Of course I put the absurd idea from me, and brought the crucifix
aboard along with the rest of the gold. I shall be glad when I
know that the vines have again covered that lonely-looking
gravestone from sight. I can't help feeling my own glorious good
fortune to be somehow an affront to poor unlucky Bill.
To-morrow one last trip to the cave, and then hey, for home and
Helen!
The diary ended here.
I closed the book, and stared with unseeing eyes into the green
shadows of the encompassing woods. What happened to the writer of
the diary on that last trip to the cave? For he had never left the
island. Crusoe was here to prove it, as well as the wreck of the
Island Queen. And, in all human probability, under the sand which
choked the cabin of the derelict was the long-sought chest of
Spanish doubloons.
But what was the mysterious fate of Peter? Had he fallen,
overboard from the sloop and been drowned? Had he returned to the
cave--and was he there still? It was all a mystery--but a mystery
which I burned to solve.
Of course I might have solved it, very quickly, merely by
communicating the extraordinary knowledge which had come to me to
my companions. But for the present at least I meant to keep this
astounding secret for my own. Somehow or other, by guile or lucky
circumstance, I must bring it about that the document I had signed
at Miss Browne's behest was canceled.
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