had seen another boat, a big
cabin cruiser, tied up at the pier in front of the house occupied by the
fancy frogmen!

Rick turned and looked at the cruiser, then at the house. He was in time
to see the front door close. There would have been plenty of time for
someone to drop the chicken from the cruiser and then cross the reef and
tie up at the dock.

"I'll bet that's where the chicken came from," Rick said harshly.

"That's a bet I won't take," Scotty returned. "But you can bet we'll
find out!"

CHAPTER IX

Wreck of the "Maiden Hand"

Tony Briotti examined the metallic object they had brought from the
bottom, then took his knife and scraped at it. Under the covering of
marine growth, red rust appeared. He looked at Hobart Zircon. "Recognize
this, Hobart?"

"There's only one thing I can think of that fits the shape, Tony. Bar
shot."

"My conclusion exactly." Tony weighed the thing in his hand. He grinned
at the boys. "Adventure-prone, and lucky. Describe the place where you
found it."

Rick did so, concluding, "The patch didn't look anything like a ship,
though. If that's what you're thinking."

"After two centuries, the ship would no longer look like a ship. But
this is unquestionably a bar shot for an ancient cannon. It was used to
cut ship's rigging, and to knock down masts, and create other damage of
that sort. It's likely that the pirates, or the _Maiden Hand_, would
have carried bar shot."

"I think you have found the ship," Zircon told them, "and the question
about earthquakes was a good one. There was a heavy quake in this region
about a year ago. I had occasion to recall it a half hour ago when we
found a slight fault at the southern tip of the island that had
uncovered an Indian midden."

"And a fine one," Tony added. "You boys can dive for treasure if you
want to. I've some work of my own to do."

"Incidentally," Scotty reminded Rick, "in the confusion below we forgot
to send up a buoy. Hope we can find the place again."

"We can."

"What confusion?" Zircon asked.

Rick told him. "A freshly killed chicken was dropped near us. And it
must have been bleeding when it hit the water, because we suddenly had a
shark convention around us." He pointed to the boat tied at the pier,
now far behind them because the _Water Witch_ had been moving. "And we
think that was the boat that dropped it."

"It was weighted," Scotty added.

The scientists looked at each other. Tony grunted. "It m