Like a jackrabbit, Sam, in two moves, dived into the cabin. His first jump took him from the deck to the cockpit; his body hardly landed, facing astern, before he doubled on himself, snakelike, and shot himself through the narrow door.
Tom was on the point of following; but his fear of his comrades’ laughter was greater even than his dread of the unknown. Sam’s comical appearance brought a shout of laughter from Cliff and Nicky; even Mr. Neale was compelled to chuckle. Tom, therefore, mastered his impulse and remained on the cabin roof.
“Now what do you suppose that was?” Cliff wondered, after they relieved the tension of the momentary start of instinctive terror by a good laugh at Sam.
“I must give it up,” answered Mr. Neale, “but I am inclined to look for some human agency before I admit any supernatural cause.”
“It—it didn’t sound like—anything human!” Tom said with a shiver.
“Have you heard so many ghosts that you know what they sound like?” asked Nicky with a chuckle. Tom shook his head.
“I don’t feel much like investigating in the dark,” Cliff went on.
“I don’t see what there is to investigate,” Nicky added.
“I’ll take the dinghy in the morning and look for some evidences of human causes,” declared Mr. Neale. “Perhaps a Seminole Indian may be around here, fishing—or something. Or some white resident of the mainland, with a sense of humor, is playing a joke on us.”
“This message doesn’t seem like a joke,” Nicky defended. “It looks real to me. See how rusted the old can is—why, it’s almost like paper—and the parchment is awfully old.” He indicated, by the dim lantern, how frail the edge of the sheet was by tearing it.
“I think it’s real,” Cliff agreed. “Don’t you, Mr. Neale?”
Their captain and mentor hesitated.
“There are several strange points to consider by daylight,” he commented. “If we had found it by chance I should consider it genuine; but the light—and the ghostly voice—those make me suspicious.”
“But—look!” argued Nicky, “it gives a definite place, and tells about a landmark to show where to dig for treasure. Our map wasn’t even clear about the channel or where the treasure was hidden.”
“However,” Mr. Neale said, “it came to you in a logical way. The new one did not. I cannot account for that bluish light but it is surely not supernatural.”
“I’ve heard of very old things, decomposing, giving off light,” Cliff declared. Mr. Neale nodded and since there was really nothing to be gained by any long argument, they finally became calm enough to lie down again, Mr. Neale agreeing to stay awake and watch until dawn.
Not much sleep was possible; nevertheless they all dozed some, and their dreams were, to say the least, thrilling.
However, as is usual with any form of terror of supernatural things, the coming of the sunshine dispelled their timidity. True it was that the coral showed no footprints and the water told no story of the previous night’s incidents. They remained unexplainable.
Sam served a breakfast of fish, with bacon and some turtle eggs he had found the evening before, and during the meal their procedure was discussed.
Nicky, Cliff and Tom were for giving up their indefinite search, among a multitude of islets, and trying for the new treasure trove, and Sam agreed with them with the words, “Anywhere, sar—anywhere but hereabouts! It’s bad lucky, so it is!”
Mr. Neale, outvoted, gave in.
“I hunted crocodiles for the Museum of Natural History one winter,” he stated, “I did not secure a really successful specimen—all I got was a giant turtle head, and part of the skeleton of some great snake; the crocodiles were too shy to be caught or even shot.”
“Don’t you mean alligators?” asked Tom, who knew some natural history.
“No,” replied Mr. Neale. “Mostly the saurians of Florida are of the alligator family; but in some southerly parts of the Florida bays there are to be found certain species that are different from the alligators and more closely allied with the crocodile species. I really believe it would do us no harm to delay our search here for a while. There is delightful fishing and a great deal of fun—good bathing, sponge fishing, crawfish catching and so on—to be had.
“Card Bay,” he went on, “is a curious slip in the parchment; it is really Card Sound—a sheet of water about six miles by two and a half. But possibly when this parchment was put where we found it—if it is genuine—the names were different.”
