“Sam—why he’s sick in the cabin. We’re taking him to a doctor!”
“Sam—sick,” Mr. Neale said to the cutter’s officer, “but we left him on the way to Jamaica the afternoon before the squall. How did these men get on his boat?—and——”
“And why are they bound Eastward along the coast when he ought to be nearly to Jamaica by now—here, heave to!”
The sail came down with a run—the men were careless sloopmen or very ignorant of a single-masted boat and her handling. The cutter swung in a circle and ranged up beside the sloop.
It was practically dark, for the twilight is short in the season, and the men sat with their heads well covered. But if this was a ruse to escape detection of their identity it failed. Lieutenant Sommerlee motioned to a patrol member, and the man caught the rail of theTreasure Belleand clung so that the boats lay sides-to.
The lieutenant stepped across the rails, and made his way to the cabin. At the same instant the two men stood up, but before they could carry out their intention—which might have been to plunge over the side and take chances of swimming away and escaping in the dark—the young officer had his pistol trained, drawing it as he whirled.
“Throw up your hands!” he snapped, “and sit down again!”
“Sam,” called Mr. Neale, clambering into the cockpit of his old sloop, “where are you?”
“Ain’t no one there,” said one of the men. “Lieutenant, will you promise us a fair break if we tell you the truth?”
“Yellow-livered, of course,” he said. “I guessed you would try that.” He went close, called for a flashlight and trained it on the two anxious sailors. “Ho! You—‘Runty’—you, too—‘Jack O’ the Keys.’ What are you doing in this sloop? Where is Sam—but I may as well tell you that you are under arrest right now, and if you expect any leniency, which I won’t promise at this moment, you had better say what’s on your minds.”
Then they told him. He, and Clarence Neale, learned of the escape of theSenorita, as well as of Nelse’s part in that, and in the hi-jacker’s plans, in which Nelse figured as a receiver for their stolen cargoes, since he owned Crocodile Key; they also learned of the wreck, of the boys’ ruse, and escape, and of the latest escapade, as far as the men knew it.
Full speed for the archipelago, was the present order, after the two sailors had been handcuffed and two of the cutter’s crew took over theTreasure Belle, to sail her to the patrol base until Sam could claim her.
“It looks as though there’s a fire up yonder,” said Lieutenant Sommerlee, as the cutter doubled the Westermost nose of Florida, “See the light in the sky?”
“I hope the boys aren’t in any danger!” cried Clarence Neale.
None of the crew, neither Mr. Neale, the lieutenant, nor Uncle Sam’s sailors, could resist a cheer of delight when they got close enough to see that the fire was merely a great heap of wood, on a small islet near the channel to Shark River.
They sent up a rocket at the first verification of this fact, and urged their speedy engine to its fullest power as rockets began to burst in the sky, blue, green and red flares showed and a dull boom from a signaling cannon floated across the water to them.
It seemed an age, but was not so very long, before the chums were leaping, skylarking, dancing, standing on their heads, slapping one another on the back, adding a slap or so for delighted Sam.
They had collected wood, cut parts from the wrecked vessel, made a signal fire on the islet, and kept it burning all day, and into the night, since the discovery that they were marooned, that morning. The purpose was to create a smoke smudge during the day, and a light at night, with the certainty that some coasting vessel or other ship must see it and come closer to investigate.
The rockets and colored flares were the signal stores of theSenorita, used more as fireworks for the celebration than with any other purpose, for the signal rocket of the cutter had been read by Sam as the patrol’s own signal.
“Thank Heaven you boys are safe!” cried Mr. Neale for the tenth time, pumping Nicky’s hand again and again, sharing fist-cuffs impartially between the shoulderblades of Cliff and Tom in his elation.
“And thank Lieutenant Sommerlee too,” said Cliff. They did.
“But now,” said Nicky, soberly, “what to do about the gold!”
They had, of course, told all their adventures.
“Now that you are all right,” Lieutenant Sommerlee said, “I feel that we shall have to let the gold wait. What I am interested in is not gold but—hi-jackers!”
“And pirates,” added Cliff. “Don’t forget they are in a stolen boat—theLibertadbelongs to one Ortiga, and the other one has it.”
“But, Lieutenant,” protested Nicky, “if you get the hi-jackers we’ll get the gold. They have it!”
“That is true,” agreed the officer. “At the moment I am puzzled about the course through which we can secure either men or gold.”
Nicky jumped up eagerly.
“When theSenoritawas running away,” he reminded his chums, “remember that Tew told us they would hide up in Shark River?”
