276 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



remained for twenty years, with three brief inter- 

 vals of hfe on the mainland. On one occasion 

 Captain Gissler heard that a son-in-law of Keat- 

 ing's was living in Boston, and there he journeyed 

 for an interview. He found the man he sought in 

 hospital and negotiated the purchase of all Keat- 

 ing's papers, including the dictated account of his 

 finding of the treasure. The information con- 

 tained in them was too vague to be of use, but 

 from certain comparisons with other clues, Gissler 

 came to the conclusion that I have quoted concern- 

 ing Keating's ignorance of the exact spot. 



The Gisslers were not left in utter solitude dur- 

 ing those years. They had many visitors, all in- 

 spired with hope of sudden wealth, all with more 

 or less vague ideas of where to look for it, and some 

 much nonplussed to find a man already in posses- 

 sion and ready to assert his rights to the land that 

 was his. 



In 1894 Keating's widow, now a woman of more 

 than middle age and married and widowed a sec- 

 ond time, came to Cocos with a Captain Hackett 

 and a crew of sealers, on board the Aurora. She 

 was looking for a spot described to her by Keating, 

 a spot that Gissler had already found, where a large 

 stone bore a carved "K" and an arrow pointing to 

 a hollow tree. Hidden under the vines that covered 

 the trunk of that tree, he had discovered a long iron 

 rod, bent into a hook at one end, which was just 

 long enough to reach the bottom of the hollow. But 

 the cavity was empty. For days the sealers ex- 

 plored the island, with growing disappointment 