Up came the anchor and instead of running into Whitewater Bay to go up the channel—if they could find one—inside the islets, they swung theTreasure Belle’sbow southward, and ran slowly down to round the land of the nose named Cape Sable, and then beat easterly along the coast, finding snug harbors behind keys or in some of the many small bays, to lie to during the nights.
The trip was fairly uneventful.
There was one time when they thought they would not find the right channel and almost went aground in a narrow passage between two mangrove-covered points. Rather heavy wind made steering hard as they rounded Southeast Cape, the lowest part of the Florida mainland, even before that; but Sam was a good man at the tiller and they had little to fear, being quick and alert to obey his quiet commands to haul on the ropes, to swing the mainsail or to take an additional reef in their canvas.
They skirted the shore of lower Matecumbe, and stared interestedly at Indian Key.
“That is where the Seminole Indians killed a Doctor Perrine,” Mr. Neale explained. “During the Seminole War that happened. His children hid in a turtle pen. They escaped. Really, it was a miracle!”
It was a high island of about ten acres, and in the plentiful water around it they ran quite close to its high banks in passing.
That evening they anchored after running between two points where the draught was very slight and only by judging the color of the water were they able to starboard, or port, the helm a trifle, moving slowly, to avoid the shoal or the more dangerous coral itself.
They anchored just before sunset and so beautifully clear was the water that the sponges growing on the bottom were plainly visible, in the cross light, as Tom and Nicky rowed the glass bottomed dinghy slowly around on the smooth water.
“Isn’t this great” exclaimed Nicky. “See those sponges! How many kinds do you know, Tom?”
“Well, I know them by name, but not by sight,” Tom responded. “I have read that the marketable kinds are the yellow, the sheeps-wool, the gras—and I think one is called the glove. But there are more kinds that aren’t any good to sell, and they have to be recognized or else you’d get a lot that aren’t salable. There is the loggerhead, for one, I remember—and the potato sponge. And there are some that are spiny, and they hurt your hands if you grab them.”
“They don’t look like what we see in the stores,” Nicky commented. “They are sort of the same shapes, but they are black, and Mr. Neale says they feel like india-rubber to touch and they are smooth, with little craters or holes in the top—look! There’s a beauty. Is that a salable one, Tom?”
Tom peered down through the boat’s transparent bottom.
“I’ll bet it’s a sheeps-wool one,” he declared.
Nicky stood up and began to fling off his clothes.
“I’m going to dive for it!” he exclaimed. Tom, fired by his enthusiasm, and with the spirit of rivalry, began to “shuck” his clothes. It became a race toward nakedness—with no one but their comrades to observe, they often plunged into the limpid, translucent water in nature’s swimming suit. Cliff, observing them from the sloop, began to emulate their hasty disrobing. But Sam put a stop to their plan.
“Why?” demanded Cliff, rather warmly. “We’re not afraid of sharks!”
“No, sar,” called Sam, “but you are liable to dive crooked or if your foot slips you may go in backwards—and a cut from that sharp coral isn’t to be chanced, sar.” He showed Cliff a deep scar under his wooly hair, and Cliff, alarmed, called for his comrades to desist—until daylight, at least. They agreed reluctantly, and, looking down more carefully Nicky confided to Tom that he was glad they had. Overlooked in their excitement, they were able in calm study to observe a long, arrow-like frond of coral extending upward at an angle so close to the sponge that it must have been struck by any but a most expert diver.
Green turtle, cooked by broiling beside a good beach fire, as the Indians did it—a tasty meat, and equally good when made into a sort of stew of the whole creature’s flesh, was eked out by a four pound crawfish caught by Nicky from a veritable crawling mass of these lobster-like shellfish in their bay. Corn-pone, or cornbread made the southern way and baked in ashes, a process learned by Tom during a summer camp, in the South, made a fine dinner that night and they ate the more lustily for the realization of their narrow escape earlier in the evening. “It doesn’t pay to leap before you look!” declared Nicky as the chums settled down to sleep that night.
After rather eventless days, during which they passed many bays, inlets, keys and reefs, they sighted Key Largo, one of the most fertile of the few larger Florida Keys, beat along its shore, ran along past Whaleback Key, and finally slipped to the end of what the natives call Barnes’ Sound, and through Jewfish Creek, a narrow and deceptive passage connecting the larger sheet of water with what the natives call Little Card Sound, although the Geodetic Survey charts give different names to both major and minor waters.
