Exploring for Answers

Penny moved to the stove to stir the cocoa as Mr. Drew and George joined Nancy in bending over the medallion. “Don’t you see it? ” Nancy asked as their curious gazes left the medallion and returned to her face.

“I guess not, ” her father admitted. “What is it? ”

“A broken anchor, ” Nancy answered. “Just as this island is in the shape of a broken anchor.” “That’s true, ” Penny said, joining them. “I think that was the first name for the island, but it got shortened to just plain Anchor Island.” “You mean the medallion wasn’t damaged? ” Carson Drew asked, picking up the necklace to study it more closely. “Then what is all this gold work on the other side? ” His fingers traced the lines that had been etched into the disk.

“I think it’s a map, ” Nancy answered. “A treasure map! ”

“The pirate treasure? ” Penny gasped. “You mean all the legends are true? ”

“Well, that’s what Tom and Jack seemed to think, ” Nancy answered. “That’s why they’re keeping us here. They seem sure that the treasure is somewhere on this island and that this medallion is the key.”

“Those scratches are impossible to read, ” George said. “They don’t make any sense.” Nancy nodded. “Precisely what I was thinking. So why don’t we try to get a clear rubbing of them with paper and soft lead or charcoal.” “I’ve got some charcoal, ” Penny said. “I brought all my art supplies. I even have some paper that should be just right for a rubbing on something that fine.”

“Suppose you fill me in on the details of what happened to you, Nancy, ” Carson Drew suggested as Penny left the kitchen, while George poured the cocoa and got some cookies out of the cookie jar.

Nancy recounted her kidnapping and escape as fully as she could, describing the men in limited detail, but enough so that George nodded. “That’s the Tom that met us, all right, ” she said. “But he was alone on the boat, I’m sure.” Nancy sighed. “I expect Jack was still in Florida somewhere with the Polka Dot. I still don’t understand why it was taken there, then brought back here. But I am sure that it was the boat I saw tonight and this afternoon.”

“But where could it have disappeared to so quickly? ” George asked, remembering what Nancy had told her. “Surely one of us would have seen it if it was chugging around the island.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, ” Nancy admitted, “and I wonder if it could have been hidden in that cavern.”

“The one where you were tonight? ” George frowned.

“What cavern? ” Penny asked as she came in with the art supplies.

Nancy explained as the redhead began work on the medallion.

“I don’t remember any cavern, ” Penny said, frowning at her first rubbing and trying a second with a slightly different technique.

Nancy described the opening and the area as well as she could, but there was no spark of recognition in the green eyes. A third and a fourth rubbing were done as they all watched. Finally Penny straightened up and handed the fifth one to Nancy. “I think that’s the best I can get, ” she said.

“Don’t you know anything about the cavern? ” George asked Penny.

“I remember a kind of small opening along there, but nothing big enough for even a rowboat except at low tide, ” Penny replied, then smiled. “Of course, it could have opened up during some of the storms. My grandparents wrote that there were a lot of cliff cave-ins after the big storm they had this spring. Maybe it was a large cavern with a very small entrance till the outer rock face broke away.”

Nancy nodded. “We’ll have to go down there tomorrow and look. I’m sure it’s wide enough for a boat, and the water was deep, too. When I slid off the ledge, I couldn’t touch bottom. I had to swim back out.”

“Do you have any idea what these lines could mean, Penny? ” Carson Drew asked, turning the rubbing first one way, then another.

“They don’t look like any paths I’ve ever seen, ” Penny answered, sipping her cocoa and taking one of the cookies they’d thawed out that morning. “In fact, the only areas of the island wide enough to have paths like that are right here at the resort and the village area. The rest of it is just long and skinny.”

Nancy picked up the tiny squiggling mass of marks and compared them to the broken anchor in the medallion. There was a tiny upside down V on the anchor, and after a moment, she saw the same mark in the midst of the rubbing. Matching one to the other, she compared them and felt her heartbeat quicken.

“It’s the cavern! ” she shouted. “It has to be the cavern.”

“What has to be the cavern? ” Mr. Drew asked, setting his cup down and bending over the tracing and the disk with her.

“This, ” Nancy answered, indicating what looked like a tiny equal sign on one side of the rubbing. “See how the lines seem to radiate from that point? ”

“You think this is a map of caverns under the resort? ” Carson Drew gasped, following her thinking at once.

Nancy nodded, then looked at Penny. “Could it be? ” she asked.

