COCOS— A TALE OF TREASURE 269 



Eight years later, Gissler was living in Hawaii, 

 having taken up some land there. A friend of his 

 married a half-caste girl, daughter of a native 

 woman and an old white man, whose only name 

 seemed to be "Old Mac." His son-in-law told 

 Gissler that the old man had in his possession a 

 chart showing where there was a treasure, but that 

 he had always refused to tell how he came by it. 

 In after years, Gissler came to believe that Old 

 Mac might have been Chapelle, but at that time he 

 knew nothing of the involved tale of Cocos. 



Gissler remembered his Portuguese manuscript. 

 He unearthed it among his papers, the friend per- 

 suaded his father-in-law to let him take the chart, 

 and comparing notes, they decided that Las Palmas 

 and Cocos were the same. Sped on their way by 

 gloomy prophecies from Old Mac, as to the evil 

 effects on human nature of finding treasure, they 

 sailed for San Francisco, taking with them the 

 eleven-year-old son of Gissler's friend. From San 

 Francisco they reached Punta Arenas, hoping to 

 find a small schooner in which to sail to Cocos. 

 The day they arrived, two men accosted them in 

 English, asking if there was any chance of getting 

 work thereabouts. They pointed out their schooner 

 in the harbor. 



"Why are you flying the Nicaraguan flag? 

 Smuggling?" asked Gissler. 



"Worse than that," they replied, "We've been 

 looking for buried treasure on Cocos Island." 



They were two young journalists from Ottawa, 

 infected with the Cocos germ through an acquain- 



