Gavin noted that here the orange tree rows were alternated with rows of strawberry plants.
"That was an idea of Milo's, too," she explained. "It's 'intercrop' farming. And he's done splendidly with it so far. He thinks the eel-worm doesn't get at the berry plants as readily here as in the open, but he's not sure of that yet. He's had to plant cowpeas on one plot to get rid of it."
"The experiment of intercropping orange trees with strawberries isn't new," said Brice thoughtlessly. "When the plants are as thick as he's got them here, it's liable to harm the trees in the course of time. Two rows, at most, are all you ought to plant between the tree-ranks. And that mulch over there is a regular Happy Home for crickets. If Standish isn't careful—"
The girl was staring up at him in astonishment. And Gavin was aware for the first time that he had been thinking aloud.
"You see," he expounded, smiling vaingloriously down at her. "I amused myself at the Miami library Saturday by browsing over a sheaf of Government plant reports. And those two solid facts stuck in my memory. Now, won't I be an invaluable aide to your brother if I can remember everything else as easily?"
Still puzzled she continued to look up at him.
"It's queer that a man who has just come down here should remember such a technical thing," said she. "And yesterday you warned me against letting Bobby Burns wander in the palmetto scrub, for fear of rattlesnakes. I—"
"That deep mystery is also easy to solve," he said. "In the smoker on the way South several men were telling how they had lost valuable hunting dogs, hereabouts from rattlesnakes. I like Bobby Burns. So I passed along the warning. What are those queer trees?" he asked shifting the dangerous subject. "I mean the ones that look like a mixture of horse-chestnut and—"
"Avocadoes," she answered, interest in the task of farm guide making her forget her momentary bewilderment at his scraps of local knowledge. "They're one of our best crops. Sometimes a single avocado will sell in open market here for as much as forty cents. There's money in them, nearly always. Good money. And the spoiled ones are great for the pigs. Then the Northern market for them—"
"Avocadoes?" he repeated curiously. "There! Now you see how much I know about Florida. From this distance, their fruits look to me exactly like alligator pears or—"
Again, her laugh interrupted him.
"If only you'd happened to look in one or two more government reports at the library," she teased, "you'd know that an avocado and an alligator pear are the same thing."
"Anyhow," he boasted, picking up a gold-red fruit at the edge of a smaller grove they were passing, "anyhow, I know what this is, without being told. I've seen them a hundred times in the New York markets. This is a tangerine."
"In that statement," she made judicial reply, "you've made only two mistakes. You're improving. In the first place, that isn't a tangerine, though it looks like one—or would if it were half as large. That's a king orange. In the second place, you've hardly ever seen them in any New York market. They don't transport as well as some other varieties. And very few of them go North. Northerners don't know them. And they miss a lot. For the king is the most delicious orange in the world. And it's the trickiest and hardest for us to raise. See, the skin comes off it as easily as off of a tangerine, and it breaks apart in the same way. The rust mite has gotten at this one. See that russet patch on one side of it? You'll often see it on oranges that go North. Sometimes they're russet all over. That means the rust mite has dried the oil in the skin and made the skin thinner and more brittle. It doesn't seem to injure the taste. But it—"
"There's a grand tree over toward the road," he said, his attention wandering. "It must be nearly a century old. It has the most magnificent sweep of foliage I've seen since I left the North. What is it?"
"That?" she queried. "Oh, that's another of Milo's prides. It's an Egyptian fig. 'Ficus Something or other.' Isn't it beautiful? But it isn't a century old. It isn't more than fifteen years old. It grows tremendously fast. Milo has been trying to interest the authorities in Miami in planting lines of them for shade trees and having them in the city parks. There's nothing more beautiful. And nothing, except the Australian pine, grows faster…. There's another of Milo's delights," she continued, pointing to the left. "It's ever so old. The natives around here call it 'The Ghost Tree.'"
They had been moving in a wide circle through the groves. Now, approaching the house from the other side, they came out on a grassy little space on the far edge of the lawn. In the center of the space stood a giant live-oak towering as high as a royal palm, and with mighty boughs stretching out in vast symmetry on every side. It was a true forest monarch. And like many another monarch, it was only a ghost of its earlier grandeur.
For from every outflung limb and from every tiniest twig hung plumes and festoons and stalactites of gray moss. For perhaps a hundred years the moss had been growing thus on the giant oak, first in little bunches and trailers that were scarce noticeable and which affected the forest monarch's appearance and health not at all.
Then year by year the moss had grown and had taken toll of the bark and sap. At last it had killed the tree on which it fed. And its own source of life being withdrawn itself had died.
So, now the gaunt tree with its symmetrical spread of branches stood lifeless. And its tons of low-hanging festooned moss was as void of life as was the tree they had killed. Tinder-dry it hung there, a beauteous, tragic, spectacle, towering high above the surrounding flatness of landscape, visible for miles by land and by sea.
Fifty yards beyond a high interlaced hedge of vines bordered the clearing. Toward this Gavin bent his idle steps, wondering vaguely how such a lofty and impenetrable wall of vine was supported from the far side.
Claire had stopped to call off Bobby Burns who had discovered a highly dramatic toad-hole on the edge of the lawn and who was digging enthusiastically at it with both flying fore-feet, casting up a cloud of dirt and cutting into the sward's neat border. Thus she was not aware of Brice's diversion.
Gavin approached the twenty-foot high vine-wall, and thrust his hand in through the thick tangle of leaves. His sensitive fingers touched the surface of a paling. Running his hand along, he found that the entire vine palisade was, apparently, backed by a twenty-foot stockade of solid boards. If there were a gate, it was hidden from view. It was then that Claire, looking up from luring Bobby Burns away from the toad-hole, saw whither Gavin had strayed.
"Oh," she called, hurrying toward him. "That's the enclosure Milo made years ago for his experiments in evolving the 'perfect orange' he is so daft about. He's always afraid some other grower may take advantage of his experiments. So he keeps that little grove walled in. He's never even let me go in there. So—"
A deafening salvo of barks from Bobby Burns broke in on her recital. The collie had caught sight of Simon Cameron mincing along the lawn, and he gave rapturous and rackety chase. Claire ran after them crying out to the dog to desist. And Gavin took advantage of the brief instant when her back was turned to him.
His fingers in slipping along the wall had encountered a rotting spot at the juncture of two palings. Pushing sharply against this he forced a fragment of the decayed wood inward. Then, quickly, he shoved aside the tangle of vines and applied one eye to the tiny aperture.
"A secret orange-grove, eh?" he gasped, under his breath. "Good Lord! Was she lying to me or did she actually believe him when he lied to her?"
To south and to southeast, the green-blue transparent sea. Within sight of the land, the purple-blue Gulf Stream,—a mystic warm river a half mile deep, thousands of miles long, traveling ever at a speed of eighty miles a day through the depth of the ocean, as distinct and as unswerving from its chosen course as though it flowed through land instead of through shifting water.
