ny quadrant. Have Billy Isham buy it
because it was cheap."

"How did it get out of order, Captain Jack?" inquired Blix. "That
would be a good technical detail, wouldn't it, Condy?"

"Well, it's like this. Our Mug an' Billy get a schooner that's so
bally small that they have to do their cooking in the cabin; quadrant's
on a rack over the stove, and the heat warps the joints, so when Our
Mug takes his observation he gets fifty miles off his course and raises
the land where the government forces are watching for him."

"And here's another point, Cap.," said Condy. "We ought to work some
kind of a treasure into this yarn; can't you think up something new and
original in the way of a treasure? I don't want the old game of a
buried chest of money. Let's have him get track of something that's
worth a fortune--something novel."

"Yes, yes; I see the idea," answered the Captain, striding over the
floor with great thuds of his stockinged feet. "Now, lessee; let me
think," he began, rubbing all his hair the wrong way. "We want
something new and queer, something that ain't ever been written up
before. I tell you what! Here it is! Have Our Mug get wind of a little
river schooner that sunk fifty years before his time in one of the big
South American rivers, during a flood--I heard of this myself.
Schooner went down and was buried twenty feet under mud and sand; and
since that time--you know how the big rivers act--the whole blessed
course of the river has changed at that point, and the schooner is on
dry land, or rather twenty feet under it, and as sound as the day she
was chartered."

"Well?"

"Well, have it that when she sank she had aboard of her a cargo of five
hundred cases of whiskey, prime stuff, seven thousand quart bottles,
sealed up tight as drums. Now Our Mug--nor Billy Isham either--they
ain't born yesterday. No, sir; they're right next to themselves! They
figure this way. This here whiskey's been kept fifty years without
being moved. Now, what do you suppose seven thousand quart bottles of
fifty-year-old whiskey would be worth? Why, twenty dollars a quart
wouldn't be too fancy. So there you are; there's your treasure. Our
Mug and Billy Isham have only got to dig through twenty feet of sand to
pick up a hundred thousand dollars, IF THEY CAN FIND THE SCHOONER."

Blix clapped her hands with a little cry of delight, and Condy smote a
knee, exclaiming:

"By Jove! that's as good as Loudon Dodds' opium