The opening of Jewfish Creek was deceptive because mangrove trees grew so closely that it looked like an impassable place until Mr. Neale, who had used it previously during his crocodile hunting expedition, took command and piloted them through cleverly.
“Little Card Sound!” exclaimed Nicky—with considerable eagerness. “Now—where is Crocodile Key?”
“I never heard of it,” Mr. Neale replied. “But——”
“Yonder—yonder!” cried Sam, extending his arm toward a point on the distant shoreline. “That may not be a key, sar—but there shorely are three trees in a row!”
“So they are!” agreed the captain, jamming over the tiller as the sloop heeled in the breeze and swung her bow toward the trees.
“But they are on the shore—not on a key,” objected Tom.
“Coral may have closed a channel during the years,” Mr. Neale explained. “Then earth covered it. That is, granting that our message is genuine.”
“The trees prove it!” Nicky cried. “Now, all we have to do is to wait till tomorrow and then——”
“Dig for treasure!” cried Tom and Cliff, together.
Once the anchor was dropped and the sails furled, and everything made ship-shape for an indefinite stay, the chums lost no time in tumbling into their dinghy and rowing the several hundred yards to shore.
They wanted to inspect the small inlet opposite which they had anchored, and, before the light faded, to get an idea of what sort of a place lay beneath those three sentinels standing their silent guard over the treasure buried so long ago.
The mouth of the inlet was dark and gloomy when they reached it and Tom, using the oars, let them trail in the water until the snub-nosed boat lost way.
“It looks pretty spooky in there,” he said.
“Oh, pshaw!” exclaimed Nicky, “pull, Tom. There aren’t any spooks!”
“But there are snakes—and plenty of them,” Cliff came to the rescue of the oarsman. “Mr. Neale warned us, and it’s getting close to sunset. We might not see them—the snakes!”
Nicky gave in and they drifted close in to the narrow waterway. The shore was heavily matted with a jungle of undergrowth, above which the larger growth, some small mahogany, mangrove and other trees towered.
“This may be just a lagoon, not an inlet. If it’s a—er—like a strait, you know,” Nicky urged, “then’s there may be water enough on the far side to make this a key. In that case—we’ve got the very place mentioned in the message!”
“We’d better wait till morning to make sure,” Cliff said, and after many speculations as to which side of the trees the treasure lay under—the message had not said—they rowed back to the sloop.
“There’s another boat—I think it’s making for theTreasure Belle,” said Cliff. Looking across the small distance, the others saw a rowboat coming from around a point, making at leisurely speed for the spot they had their bow pointed toward.
“I wonder who they are?” Nicky speculated.
“I guess they wonder that about us,” Tom hinted.
They were aboard when the other small craft slipped alongside. In the rowboat was a tall, rangy, and very thin and hawk-faced white man and a plumb, grinning darkey of the true southern type, ready to break into a guffaw at the slightest joke; he was quite a contrast to the Jamaican, Sam. Although Sam had a pleasant smile, his face never broke out, as Nicky put it, “like the sun bu’sting through a cloud,” as did that of the darkey whom his white companion called “Pomp’” to shorten his real name, which was Pompey.
“Howdy, strangers,” greeted the white man as their boat grated and came to rest at the side of the sloop. “Right pretty name your boat’s got—Treasure Belle. Reckon maybe you named her that a-purpose. Reckon maybe you come here-’bouts to make her live up to hit!”
“Come aboard, won’t you?” Mr. Neale responded. “We’re glad to have company and get acquainted.” The white man clambered to the cockpit and produced a corncob pipe, filling it languidly as he lay sprawled on a long cushion at the side of the engine.
“I’m Nelse Carford,” he explained and introductions were exchanged. “I got me a right nice little piece of ground up beyond the point. You-all mus’ come to visit me. Here for the night—or on special business?” It struck Nicky and his comrades that he eyed them all closely as he asked the question.