Studded in the milk-tepid nearer waters, innumerable coral islets and keys and ridges. Then the coral-built tongue of land running north without so much as a respectably large hillock to break its flatness. Along the coast the tawny beaches, the mangrove-swamps, the rich farms, the groves, the towns, the villages, the estates, snow-white Miami, the nation's southernmost big city.
Back of this foreshore, countless miles of waving grass, rooted in water, and with a stray clump of low trees, dotted here and there, the Everglades, a vast marsh that runs north to the inland sea known as Lake Okeechobee. Then the solid sandy ground of the main State.
Along the foreshore, and running inland, miles of sand-barren scattered with gaunt pines and floored with harsh palmetto-scrub. Strewn here and there through this sandy expanse lovely oases, locally known as "hammocks", usually in hollows, and consisting of several acres of rich soil where tropic and sub-tropic trees grow as luxuriantly as in a jungle, where undergrowth and vine run riot, where orchid and airplant and wondrous-hued flowers blaze through the green gloom of interlaced foliage.
This, roughly, is a bird's-eye glimpse of the southeastern stretch of Florida, a region of glory and glow and fortunes and mystery. (Which is perhaps a momentary digression from our story, but will serve, for all that to fix its setting more vividly in the eyes of the mind.)
When Milo Standish came back from Miami that noon he professed much loud-voiced joy at seeing his guest so well recovered from the night's mishaps. At lunch, he suggested:
"I am running across to Roustabout Key this afternoon, in the launch. It's an island I bought a few years ago. I keep a handful of men there to work a grapefruit grove and a mango orchard and some other stuff I've planted. I go over to it every week or so. Would you care to come along?"
He spoke with elaborate carelessness, and looked anywhere except at his guest. Gavin, not appearing to note the concealed nervousness of his host's voice and manner, gave eager consent. And at two o'clock they set forth.
They drove in Milo's car a half-mile or more to southwestward along the road which fronted the house. Then turning into a sand byway which ran crookedly at right angles to it and which skirted the southern end of the mangrove-swamp, they headed for the sea. Another half-mile brought them to a handkerchief-sized beach, much like that on the other side of the swamp, where Gavin had found the hidden path. Here, on mangrove-wood piles, was a short pier with a boathouse at its far end.
"I keep my launch and my fishing-boats in there," explained Milo, as he climbed out of the car. "If it wasn't for that pesky swamp. I could have had this pier directly back of my house, and saved a lot of distance."
"Why not cut a road through the swamp?" suggested Brice, following him along the pier.
Again Standish gave vent to that great laugh of his—a laugh outwardly jovial, but as hollow as a shell.
"Young man," said he, "if ever you try to cut your way through an East Coast mangrove-swamp you'll find out just how silly that question is. A swamp like that might as well be a quick-sand, for all the chance a mortal has of traveling through it."
Gavin made no reply. Again, he was visualizing the cleverly engineered path from the beach-edge to Milo's lawn. And he recalled Claire's unspoken plea that he say nothing to Standish about his chance discovery of it. He remembered, too, the night-song of the mocking bird from the direction of that path, and the advent of Rodney Hade from it.
Milo had unlocked the boat-house, and was at work over a fifteen-foot steel motorboat which was slung on chains above the water. A winch and well-constructed pulleys-and-chains made simple the labor of launching it in so quiet a sea.
Out they fared into the gleaming sunlit waters of the bay. Far to eastward gleamed the white city of Miami, and nearer, across the bay from it the emerald stretch of key with Cape Florida and the old Spanish Light on its southern point and the exquisite "golden house" of Mashta shining midway down its shoreline. Miles to eastward gleamed the gray viaduct, the grain elevator outlines of the Flamingo rising yellow above a fire-blue sea.
"I used to hear great stories about this region years ago," volunteered Brice as the launch danced over the transparent water past Ragged Keys and bore southward. "I heard them from a chap who used to winter hereabouts. It was he who first interested me in Florida. He says these keys and inlets and changing channels used to be the haunts of Spanish Main pirates."
"They were," said Milo. "The pirates knew these waters. The average merchant skipper didn't. They'd build signal flares on the keys to lure ships onto the rocks, and then loot them. At least that was the everyday (or everynight) amusement of their less venturesome members and their women and children. The more adventurous used to overhaul vessels skirting the coast to and from Cuba and Central America. They'd sally out from their hiding-places among the keys and lie in wait for the merchant-ships. If the prey was weak enough they'd board and ransack her and make her crew walk the plank,—(that's how Aaron Burr's beautiful daughter is supposed to have died on her way North, you know,)—and if the ship showed fight or seemed too tough a handful the pirates hit on a surer way of capture. They'd turn tail and run. The merchant ship would give chase, for there were fat rewards out for the capture of the sea rovers, you know. The pirates would head for some strip of water that seemed perfectly navigable. The ship would follow, and would pile up on a sunken reef that the pirates had just steered around."
"Clever work!"
"They were a thrifty and shrewd crowd those old-time black-flaggers. After they were wiped out the wreckers still reaped their fine harvest by signaling ships onto reefs at night. Their descendants live down among some of the keys still. We call them 'conchs,' around here. They're an illiterate, uncivilized, furtive, eccentric lot. And they pick up some sort of living off wrecked ships and off what cargo washes ashore from the wrecks. A missionary went down there and tried to convert them. He found the 'conch' children already had religion enough to pray every night. 'Lord, send a wreck!' The conchs gather a lot of plunder every year. They—"
"Do they sell it or claim salvage on it, or—?"
"Not they. That would call for too much brain and education and for mixing with civilization. They wear it, or put it to any crazy use they can think of. For instance fifty sewing-machines were in the cargo of a tramp steamer bound from Charleston to Brazil one winter. She ran ashore a few miles south of here. The conchs got busy with the plunder. The cargo was a veritable godsend to them. They used the sewing machines as anchors for their boats. Another time a box of shoes washed ashore. They were left-hand shoes, all of them. The right-hand box must have landed somewhere else. And a hundred conchs blossomed forth with brand new shoes. They could wear the left shoe, of course, with no special bother. And they slit down the vamp of the shoe they put on the right foot, so their toes could stick out and not be cramped. A good many people think they still lure ships ashore by flares. But the lighthouse service has pretty well put a stop to that."
"This chap I was speaking about,—the fellow who told me so much about this region," said Gavin, "told me there is supposed to be pirate gold buried in more than one of these keys."
"Rot!" snorted Milo with needless vehemence. "All poppycock! Look at it sanely for a minute, and you'll see that all the yarns of pirate gold-including Captain Kidd's—are rank idiocy. In the first place, the pirates never seized any such fabulous sums of money as they were credited with. The bullion ships always went under heavy man-o'-war escort. When pirates looted some fairly rich merchant ship there were dozens of men to divide the plunder among. And they sailed to the nearest safe port to blow it all on an orgy. Of course, once in a blue moon they buried or hid the valuables they got from one ship while they went after another. And if they chanced to sink or be captured and hanged during such a raid the treasure remained hidden. If they survived, they blew it. That's the one off-chance of there ever being any buried pirate treasure. And there would be precious little of it. at that. A few hundred dollars worth at most. No, Brice. this everlasting legend of buried treasure is fine in a sea-yarn. But in real life it's buncombe."
