1. THE TREASURE
Chapter – 1
Round the Garden
In this story I shall tell you how we found a long gone treasure in our garden. The way I see it, we were very unlucky because it was the (rotten) fruit of our labors, also we needed the money as our father could not afford to send us to school. It all began a dark night when we were playing charades, an interruption occurred. “Alright children, go to bed now, it’s time to sleep.” cried out mother as we all, or, in other words, Jack, Martha, Bill and me, Joe stood up yawning from our game of charades and went to our respective rooms without exchanging a word. Probably this is why father is on our case of behavior. Sure enough, he called up to us to remind us to at least say goodnight. All he got in return were a few muffled yawns.
The next day was rainy and we were all holding a council as to what to do that day. It was not my idea to look for treasure it was Bill’s. After all he was the only one interested in archeology, the rest of us were sure that there were no such thing as buried treasures nowadays. We all had our own points of specialization, I and Martha was interested in cryptographs, while Jack was regarded as the person with the highest common sense. Bill began to insist that there was a buried treasure in our garden (I have made a point of highlighting the word ‘was’); he seemed to be like a hurricane gathering momentum, gradually, but visibly. We told him to go and look for a treasure while we others played something jolly. So the hurricane adamantly released all its force on finding a treasure.
We were continuing our interrupted game of charades when we had played for about an hour or two when the hurricane (now a breeze) blowed in, claiming that he had found a clue which shall lead him to the so called ‘treasure’. We gaped after him as he began his story. He said (giggling) “Ha ha ha. I have not found anything related to treasure, all I have found in my search of the house is that a few of the boards in the basement creak, the cupboard in the attic is forever locked and the sink in the yard doesn’t work.” He burst out laughing again as we pinned him to the ground and pummeled him.
Martha suggested that we should capture a rare and exotic animal and sell it in the market to make money. This claim too was met with much hesitation from the others. Finally we came to an agreement, each of would take a turn at making money with the others help. Martha’s idea was the first to be tested. Under the guidance of Martha we all set to work, capturing (or failing to capture) anything that moved. After 3 hours of searching, we all were heartily sick of the whole affair and we gathered around to examine what we had collected so far. Jack had captured a lizard and a cockroach. Bill had stumbled upon a colony of ants and all of the 3 hours he had been collecting ants of which he had about a hundred. I had collected 2 ladybugs and a bright shining bug. Martha told me to throw it away because it could be poisonous. Martha herself had been successful to capture 2 butterflies. After a brief discussion we all decided that these finds were not worth anything and we let our prisoners go. After this little jaunt it was time to go to bed.
Chapter – 2
The Circus
Today it was Jack’s turn to have a go at making money. He had obviously been thinking about it overnight for he brought up the topic before anyone else could think about it. He suggested that we again capture animals, but instead of selling them we should train them to tricks and make money by displaying them publicly, rareness and exoticness will not be a property the animals would need for it. We again set off reluctantly to capture creatures.
After 2 hours we again gathered and pooled our finds. Martha had been able to secure a caterpillar, Bill and Jack each had got 2 lizards. I had stumbled upon a lot of bugs again and was overflowing with them. We all began to respectively train our ‘finds’. After 1 hour I was bitten with 3 bugs and was beginning to wonder if I would survive to see tomorrow. Martha’s caterpillar had run away and she was searching for it vain through the undergrowth. Jack and Bill’s lizards were not too eager to stand on their hind feet or roll on their bellies either. Now it was finally my turn to think of something. I after a lot of hesitation decided that we should save up our money. To be quite honest I had been saving up since I was a child of 3 – 4 years. Yeah, I know the most stupid idea of all. The others stared at me as if I was mad, well I couldn’t blame them, after all I was the only sincere one. Suddenly we were hailed by a voice on the road,”Hey Jonasons, playing a game? Want me to join in?” We all groaned simultaneously. That has to be Uncle Rex, I murmured. His real name isn’t Rex, but Red. We nicknamed him Rex because of his red face and frog legs. He had gone away on a holiday and life had become much more merrier for us, but now he was back, oh gloom! Sure enough, in marched the Rex red face and all.
