The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna Part 28

said Bobby with decision. "And so--it went!"

"I can scarcely believe it," sighed Dorothy.

"But it must be found before the Big Day!" cried Dora.

"I guess that's what all the girls of Central High will say. But Lake Luna is a large body of water, and there are plenty of wild pieces of sh.o.r.e where the sh.e.l.l could be hidden, in the mouth of a creek, or some such place. Or, perhaps it has been removed from the lake altogether.

Oh, it may have been already destroyed."

"Dreadful!" groaned Dorothy.

"And we haven't paid for it, yet," added Dora.

The news of the sh.e.l.l's disappearance was well circulated over the Hill before schooltime. The girls of Central High could scarcely give proper attention to their textbooks that morning. Some of the members of the crew actually wept. It was the afternoon for practice, and there were only a few more such opportunities.

There was no news of the lost boat when school was out. The police had been notified, and the police launch had taken up the search. The watchman at the boat houses was made to admit that it had been his custom to sleep most of the night. There had never been any robbery of the school boathouses before. But, as Princ.i.p.al Sharp of Central High said, another watchman would doubtless be able to keep awake better than Mike, and the old man received his notice.

This stringent measure did not bring the lost sh.e.l.l back, however.

Professor Dimp had the girls out in the old sh.e.l.l that afternoon, and although they did their very best, they fell back more than forty seconds in half a mile. And from what they knew about Keyport, the girls of Central High knew very well that they could not afford to drop those forty seconds if they were to win the Luna Boat Club's cup.

There wasn't a girl in Central High--unless it was Hester Grimes--who did not consider the loss of the new sh.e.l.l a calamity. Theories of the wildest nature were put forward to explain the robbery. That the sh.e.l.l had been stolen for the sake of profit was hardly likely. Eight-oared sh.e.l.ls cannot be pledged at a p.a.w.n shop; nor would any other rowing club purchase such a boat without knowing just where the craft came from.

Really, Bobby Hargrew's belief that one of the competing crews had caused the sh.e.l.l to be spirited away gained ground among the school pupils as a body. Yet there was no trace of the course of the robbers, and the search of the borders of the lake was fruitless.

The newspapers took it up and the theory that one of the competing crews had caused the sh.e.l.l's disappearance was printed. This forced some discussion of the matter before the Board of Education, and the minority which had always been against compet.i.tions between the schools gained some strength.

Above all, it looked bad for the Central High crew. They all knew in their hearts that with the heavy and lubberly old sh.e.l.l which was left them, they could not win the race on the Big Day. This thought took the heart out of them and on Friday afternoon, when they practiced, their showing was even worse than it had been before.

Sat.u.r.day the "Treasure Hunters" had their outing at Cavern Island. They went in several small boats, and the twins, finding Aunt Dora much improved (or seemingly so) joined the party at the last moment and paddled their canoe with the rest.

"Oh, my, my!" cackled Lance Darby as he slid into a seat in Chet's boat that Josephine Morse had been about to take. "Awful accident on the Lake! Terrible Catastrophe While Boating on Luna! Lady had Her Eye on a Seat and a Gent Sat on It! My, my!"

"You needn't think you're so smart," returned Jess. "Now you're there, you can row--both you and Chet. Laura and I will sit here in the stern and watch you both work. Work is good for boys, anyway."

"Yes," growled Chet. "It's like what they say about the fleas on dogs. A certain number of fleas are good for a dog; helps him keep his mind off the fact that he _is_ a dog!"

Short and Long balanced the big boat by sitting in the bow, and the fleet got under way.

"We're going right to Boulder Head, aren't we?" demanded Short and Long.

"Is that where the treasure is buried?" asked Laura, laughing.

"It's somewhere around there; or in the caves. You folks can laugh,"

said Billy, "but those foreigners talked enough English for me to understand that the money----"

"In a lard kettle," put in Bobby, chuckling.

"In a lard can," corrected Billy, "was hidden on the island, and was not far from the caves."

"Maybe when the man you said was hanging around so long disappeared, he took the treasure with him," laughed Dorothy Lockwood.

"And I bet I know who the two men were whom Billy heard quarreling over a lard can," cried Dora.

"You know, do you?" demanded Billy. "Well, who were they?"

"Tony Allegretto and the man the police found him fighting with," said Dora promptly.

"Great Scott!" gasped Chetwood Belding. "Do you hear that, Lance?"

"Never thought of 'em!" answered his chum.

"Buried treasure, too!" said Chet, thoughtfully. "Tony said they were quarreling over money."

"There is something that needs looking into about Tony Allegretto,"

declared Mother Wit, seriously. "Don't you think so, Chet?"

"It might be well to find out what the money was, and where they got it to quarrel over," agreed Chet, slowly.

"Pirate gold, of course!" laughed Bobby Hargrew, from another boat.

"Don't spoil all the romance of this treasure hunt by suggesting that the buried loot is merely the proceeds of the sale of a banana stand that the two Italians owned in partners.h.i.+p."

CHAPTER XXIII

BILLY'S GREAT DIVE

But both Chet and Laura Belding were thoughtful for the rest of the way to the island. The others seemed to see nothing significant in what Billy had said about the two Italians, or the suggestion the twins had made that the quarreling men were identical with Tony Allegretto, the trained monkey's master, and his fellow countryman, whom the police had driven away from Cavern Island.

"We ought to find some clue to the buried treasure, something like Poe's 'Gold Bug,'" suggested Nellie Agnew.

"Sure!" cried Lance. "So many fathoms from a certain tree with arms like a gibbet, on a line with a stone on which is scratched the outline of a skull. Then dig straight down--so far--till you strike----"

"A lard kettle!" cried Jess. "Sounds just like Poe, doesn't it?"

"Just like Poe's ravin'," chuckled Bobby, the only one who dared make such an atrocious pun.

They piled out of the boats at the usual landing and Billy took them to the several "hide-outs," or camps, he had found while he was living like a castaway on the island.

The twins were as eager to see Billy's camps as anyone; the big boulder before the mouth of the farther cavern, into which they did not dare to venture without a guide, had been the boy's lookout. That was where he was perched in his wig and whiskers when Dora and Dorothy had first seen him and nicknamed him "the lone pirate."

"And how under the sun did you chance to have that Hallow E'en disguise with you, Billy boy?" demanded Dora.

Short and Long grinned. "I didn't know but one of those fresh detectives was hanging around the house when I went off fis.h.i.+ng that morning; so I put on the wig and whiskers before I slid down the woodshed roof."

"By jolly!" laughed Lance. "You must have looked like a gnome when you went through the streets."

"n.o.body saw me. It was before sun-up," said Billy.