“Thank you—we would be glad to visit you soon, if we remain.” Mr. Neale took it upon himself to be the spokesman. “We are just sailing around among the bays and the keys, giving the boys a bit of fun—an epidemic of ‘flu’ closed their school this December.”
“I see,” nodded Nelse, apparently better pleased than before. “I thought it mought—” his word for “might”—“mought be you was after some treasure, seeing what the craft is named.”
Nicky opened his mouth, but Cliff kicked his shin gently and Nicky subsided. But Nelse had caught his expression.
“I reckon it mought be your aim to git some if it was right handy though, hey?” he grinned. Pompey, in the rowboat, holding to a rail alongside the cockpit, guffawed, “Sho’ nuff!” he chuckled. “White boys sho’ nuff do dat!”
“Would you blame us?” Cliff demanded with a grin.
“’Course not,” Nelse answered. “Hits right natural. And you’re ’most what mought be said to be in the pirates’ an’ wreckers’ haunts, too. Not fur away to what they call Black Caesar’s Creek—they do say that old pirate was a terror. An’ all around—just beyond, is a regular ships’ graveyard—why you kin right near see ribs and rudder posts, an’ bits of keel sticking up, from here. Not quite, but you near-’bout kin see ’em. They’s just away yonder.” He gestured in the general direction of the lower neck of Biscayne Bay and the Fowney Rocks light.
“Tell us,” said Nicky, before Cliff could warn him again, “is that called Crocodile Key?” He indicated the land at their bow.
Nelse started. He almost dropped his pipe. Then he straightened. Nicky felt eyes that were suddenly very piercing, boring at him in the deepening twilight.
“How come you ast that?” demanded Nelse.
Mr. Neale took things in hand before Nicky could commit himself further.
“Somebody told them there was such a place nearby, and I had a notion I’d try for a croc’ if that is so,” he declared.
Nelse sat up straight and bent forward while Pomp’ in his boat subdued a cackle of laughter and became very serious, an expression that made his plump face look ludicrously like a monkey’s.
“Listen!” ordered Nelse, sharply, “for your own sakes, keep away f’om that place yonder—’specially at nights!”
“Why?” said Tom, his voice beginning to get weak.
“Because!” declared Nelse, “they say that Black Caesar buried some treasure there one time. And——”
“All the more reason—” began Nicky.
Nelse silenced him with a curt shake of the head.
“And—” he took up his talk, “Black Caesar was the meanest and most brutal pirate that ever lived! They say, if anybody comes to try to git his treasure, him and his mates appears—ghos’s, you know! An’ woe betide them what they puts their spell on!”
Sam had retired, shuddering and groaning, to the cabin. Pomp’ began to look over his shoulder. “Mas’ Nelse,” he quavered, “come on, suh—don’ talk no moah ’bout dat! Le’s git on home—please!”
Nelse nodded. “You see, I reckon,” he said. “Ever’body here-’bouts believes hit.”
“Have you ever seen the pirates—are they real or spooks?” asked Nicky.
“Comin’ home, late, one night, bein’ becalmed in a sail boat—I see ’em. Loading chests o’ treasure in the moonlight! Bet you I never want to see ’em no more! No, suh!” Pomp’ gasped.
“And,” added Nelse to his servant’s tale, “next day after Pomp’ told me—he was near-’bout scared out o’ his clo’es—I took me a rifle an’ went onto that land ’side o’ the inlet, there—where you see that bit o’ rock under the mangrove—an’—an’—they had been some man there, it looked like he had been tryin’ to locate somethin’ and started to dig for it—but—he—won’t—never—dig—no mo’!”
The three chums shuddered in spite of themselves.
“Hurt?” asked Mr. Neale.
“Beyond hurtin’—” said Nelse solemnly. He refused an invitation to stay for supper, complied with Pomp’s pleading and tumbled into his boat.
“If I was you,” he said in farewell, “an’ had any idea o’ tryin’ for what I reckon may be hid on that strip o’ land—I’d up sail an’ away quick’s the wind ’ud take me!”
“Yes, sar!” mumbled Sam in the cabin.