“I do,” agreed Cliff.
“And Sam, when they took his sloop, thought the men said something to the two on her about bringing liquor cases or cases of liquor, and something was said about sharks——”
“That’s so!” Sam exclaimed.
“I believe they’ve gone into Shark River—” Nicky declared.
“But we are at the mouth of the channel into Shark River,” objected Tom. “And they captured theLibertadNorth of this place, and turned North again from there.”
“They may have doubled back; Nicky defended his idea.
“I think there is a more likely solution,” suggested the lieutenant. “They went to the channel at the opening of the Harney River, above; there they could go back into the inner channel—above Whitewater Bay, and down that, again, to the landward entry into the Shark.”
Plans were discussed, ideas proposed, until far into the night. In all that the chums proposed, they figured; in those their elders discussed, they did not.
But because of the crew’s depletion by the departure on the sloop of two of her fighting patrols, and because neither Sam nor Mr. Neale was an expert with a rifle or pistol, the more vigorous plans for pursuit and capture had to be shelved in favor of more adroit measures.
And so it came about that a plan partially suggested by Nicky and elaborated by the lieutenant, in which the boys must figure, was the one to be adopted.
And again the Mystery Boys were adventure bound.
“But,” said Cliff, as a new thought struck him, “those hi-jackers must have seen our lights—we made plenty of excitement.”
“Yes,” agreed Tom. “They may have seen them—then, they will either turn and run across the Gulf, or somewhere else, or they will unload the treasure in Shark River and hide it in the Everglades.”
“Once it’s hidden there, any effort to find it would be like looking for a needle in a hay-stack!” declared Mr. Neale.
“Then let’s hurry!” cried Nicky, and from that instant all was activity on the strandedSenorita.
In order to see how Nicky’s plan was, the picture that he had in his mind must be understood. This was Nicky’s mind picture:
The hi-jackers, after capturing Sam’s sloop, had sent her, with two men aboard, to make contact with their Little Card Sound headquarters. Nelse was there and from what he had heard and pieced together, Nicky supposed that the two men on theTreasure Bellewould find Nelse, and have him go, or send Seminole Indians, across the inland waterways, to take to the hi-jackers some liquor cases in which to conceal the treasure bars.
When they captured theLibertad, the hi-jackers had left three men floundering in the water; for all they knew or cared, these men might have been wounded. TheLibertad’sown boat had been sunk by bullet holes during the fight, which was why the boys had been left without a boat when Senor Ortiga and Mr. Coleson had fled theSenoritain the tender.
Under such conditions the hi-jackers had started North inEl Libertad, the night previous to that on which the cutter arrived.
They would hardly go to the shores of the Southern States bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Nicky decided, because they would be afraid of having the gold discovered: it was in bars and had been loaded into theLibertadwithout any provision for its concealment and transportation later on.
The hi-jackers would probably go, Nicky argued, into the inner channel of the archipelago and then lay up in the Shark River, that small stream having its source at the edge of the Everglades. It was the most Southerly place they could get close to the Everglades, and the Seminoles, bringing the cases to put the treasure in would come up the inland way through part of Big Cypress Swamp, along the rim of the Everglades, and meet them. That was the only way Nicky could see for the hi-jackers to do, because they had no small boat and could not go any closer to the shallow water of the Florida swamp than the draught ofEl Libertadwould permit.
They could not have had enough gasoline in the tanks to risk a very long voyage; that was the reason he did not think they would try to get to the Southern States and risk themselves in strange waters with no way to carry the gold from the vessel to their Northern headquarters, wherever that might be.
With all of this the older heads of the party agreed.
Their first plan, then, was to get theLibertadpocketed and surrounded; this they must do before the treasure could be hidden.
Without a small boat it was not probable that the hi-jackers could get into the Everglades, but they might know the Seminoles and might be able to get hold of a canoe.
A day, and a good part of the night before had passed since they went away in theLibertad, but Lieutenant Sommerlee and Mr. Neale decided that they had probably gone into the Shark River and laid up. They had no reason to be afraid: they left theLibertad’sowners in the water; they left three boys and a Negro in another rowboat. There was not much danger, from their way of looking at it, in anything that these people could do.
If they had seen the signal smoke of the day or the fire and the rockets and lights at night, it would be too late for them to run out in theLibertad; and, unless they had already hidden the treasure, they could not very easily do so in the darkness. They would be more apt to believe themselves well hidden, and would not make any move before daylight, because they would be waiting for their two men in the sloop to get Southeast and bring help from inland. They did not know, of course, that the men had been captured.
