afe enough for a few minutes."

A moment more, and those on board were joined by Ross and Lester, as
breathless and excited as themselves, for the meaning of Teddy's
discovery had dawned upon them.

They all raced to the forecastle and tumbled in pell mell.

CHAPTER XXIX

TREASURE COVE

With a finger that he vainly tried to keep steady, Teddy pointed to a
rough tracing on the wall at the left side of the forecastle.

It took a moment to accustom their eyes to the dim light of the place,
then their vision cleared and the boys could make out the details of a
map similar to the one which the old sailor had described to Ross.

There were two clumps, one consisting of two and the other of three
trees, at a little distance in from the beach. To the right was a huge
rock that rose like some giant sentinel and seemed to mark the entrance
to a bay or cove. A series of waving lines appeared to indicate the
water, and a more heavily shaded part was evidently meant to denote the
land. There was no artistic element in the drawing, but just then the
boys would not have exchanged the rough scrawl of that knife blade for a
painting by Titian or Raphael.

"Glory, hallelujah!" shouted Teddy, who had by this time recovered his
power of speech.

"Eureka!" cried Lester.

"We've found it," translated Fred.

"Joy!" exulted Bill, his habitual caution swept away in the flood of his
excitement.

Ross alone said nothing, though his trembling hands and moistened eyes
betrayed the depth of his emotion. To the Rally Hall boys this meant a
tremendous step forward, they hoped, toward the achievement of their
ambition. It meant all that, too, to Ross, but it meant much more. He
was on the spot where his father had been foully assaulted and brought
to his death. Somewhere in this ship there had been the scuffling of
feet and the thud of a deadly weapon, as his father had fought for his
property and his life.

The other boys were quick to recognize his feeling, and with the true
courtesy that marked them, they strove to restrain their exultation for
a time, and to talk among themselves until Ross should have had time to
get a grip on himself.

Bill, as usual, was the first to put a brake on their optimism and
subdue their enthusiasm by questioning cautiously the real value of
their discovery.

"It's splendid, of course," he ventured to suggest, "but, after all,
what does it give us that we didn't already know? To be sure, it s