. Only one or two larger sheets seemed like a consecutive narrative. Others were mere scraps of paper that l

n. As the boys handled carefully those yellowed sheets of paper, so brittle from time that they were almost falling apart, so yellowed that in many cases the writing was almost illegible, the years rolled away and before them rose up the pi

n chronological order and kept up a running seri

two centuries ago. Those were wild and reckless days in that quarter of the world, with the buccaneers roaming up and down the Spanish Main, sinking ships and once in a while attacking the towns on the coast and robbing them of their treasures. This fellow was probably the bl

all the laws of the civilized nations of the world. They were Ishmaels, their hands against every man's and every man's hands against them. But

any particular bit of treasure that he might come across. Everything was to be brought and placed in a great pile at the foot of the

ned. That meant that he was to be taken to some one of the many little desolate islands that stud the Ca

exhausted, or even if he succeeded for a time in dragging out a miserable existence he would go mad from

ose writing is on these papers. Likely enough he deserved i

up one of the

taken from the passengers before they were made to walk the plank. But Cerillos the captain-may his soul be accursed-hated me because he feared th

f what in these days we would call a 'frame-up.' Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. You kn

he old boy, and he was taken to this island, where he wa

m in the Caribbean. Some of them are mere rocks a few acres in extent. Others cover a good many square miles. This one where Santos was maroon

f paper, "to the location of the island is this rough sketch that Santos d

intended for the island itself. On this were peaks rising to a considerable height, and the effect of the skyline was something like the teeth of a saw. There were f

d longitude," exclaimed Dick, wh

e that he had any instruments with him, but if what he says of the captain's jealousy is correct it indicates that he was an important figure in the crew a

n the atlas referring to the West Indi

. "Here it is in the Caribbean somewhere

the water is very shallow, where what seem to be great plateaus rise from the bed of the sea to within a hundred or two hundred feet of the surface. Now one of these shallow basins is that which lies between Jamaica and Honduras. Then too, the o

nton adjured them impressively,