," groaned
Fred.

"It's now or never," declared Lester with decision.

"I'm afraid it's never, then," put in Bill, the skeptical. "Here for
days we've been blistering our hands and breaking our backs, to say
nothing of racking what brains we have, and we're no nearer finding it
than we were at the beginning."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," protested Fred. "We've at least
explored a lot of places where there were no signs of the peculiar trees
and rock shown in that map that Ross told us about. That leaves just so
many fewer places to waste our time on, and makes it more likely that
the next will be the right one."

"Not much nourishment in that," persisted Bill. "I'll admit that we've
found plenty of places where the gold _isn't_, but that doesn't get
us anywhere. And we'll be gray-headed before we can explore the whole
coast of Maine."

"Oh, stop your grouching, you old sinner," exhorted Teddy, clapping him
on the back. "This is like football or baseball. The game isn't over
till after the last minute of play."

"That's the talk," cried Lester emphatically. "If we go down, we'll do
it with the guns shotted and the band playing and the flag flying."

It was not to be wondered at that the lads were all assailed at times by
the doubt and discouragement that troubled Bill acutely that morning.
They had taken advantage of every day when the sea permitted, and, as
Teddy phrased it, had "raked the coast fore and aft." Their main
reliance had been the map that had appeared in the story of the old
sailor to Ross, and the first thing they did after entering any bay or
cove was to look about them for the clump of two and three trees, with
the big rock standing at the right. Once or twice they had found
conditions that nearly answered this description, and they had dug and
hunted near by, wherever the lay of the land held out any hope of
success.

In the absence of anything better, this supposed map was their strongest
clue. Yet even this was only supposition. It might not have been
anything more than the fanciful sketch of an idle sailor. Or if it
indeed were a map of any given locality, it might not refer in the
slightest degree to the robbery by the crew of the smuggler.

The knowledge that this might be so had at times a paralyzing effect on
the boys. They felt the lack of solid ground beneath their feet. Like
the coffin of Mahomet, they were as though suspended between earth and
sky.

Still, it was the