"But this same man told me there were stories of bullion ships and even more modern vessels carrying a money cargo that sank in these waters, during storms or from running into reefs," pursued Brice, with no great show of interest, as he leaned far overside for a second glimpse at a school of five-foot baracuda which lay basking on the snowy surface of the sand. two fathoms below the boat. "That, at least, sounds probable. doesn't it?"
"No," snapped Milo flushing angrily and his brow creasing, "it doesn't. These water are traversed every year by thousands of craft of all sizes. The water is crystal clear. Any wrecked ship could be seen at the bottom. Why, everybody has seen the hull of that old tramp steamer a few miles above here. It's in deep water, at that. What chance—?"
"Yet there are hundreds of such stories afloat," persisted Brice. "And there are more yarns of buried treasure among the keys than there are keys. For instance didn't old Caesar, the negro pirate, hang out here, somewhere?"
Milo laughed again, this time with a maddening tolerance.
"Oh, Caesar?" said he. "To be sure. He's as much a legend of these keys as Lafitte is of New Orleans. He was an escaped slave, who scraped together a dozen fellow-ruffians, black and white and yellow—mostly yellow—about a century ago, and stole a long boat or a broken-down sloop, and started in at the trade of pirate. He didn't last long. And there's no proof he ever had any special success. But he's the sea-hero of the conchs. They've named a key and a so-called creek after him, and in my father's time there used to be an old iron ring in a bowlder known as 'Caesar's Rock.' The ring was probably put there by oystermen. But the conchs insisted Caesar used to tie up there. Then there's the 'Pirates' Punchbowl,' off Coconut Grove. Caesar is supposed to have dug that. He—"
An enormous sailfish—dazzlingly metallic blue and silver—broke from the calm water just ahead, and whirled high in air, smiting the bay again with a splash that sounded like a gunshot.
"That fellow must have been close to seven feet long," commented Milo as the two men watched the churned water where the fish had struck. "He's the kind you see when you aren't trolling. He's after a school of ballyhoos or mossbunkers …. There's Roustabout Key just ahead," he finished as their launch rounded an outcrop of rock and came in view of a mile-long wooded island a bare thousand yards off the weather bow.
A mangrove fringe covered the shoreline, two thirds of the way around the key. At the eastern end was a strip of snowy beach backed by an irregular line of coconut palms, and with a very respectable dock in the foreground. From the pier a wooden path led upward through the scattering double row of palms to a corrugated iron hut, with smaller huts and outbuildings half seen through the foliage-vistas beyond.
"I've some fairly good mango trees back yonder," said Standish as he brought the launch alongside the dock's wabbly float, "and grapefruit that is paying big dividends at last. The mangoes won't be ripe till June, of course. But they're sold already, to the last half-bushel of them."
"'Futures,' eh?" suggested Gavin.
"'Futures,'" assented Milo. "And 'futures' in farming are just about as certain as in Wall Street. There's a mighty gamble to this farm-game."
"How long have—?" began Gavin, then stopped short and stared.
One or two negro laborers had drifted down toward the dock, as the boat warped in at the float. Now, from the corrugated iron hut appeared a white man, who, at sight of the boat, broke into a limping run and was in time to catch the line which Milo flung at him.
The man was sparsely and sketchily clad. At first, his tanned face seemed to be of several different colors and to have been modeled by some bungling caricaturist. Yet, despite this eccentricity of aspect, something about the obsequiously hurrying man struck Brice as familiar. And, all at once, he recognized him.
This was the big beach comber with whom Gavin had fought barely twenty-four hours earlier. The man bore bruises and swellings a-plenty on his rugged features, where Brice's whalebone blows had crashed. And they had distorted his face almost past recognition. He moved, too, with manifest discomfort, as if all his huge body were as sore as his visage.
"Hello, Roke!!" hailed Milo genially, then in amaze, "what in thunder have you been doing to yourself? Been trying to stop the East Coast Flyer? Or did you just get into an argument with one of the channel dredges?"
"Fell," said Roke, succinctly, jerking his thumb back toward the corrugated iron hut. "Climbed my roof to mend a leak. Fell. My face hit every bump. Then I landed on a pile of coconuts. I'm sore all over. I—"
He gurgled, mouthingly, as his swollen eyes chanced to light on Gavin Brice, who was just following Milo from the launch to the float. And his discolored and unshaven jaw went slack.
"Oh, Brice," said Standish carelessly. "This is my foreman here, Perry Roke. As a rule he looks like other people, except that he's bigger, just now his cravings for falling off corrugated roofs have done things to his face. Shake hands with him. If you like the job I'm going to offer you he and you will be side-partners over here."
Gavin faced his recent adversary, grinning pleasantly up at the battered and scowling face, and noting that the knife sheath at Roke's hip was still empty.
"Hello!" he said civilly, offering his hand.
Roke gulped again, went purple, and, with sudden furious vehemence, grabbed at the proffered hand, enfolding it in his own monstrous grip in an industrious attempt to smash its every bone.
But reading the intent with perfect ease. Brice shifted his own hand ever so little and with nimbly practised fingers eluded the crushing clasp, at the same time slipping his thumb over the heel of Roke's clutching right hand and letting his three middle fingers meet at the exact center of that hand's back. Then, tightening his hold, he gave an almost imperceptible twist. It was one of the first and the simplest of the tricks his jiu-jutsu instructor had taught him. And, as ever with an opponent not prepared for it, the grip served.
To the heedlessly watching Standish he seemed merely to be accepting the invitation to shake hands with Roke. But the next instant, under the apparently harmless contact, Roke's big body veered sharply to one side, from the hips upward, and a bellow of raging pain broke from his puffed lips.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Brice in quick contrition: "You must have hurt your hand when you fell off that roof. I'm sorry if I made it worse."
Nursing his wrenched wrist. Roke glowered hideously at the smiling Gavin. Brice could feel no compunction for his own behavior. For he remembered the hurled knife and the brutal kicking of the dog. Yet he repented him of the hand-twisting trick. For if he and Roke were expected to work together as Milo had said, he had certainly made a most unfortunate beginning to their acquaintanceship, and just now he had added new and painful aggravation to his earlier offense.
Milo was surveying the sufferer with no great pity, as Roke bent over his hurt wrist.
"Too bad!" commented Standish. "I suppose that will put a crimp in your violin-playing for a while."
Turning to Gavin who looked in new surprise at the giant on hearing of this unexpected accomplishment. Milo explained:
"I hired Roke to run this key for me and keep the conchs and the coons at work. But I've got a pretty straight tip that, as soon as my back is turned, he cuts indoors and spends most of his day whanging at that disreputable old violin of his. And when Rodney Hade comes over here. I can't get a lick of work out of Roke, for love or money. Hade is one of the best amateur violinists in America, and he's daft on playing. He drops in here, every now and then—he has an interest with me in the groves—and as soon as he catches sight of Roke's violin, he starts playing it. That means no more work out of Roke till Hade chooses to stop. He just stands, with his mouth wide open, hypnotized. Can't drag him away for a second. Hey, Roke?"