First of all, Sam and a patrol sailor went over the side of theSenorita, in the dark, with ropes under their arms and fastened to the rail. They searched about on the reef at the side of the ship where Nicky and his chums had thrown the rifles and pistols. Lieutenant Sommerlee did not think that these had been in the water long enough to be severely damaged or made useless; he wanted them for a purpose.
Sam and his companion by dint of much searching brought up both submerged rifles and several pistols.
They were set to work cleaning and drying and oiling them at once.
“Cliff,” ordered Lieutenant Sommerlee, taking command, “you—with Sam and Jim and one of my sailors, will stay on theSenorita. Jim has had a night and a day to rest in and he is pretty strong again. You four are the guardians of this Shark River channel.”
“If they try to run out past us we must try to prevent that,” Cliff agreed.
“Yes,” nodded the commander. “My boatswain, Jack, will be with you and, for the sake of discipline, you must all obey his orders. He has a cool head and is a fine shot. Four of you ought to be able to block this channel if the hi-jackers try to run out here.”
“We will!” agreed Cliff, feeling the importance of his share in the blockade.
“The rest of us will start at once in the cutter,” the lieutenant continued. “We will tow our own light dory, and when we reach the inner mouth of the Harney River, Mr. Neale, Nicky, and one of my men who has been into the Everglades, will drop off in the dory and go up the Harney River as fast as they can by night. By submerging a flashlight in the water, training its beam on the bottom, and rowing carefully they can get almost to the head of the stream, where it has its source at the rim of the Everglades. From there, as soon as dawn comes, my man will direct the course South along the rim of the Everglades to the nearest point he sees fit to the Shark River. The Harney starts a few miles North of the Shark, at the rimrock, and by sending the boat there, we can block the Everglades side and stop any Indians who may come there from Big Cypress.”
“And we will stop them, never fear!” declared Nicky stoutly.
“I know that you will,” said the lieutenant with a smile. “The cutter will proceed carefully down the inner channel. I will be in command, and will lie-to close to the bank, not far from the Shark. Unless the hi-jackers rush out I will do nothing until we are all in position. We shall need some signals.”
“Have you any smoke-rockets on the cutter?” asked Nicky. “They would make enough light to be seen at night, and smoke to see by day.”
“We have,” answered a sailor. “Plenty of them.”
“Then we will take four,” Nicky suggested. “How will we use them?”
“One at night will call for help. One right after the other at night will call urgently for help. Do not use them for any other purpose tonight, and I will be watching the sky over the ’Glades.”
“All right, sir,” said Nicky in proper nautical deference. “Then, when we get into place at the inside end of the Shark, shall we signal?”
“No,” replied the lieutenant. “But if you see that there is no boat in the Shark River at all, send up a rocket, wait a minute and then send up a second. Watch for the same signal in reply; if you do not get it, repeat with your other two rockets. If the boat is there, make no signal unless the men are escaping. In that case, send up three rockets in quick succession, as fast as you can.”
“How shall we be able to set them up?” asked Mr. Neale.
“You will find clumps of tall saw-grass almost everywhere; it is from four to eight or nine feet high, and you must be careful not to let its sharp edges gash you, but it is strong enough to support a rocket in an upright position while you set and light it.”
Hasty repetition by each member of the party of plans in which they must participate, the arranging of signals from the cutter, and of others from theSenorita, completed the arrangements.
Cliff, with Jim, Sam and the boatswain, Jack, busily getting the recovered arsenal into good shape again, saw the cutter disappear into the gloom.
The run up the channel into the Harney River was without event, and since Lieutenant Sommerlee had cruised in those waters, making a chart for the U. S. Geodetic Survey, he knew the safest way, and finally, with tense, thrilling nerves, Nicky dropped into the light dory with Mr. Neale and a sailor called Brownie because his last name was Brown and he was a short, fat, jolly little man. With whispered directions from the cutter’s commander, they pushed off and with Mr. Neale at the oars and Nicky in the stem, Brownie being at the bow to give the course up the rapidly narrowing stream, they slipped into a darkness that seemed to close down about them like a curtain.
By following the lieutenant’s directions they made steady progress as far as their boat dared go in the dark, feeling-out the channel with the tip of their flashlight under water so they could see the coral bottom of the river. Finally they stopped, tied to a heavy root and got such sleep as they could, curled up on their hard seats.