“But whatever you do,” called Nelse, “if there is any spooks—doan’ try for to bother ’em none—they’s more to them ha’nts—” his word for ghosts “—than most folks knows, I reckon!”
“Well, you won’t get me there,” declared Tom.
The slow, idle evening gave them plenty of time to recount their feelings and to argue to and fro about ghosts, spooks, ha’nts, and buccaneers’ apparitions in particular. Sam, refusing to come forth even to cook supper, took no part. He crouched in a corner, muttering some charm or spell of protection taught him by Ma’am Sib, no doubt, till Cliff called, “Oh, Sam—shut up!”
“All that talks doesn’t scare me,” Nicky declared, “nor Sam, either, even with his witch-charms. I’d sort of like to see——”
That very second he had his wish!
On shore a queer light appeared. It was queer in more ways than one. It was of a peculiar green, an uncanny green; it was not the light of a lantern, shining all around; it seemed like a small window lighted up with an uncanny glow—and it was where no window could be. The light seemed to be moving, very slowly, when Cliff discovered it and without a word directed his comrades’ attention toward it.
While they stared, the light came slowly closer to the shore—and yet it did not seem to be carried—it glided along almost imperceptibly.
Tom, with a nervous clutch on Mr. Neale’s arm, indicated the open water of the Sound. Across it a boat was moving, slowly, steadily, toward them.
Yet, although it came steadily along and they could see the men as dim, ghostly shapes, the oars made no sound as the forms in the boat plied them—bend! straighten!—bend! straighten!
The light had stopped moving and seemed to hang, a queer window of illumination, above the water on which its gleam was reflected faintly. The boat came toward them. In its bow a figure stood—and what a figure! In the dim star-gleam it seemed gigantic. Not a sound accompanied the slow progress of the strange craft.
“He’s got something in his hand!” gasped Nicky.
The man, as the boat came to within thirty feet of the sloop, raised his arm.
“It’s a sword—” whispered Tom.
“No! A cutlass!” Cliff breathed.
The ghostly figure, its head tied up in some sort of cloth, its face a white blur under the white head covering, made a menacing gesture, as of one thrusting at them, with the implement in his hand.
Then he lifted the cutlass and with it pointed away toward the passage between the mangroves where they had come into the Sound.
“Go away, or you will suffer!” his gestures seemed to say.
His boat, still without a sound, like a wraith on the water, swung away toward the light.
Hardly breathing, the chums watched.
“Boat, ahoy!” called Mr. Neale.
There was no response. Like a craft of dreams the boat moved off and they saw it progress steadily to shore.
The light, green and gruesome, seemed to grow larger and brighter, and it turned slightly so that it lighted up the shelving bit of sand at the mouth of the inlet.
Onto this small beach, with no sound that could be heard, the boat-load of wraith-like figures debarked.
They seemed to be all white, like ghosts, in sheets or some sort of glimmeringly pale garments. They bent toward the boat in the glow that made them seem like luminous, greenish shapes of evil.
“Look!” breathed Tom, “they’re lifting a chest!”
They were! A chest or box of treasure was being shifted to the sand. Several others followed, still without answer to Mr. Neale’s repeated hail.
Sam, who had refused to leave his retreat in the stuffy cabin, began to whimper. Through a port-hole, at their captain’s hail, he had stolen one glance. It was enough!
Tom, too, was demoralized; but he dared not speak; only by the shaking of his hand on Nicky’s arm did his terror show.
On shore there seemed to be a ghostly argument—suddenly, in the greenish glow, knives flashed out, were lifted, were plunged into action! Yet no sound of a fight came across the water.
Figures dropped! Forms strove, hand in hand, knives upraised and driven downward!
And at one side, a little above the rest, and sharply silhouetted as a tall form in white, stood the one who must be the leader, his cutlass held ready, but making no move.
And then, all but one of the contending silent figures was down! The survivor of the battle turned and rushed toward his chief—the glow disappeared and the silence, the darkness, closed down more eerily than ever!
“Where are they—what are they doing?” gasped Nicky.
