Pieces of Eight

SEARCHING FOR PIRATE TREASURE IN Cocos ISLAND--Capt. Malcolm Campbell --Stokes ($2).

Many a buried treasure is still waiting to be found. Some scholars think Darius III of Persia cached a still-undiscovered gold hoard worth over $120,000,000.

Some people say they know where to find 25,000 in silver buried on Long Island, say it would take only two weeks, cost only $500. In Tobermory Bay, off the :est coast of Scotland, dredging still goes on for the lost treasure of the Armada galleon Florencia. On Oak Island, Nova Scotia, a treasure was actually discovered in a 153-ft. shaft which, promptly flooded, defied all attempts to drain it. Last fortnight Inventor Simon Lake was in the newspapers with an elaborate plan and a ong steel tube to salvage the millions hat went down in the purser's strong room in the Lusitania.

Motor-Racer Capt. Malcolm Campbell thought it would be fun to look for buried treasure. First he thought he would try the Salvage Islands, found out just in time he had been forestalled. Then he decided on Cocos Island.* Capt. Campbell says there are three separate treasures on the island, estimates their combined value at -L-12,000,000, calls them "the richest and most authentic pirates' treasures in the world."

Campbell collected volunteers. His stout friend Lee Guinness lent a yacht. Unfortunately the yacht had been sold, had to be returned to its purchaser by a certain date, so they had only one week actually on Cocos to find the treasure. But Capt. Campbell had very specific clues, thought a week would do it. Cocos. 400 mi. off the Colombian coast of South America, is a small island (six nautical miles each way) but mountainous, covered with dense undergrowth. The clue, naturally not divulged, was supposed to lead to a large rock which formed the door of the treasure cave.

The clue failed to work. They got tangled in the underbrush. They fell down the mountainous hillsides. It was very hot. ''Millions of beastly little insects" bit them, and their bites "stung and irritated like the deuce." Soon their time was up; baffled but undaunted they went back to England. "One of these days," says Capt. Campbell, in spite of this setback and in spite of the known failure of other Cocos Island treasure-seekers, he will try again.

* In October Castaways Elmer Palliser, Paul Stachwick and Gordon Brawner were rescued from a six-month stay on Cocos Island, would not say if they had been looking for pirate gold, were under contract for their story to American Magazine.

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