Roke had ceased nursing his wrist and had listened with sheepish amusement to his employer's guying. But at this question, he made answer:
"I'm here now."
He jerked the thumb of his uninjured hand toward a spic-and-span launch which lay moored between two sodden scows, and then nodded in the direction of the corrugated iron hut among the trees.
Listening—though the wind set the wrong way for it—Brice could hear faintly the strains of a violin, played ever so softly and with a golden wealth of sweetness. Even at that distance, by listening closely, he could make out a phrase or so of Dvorak's "Hiawatha" music from the "New World Symphony." Milo's loud laugh broke in on his audition and on the suddenly rapt look upon Roke's bruised face.
"Come along!" said Standish, leading the way toward the house. "Music's a fine thing, I'm told. But it doesn't spray a grapefruit orchard or keep the scale off of mango trees. Come up to the house. I want to show you over the island and have a chat with you about the job I have in mind."
As Milo strode on the two others fell in step behind him.Brice lowered his voice and said to the sulking Roke:
"That collie belongs to Mr. Standish. I did you a good turn it seems by keeping you from stealing him. You'd have been in a worse fix than you are now, if Mr. Standish had come over here to-day and found him on the island."
Roke did not deign to reply, but moved a little farther from the speaker.
"At this rate," said Brice pleasantly, "you and I are likely to have a jolly time together, out here. I can't imagine a merrier chum for a desert island visit. I only hope I won't neglect my work chatting with you all day."
Roke eyed him obliquely as he plodded on, and his battered lip-corner lifted a little in what looked like a beast snarl. But he said nothing.
Then they were at the shallow porch of the hut and Milo Standish had thrown open its iron door letting out a gush of golden melody from the violin. At his hail, the music ceased. And Rodney Hade, fiddle in hand, appeared in the doorway.
"You're late," said the violinist, speaking to Milo with that ever-smiling suavity which Gavin recalled from the night before, and ignoring Gavin entirely "You've kept me waiting."
Despite the smooth voice and the eternal smile there was an undernote of rebuke in the words, as of a teacher who reproves a child for tardiness. And, meekly, Standish replied:
"I'm sorry. I was detained at Miami. And lunch was late. I got here as soon as I could. I—"
With an impatient little wave of one white hand. Hade checked his excuses and dismissed the subject. In the same moment his snakelike black eyes fixed themselves on Brice whom he seemed to notice for the first time. The eyes were smiling. But he granted the guest no further form of salutation, as he asked abruptly:
"Where have I seen you before?"
"You saw me last night," returned Gavin, still wondering at this man's dictatorial attitude toward the aggressive Milo Standish and at Milo's almost cringing acceptance of it. "I was at the Standishes. I was just starting for bed when you dropped in. Miss Standish introduced—"
"I'm not speaking about last night," curtly interrupted Hade, though his voice was as soft as ever and his masklike face was set in its everlasting smile. "I mean, where did I run across you before last night?"
"Well. Mr. Bones," answered Gavin with flippant insolence, "Dat am de question propounded. Where did you-all run acrost me befo' las' night?"
Milo and Roke stirred convulsively, as if scandalized that any one should dare speak with such impudence to Hade. Rodney himself all but lost the eternal smile from his thin lips: and his voice was less suave than usual as he said:
"I don't care for impertinence, especially from employees.You will bear that in mind. Now you will answer my question.Where did I see you?"
"If you can't remember," countered Gavin, "you can hardly expect me to. I live in New York. I have lived there or thereabouts for a number of years. I was overseas—stationed at Bordeaux and then at Brest—for a few months in 1918. As a boy I lived on my father's farm in northern New York State, near Manlius. That's the best answer I can give you. If it will make you recall where you've seen me—all right. If not I'm afraid I can't help you out. In any case what does it matter? I don't claim to be anybody especial. I have no references. Mr. Standish knows that. If he's willing to give me some sort of job in spite of such drawbacks, it seems to be entirely his affair."
"The job I had—have—in mind for you," spoke up Milo, at a glance from Hade, "is on this key, here. I need an extra man in the main storehouse to oversee the roustabouts there. At this season Roke is too busy outdoors to keep the right kind of eye on them. The pay won't be large to start with. But if you make good at it. I may have something better to offer you on the mainland. Or I may not. In any case. I understand this is only a stopgap for you, and that you are down here for your health. If you are interested in the idea, well and good. If not—"
He paused and glanced at Hade as if for prompting. Throughout his harangue Standish had given Brice the impression of a man who recites a lesson taught him by another. Now Hade took up the tale.
"I think," said he smilingly—his momentary impatience gone—"I think, before answering—in fact before coming down to terms and other details—you might perhaps care to stroll around the island a little, and get an idea of it for yourself. It may be you won't care to stay here. It may be you will like it very much. Mr. Standish and I have some routine business to talk over with Roke. Suppose you take a walk over the place? Roke, assign one of the men to go with him and show him around."
With instant obedience. Roke started for the door. Indeed, he had almost reached it before Hade ceased speaking. Gavin raised his brows at this swift anticipation of orders. And into his mind came an odd thought.
"You seemed surprised to see me this afternoon," said he as he followed Roke to the porch and closed the door behind them. "Yet Mr. Hade had told you I was coming here. He had told you, and he had told you to have some one ready to show me over the island."
As he spoke Gavin indicated with a nod a man who was trotting across the sandy clearing toward them.
"Didn't know it was you!" grunted Roke, too surprised by the direct assertion to fence. "Said some feller would come with Mr. Standish. He—. How'd you know he told me?" he demanded in sudden angry bewilderment.
"There!" exclaimed Gavin admiringly. "I knew we'd chat along as lovingly as two turtle-doves when once we'd get really started. You're quite a talker when you want to be, Rokie my lad! If only you didn't speak as if you were trying to save words on a telegram. Here's the chap you'd ordered to be cruising in the offing as my escort, eh?" as the barefoot roustabout reached the porch. "All right. Good-by."
Leaving the grumbling and muttering Roke scowling after him. Brice stepped out onto the sand to meet the newcomer. The roustabout apparently belonged to the conch tribe of which Milo had spoken. Thin, undersized, swarthy, with features that showed a trace of negro and perhaps of Indian blood as well, he had a furtive manner and seemed to cringe away from the Northerner as they set off across the clearing, toward the distant huts and still more distant orchards.
He was bareheaded and stoop-shouldered. Beyond a ragged pair of drill trousers—indescribably dirty—his only garment was a still dirtier and raggeder undershirt. His naked feet flapped awkwardly, like a turtle's. He was not a pretty or prepossessing sight.
Across the clearing he pattered, head down, still cringing away from the visitor. As the two entered the shadows of the nearest grove Gavin Brice glanced quickly around him on all sides. The conch did the same. Then the two moved on with the same distance between them as before.
And as they went Gavin spoke. He spoke in a low tone, not moving his lips or looking directly toward the other man.
