CHAPTER XX

“WE WILL DIG HERE”

The forces of nature are never at rest. Man makes his mark upon the earth. Nature destroys it. A day may be required for the task, a year, a generation, a thousand years. It is all the same to nature. She wins at last and the man and his works are forgotten.

Shortly after Curlie Carson and the college girl left the island, a storm arose; not a violent storm, but a storm nevertheless. Storms are ever changing the face of nature, not alone in the sky, but on the earth as well. This storm set the waters of the lake into motion. Waves, with increasing violence, beat on the sandy shore that lay close to the breakwaters on which Curlie and the girl had stood. Tiny particles of sand were loosened from the mass and thrown high in air. The north wind caught them. Like a kitten with a ball, it teased them, tossing them about. In time it had a million of these racing about at its will.

But now one particle, tiring of the play, dropped into a shovel mark and stayed there. Others followed and soon there was no mark. Some lodged in a footprint and in time the footprint joined the shovel mark in oblivion.

When Curlie and the girl, still troubled over the fact that the mysterious package had not been found, and that Curlie was responsible for the loss, and still wondering what those men had meant to bury and if after all they had buried it, arrived at the spot where the men had labored, they found it flat as a floor. Not a trace of any digging could be found.

“No one dug here,” said Grace Palmer in disgust. “We must have made a mistake.”

“No,” said Curlie, positively. “This is the place. Back here in the rocks is a piece of driftwood with a nail in it. I scratched myself on the nail.

“Here,” he said with a laugh, “is the scratch, and there the nail.”

“We will dig here,” he said a moment later.

There was no mistaking the cause of the pick-up in their heart beats as Curlie threw out the first shovelful of sand. The girl had stayed up until the wee hours, reading in her father’s library. She had found there a description of the crown jewels of Russia. Curiously enough, the thing that had interested her most was the description of a tiny train, made of platinum and set with diamonds, that was made to fit snugly in a large golden egg. This she knew was a perfect model of the one time private railway train of the Czar. “Only a plaything for a prince,” she told herself. “But what a plaything!”

Now, as Curlie dug, her hopes rose and fell. So, too, did Curlie’s, for the success or failure of this enterprise meant much to him. True, his youthful employer had sworn to stand by him; but this did not remove from Curlie’s shoulders the responsibility of having allowed a priceless package to escape from the hands of the law and come into the possession of those who openly regard themselves as enemies of the Government he gladly served.

For a long time the shovel uncovered nothing. They were beginning to despair when at last it touched something hard.

“At last!” Curlie breathed hard.

“If only it is!” The girl’s eyes shone.

A moment of furious digging and then they uncovered—not the parcel-post package, but something long and slim, done up in oilskin.

“That,” said Curlie in disgust, “may interest some one. It does not interest me.”

He threw it down on the sand.

The girl took the trouble to unwrap it, but was hardly more impressed when she found it contained a very old and much tarnished telescope.

“Oh, well,” she sighed, replacing it in its oilcloth covering, “we’ll take it along. May interest father.”

“We may as well have a look at that thing over there,” said Curlie with a sigh. “I don’t know of anything more exciting to do just now.”

They made their way toward the Planetarium which in the light of day lost most of its mystery.

At their request the aged professor made the sun, moon, stars and planets do their little part in their artificial universe.

The Planetarium, as you doubtless know, consists for the most part of a great white dome. Inside this dome one may sit with comfort while a great bug-like affair made of steel and glass, winking and blinking through its scores of white eyes, reproduces for him the starry heavens and throws in the planets, the moon and the stars for good measure. It was in this dome that the boy and girl had strayed in their flight of the night before. They had chanced to arrive just as the professor was testing some new form of projector.

With the light of day outside, all this seemed rather commonplace. But when they showed the professor what they had found beneath the sand, he fairly sprang at them.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded.

“In the sand.” Grace stared at him.

“What sand?”

“Out there.” She pointed out the window.

“It was stolen early last evening.” He took it from her as if afraid it would disappear again.

“This,” he said, handling it with real affection, “is one of the oldest telescopes in existence; perhaps the oldest. When you think how much the telescope has done to widen man’s knowledge of the universe, you will know how priceless it is.

“And now,” he added, “since you have done me and this institution I serve a very great service, what can I do for you?”

“One little thing,” the girl smiled. “Find us the crown jewels of Russia. You’ll know them when you see them. There is a tiny platinum train set with diamonds that is kept in a golden egg.”

The professor stared at her as if he believed she had lost her senses. But when the full story was told over a cup of coffee in the professor’s study, he readily enrolled himself as one of that growing band who were pledged to unravel the mystery of the missing parcel.

The human mind behaves in a strange manner at times. Here were a boy and a girl who had come to a man-made island to search for stolen treasure. They had happened upon men who were burying an ancient telescope, and had been frightened away.

Returning next day when they might have searched the whole island at their leisure, they unearthed the telescope, returned it to the custodian, had their morning coffee, and went away.

The island with its grove of young cottonwoods, its many breakwaters, its drifting sands and its three shacks of driftwood built by men of strange names and no reputation, remained quite unsearched.