among some Incas of Peru, in an old hidden Inca city among the Andes, was, at this time, exploring and studying in the island of Jamaica, among the West Indies. He was a great scholar and a student of old civilizations and was writing some chapters of a book on the Carib Indians, the original inhabitants of the islands when Columbus discovered them.

Cliff’s Aunt Lucy thought it would be wise for Cliff to join his father, to be well away from danger of infection; because the three chums were inseparable, consent was easily secured for Tom and Nicky to go with him. The three friends had been residing on a plantation in the heart of the island for nearly a week. There, with Cliff’s father and a young man, Clarence Neale, who was securing Carib relics for a great Museum of Indian History in New York, they tried to help out by searching for Carib pottery and ornaments. Jamaica had a great lure for them, for Nicky, a “pirate bug,” called Jamaica “Pirates’ Paradise!”

This interest was not due to any desire on Nicky’s part to be a wild, fierce seadog, sailing from some port with letters of marque, to pillage unprotected ships. The days for such things lay far in the past and although Nicky was excitable and impulsive he was, at heart, a very steady, sincere boy, a true American living up to the ideals of all that American boyhood means.

But in Nicky’s family there was an old paper which was a direct message to one of his ancestors from no less a person than the alleged pirate, Captain Kidd!Naturally Nicky, scarcely more than fourteen, was elated when he knew that he was permitted to accompany Cliff Gray, with their comrade, Tom, slightly older than either, to the island which had once been governed by a reformed pirate, in the heart of the West Indies where once piracy had flourished.

They found very little more than legends and old tales to whet their interest. Piracy had given place to commerce on the seas, as sailing ships had surrendered to steam. And so, instead of digging for buried treasure, on the sixth morning of their visit, they had found themselves digging carefully in a corner of an uncultivated field, to unearth broken bits of earthenware, possibly some small ornaments, or other relics of the Caribs who once roamed the island.

Digging early to avoid the mid-day heat during which everybody was quiet and inactive, they had discovered the unaccountable interest of the colored boy and when he had scuttled away they returned to their work wondering a little about it.

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