ed to
take familiar though distorted shapes. Ah, they were his old friends,
but badly crippled.

Then he began to make out a word here and a word there. His heart
leaped for joy. He could read it, and he would.

In another half hour he was progressing rapidly, and, but for an
exceptional word now and again, he found it very plain sailing.

Here is what he read:

WEST COAST OF AFRICA, ABOUT 10 DEGREES SOUTH
LATITUDE. (So Mr. Clayton says.)
February 3 (?), 1909.

DEAREST HAZEL:

It seems foolish to write you a letter that you may never see, but I
simply must tell somebody of our awful experiences since we sailed from
Europe on the ill-fated Arrow.

If we never return to civilization, as now seems only too likely, this
will at least prove a brief record of the events which led up to our
final fate, whatever it may be.

As you know, we were supposed to have set out upon a scientific
expedition to the Congo. Papa was presumed to entertain some wondrous
theory of an unthinkably ancient civilization, the remains of which lay
buried somewhere in the Congo valley. But after we were well under
sail the truth came out.

It seems that an old bookworm who has a book and curio shop in
Baltimore discovered between the leaves of a very old Spanish
manuscript a letter written in 1550 detailing the adventures of a crew
of mutineers of a Spanish galleon bound from Spain to South America
with a vast treasure of "doubloons" and "pieces of eight," I suppose,
for they certainly sound weird and piraty.

The writer had been one of the crew, and the letter was to his son, who
was, at the very time the letter was written, master of a Spanish
merchantman.

Many years had elapsed since the events the letter narrated had
transpired, and the old man had become a respected citizen of an
obscure Spanish town, but the love of gold was still so strong upon him
that he risked all to acquaint his son with the means of attaining
fabulous wealth for them both.

The writer told how when but a week out from Spain the crew had
mutinied and murdered every officer and man who opposed them; but they
defeated their own ends by this very act, for there was none left
competent to navigate a ship at sea.

They were blown hither and thither for two months, until sick and dying
of scurvy, starvation, and thirst, they had been wrecked on a small
islet.

The galleon was washed high upon the beach where she went to pieces;