Chapter – 3
T – Rex (The Rex)
I suddenly had another idea, I spoke to the others in a whisper, “I think that we should melt the Rex by giving him false praise and somehow get him into giving money to us.” Not a bad idea, they all agreed. So I must take a little break from the story and say (I am not boasting) that I was the first who actually thought of an idea all the other offsprings of my same blood agreed with. I don’t know if they had forgotten the not-so-good idea which I cherished as my own, the save our money idea. Well, I hope they had forgotten or will begin to feel a little embarrassed, on my own. Now, ahem, back to the story. So, the Rex loomed over us like the mall looms over the ordinary street dog. Now it was time to put my plan into action. I said, “Wow uncle, your breath smells like, like peppermint.” Evidently as you might imagine, he wasn’t too pleased with the remark. He said, “Let’s cut out the chatter and play something!” Even though he is about 40 years old, he still behaves like a child to us, only. Otherwise his voice booms out of a loudspeaker (his mouth), to us he almost speaks like a girl. “Let’s play at horses, you will be the horse and we will be the gallant knight mounted on you.” Said Bill, with a brainwave. So, (he could never refuse to play a game) soon enough turn by turn each of us took a turn at old Rex’s back. Our game ended when I was seated on the Rex and shouting when father heard my voice and came to the window thinking that someone was hurt or something… So, the Rex, a bit purple in the face said goodnight and marched away. So, my idea was no good either. We had spent all our time softening him up and we forgot to strike while the iron was hot, which was hardened immediately by the circumstances of his departure.
Chapter – 4
The Hint
The next day I was somewhat depressed altogether. Perhaps it was the bitter failure and embarrassment which had occurred in the presence of a prehistoric animal whose name began with the 20th alphabet of the English grammatical sequence of certain letters beginning with ‘a’, followed by a small hyphen which precedes the word ‘Rex’. Anyway I was depressed. Today it was Bill’s turn to have a go at the previously mentioned task. He seemed to be in uproarious mood today owing to realization that today was the day when he was going to get his turn at doing something. He (as you might have guessed) again suggested, or rather, ordered to look for treasure. It might be observed by our gloomy faces all around that we all were sick and tired of treasure. He set us to work by reminding us that he did work for each of us in turn with his full capacity, so we were bound to do his share of (probably unsuccessful) suggestions. We all set to work in the basement first. Under the guidance of Bill we were all faithfully searching everywhere. Soon I uncovered a deep hole in the ground and put my hand in to see what was in it. As I put my hand in, I touched something hard and metallic in the hole. I drew my hand out and called the others breathlessly. They came soon and I told them about what I had discovered. Soon enough there ensued a long struggle between us to put our hand in the hole. After the aftermath, each of us put our hand in it; none of us bring it up due to lack of grip and extreme presence of excitement. I suddenly got an idea, I said, “You all know that the thing there was metallic, so most probably it would be magnetic too. So what about this, Martha has a small table magnet, we can tie a string to it and bring up the metal, hopefully it will be magnetic.” No one had any objections to my idea. Preparations were duly made and the metal brought up. I was a bit hopeful as to it being gold, but as gold isn’t magnetic, those hopes were shattered. It was a thin sheet of iron and as each of us examined it, we found nothing except Jack, who distinguished a number of small dots and commas. I have given the picture of their appearance here.
......,,,......,,,,,,,,,,,......,,,......,,......,,,......,,,......,,,,,,,,
......,,,,,,,,,,,,......,,,,,,,,,,,,......,,,,,,,,,,,,......,,,,,,,,,......
......,,,......,,,,,,,,,,,,......,,,......,,,......,,,......,,,......,,,......
As one might be observed to observe, it is some sort of a code and as me and Martha were the most specialized in that, we set to work decoding it. I will not tell you the time taken by me and Martha to decode it nor will I tell you the other (wrong) solutions either, but I will directly give you the solution- Step 1 Divide the code into 3 groups of 3x3 (i.e. 9 pieces each) blocks. Step 2 Now it should be distinctly visible, the letters ‘D’ in the first ‘I’ and ‘G’ in the other group(s). Even if you are not able to see it I have given you the answer – ‘DIG’.