"Good boy, Davy!" he said, approvingly. "How did you get the job of taking me around? I was afraid I'd have to look for you."
"Two other men were picked out to do it sir," said the conch without slackening his pace or turning his head. "One after the other. One was a nigger. One was a conch. Both of 'em got sick. I paid 'em to. And I paid the nigger an extra five to tell Roke I'd be the best man to steer you. He said he'd been on jobs with me before. He and the conch are malingering in the sick shed. Ipecac. I gave it to 'em."
"Good!" repeated Gavin. "Mighty good. Now what's the idea?"
"You're to be kept over here, sir," said the conch. "I don't know why. Roke told me you're a chum of Hade's, and that Hade's doing it to have a bit of fun with you. So I'm to lead you around awhile, showing you the plant and such. Then I'm to take you to the second storage hut and tell you we've got a new kind of avocado stored in there, and let you go in ahead of me, and I'm to slam the spring-lock door on you."
"Hm! That all, Davy?"
"Yes, sir. Except of course that it's a lie. Hade don't play jokes or have fun with any one. If he's trying to keep you locked up here a while it's most likely a sign he don't want you on the mainland for some reason. Maybe that sounds foolish. But it's all the head or tail I can make out of it, sir."
"It doesn't 'sound foolish,'" contradicted Brice. "As it happens it's just what he wants to do. I don't know just why. But I mean to find out. He wants me away from a house over there. A house I had a lot of trouble in getting a foothold in. It's taken me the best part of a month. And now I don't mean to spend another month in getting back there."
"No, sir," said Davy, respectfully, still plodding on in front with head and shoulders bent. "No, sir. Of course. But—if you'll let me ask, sir—does Hade know? Does he suspicion you? If that's why he's framed this then Roustabout Key is no place for you. No more is Dade County. He—"
"No," returned Gavin, smiling at the real terror that had crept into the other's tone. "He doesn't know. And I'm sure he doesn't suspect. But he has a notion he's seen me somewhere. And he's a man who doesn't take chances. Besides he wants me away from the Standish house. He wants every outsider away from it. And I knew this would be the likeliest place for him to maroon me. That's why I sent you word …. I'm a bit wobbly in my beliefs about the Standishes,—one of them anyhow. Now, where's this storehouse prison of mine?"
"Over there, sir, to the right. But—"
"Take me over there. And walk slowly. I've some things to say to you on the way, and I want you to get them straight in your memory."
"Yes, sir," answered the conch, shifting his course, so as to bring his steps in a roundabout way toward the squat storeroom. "And before you begin there's an extra key to the room under the second packing box to the right. I made it from Roke's own key when I made duplicates of all the keys here. I put it there this morning. In case you should want to get out, you can say you found it lying on the floor there. I rusted all the keys I made so they look old. He'll likely think it's an extra key that was lost somewhere in there."
"Thanks," said Gavin. "You're a good boy. And you've got sense. Now listen:—"
Talking swiftly and earnestly, he followed Davy toward the square little iron building, the conch outwardly making no sign that he heard. For, not many yards away, a handful of conchs and negroes were at work on a half-completed shed.
Davy came to the store-room door, and opened it. Then, turning to Brice he said aloud in the wretched dialect of his class:
"Funny avocado fruits all pile up in yon. Mighty funny. Make yo' laugh. Want to go see? Look!"
He swung wide the iron door and pointed to the almost totally dark interior.
"Funny to see in yon," he said invitingly. "Never see any like 'em befo'. I strike light for you. Arter you, my boss."
One or two men working on the nearby shed had stopped their labor and were glancing covertly toward them.
"Oh, all right!" agreed Brice, his uninterested voice carrying well though it was not noticeably raised. "It seems a stuffy sort of hole. But I'll take a look at it if you like. Where's that light you're going to strike? It—"
As he spoke he sauntered into the storeroom. His lazy speech was cut short by the clangorous slamming of the iron door behind him. Conscientiously he pounded on the iron and yelled wrathful commands to Davy to open. Then when he thought he had made noise enough to add verity to his role and to free the conch from any onlooker's suspicion he desisted.
Groping his way through the dimness to the nearest box, he sat down, philosophically, to wait.
"Well," he mused sniffing in no approval at all at the musty air of the place and peering up at the single eight-inch barred window that served more for ventilation than for light. "Well, here we are. And here, presumably, we stay till Standish and Hade go back to the mainland. Then I'm to be let out by Roke, with many apologies for Davy's mistake. There'll be no way of getting back. The boats will be hidden or padlocked. And here I'll stay, with Roke for a chum, till whatever is going on at Standish's house is safely finished with. It's a pretty program. If I can get away to-night without Roke's finding it out till morning—"
His eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the room. Its corners and farther reaches and most of its floor were still invisible. But, by straining his gaze, he could just make out the shapes of a crate or two and several packing boxes close to the wall. The central space was clear. In spite of the stuffiness, there was a damp chill to the gloomy place, by contrast to the vivid sunlight and the sweep of the trade-winds, outside.
Gavin stretched himself out at full length on the long box, and prepared to take a nap. First he reached toward the next box—the one under which Davy had told him the key was hidden—and moved it an inch or so to make certain it was not full enough to cause him any especial effort in case he should not be released until next day and should have need of the key. Then he shut his eyes, and let himself drift toward slumber.
It was perhaps two hours later when he was roused from a light doze by hearing something strike the concrete floor of his prison, not six feet from his head. The thing had fallen with a slithering, uneven sound, such as might be made by the dropping of a short length of rope.
Brice sat up. He noted that the room was no longer light enough to see across. And he glanced in the direction of the window. Its narrow space was blocked by something. And as he looked he heard a second object slither to the floor.
"Some one's dropping things down here through that ventilator," he conjectured.
And at the same moment a third fall sounded, followed almost at once by a fourth. Then, for a second, the window space was clear, only to be blocked again as the person outside returned to his post. And in quick succession three more objects were sent slithering down to the floor. After which the window was cleared once more, and Brice could hear receding steps.
But he gave no heed to the steps. For as the last of the unseen things had been slid through the aperture, another sound had focused all his attention, and had sent queer little quivers up his spine.
The sound had been a long-drawn hiss.
And Gavin Brice understood. Now he knew why the softly falling bodies had slithered so oddly down the short distance between window and floor. And he read aright the slippery crawling little noises that had been assailing his ears.
The unseen man outside had thrust through the ventilator not less than seven or eight snakes, carried thither, presumably, in bags.
Crouching on his long box Gavin peered about him. Faintly against the dense gray of the shadowy floor, he could see thick ropelike forms twisting sinuously to and fro, as if exploring their new quarters or seeking exit. More than once, as these chanced to cross one another's path, that same long-drawn hiss quavered out into the dark silences.
And now Brice's nostrils were assailed by a sickening smell as of crushed cucumbers. And at the odor his fists tightened in new fear. For no serpents give off that peculiar odor, except members of the pit-viper family.
