The Secret of Saturday Cove. Barbee Oliver Carleton

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СКАЧАТЬ something to think about besides the storm.

      Another explosion of thunder. Then the hail began to fall, rattling like birdshot against the shutters.

      A cunning gleam came into Sally’s eyes. “What makes you think there ever was any treasure in the first place?”

      David struck a match and the wood kindled into flame. “Everyone in the family always said there was, for one thing. Dad’s father told him about it, and his father told him, and that’s the way it went, back two hundred years or more.”

      “Well, I never did see why they didn’t dig it up again.”

      David shrugged. “Nobody knows. Maybe they couldn’t find it.”

      Sally sniffed. “That’s silly. If I buried something, I guess I could find it again. Anyway, why did they want to hide it in the first place?”

      “You just want to hear the story again,” said David. He pulled a box close to the blaze and Sally moved beside him. Outside, the wind and the hail battered the ancient house. But here in the kitchen the fire crackled and they were warm and content.

      “One night,” David began, “during the Revolutionary War, John Blake saw a shaving mill come into this cove.”

      “What’s a shaving mill?” asked his sister, not quite remembering.

      “Dad says that’s what they called the long boats that the British used. Wherever there was a house or a settlement, they would come ashore off their frigates and take whatever they needed.”

      Sally was indignant. “That was dirty.”

      “That was war,” David said dryly. “Well, one night a band of British came ashore and climbed the path we just came up over. They seized John Blake’s musket and they butchered the sheep and cows and made off with what they wanted.”

      For a moment the two were silent, seeing in the shadowy kitchen the heavy-booted Redcoats, the children huddled about their mother, the white face of John Blake who, without his firing piece, was helpless to defend his home.

      “John’s wife, Sally—”

      “Sally Blake! Like me,” Sally broke in.

      David nodded. “Lots of the Blake girls have been named Sally after her. Anyway, the first Sally sent the oldest boy, Jonathan, to hide the valuables — family silver, I think, and pewter, and things like that. And the British never found them.”

      “Then they might be right here in this house,” cried Sally. She seemed not to hear the thunder that crashed and echoed among the islands.

      David placed a piece of driftwood on the flames. “But if Jonathan had hidden the things in the house, he could have found them again, couldn’t he?”

      “I should think so.”

      “Well, I’ve been thinking.” David faced his sister. “If I had been John and Sally Blake, I’d have stuffed the valuables into something the minute I saw the British drop anchor. Then I’d have sent Jonathan off with them in a boat. Then, when the British came and swarmed all over the house, the valuables would have been safe on some other island. Besides . . .”

      “Besides, what?”

      David hesitated.

      Sally jumped off her keg in a fury. “If you had your precious old Poke here, I bet you’d tell him!”

      “Poke doesn’t talk.”

      “Poke does, too, talk.” Sally insisted. “Sometimes he talks exactly like an ency . . . an encyclo . . . a book.”

      David studied his sister’s angry face. Then he laughed. “All right, hothead. Never mind about Poke. Cool off and come on.”

      David picked up the light and led the way to the buttery, with Sally following closely at his heels. Here it was even darker than the kitchen, and dank with the chill of stone and age. Except for several rusted old lanterns lined up against the wall, the place seemed empty.

      David handed Sally the light and stooped to open the door of a low cupboard. “There was a stack of old newspapers in here and I’ve used them up, building fires. So yesterday I poked around for some more, way in back of this beam.”

      Sally peered in. “It looks spidery in there.”

      “And I found this!” David dragged forth a heavy crock. From it he pulled a roll of musty papers.

      “Grandfather’s charts,” he said briefly. “Most of them are like the ones we all use now, except they’re too mildewed to be much good.”

      Sally sniffed with distaste.

      “But take a look at this one!” A note of excitement had crept into David’s voice.

      Her eyes bright, Sally lowered the candle over a stained scrap of canvas that David held flat on the floor. It was a faded and crudely drawn chart. In one corner the name, Jonathan Blake, was written in a childish script.

      “It’s so old it’s all yellow,” Sally murmured.

      “That’s why I studied it. Now look a-here.” Tensely, David’s finger traced the rude but certain outlines of Saturday Cove.

      Sally crouched, wondering, over the chart.

      “Don’t go dripping wax all over it,” her brother warned. “See. Here’s Blake’s Island, with a square to mark this house. Then all these little islands with no names on them. But look — ” David tapped his forefinger over a small circle. “What do you see?”

      “I see a little circle for an island,” Sally said unevenly.

      “Look in the circle.”

      Sally looked, and drew in her breath. Very faint, so dim that she could scarcely make it out, she saw the careful cross of a small X.

      Chapter

      2

       AN ENEMY AND AN ISLAND

      SAN ENEMY AND AN ISLANDALLY looked up, her face aglow. “It’s a cross, David! On an island! I’ll bet anything it’s where Jonathan buried the treasure.”

      “Could be.” Carefully, David rolled up the old chart and tied it with a piece of string from his pocket. “But don’t get your hopes up. . . .”

      “But why don’t we just follow the chart?”

      David laughed shortly. “That’s easier said than done. It’s only a rough sketch drawn by someone who didn’t know beans about the cove.”

      “Jonathan? But Jonathan lived here.”

      David led the way back to the kitchen. “That’s right. But the family had just settled on the island when all this happened, Dad said. They probably СКАЧАТЬ