At about four-thirty, before dawn cut through the heavy tangle of trees, intertwined overhead, Brownie awoke his companions and they ate their hardtack, and picked the bones of a chicken from the cutter’s recent purchases, cooked the night before on theSenorita; this they washed down with cocoa from tin cups, cocoa hot out of a thermos bottle.
The hot liquid helped to drive away the night chill, and Nicky declared that he felt fit for anything.
“That’s good,” chuckled Brownie. “We’re going to have to stand in shallow water and walk in it, too. We must drag our dory up over the rock bed here at the rim of the Everglades.”
In spite of the cold of the water, fed by the overflow from the Everglades which, themselves, are renewed by many streams that spout out cold and clear, from holes in the limestone, they dragged and tugged and laughed softly as they slipped, until, when the dory was over the rim, and into fairly good water, they were quite warm from their exertions.
“Here we are!” said Brownie softly, with a wave of his hand. “Here we are—in the Everglades!”
“While we rest,” Brownie said to Nicky, “take a good look around. There’s not so many white boys who get to see the Everglades. It’s a sight worth seeing, just at daybreak!”
It was. Nicky stared about, and turned in surprise.
“Why, I thought,” he said, amazed. “I thought the ’Glades were all swamps. They’re not, at all!”
“Many a one has the wrong idea,” retorted Brownie affably. “In truth, the ’Glades are just flat bedrock, mostly, under a couple of feet of water, and with a very thin soil that the grass hangs onto. Down South’ard, you see, where the trees are, that’s Big Cypress. That’s all swamp, I admit, and bad to get into. This would be as bad if you got lost in it, and that wouldn’t be so hard, would it?”
Mr. Neale agreed with him, while Nicky, standing upright on the forward thwart, forgot his wet feet in the beauty and strangeness of the scene before him.
At the Eastern edge of the ’Glades, the sun was rising, casting its slanting, golden rays across a great expanse of grass, and more grass, and yet more grass.
That grass was no such growth as is usually understood by the name. It was tall, some clumps of it reaching up as high as ten feet. There were several kinds, but most predominant was the terrible saw-grass. Its stiff uprightness, and its rasping, cutting edges would make of it, Nicky decided, a formidable barrier for anyone who tried to go through it.
Brownie agreed with his voiced idea.
“I went with another lieutenant across the ’Glades, back a couple of winters ago,” he said. “It took us months. It’s not so many miles, but, as you can easily see, the grass grows in big clumps, and it is so high that you can’t spy ahead and find the channels. There are channels, but they are a good deal like the ones you tell about in those Ten Thousand Islands. Some of them run into blind ends and shoal up; others are blocked by the saw grass—and if anybody wants the job of trying to hack a way through some of these clumps of saw grass, they aren’t named Brownie.”
Nicky, and Mr. Neale, could readily see how difficult it would be to cut a way through: the edges of the blades could inflict such deep gashes in the hands that only by the most careful work could one cut at them, and then only in heavy gloves which would, in a short time, be cut through. Even boots, Brownie said, were not thick enough to withstand much work in passing through the grass.
“In places,” he added, “we had to wade and push our canoes—we had two specially built canoes, and we made a survey while we crossed. The grass tears at leather and rubber boots and in almost no time it gets through. Look across! See, about half way, there is a long clump of grass—almost like land! Well, it’s just grass, and it is so long and so thick that it took us a couple of weeks, going South, to get down around it. In covering five miles straight across we made more than forty miles of travel. You see, we’d go fifty feet and run into a dead end, or into a bend that took us to grass; then we’d have to go back and search out another way. Back and forth, around and back, through and back, we went. I tell you, it was no lark!”
They were rested, and with water enough to float their dory, they turned her prow toward the distant line of trees which marked the Big Cypress Swamp and sculled carefully, winding along the comparatively open way at the edge of the rim of the ’Glades.
The Everglades are really a sort of inland sea, very shallow and thickly studded with clumps of the terrible, high grass. Around the table land of the shallow sea, which rises gradually toward its center line, something like a low crest of a long underwater hill, there is a rim of somewhat higher rock which keeps the water in.
The water seems to be replenished by streams or springs coming up through fissures in the rock; its drainage is to the open sea and the bays inside the outer reefs, through rivers like the Shark and the Harney on the West side, and the Miami on the Eastern slope.
Sculling carefully, and keeping a sharp lookout, the trio in the light-draught dory progressed steadily as the sun rose higher. It was still very early.
“I doubt if the hi-jackers are awake yet,” said Brownie. “They probably feel that they are well hid.”