"They're not rattlesnakes," he told himself. "For a scared or angry rattler would have this room vibrating with his whirr. We're too far south for copperheads. The—the only other pit-viper I ever heard of in Florida is the—cotton-mouth moccasin!"
At the realization he was aware of a wave of physical terror that swept him like a breath of ice.
Without restoratives at hand the moccasin's bite is certain death. The plan had been well thought out. At the very first step the frantic prisoner might reasonably be relied on to encounter one or more of the crawling horrors. The box on which he crouched was barely eighteen inches high. The next box—under which rested the key—was several feet away. The door was still farther off.
Truly Standish and Hade appeared to have hit on an excellent plan for getting rid of the man they wanted out of the way! It would be so easy for Roke to explain to possible inquirers that Brice had chanced to tread on a poisonous snake in his wanderings about the key!
The slightest motion might well be enough to stir to active hostility the swarm of serpents already angered by their sudden dumping into this clammy den.
Weaponless, helpless, the trapped man crouched there and waited.
As Gavin Brice sat with feet drawn up under him, listening to the gruesome slither of the moccasins along the concrete floor just below he was gripped for a minute by irresistible terror. It was all so simple—so complete! And he had been calmly self-confident of his ability to command the situation, to play these people's own game and to beat them at it. Grinning and open-eyed he had marched into the trap. He had been glad to let Hade and Standish think him safely out of their way, and had planned so confidently to return by stealth to the mainland that night and to Milo's house!
And now they had had absolutely no difficulty in caging him, and in arranging that he should be put forever out of their way. The most stringent inquiry—should any such be made—could only show that he had been bitten once or more by a deadly snake. Any post-mortem would bear out the statement.
It was known to every one that many of the keys—even several miles from the mainland—are infested by rattlesnakes and by other serpents, though how such snakes ever got to the islands is as much of a mystery to the naturalist world as is the presence of raccoons and squirrels on the same keys. It is simply one of the hundred unsolvable mysteries and puzzles of the subtropic region.
In his jiu-jutsu instructions Brice had learned a rule which he had carried into good effect in other walks of life. Namely to seem to play one's opponent's game and to be fooled by it, and then, taking the conquering adversary by surprise, to strike. Thus he had fallen in with Standish's suggestion that he come to the island, though he had thought himself fairly sure as to the reason for the request. Thus, too, he had let himself be lured into this storeroom, still smugly confident that he held the whip hand of the situation.
And as a result he was looking into the ghastly eyes of death.
Like an engine that "races," his fertile brain was unduly active in this moment of stark horror, and it ran uselessly. Into his over-excited mind flashed pictures of a thousand bits of the past—one of them, by reason of recent association far more vivid than the rest.
He saw himself with four other A.E.F. officers, standing in a dim corner of a high-ceiled old room in a ruined chateau in Flanders. In the room's center was a table. Around this were grouped a double line of uniformed Americans—a court-martial. In came two provosts' men leading between them a prisoner, a man in uniform and wearing the insignia of a United States army major—the cleverest spy it was said in all the Wilhelmstrasse's pay, a genius who had grown rich at his filthy trade of selling out his country's secrets, and who had been caught at last by merest chance.
The prisoner had glanced smilingly about the half-lit room as he came in. For the barest fraction of a second his gaze had flickered over Gavin Brice and the three other officers who stood there in the shadow. Then, with that same easy, confident smile on his masklike, pallid face, the spy had turned his glittering black eyes on the officers at the courtmartial table.
"Gentlemen," he had said amusedly, "you need not go through the farce of trying me. I am guilty. I say this with no bravado and with no fear. Because the bullet has never been molded and the rope has never been plaited that can kill me. And the cell is not yet made that can hold me."
He had said it smilingly, and in a velvet suave voice. Yes, and he had made good his boast. For—condemned to die at daylight—he had escaped from his ill-constructed prison room in the chateau a little before dawn and had gotten clean away after killing one of his guards.
"He never set eyes on me except for that instant, there in the shadows," Brice found himself reflecting for the hundredth time. "And there were all the others with me. Yet last night he recalled my face. It's lucky he didn't recall where he'd seen it. Or—perhaps he did."
With a start, he came out of his half-hypnotic daze—a daze which had endured but a few seconds. And once more his rallying will-power and senses made him acutely alive to the hideous peril in which he crouched.
Then—in one of the odd revulsions which flash across men at unnaturally high tension—his daze and his terror merged all at once into a blaze of wholesome rage. Nor was his rage directed against Rodney Hade, but against Milo Standish, the man whose life he had saved not twenty hours earlier, and who had repaid that mighty service now by helping to arrange his murder.
At the thought Brice grew hot with fury. He longed to stand face to face with the blackguard who had rewarded a life-gift in such vile fashion. He yearned to tell Standish in fiery words how unspeakable had been the action, and then foot to foot, fist to fist, to take out of the giant's hide some tithe of the revenge due for such black ingratitude.
The ferocious impulse set steady his quivering nerves. No longer did his brain race uselessly. Again it was alert, resourceful, keen.
Standish! Yes, and no doubt Standish's sister too! The girl whose eyes had made him feel as if he were on holy ground—the girl whom he had been so irritatingly unable to get out of his mind!
With an angry shake of the head Gavin dismissed Claire from his thoughts. And his newborn hate concentrated on her brother who had betrayed to death his rescuer. Obsessed with the fierce craving to stand face to face with the blonde-bearded giant he banished his lethargy of hopelessness and cast about for means of escape out of this seemingly inescapable snare.
First, the key must be found. Then the door must be reached and opened. In the way of both enterprises writhed a half dozen or more deadly snakes. And to the problem of winning past them alive and getting to his enemy. Gavin Brice bent his trained faculties.
The box whereon he sat was covered with loose boards nailed down only at one end, a long strip of thin iron or copper binding the one unopened edge. So much his groping fingers told him. Moving to one corner of the box top he pushed aside a board and plunged his hand into the interior. It was as he had hoped. According to custom when the box had been emptied the jute and shredded paper stuffing of its contents had been thrust back into it for future use.
Feverishly, Gavin began to pull forth great handfuls of paper and of excelsior. These he piled onto the box top. Then, exerting all his skilled strength, he tugged at the narrow iron strip which bound, lengthwise, one side of the box.
This task was by no means easy, for the nails were long. And the iron's sharp edges cut cruelly into the tugging fingers. But, inch by inch, he tore it free. And at the end of three minutes he was strengthening and testing a willowy five-foot strip of metal. Laying this across his knees and fishing up another double handful of the packing paper and jute he groped in his pockets with bleeding fingertips for a match.
He found but one. Holding it tenderly he scraped its surface against his nail—a trick he had picked up in the army. The sulphur snapped and ignited, the wooden sliver burning freely in that windless air.
Giving it a good start, he touched the point of flame to the piled jute and paper in front of him. It caught in an instant. Still holding the lighted match, he repeated this ticklish process time after time, tossing handfuls of the blazing stuff down onto the floor at his side.