“A lot of these islands are honeycombed with caves and caverns, ” she began, “but I—

A loud crash stopped them all. Nancy looked around, suddenly afraid that the men had returned and might now be coming to take the medallion and the secret she’d just discovered. However, the racket continued and Penny quickly identified it as a shutter blowing in the wind.

“I think we should close the shutters over the small windows, ” she said. “This is going to be a bad storm.”

“I'll help you, ” George said before Nancy could offer. “You keep looking at that map, Nancy. Maybe you can find some more clues.”

“What’s this? ” Mr. Drew asked, using a pencil tip to indicate another equal sign on the opposite side of the marks.

“Another entrance? ” Nancy gasped. “But where? ”

They studied the map in silence for several seconds, comparing it to the broken anchor design of the medallion and their own rather sketchy mental maps of the island. “As near as I can figure, it should be somewhere near the generator building, ” her father said after several minutes.

Penny and George came in, smoothing down their hair and smiling. “Everything is secure for the moment.” George reported, “but that’s not saying how long the wind will leave it that way. We were even thinking of boarding up the big windows to protect them.”

“Penny, do you know of any caves in the area near the generator building? ” Nancy asked, her mind on the puzzle, not the approaching storm.

“The Singing Rocks, ” Penny answered at once. “I used to love them when the wind was right, but my grandparents wouldn’t let me spend much time over there. They said the caves were dangerous.”

“Do you think we could go look? ” Nancy asked.

“Now? ” Penny gasped.

Nancy nodded, not sure why she suddenly felt a sense of urgency. There was something about the caverns, something more important than the treasure, yet she had no idea what it was. “I really think we should, ” was all she could say.

“We’ll need flashlights and maybe a lantern, ” her father said, looking skeptical.

Penny brought flashlights for everyone and two lanterns, matches, and even a ball of twine. “We can use this to leave a trail, ” she explained. “I have a friend who is into exploring caves and he always does that so he can find his way back out.”

“Beats a trail of bread crumbs, ” George quipped as they let themselves out into the wind-torn night and followed Penny along the road to the small hump that was the generator building.

Finding the entrance of the cave proved difficult. Nancy sensed that the others thought she was behaving foolishly, but something kept her from postponing the search till morning. Something told her to keep looking, to go into the maze that must spread beneath the lovely hill on which the resort had been built.

“Here we go, ” Penny shouted at last, her words snatched away by the wet wind that harassed them seemingly from every side. “This is the biggest cave, I think. Anyway, it’s the only one I’ve been in. Hear the singing? ”

Nancy gasped as the whistling and humming filled the air around her. It was a sad sound, lost and lonely, speaking of storms and abandonment; yet it was beautiful, too. She could almost imagine people being haunted by the wind’s music.

“Now what? ” George asked as they moved well back in the cave, out of the wind and away from the fullest swell of its singing.

Nancy took the rubbing from her pocket and trained the flashlight’s beam on it. “If we’re here, ” she began, tracing the spiraling lines with her fingernail, “this line seems to lead toward the deepest tangle of caves or tunnels.” “Don’t forget the twine, ” Mr. Drew counseled. “I don’t really want to be lost down here tonight, not with that storm blowing in.”

“I’ll tie the end around that, ” Penny agreed, pointing to a small pillar of stone that rose from the cave floor to a height of about two feet.

Nancy started along the cavern, finding it fairly easy going since the ceiling was high and the floor relatively smooth. She tried to match the curves and turns of the rocky hollow with those on the medallion, but the light was too poor, and as they moved deeper, there were other openings off the main tunnel.

“Do you think this goes clear down to the cavern you were in? ” George asked after what seemed a long period of silence.

“I wish I knew, ” Nancy admitted.

“We’re going to have to stop pretty soon, ” Penny called from her place at the rear of the group. “My string is almost gone.”

“Oh, no, ” Nancy muttered, her sense of urgency growing rather than lessening as she moved through the narrowing tunnel. The walls were growing damp now and the ground was somewhat slippery beneath her feet, yet she was sure that something important waited just ahead.

“That’s it, ” Penny called.

“I really think we should turn back, ” Carson Drew said. “We can leave the string in place and bring more tomorrow. That way we can explore the side tunnels and—”

Nancy clutched his arm, stopping his words as a distant sound reached her ears.

“What is it, Nancy? ” he whispered.

Nancy listened, waiting for it to come again, but the silence was broken only by the dripping of the seeping walls.

“Did you hear something? ” George asked, coming forward to join Nancy and her father. “What was it? ”

Nancy looked at them, her eyes wide with anxiety. “I think I heard a call for help! ”