he
original of that old map with you?"

The boy pointed to his aviator's sodden leather coat. Although he had
gained much strength from the warm blankets, he had found himself
unable to speak of the tragedy which had befallen his companion on the
_Stormy Petrel_. Now as he saw Curlie draw the water-soaked map from the
pocket of his coat, a look of horror overspread his face and he muttered
hoarsely:

"Throw it into the sea. It brings nothing but bad luck."

"No, no," said Curlie, "we won't do that."

"Then you must keep it," the other boy exclaimed. "I don't want ever to
see it again. Alfred made me a present of it just before we hopped off."

"All right," said Curlie, "but you are parting with a thing of some
value."

"Value!" exclaimed Vincent. Then he sat staring at Curlie in silence as
much as to say: "You too must have been bitten by the gold-bug." But
that Curlie had not been bitten by that dangerous and poisonous insect
will be proved, I think, by the pages which follow.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE STORY OF THE MAP

"You see," said Curlie, tapping the soggy bit of vellum which he held in
his hand, "the trouble with this map is, not that it is not genuine, but
that it's too old. This map," he paused for emphasis, "this map was made
in fourteen hundred and forty-six."

Gladys Ardmore gasped. Her brother stared in astonishment.

"It's a fact!" declared Curlie emphatically.

"You see," he went on, "the day I was in the library with Miss Gladys I
saw an exact reproduction of this map in a large volume. At the same
time I read a description of it and a brief account of its history. It
seems it was lost sight of about a century ago. There were copies, but
the original was gone.

"I concluded at once that the map had somehow come into the hands of
Alfred Brightwood. Since I was convinced that this was the truth, and
since I had read the writing about the gold discovered on the mysterious
island charted there, I decided that it would be wise to find out
whether or not it were possible that this strange story might be true. I
found my answer in a bound volume of Scottish Geographic Magazines in a
series of articles entitled 'The So-Called Mythical Islands of the
Atlantic.'

"It seems that there is fairly good proof that a number of vessels
landed on the North American continent before Columbus did. Driven out
of their course or lured on by hopes of gold and adventure, these ships
from time to time discove