“What’s that—ahead?” queried Nicky, standing, carefully balanced, in the stern. He sat down and helped Mr. Neale to steady their craft while Brownie rose at the bow and spied over the grass at one side.
“I swan!” exclaimed Brownie under his breath, turning to his companions. “It’s—a boat.”
He turned and stared, under his cupped hand.
“I can make out—why! It’s theSenorita, printed on the bow.”
“TheSenorita!” exclaimed Nicky softly. “That’s the tender we had taken away by Mr. Coleson and Don Ortiga’s brother—the one they called Senor Ortiga.”
“Then they must have rowed in at the Harney yesterday, and come around behind the Shark,” stated Mr. Neale. “I wonder what they intended to do?”
“Oh, I’m not worrying about what they intended,” Brownie answered, “I’m anxious about what they’re doing now—what has happened to them. We ought to know. It might upset our plans.”
“There’s nobody in the boat, or in sight,” Nicky whispered as they very slowly worked the dory closer. The empty tender lay with its nose to the rock and heavy fringe of underbrush, grass and small trees at the ’Glades’ rim.
“I know what!” Brownie said, when they were quite dose. “That boat is moored to a root on the rim-line. It’s about opposite an old Indian trail, too. A trail leads down beside the Shark. You can’t hardly make out the mouth where the water escapes from the ’Glades, the trees and brush is so thick. But it’s there, and the Indians have a sort of portage, about opposite where the tender lays.”
“We ought to do some scouting,” suggested Nicky. “Let me!”
Mr. Neale objected. Brownie, also, said that he had better do it.
“You’re too stout,” Nicky urged, “and Mr. Neale is not a woodsman. I’ve spent two summers in the woods, one up in Maine and one out in the Sierras. I can go quietly and come back without letting anyone know I’m around.”
He pleaded so eagerly and the danger seemed so slight, if he kept his head, as he promised to do, that they finally agreed, and he was allowed to land on the damp, matted growth at the nose of the dory as she swung close to the tender. Nicky listened carefully to instructions from Brownie and warning from Mr. Neale.
“And be especially watchful about snakes,” Brownie said. “There aren’t so many in the ’Glades, but in the heavy growth there are plenty. But if you keep your eyes open—and here!—take this pistol, in case of need!—you can generally avoid them. If you fire three times, quickly, we will come to help you. If you fire at a snake, we’ll come, too, of course, but the three shots is to show that it is help you need, of any kind.”
The trail was almost blind, being little used, and Nicky was hard put to it to discover his way sometimes; but Brownie had told him where to look for Indian signs on the trees and lower tangle, and what sort of ground to avoid, and he made a fairly quiet and very slow progress.
Almost so suddenly as to be a total surprise, he came to the end of the trail. Thick brush and heavy tangle of every sort of vine and creeper was just ahead; but through it his quick eyes discerned the glint of sun on rippled water, and the white reflection of a boat’s bow!
There, moored close to shore, so that one could step from it to the heavy roots at the edge, lay theLibertad!
Nicky stayed where he was and looked and strained his ears. He moved cautiously to one side and got a better view. He could see the forward deck, and there crouched the two Ortiga brothers, the one they called the Senor and the other, the Don.
Their voices were low, but they came clearly to Nicky.
“Let’s call a truce,” Senor Ortiga was saying. “You and I have fought and won, back and forth, times without number. Now there is enough gold in this boat to make us rich—and more back in the islands. Let’s bury the hatchet!”
“It is buried, amigo,” his brother agreed. “Now I suggest that we also bury the treasure, out in the ’Glades, and disappear for a while.”
“That would do but for one thing. We can’t trust our men. If they know where it is buried they will come back and steal it—or you——”
“Yes,” snarled the other suddenly angry again. “Or I—or you! Bury the hatchet! Oh, yes!”
“Our original plan—your plan—is best, after all,” said the other brother. “We will wait until the Seminoles come and pack the treasure in cases when it is divided—then it will be ‘each man for himself!’”
“I will go back to the rimrock and see if there is any sign of the Indians,” said Senor Ortiga, rising. Nicky looked about quickly. He must get back and warn his companions so they could, all three, hide before the Senor arrived.
And as Nicky turned, his blood turned to ice in his veins.
Lying along a low bough, not ten feet from the ground, with its steady, unblinking, bright, beady eyes fixed on him, lay a moccasin, a large specimen of the ’Glades snake family!
Instinctively, and with the impulsiveness that characterized his movement at many close corners in life, Nicky lifted the pistol and fired!
As his finger pressed the trigger he realized that, in the old adage, “the fat was in the fire.”