Mr. Neale was drawing in on the line that secured the dinghy.
“I’m going to see,” he said.
For once there were no volunteers for the investigation!
Tom begged his chief not to go, but Mr. Neale, with a word of encouragement, assuring them that he felt that the strange scene had more than supernatural explanation, rowed away.
The wait seemed interminable. They heard his oars squeal in the rowlocks, saw the dinghy reach the shore and lose way; then there was a silence and an absence of movement. They could not make out what Mr. Neale was doing.
“I wish I’d gone along, now,” Nicky said.
“I ought to have gone, too—he might need help.” Cliff seconded his chum’s tardy return of courage.
But the dinghy was returning!
“It’s queer,” Mr. Neale said when he had transferred himself to the cockpit, “I couldn’t find a thing!”
“Couldn’t find—no boat—nothing?” quavered Tom.
“Not a thing!”
There was not much sleep that night and they were all glad to see the sky begin to turn gray, then lighter, in the East, as dawn came.
Sam came out sullenly to prepare breakfast. Their supplies were very low for they had laid in only a small store, to keep up their pretence of cruising among islands where food was plentiful. At several points of the shore they had secured yams, corn flour and other necessities, but the meal, with a lean larder and a morose, intimidated cook, yielded little zest or nourishment for even such good appetites as the Mystery Boys usually possessed.
“I’m going to suggest that you fellows go ashore,” Mr. Neale said. “I’ll set you on the beach—and be careful about snakes! Then I’ll take the dinghy and go around the point to see that chap we met last night. There is more behind this than we see just now.”
“Don’t you think?—” began Tom.
“I think a good deal,” the captain replied, “but ghosts are the very last explanation I will accept!”
He put Nicky and Cliff on the bank of the inlet, noting that by daylight the sand and undergrowth was trampled and muddied.
“No ghosts did all this,” he said. “There is a human agency at work and I want to find out why all this trouble was taken—to scare us.”
He went back to the sloop, ordered Sam to pull himself together, and took Tom aboard the dinghy. When he landed the third of the comrades Mr. Neale, repeating his warning about snakes, bade them reconnoiter and find all the signs they could, against his return. Then he rowed off toward the point around which Nelse had said he had a plantation.
“Funny Nelse didn’t come back this morning,” Cliff observed.
“Maybe he is in the scheme—whatever it is—to scare us,” Nicky mused. “Remember how anxious he was at first, till we said why we are here—and then how emphatic he was about danger?”
They did. As they looked about there were plenty of signs to show that human agencies and not ghosts had produced the strange scene the night before.
Not only was the ground trampled, but on one mangrove root that bent upward and curved into a sort of prong, they discovered a strip of cloth that looked like part of a bed sheet.
But there was no sign of the chests of treasure!
“It’s a queer thing!” Nicky declared. His chums agreed.
“Say!” exclaimed Tom suddenly, pointing toward the sloop, “what’s Sam doing? Look—he’s hoisting the mainsail!”
Sam was doing exactly that.
“Ahoy—Sam!” hailed Nicky through cupped hands.
Sam did not answer.
“Sam! Sam!” shouted all three. They saw the colored man turn and look toward them. Then he picked up a small megaphone that was part of the boat’s equipment and roared at them.
“I’m going away from here, sars! Yes, sar! Going from here!”
“He’s been scared almost crazy!” declared Cliff, “but he can’t go away——”
“——And leave us—and Mr. Neale!” cried Tom.
Nicky began kicking off his shoes. As he doffed coat and cap, his chums followed his example. Together they plunged into the water and swam lustily toward theTreasure Belle.
It was a race against Sam’s swift movements.
The sail was up. The anchor came in with a groan of its chain. Cliff, a few strokes in the lead, redoubled his efforts.
TheTreasure Bellebegan to move through the water, taking a puff of wind in the early morning gusts.
Nicky and Cliff desisted from their effort. Tom, desperate, seemed fairly to race toward the stem of the moving slope—but her pace accelerated. She stood away toward the neck through which she would apparently head out toward Biscayne Bay and the open water.
From the stern Sam waved a hand in farewell!