In two minutes more he had a gayly-flaming pile of inflammable material burning high there. Its gleam lightened every inch of the gloomy room. It brought out into hideous clearness the writhing dark bodies of the crawling moccasins, even to the patches of white at their lips which gave them their sinister name of "cottonmouths." Fat and short and horrible to look upon, they were, as they slithered and twisted here and there along the bright-lit floor or coiled and hissed at sight of the flame and of the fast plying hand and arm of the captive just above them.
But Brice had scant eyes or heed for them. Now that his blaze was started past danger of easy extinction, he plunged both hands again into the box. And now, two handfuls at a time. he began to cast forth more and more of the stuffing.
With careful aim he threw it. Presently there was a wide line of jute and paper extending from the main blaze across to the next box. Then another began to pile up in an opposite direction, toward the door. The fire ran greedily along these two lines of fuel.
Meantime the room was no longer so clearly lighted as at first. For the smoke billowed up to the low roof, and in thick waves poured out through the small ventilator. Such of it as could not find this means of outlet doubled back floorward, filling the room with chokingly thick fumes which wellnigh blinded and strangled the man and blotted out all details of shape and direction.
But already Gavin Brice had slipped to the floor, his thin-shod feet planted in the midst of the blaze, whose flames and sparks licked eagerly at his ankles and legs.
Following the trail of fire which led to the box. Gavin strode through the very center of this blazing path, heedless of the burns. Well did he know the snakes would shrink away from actual contact with the fire. And he preferred surface burns to a fatal bite in ankle or foot.
As he reached the box its corners had already caught fire from the licking flames below. Heaving up the burning receptacle. Brice looked under it. There lay the rusty key, just visible through the lurid smoke glare. But not ten inches away from the far side of it coiled a moccasin, head poised threateningly as the box grazed it under Gavin's sharp heave.
Stooping, Brice snatched up a great bunch of the flaming paper and flung it on the serpent's shining coils. In practically the same gesture he reached with lightning quickness for the key.
By a few inches he had missed his hurried aim for the moccasin. He had intended the handful of fire to land on the floor just in front of it, thus causing it to shrink back. Instead the burning particles had fallen stingingly among its coils.
The snake twisted its arrow-shaped head as if to see what had befallen it. Then catching sight of Brice's swooping hand it struck.
But the glance backward and the incredibly quick withdrawal of the man's hand combined to form the infinitesimal space which separated Gavin from agonizing death. The snake's striking head missed the fast-retreating fingers by less than a hair's breadth. The fangs met on the wards of the rusty key Brice had caught up in his fingertips. The force of the stroke knocked the key clatteringly to the floor.
Stepping back. Brice flung a second and better aimed handful of the dwindling fire in front of the re-coiling reptile. It drew back hissing. And as it did so. Gavin regained the fallen key.
Wheeling about choking and strangling from the smoke, his streamingly smarting eyes barely able to discern the fiery trail he had laid. Brice ran through the midst of the red line of embers to the door. Reaching it he held the key in one hand while the sensitive fingers of the other sought the keyhole.
After what seemed a century he found it, and applied and turned the key in the stiff lock. With a fierce shove he pushed open the door. Then as he was about to bound forth into the glory of the sunset, he started back convulsively.
One moccasin had evidently sought outer air. With this in view it had stretched itself along the crack of light at the foot of the door. Now as the door flew wide the snake coiled itself to strike at the man who had all but stepped on it.
Down whizzed the narrow strip of iron Gavin had wrenched from the box as a possible weapon. And, though the impact cut Brice's fingers afresh, the snake lay twisting wildly and harmlessly with a cloven spine.
Over the writhing body sprang Gavin Brice and out into the sandy open, filling his smoke-tortured lungs with the fresh sunset air and blinking away the smoke-damp from his stinging eyes.
It was then he beheld running toward him three men. Far in the van was Roke—his attention no doubt having been caught by the smoke pouring through the ventilator. The two others were an undersized conch and a towering Bahama negro. All three carried clubs, and a pistol glittered in Roke's left hand.
Ten feet from the reeling Gavin. Roke opened fire. But, as he did not halt when he pulled trigger, his shot went wild. Before he could shoot again or bring his club into action. Brice was upon him. Gavin smote once and once only with the willowy metal strip. But he struck with all the dazzling speed of a trained saber fencer.
The iron strip caught Roke across the eyes, smartingly and with a force which blinded him for the moment and sent him staggering back in keen pain. The iron strip doubled uselessly under the might of the blow, and Gavin dropped it and ran.
At top speed he set off toward the dock. The conch and the negro were between him and the pier, and from various directions other men were running. But only the Bahaman and the little conch barred his actual line of progress. Both leaped at him at the same time, as he came dashing down on them.
The conch was a yard or so in front of the negro. And now the fugitive saw the Bahaman's supposed cudgel was an iron crowbar which he wielded as easily as a wand. The negro leaped and at the same time struck. But, by some queer chance, the conch, a yard ahead of him, lost his own footing in the shifty sand just then and tumbled headlong.
He fell directly in the Bahaman's path. The negro stumbled over him and plunged earthward, the iron bar flying harmless from his grasp.
"Good little Davy!" apostrophized Brice, as he hurdled the sprawling bodies and made for the dock.
The way was clear, and he ran at a pace which would not have disgraced a college sprinter. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the Bahaman trying blasphemously to disentangle his legs from those of the prostrate and wriggling Davy. He saw, too, Roke pawing at his cut face with both hairy hands, and heard him bellowing confused orders which nobody seemed to understand.
Arrived at the dock Gavin saw that Standish's launch was gone. So, too, was the gaudy little motorboat wherein Rodney Hade had come to the key. Two battered and paintless motor-scows remained, and one or two disreputable rowboats.
It was the work of only a few seconds for Brice to cut loose the moorings of all these craft and to thrust them far out into the blue water, where wind and tide could be trusted to bear them steadily farther and farther from shore.
Into the last of the boats—the speedier-seeming of the two launches—Gavin sprang as he shoved it free from the float. And, before the nearest of the island men could reach shore, he had the motor purring. Satisfied that the tide had caught the rest of the fleet and that the stiff tradewind was doing even more to send the derelict boats out of reach from shore or from possible swimmers he turned the head of his unwieldy launch toward the mainland, pointing it northeastward and making ready to wind his course through the straits which laced the various islets lying between him and his destination.
"They'll have a sweet time getting off that key tonight," he mused in grim satisfaction. "And, unless they can hail some passing boat, they're due to stay there till Hade or Standish makes another trip out …. Standish!"
At the name he went hot with wrath. Now that he had achieved the task of winning free from his prison and from his jailors his mind swung back to the man he had rescued and who had sought his death. Anger at the black infamy burned fiercely in Brice's soul. His whole brain and body ached for redress, for physical wild-beast punishment of the ingrate. The impulse dulled his every other faculty. It made him oblivious to the infinitely more important work he had laid out for himself.
No man can be forever normal when anger takes the reins. And, for the time, Gavin Brice was deaf and blind to every motive or caution, and centered his entire faculties on the yearning to punish Milo Standish. He had fought like a tiger and had risked his own life to save Standish from the unknown assailant's knife thrust. Milo, in gross stupidity, had struck him senseless. And now, coldbloodedly, he had helped to plan for him the most terrible form of death by torture to which even an Apache could have stooped. Small wonder that righteous indignation flared high within the fugitive!