Chapter – 5
Excitement
We all could hardly control our excitement the day I and Martha had decoded the code. We were all sitting at our breakfast tables, trying to think of eating instead of digging up the basement, boards and all. After a hasty and much not-admired-by-parents breakfast, we set of to the basement. We all had earlier decided that we should not mention this whole affair to our parents or any other grown-up person, for they might take the whole matter out of our hands. When we reached the basement, I realized that none of us exactly remember where the hole was owing to the lack of furniture (which would have made very good pointers to the location of the hole and also that the basement was very big and we had never explored all of it. We all panicked and crawled on all fours in order to accidently touch the rim of the hole. Jack suddenly got an idea; he remembered that Bill, when he had earlier gone to look for a treasure, he had mentioned that some of the boards creak. So all we had to do was to find the boards because they might be hollow underneath due to the hole and assuming that it was wide because the decoded code had told us to dig. Sure enough, when had all stamped about, trying to find the hole, we did find it.
We set to work (we had brought some small 20 cm shovels with us), in about 20 minutes, the boards near the hole fell in and there beheld the most stupendous sight a boy ever saw!
Chapter – 6
Our first find
When the boards fell in, we saw that there were about 200-250 old bronze coins scattered on beneath the big boards (we later found out that these were useless except for collections). But this wasn’t the valuable thing, for beneath the coins, lay an extremely thin sheet of some metal (which we all found later to be gold!), on this, a lot of letters were inscribed as following – ‘YMJHMTPNSLRJYFQFDFWIQTSLMFXNSNYMNIIJSYMJWJHNUJTKRFPNSLYMJZSXJJSXJJS’
At first as you might imagine, it looked like a different language to us, but as Jack thought, there were not many languages in the roman script, which this code was written on. So the gold sheet was immediately entrusted to me and Martha in order to break the ‘code’. This one code was so easy to crack that Martha did it in 10 minutes. I will now tell you how to decode it – You just have to move each letter ahead 5 times, in other words, ‘a” will become ‘F’ and ‘b’ will become ‘G’ etc … Here is the entire decoded message provided by me – ‘the choking metal a yard long has in it hidden the recipe of making the unseen seen’
Now this was another riddle at which we set our brains to work at. At least, we could cancel some of the possibilities in our mind as our house was very big and rambling while a part of our house was very new.
After some thinking, Jack suddenly got an idea, he said,” You now that the word ‘yard’ is used as a measurement as well as our front yard you know. As for the ‘choking metal’ part, it must mean something metallic on the yard which is stuck in some way. Now the ‘hidden recipe of making the unseen seen’, we will only find out when we find the ‘chocking metal’!”We all, as you might imagine, were very impressed with this idea of Jack’s. We set off for the yard.
Chapter – 7
Herbs
When we reached the yard, we all had at least spotted at least one thing of metal and very old. Bill set to work with an old sprinkler which had rusted. I had spotted some old metallic projections out of the brick wall which enclosed our house. As for Martha, I didn’t know what she was doing except that she was rummaging in the garden hedge. Jack was curiously examining the old sink mentioned earlier. After half-an-hour Jack gave a sudden shout and hailed us. We came running and falling in the short distance. He explained that he had opened the knob of the tap in the sink and many small balls had rolled out with a paper. We all fell upon the paper and we could hardly read what was written in the long struggle, but Jack (who was holding the paper) said it aloud, “Dilute 1, Crush 2, Melt 3, mix together.” Suddenly the struggle stopped and we were silent for a lot of time. Until Bill began to examine the 3 balls which had rolled out. He said, “These balls have numbers printed on them. One has a ‘1’ and the others have ‘2’ and ‘3’ respectively and they seem to be some sort of herbs”. As the meaning of the message slowly unfolded to us, we realized that we had to prepare a concoction made of the balls present. Suddenly a voice hailed us and an enormous figure casting its shadow down to us appeared. I ground my teeth for it was the Rex!
Jack hid the balls and the note in his pocket and we turned around with false smiles pasted on our faces. Why, why did he have to appear at the worst time? ” Hey uncle we were busy collecting some flowers and please don’t disturb us now” I lied. He didn’t seem to approve of the story. A frown crossed his face and he said,” So where are these flowers of yours. I’d like to smell some.” Busted! “We ... we didn’t find any yet.” said Martha with a burst of inspiration. He smiled. That’s why I think that he likes Martha (and hates me due to the circumstances of his departure last time). He went (or rather stampeded) away. We breathed a sigh of relief.
