The daily Alaskan., 1904-04-05
CHANGERS ISLAND
,nvrIrbt l90s, by e. B. Lewls.l

lean named Grangef' lie uAu Oeth' dC- cording to his statements, passenger on a vessel cast away in the China sea, and all hands had been lost save him self.
 A part of the island was sterile and rocky. and amid the rocks he one day found a pirates cave. There were, he contended in the most earnest way, thousands of pieces of silk and other costly goods, boxes of pearls, chests of jewelry and kegs of coin. He roughly estimated his find to be worth S2,OOO,- 900.
 What the American wanted was to charter a ship to fetch away the treas ure, and when he learned that I was a navigator he made me an offer that closed with at once. The man seemed to have plenty of money, and in the course of a week he got hold of a schooner which was for charter and ten days later she had been fitted out for the voyage.
 We cleared for a port in Japan and got away with a fair wind, and dur Ing the two weeks 1t took us to work up to the locality of Grangers island all went we'll with us He had located the place on the chart as being about fifty miles to the east of the island of Hainan.
 Granger had been swept ashore at night. He had landed on one side of the island and been taken off on the other. He claimed to remember cer- tain landmarks, however, and fol ten days we threaded the channels of the islands, and he took a close look at every one. It was on the twelfth day of our search that we came to his island. and the finding Sf it gave us all a queer feeling. There were no such landmarks as he described, nor was the lay of the land at all according to his drawings. It was a totally diff fereut island in size and appearance, and yet he stoutly maintained that 1t was the one we had come in search of. and that there could be no mis- take. We carried deep water to within half mile of the beach, and then the schooner was anchored, and we pulled ashore in the yawl.
 We landed on sandy beach, and Granger headed into the forest without hesitation. After walking for half an hour he said that he recognized certain landmarks, and that the treasure was not far away. Presently he remarked that something had worked into his shoe, and, telling us to keep right on till we reached the rocks, be sat down and began unlacinG his shoe. We left him behind in moment, as the bushes were thick. and though we walked for half a mile we found no rocks. In go- ing a distance of less than a mile We struck the other shore.
 Granger had not yet joined us, and after waiting fifteen minutes l sent one of the men back to ascertain the cause of the delay. Failing to find the man. the sailor kept on to the beach, and then returned to us with the an- uouncrmpnt that the yawl was missing, All my suspicious were now aroused. and we broke into run as we made for tEc spot where the boat had been Ipachcd and left to care for herself. We got to the shore to see her along side the anchored schooner. Two men had been left aboard, and as we stood there We saw Granger drive them into the yuwl at the point of a pistol and command them to row for the shore. We yelled and shouted and demanded explanations, but he gave us no at tention whatever.
 We'll. there we were, eight of us, ashore on small island and an insane man in possession of the schooner. He had firearms. and we had only our knives. It would have been no trick at ull to go off to him in the boat, but with his pistols he could have shot every one of us before man could haze reached the deck.
 Granger's conduct showed that he was out of his mind. He could not run away with the craft, but what we fear ed was that he would scuttle her or set her on fire. We made our beds on the sands that night and slept sOundly enough, and when morning came and Granger still refused to answer our halls we made up our minds that some thing must be done before the day was out.
 After two or three hours of watching on our part and having seen no stir aboard one of the men climbed q palm tree and from height of fifty feet got fair view of the schoOner's deck, Nothing was to be seen of Granger. He might be watching us from the galley or the cabin, but we must take our chances of that.
 It was soon after noon that we all got into the boat to scull quietly down on the anchored craft, each man being armed with a club. Had he appeared We were prepared to put back at once, but foot by foot we approached the schooner without any alarm, and at length we were alongside. Five min utes after getting aboard We found him hanging by the neck in the cabin, and the state of the body proved that he had been dead for hours.
 Who was Granger? He had paid a round price to charter the vessel, and yet he had come on a fools errand. He could never have been wrecked as