rock make you think of?”

“It reminds me of a rock,” jibed Bee. “I can’t see that it looks like anything else.”

“That’s because you’re not up here,” retorted Patsy. “Standing on the top, looking down, this end is like an alligator’s head. No it isn’t, either. It’s more like the head of a queer, prehistoric monster. Why, girls!” Patsy’s voice suddenly rose to an excited squeal. “Come up here, quick! I want to _show_ you something!”

Quite in the dark regarding the cause of Patsy’s agitation, Bee and Dolores lost no time, however, in scrambling up on the boulder.

“Look!” Patsy pointed a shaking finger downward. “Can’t you see it? Don’t you know what it’s like?”

“It does look a little like one of those prehistoric monster’s heads,” agreed Bee.

“It looks like more than that. It looks like a _dragon’s_ head. Now I know what Sir John Holden meant when he wrote, ‘And we buried the treasure at the true sign of the Dragon, which was also His Majesty’s ship sunk this day.’ He and his men came here with the box and found this rock. He must have climbed to the top of it to take an observation. He must have seen the queer resemblance of this end of the rock to a dragon’s head. He thought it would be a good thing to bury the box near it, because then they couldn’t mistake the place if they came back again. I truly believe that somewhere in the ground around this rock and close to it is the treasure of Las Golondrinas!”