Soon enough we got a kettle for making our potion, some water, another pot, a hammer and a Bunsen burner without attracting any suspicion. We put the ball ‘3’ into the kettle and lighted the burner under it. We crushed the ball ‘2’; put ball’1’ into the pot added water and stirred. In the end, we put the entire concoction into the kettle. While it processed, we thought what to do with it when it was done. As usual, Jack had a suggestion,” You know that only two sorts of code written on metals have been ‘presented’ to us - one on the iron plate and one on the gold plate. I suggest that we put some quantity of it on both the plates and see if we can make some sort of ‘invisible’ writing on it ‘visible’ which can explain the ‘hidden recipe of making the unseen seen’.” We were stupefied (again) by this brainwave of Jack’s.
Chapter – 8
Riddles, Riddles, Codes…
When the concoction was prepared (it smelt like ripened corn mashed with an old sock) it was immediately taken to the iron and gold plates respectively. Nothing happened to the iron plate (we tried both sides), but, in the gold plate, some dark brown letters began to appear! Here’s what appeared – ‘The rusty thing with, squares filled with tar and air’ At this, Bill could be heard to exclaim,” Why can’t they say, ‘Here’s the treasure, spend it wisely.’?” Actually this riddle was very easy, we all solved it easily. It Just meant the other plate, the iron plate, with squares filled with ‘tar’ and ‘air’. We ran (or rather stumbled) to the iron plate which we had left in the yard. When we had reached it, some brown letters were formed on it, as follows – ‘Up, up and the lock ran away with the key’ at this we all were stumped, even Jack couldn’t solve this.
Now it was time for lunch (we only had one meal and one breakfast in a day, a hearty meal). What with treasures and locks running away with keys, I could hardly eat much. The others looked the same. When we all met again, Bill was red in the face, maybe due to the hope of the rest of us that he had got an idea about the riddle. So, I said,” Spit it out Bill, what have you got to say?” Bill almost shouted ,” I think I have deciphered the riddle, the part of the lock running away with the key should mean that the lock and the key are near each other, you know, for example, a man elopes with a girl, the man should be near the girl. And for the ‘up, up’ bit, it must mean the attic of this house.” Martha thumped him on the back and said,” Well done Bill, well done.”
Chapter – 9
Locked and Unlocked
We all ran up to the attic. On our way there, Bill had said that when he had first tried to look for a treasure, he had said that the sink didn’t work, the boards creak and the cupboard is locked forever. So far only the sink and the boards had been of any use to us, now it was turn of the cupboard to be helpful. There was an old, big and rusty lock on the cupboard. We all immediately set about trying to find the key of the lock. Martha found it, this is one of the reasons I say that girls are good at finding things, it was in the keyhole of the lock itself! Funny no one noticed it there. It all four of us to turn the rusted key. Suddenly the lock sprang open and the floor gave way beneath us! We were falling! We fell about 3 meters and landed on a hard piece of ground. Martha was unconscious and the rest of us were in very bad shape. I got up on my feet just as the trapdoor which had made us fall snapped shut, however much I pulled it, it would not open. Martha was conscious now. We all tugged and pulled till the handle gave way and we were locked! We all sat about gloomily for we all now thought that we were going to perish in there. Jack’s eyes suddenly fell upon a piece of gold. He exclaimed,” Hey, look at this, it’s a piece of gold, which means that a treasure once stood here. Now it’s gone.” We all set morosely together for there was nowhere to go. Suddenly Bill discovered that he had a flashlight in his pocket. He turned it on and we all gasped, for there was a sort of corridor going away from where we were imprisoned.
We all stumbled along in the dark because Bill was first and had the flashlight. Bill suddenly stopped he said,” Hey there’s a fork here, where do we go now?”Jack got an idea and said,” does on corridor go up and one down? Bill cried out affirmatively. “So go up because we are already pretty high in the house and how much higher can we go? If we went down, then there it might get under the ground where catacombs might be present and we would get lost in them very quickly.” This seemed logical, so we went up. Soon Bill cried out that he had reached an opening in the chimney. Actually this was a problem (the descanting wasn’t a problem because the chimney had brick jutting out which we could use as steps) because mother had lighted a fire in the fireplace and we couldn’t descent with the fire on. So we waited until the dim glow of the fire underneath us died out in the night. I was worried because mother and father might be worried about us. We all descended down in the fireplace with the little piece of gold which Jack had spotted. We woke (a very worried) mother and father, and told them our story.
THE (HAPPY) END
