"Spoke like a lawyer," commented Stoodles.
"Like a friend, you mean," corrected Bob. "Leave it to smart Dave to work a way out of a dilemma. I'm interested and excited, Dave."
"Well, first and foremost," continued Dave, "do you recognize that picture, Bob?"
Dave handed out the photograph that Adair had given him on the _Swallow_.
"Why, sure," answered Bob promptly. "It's a picture of that rascally pilot."
"No, no---I mean the other figure in the photograph."
"Oh--oh!" said Bob slowly, studying it. "N-no," he continued, quite as slowly. "Yes--no. H'm! One minute the face looks familiar, the next it looks strange. I can't fix it, although it seems as if I've seen that man before."
"You have," declared Dave. "Here, Mr. Stoodles, you take a try."
"Yes, there's the pilot," announced Stoodles. "The other is the ould pawnbroker that was on the _Raven_."
Dave's face grew eager and bright with satisfaction.
"Good for you," he said. "I knew I was right. Yes, that is the man the Hankers picked up at San Francisco--a pawnbroker named Gerstein. He furnished some of the money to fit out their ship for the expedition. Well, my friends, Gerstein, under the false name of Schmitt-Schmitt, is now on this island."
"Then the _Raven_ crowd escaped!" exclaimed Bob.
"I don't know that," answered Dave. "I do know that Schmitt-Schmitt appeared here a few days ago. He has been trying to engage a ship to go after a fortune he says he can find. Of course it's our treasure."
"The spalpane! Of coorse it is!" cried Stoodles excitedly.
"My theory," went on Dave, "is that the _Raven_ was terribly disabled or lost in the cyclone. I am also pretty sure that the treasure was saved. Perhaps it was already hidden somewhere on land. At all events, Schmitt-Schmitt was in the secret, either as the partner and emissary of others of the _Raven_ crowd or on his own account. He managed to get a small boat afloat, was taken up by a liner, and landed here. Now his whole time is given, as I said, to finding a ship that will go after a fortune, as he terms it, on shares."
"Your theory is raisonable, your theory is right," insisted Stoodles.
"Schmitt-Schmitt," proceeded Dave, "made friends with the governor here. He seems to be staying at the pilot's house. When the _Swallow_ was sighted he at once reasoned it out that we had discovered the real contents of those four boxes, that we might be bound straight back for the Windjammers' Island. He induced the pilot to run us onto the sunken brig in the creek."