Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/267

255 Then, turned on the floor, the light revealed the last of the ghastly relics—another skeleton, quite undisturbed, its long arm and the bones of its fingers clutched as if about to grasp something just beyond its reach, when the evil heart stopped beating.

The boy turned the torch once more and she saw the stone.

"What do you see?"

"Only a stone." Then she added "Why, there are queer markings upon it."

"What do you make of that?"

"Circles and odd lines—yes and numbers and letters—it looks like a chart."

"Could that be a map of the island?"

"It can't be anything else."

"And there's treasure on it! Those pirates didn't divide their gold, after all—back there on the beach. They were looking for the key to treasure that was buried by some one else, before they landed."

Then she continued in an awed voice:

"The last two reached the cavern, and even they had to fall out. One died at the mouth of the cavern, the other crawled here to die."

As she turned and looked behind her another little cry was echoed back.

"Ooh—it moved!"

"What moved?" asked the boy a little roughly.

"That hand!"

She shrank back into the shelter of his arms. She had distinctly seen the hand move—and towards the stone.