Swimming dejectedly back to their small bit of beach the chums took off their soaked clothes and hung them in the sun to dry.
“Well, here we are!” observed Nicky ruefully.
“Well, here we are!” mimicked Cliff. “Don’t you like it? I thought you were fond of mystery and adventure!”
“Whether I am or not, I’m getting it!” Nicky admitted. “But this was more than I bargained for.”
“Same here,” exclaimed Tom.
“I see,” Cliff grinned at them. “You two are—sort of—arm-chair adventurers. You like to have the thrills without the hardships. Just look at us!” he declared. “We couldn’t be deeper in adventure if we tried to dig our way in! Right in the midst of treasure-land! Stranded and deserted on the edge of an awful swamp—isn’t the Big Cypress Swamp north of us? Surely it is! Without food! Drenched and helpless. What more could you ask?”
“I see what you are aiming at,” Nicky grinned back. “We must take it as it comes and make the best of it.”
“That’s it,” Cliff agreed. “You know we’re not so badly off. Mr. Neale will come rowing along in the dinghy and then we’ll all crowd in and be rescued—what a story we’ll have to tell our grandchildren.”
They were compelled to laugh at his tone and his ludicrous words. It made them all feel better.
Meanwhile, Mr. Neale had reached Nelse’s place and been greeted by Pomp’ who assured him that he was welcome to wait until Mars’ Nelse came back with his canoe—having gone “off yonder,” Pomp’ said with a vague wave of his hand toward the Sound.
Waiting on the rude little dock, Mr. Neale caught sight of theTreasure Bellestanding away for an opening into bigger water.
It astonished him and rendered him helpless to act! He knew that he could not hope to overtake her with his dinghy, and Pomp’ assured him that there was no faster boat within reach.
“I ’spect dat black man f’om Jamaica done got de skeer under his wool and run off wif de white chill’un,” he observed.
“No—he’s gone alone,” Mr. Neale stated. “I left the boys on the shore by the inlet.”
He leaped in to the dinghy and began to row down the shore line; it was no time to wait for Nelse. He must see whether the boys were where he had left them or if they had managed to return, by swimming, before Sam got the boat under headway.
He was forced to conclude that they were either voluntarily going with Sam or that they were under some compulsion on the sloop.
Certainly they were not on the shore!
He beached the dinghy and sat in it, considering. Where were his charges? Why had they let Sam get away if they had reached the sloop?
As a matter of fact, the chums were having an adventure they had not counted on.
Hardly had they decided to wait for their chief when a thought had struck Nicky. “If we were detectives, now,” he mused, “we could find out what all this mystery is concealing.”
“Well, we have nothing better to do,” Tom suggested. “Let’s try our hand at ‘detecting!’”
“Good idea!” Cliff agreed. “First off, that boat, last night, didn’t come back into the Sound. And there’s signs enough that real people were here. Where did they go? Where did they take the boat? And what did they do with the chests?”
“That’s easy!” Nicky declared. “They went up this little river, and they either put the chests back in their own boat or in another one, that had that funny light on it.”
“But where did they go, then,” demanded Tom.
“Up the inlet, I said,” Nicky retorted. “We can’t get through the mangroves and the tangle of brush, but a boat—or boats—could go up as far as that bend yonder.”
“I wonder what’s beyond the bend,” reflected Tom.
“Let’s see—while our clothes dry!” Nicky urged, slipping into the water.
“No—wait!” called Cliff. “Look out for water snakes!”
“Or—crocodiles!” added Tom.
“I will,” laughed Nicky, turning and swimming slowly up the inlet.
They watched him anxiously. He waved an arm reassuringly and in a hundred easy strokes was at the point where the inlet turned out of their sight.
“Don’t go around there by yourself!” called Cliff.
“It’s just the same, around the bend,” Nicky said as he trod water for an instant. Then he swam out of their sight.
“Nicky!” called Tom anxiously.
There was a moment of silence, then a faint answer came. The place seemed suddenly to be spooky and queer.
Of a sudden there was a sharp, low cry, and then silence.
Tom and Cliff looked at each other.
