266 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



with mud, thoroughly scratched, very hot and com- 

 pletely happy. With a piece of soap, brought with 

 great foresight, we scrubbed ourselves and our gar- 

 ments in a deep pool, and floundered back to the 

 beach, with a new respect for the buriers of Cocos 

 treasure and the conviction that wherever they de- 

 posited it, it was not above that waterfall. 



Three sailors from the Arcturiis, in a cross- 

 country scramble, found rusty shackles attached to 

 a post that was deeply embedded in the ground, 

 amid rotten boards that seemed to be the collapsed 

 fragments of a hut. This gave rise to excited 

 speculations, but later, in Panama, we found that 

 the Costa Ricans (who own the island) had for a 

 short time maintained a convict settlement on Co- 

 cos, of which these things were probably the relics. 

 The prisoners must have heard of the golden store ; 

 perhaps the chance that one of them might find it 

 lightened their penal labors. 



Convicts, peers, philanthropists, journalists, 

 middle-aged widows, sailors, adventurers, — they 

 have all played their parts in the Cocos story. More 

 than one company has been formed, has issued 

 prospectuses and sold shares in proposed expedi- 

 tions, — and more than one has never left port. The 

 catalogue of ships that have actually sailed for 

 Cocos would be a long and tiresome enumeration, 

 but there are interesting details about some of them. 

 In 1875 one of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co.'s 

 ships came treasure-seeking, and one of the crew. 

 Bob Flower, while scrambling over the island, 

 slipped, rolled down the side of a steep ravine, and 



