Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/349

Rh A challenge was unnecessary in the broad daylight, but why didn't Joe answer her hail?

The mouth was open. That was it. Sleeping at his post! Yes, there were the furrows in the sand, where they had dragged the chest away. Sally was vexed. She grew very angry. His stupid carelessness had lost the treasure.

She shook him. Her hand recoiled at the touch. That figure was too stiff—too cold. She looked up— The grey beard was matted with blood. And there was a knife, thrust cleanly through the throat, the reddened point emerging at the base of the skull.

The body fell aslant the log against which the thieves must have propped him when they dragged away the chest. But the rigid fingers did not drop the bright round things so tightly clutched, and with the fall of the body there was a dull clinking sound of something shifting within his shirt.

But the girl could neither see nor hear—she was as lifeless now as the body lying athwart the log, and the sailors, after they revived her, refrained from telling her of this last incident. But it troubled them mightily.

When they bent back the fingers and loosed the shining objects, they tossed them into the sea, like things accursed. The stolen chest they might seek later, but these at least they could never keep.

"This part of it we'll forget, boys," said the Captain, when Sally was slowly coming to, "Old Joe had his one failing—love o' money, and the temptation was too much. But he had always been faithful and I never knew him to be dishonest before."