“Nicky!” shrilled Tom.
They strained their ears.
There was no answer!
With one accord, never pausing to think of personal danger, knowing that Nicky was not the sort to play a joke, that if he failed to answer their hail he must be in peril, they slipped into the water and used their utmost effort to reach the bend.
Hardly had they left the tiny beach when a Seminole Indian, with an almost expressionless face, emerged from a clump of heavy bushes through which he had been calmly, stolidly observing them for a half hour.
That was why, when Mr. Neale arrived ten minutes later, no clothes hung in the sun to furnish a clue to the presence of the boys.
As the two chums reached the bend and could see around it they suspended their strokes and stared!
Nicky was not in danger at all!
But he was evidently too stupefied by what he was regarding to have heard their call; or, perhaps the dense growth had dulled the sound. At any rate, they paddled hastily forward until they could climb out beside their comrade.
“Why didn’t you answer?” demanded Cliff, his anxiety shifting to a natural anger at the fright Nicky had given them.
“Oh! Golly! I guess I was too surprised to hear you!”
Nicky lifted an arm and waved it at the scene before them.
On the shore a light canoe of cedar, hollowed out of the virgin wood as the Seminoles create their water craft, lay upturned.
Beyond that there was a spot cleared in the heavy brush growth, and there were piled cases and crates, perhaps fifty of them!
It did not require the stenciled black letters at the visible ends of certain cases to indicate the truth to the chums. An old ship’s lantern of the sort used at the starboard and port sides, with a screen of green glass over its front indicated where the previous night’s uncanny glow had come from. But the cases themselves told more.
“Rum runners!” gasped Nicky.
“We ought to have guessed,” Cliff said. “Nelse is one of them. That’s why he tried to scare us away. This is a nest of them. I suppose they can run up from the islands—especially Cuba—get their large boat hidden from the Government patrol on some dark night, in among the keys, and then ferry the cases over here in smaller boats.”
“But what good does that do them?” Tom wondered. “How do they get the cases to market?”
“I guess the Seminole Indians, or maybe half-breeds, work with them. It must be the Seminoles because they know the waterways in the Big Cypress Swamp and the Everglades, and I don’t think many white men do—they didn’t up to recently, anyhow, according to a book on exploration I read.” Nicky made the statement excitedly.
“Even if we never find any treasure,” he added, “there must be a big reward for breaking up trade like this. It’s wicked. It’s against the law and the Constitution, and even if there wasn’t any reward we will have to try some way to get word to the Government boats.”
There was a slight stir in the grass and scrub behind and to the left of them.
When, with one accord, they turned, a Seminole Indian faced them.
“Hello!” said Nicky, a little uneasily.
The man made no immediate reply. Instead, he lifted an arm and beckoned, then pointed toward a narrow trail beyond the clearing.
Nicky looked at Cliff, and both consulted Tom with their eyes. They all read a common intention; they would swing about and rush to the inlet and swim back to the shore.
The Indian divined their purpose; with a snakelike movement he stepped to a point preventing the move. His hand touched something bright and sinister at his belt.
“Se-lof-ka-chop-kaw!” he said, Seminole dialect for “My knife is long!” He partly unsheathed the weapon.
Silently the chums took the trail, their captor following close.
And two hundred yards away Mr. Neale sat by the shore, wondering!
Picking up the bundles of their clothes, the Seminole herded the chums along the trail; its limestone-coral hurt their tender, bare feet while they had hard work to avoid the deep, searing gashes which saw grass makes.
They came after a few minutes to a small open glade, almost bare of soil; here the Indian made a sharp, guttural sound. They turned.
Gesturing to them to sit, he said “A-pok-es-chay,” or “All sit down!” They read the gesture but not the words. However, because of their condition they preferred to stand. After he tossed their clothes to the ground the Indian signed for them to spread the garments to dry again and then, turning, he walked swiftly out of sight.
“This is a nice fix,” said Tom. “What will Mr. Neale do when he sees the sloop gone and doesn’t find us?”
“He will think Sam has made off with us—or that Tom has been so scared that he helped Sam,” Nicky declared.