"
"Yes, yes; I see the idea," answered the Captain, striding over
the floor with great thuds of his stockinged feet. "Now, lessee;
let me think," he began, rubbing all his hair the wrong way. "We
want something new and queer, something that ain't ever been
written up before. I tell you what! Here it is! Have Our Mug get
wind of a little river schooner that sunk fifty years before his
time in one of the big South American rivers, during a flood--I
heard of this myself. Schooner went down and was buried twenty
feet under mud and sand; and since that time--you know how the big
rivers act--the whole blessed course of the river has changed at
that point, and the schooner is on dry land, or rather twenty feet
under it, and as sound as the day she was chartered."
"Well?"
"Well, have it that when she sank she had aboard of her a cargo of
five hundred cases of whiskey, prime stuff, seven thousand quart
bottles, sealed up tight as drums. Now Our Mug--nor Billy Isham
either--they ain't born yesterday. No, sir; they're right next to
themselves! They figure this way. This here whiskey's been kept
fifty years without being moved. Now, what do you suppose seven
thousand quart bottles of fifty-year-old whiskey would be worth?
Why, twenty dollars a quart wouldn't be too fancy. So there you
are; there's your treasure. Our Mug and Billy Isham have only got
to dig through twenty feet of sand to pick up a hundred thousand
dollars, IF THEY CAN FIND THE SCHOONER.
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