Straight into the fading glory of the sunset. Brice was steering his wallowing and leaky launch. The boat was evidently constructed and used for the transporting of fruit from the key to the mainland. She was slow and of deep draught. But she was cutting down the distance now between Gavin and the shore.
He planned to beach her on the strip of sand at the bottom of the mangrove swamp, and to make his way to the Standish house through the hidden path whose existence Milo had that day poohpoohed. He trusted to luck and to justice to enable him to find the man he sought when once he should reach the house.
His only drawback was the fear lest he encounter Claire as well. In his present wrathful frame of mind he had no wish to see or speak with her, and he hoped that she might not mar by her presence his encounter with her brother.
Between two keys wallowed his chugging boat and into a stretch of clear water beyond. Then, skirting a low-lying reef, Gavin headed direct toward the distant patch of yellowish beach which was his objective.
The sun's upper edge was sinking below the flat skyline. Mauve shadows swept over the aquamarine expanse of rippling water. The horizon was dyed a blood-red which was merging into ashes of roses. On golden Mashta played the last level rays of the dying sun, caressing the wondrous edifice as though they loved it. The subtropical night was rushing down upon the smiling world, and, as ever, it was descending without the long sweet interval of twilight that northern lands know.
Gavin put the tub to top speed as the last visible obstacle was left behind. Clear water lay between him and the beach. And he was impatient to step on land. Under the fresh impetus the rolling craft panted and wheezed and made her way through the ripples at a really creditable pace.
As the shadows thickened Brice half-arose in his seat to get a better glimpse of a little motorboat which had just sprung into view from around the mangrove-covered headland that cut off the view of Standish's mainland dock. The boat apparently had put off from that pier, and was making rapid speed out into the bay almost directly toward him. He could descry a figure sitting in the steersman's seat. But by that ebbing light, he could discern only its blurred outline.
Before Gavin could resume his seat he was flung forward upon his face in the bottom of his scow. The jar of the tumble knocked him breathless. And as he scrambled up on hands and knees he saw what had happened.
Foolish is the boatman who runs at full speed in some of the southwestern reaches of Biscayne Bay—especially at dusk—without up-to-date chart or a perfect knowledge of the bay's tricky soundings. For the coral worm is tireless, and the making of new reefs is without end.
The fast-driven launch had run, bow-on, into a tooth of coral barely ten inches under the surface of the smooth water. And, what with her impetus and the half-rotted condition of her hull, she struck with such force as to rip a hole in her forward quarter, wide enough to stick a derby hat through.
In rushed the water, filling her in an incredibly short time. Settling by the head under the weight of this inpouring flood she toppled off the tooth of reef and slid free. Then with a wallowing dignity she proceeded to sink.
The iron sheathing on her keel and hull had not been strong enough in its rusted state to resist the hammerblow of the reef. But it was heavy enough, together with her big metal steering apparatus, to counterbalance any buoyant qualities left in the wooden frame.
And, down she went, waddling like a fat and ponderous hen, into a twenty-foot nest of water.
Gavin had wasted no time in the impossible feat of baling her or of plugging her unpluggable leak. As she went swayingly toward the bottom of the bay he slipped clear of her and struck out through the tepid water.
The mangrove swamp's beach was a bare half-mile away. And the man knew he could swim the intervening space with ease. Yet the tedious delay of it all irked him and fanned to a blind fury his rage against Milo. Moreover, now, he could not hope to reach the hidden path before real darkness should set in. And he did not relish the idea of traversing its blind mazes without a glimmer of daylight to guide him.
Yet he struck out, stubbornly, doggedly. As he passed the tooth of coral that had wrecked his scow the reef gave him a painful farewell scrape on one kicking knee. He swam on fuming at this latest annoyance.
Then to his ears came the steady purr of a motorboat. It was close to him and coming closer.
"Boat ahoy!" he sang out treading water and raising himself as high as possible to peer about him through the dusk.
"Boat ahoy!" he called again, shouting to be heard above the motor's hum. "Man overboard! Ten dollars if you'll carry me to the mainland!"
And now he could see against the paler hue of the sky. the dark outlines of the boat's prow. It was bearing down on him. Above the bow's edge he could make out the vague silhouette of a head and upper body.
Then into his memory flashed something which the shock of his upsetting had completely banished. He recalled the motorboat which had darted, arrow-like, out from around the southern edge of the mangrove swamp, and which he had been watching when his scow went to pieces on the reef.
If this were the same boat—if its steersman chanced to be Milo Standish crossing to the key to learn if his murderplot had yet culminated—so much the better! Man to man, there between sea and sky in the gathering gloom, they could settle the account once and for all.
Perhaps Standish had recognized him. Perhaps he merely took him for some capsized fisherman. In either event, a swimming man is the most utterly defenseless of all creatures against attack from land or from boat. And Gavin was not minded to let Standish finish his work with boat-hook or with oar. If he and his foe were to meet it should be on even terms.
The boat had switched off power and was coming to a standstill. Gavin dived. He swam clean under the craft, lengthwise, coming up at its stern and farthest from that indistinct figure in the prow.
As he rose to the surface he caught with both hands the narrow overhang of the stern, and with a mighty heave he hoisted himself hip-high out of the water.
Thence it was the work of a bare two seconds for him to swing himself over the stern and to land on all fours in the bottom of the boat. The narrow craft careened dangerously under such treatment. But she righted herself, and by the time he had fairly landed upon the cleated bottom. Brice was on his feet and making for the prow. He was ready now for any emergency and could meet his adversary on equal terms.
"Mr. Brice!" called the boat's other occupant, springing up, her sweet voice trembling and almost tearful. "Oh, thank God you're safe! I was so frightened!"
"Miss Standish!" sputtered Gavin, aghast. "Miss Standish!"
For a moment they stood staring at each other through the darkness, wordless, breathing hard. Their quick breath and the trickling of fifty runnels of water from Gavin's drenched clothes into the bottom of the once-tidy boat alone broke the tense stillness of sky and bay. Then:
"You're safe? You're not harmed?" panted the girl.
And the words brought back with a rush to Gavin Brice all he had been through.
"Yes," he made harsh answer trying to steady his rage-choked voice. "I am safe. I am not harmed. Apart from a few fire-blisters on my ankles and the charring of my clothes and the barking of one knee against a bit of submerged coral and the cutting of my fingers rather badly and a few more minor mischances—I'm quite safe and none the worse for the Standish family's charming hospitality. And, by the way, may I suggest that it might have been better for your brother or the gentle-hearted Mr. Hade to run across to the key to get news of my fate, instead of sending a girl on such an errand? It's no business of mine, of course. And I don't presume to criticize two such noble heroes. But surely they ought not have sent you. If their kindly plan had worked out according to schedule. I should not have been a pretty sight for a woman to look at, by this time. I—"