He had upset all their careful plans!
It was not the bullet from Nicky’s pistol that did damage—it missed the moccasin by a good foot; but the sound, pounding through the still morning air, warned and wakened the hi-jackers.
Nicky did not dare risk a run past the snake which, in spite of the pistol shot, had not moved, except to lift its head angrily.
From the position by the boats Mr. Neale and Brownie heard the reverberating thud of the exploding powder. “He’s in trouble,” said Mr. Neale. “But he isn’t calling for help!” answered Brownie. They listened, but no further sound came. “Guess he got it,” said Brownie.
But then their ears were assailed by a triple succession of sharp explosions. This time it was the summons, without chance of mistake!
Breaking through the tangle, heedless of cuts and scratches, the sailor and the young collector of relics fought their way along the faint trail.
Nicky had aimed the pistol at the snake, even as he pressed the trigger in the call for aid; but his hand shook so that he made no effect on the reptile which, alarmed by the sound, slipped in a long, sinuous curve to the trunk of the tree. Nicky drew a long breath. But at the same instant that he heard the crash of bodies in the trail, he heard, behind him, feet thudding up from the waterside.
Turning, he lifted the pistol desperately in the faces of the two Ortiga brothers; but they were too close. As one knocked the weapon high in the air it exploded its fifth cartridge.
At the sound the men on the path beyond sight of Nicky gave a hail; at the same instant stout, powerful arms closed around Nicky, his opened lips were rudely smothered in a coarse hand and he felt himself, struggling, kicking, trying to bite, propelled toward the water.
“Fling him in and let’s get away!” cried Don Ortiga.
“No,” panted his brother, with a wicked word as Nicky teeth closed on his flesh and he snatched his hand free. “Make him a hostage! Hold him. Here—ahoy, the ship! Give a hand!”
Nicky tore and fought but against two powerful men. His fourteen years, his athletic prowess, were little help to him. His strength was in no way equal to theirs. From theLibertadcame excited voices.
From the trail broke cries and the sound of Brownie’s automatic barking as he caught sight of the men; but Mr. Neale stayed his hand, catching a view of Nicky in the group.
Before they could get there and intervene, Nicky had been flung to willing hands, had been thrust back into the cabin, an engineer was rocking the flywheel ofEl Libertad, her motor took hold with a roar and a tremble of the hull, Don Ortiga and his brother had thrown themselves onto the bow deck, clinging to the rail, and then scrambling down out of range, and, backing down stream,El Libertadwas beyond the leap of Brownie which fell short and sent him plunging down onto the coral bottom.
Mr. Neale shouted to Nicky; he was helpless, having no weapon. Nicky could not answer; he was surrounded, his mouth was being tied securely with a handkerchief rudely thrust between his lips.
El Libertadbacked slowly but surely down the stream.
From the bank Brownie, sputtering and soaked, hailed.
“Libertad—ahoy!” he cried. “Stop or we’ll sink you!”
“With what—your fat?” cried a lusty sailor with a roar of laughter. “If you shoot you’ll hit your boy—see, here he is!”
Screening behind Nicky, whose bound form they lifted into view, the evil sailors sent a defiant guffaw back to the men on the bank.
“Get the rockets!” panted Mr. Neale, tearing back along the trail, “the cutter won’t know what’s happened. Send up rockets!”
Brownie dashed back with him, and while Mr. Neale was fumbling to set the rockets, and dropping a packet of matches into the water in his helpless eagerness, Brownie was tugging at the light dory with all his strength, trying to shove it over the rimrock into the shoals at the head of the Shark; his idea was to row down after the vessel and so to be on hand if any help could be rendered. Mr. Neale had to ask for matches; but finally the fuses hissed and rockets roared up from the heavy roots into which their sticks had been thrust, to break into puffs of white, heavy smoke—the warning of attack!
On theLibertada hasty conference was held. Nicky was not invited to attend the conferees, but was bound quickly and thrown unceremoniously into a corner of the cabin floor, to await their further need for his protecting body.
Whispers, gruff laughs, sharp negatives to suggested action, were all that Nicky could catch. Finally, however, he heard Don Ortiga order the engineer to put on full speed astern, and back went the white boat down the Shark, a man at her stem to call the channel to the tillerman.
“We’ll use him as a blind, say he’s been hurt and we want to deliver him up,” Nicky overheard a man confide to the engineer who was necessarily absent from the conference. “That will hold their fire.”
“Whose fire?” asked the engineer, wiping gasoline from the lower edge of the carbureter, which seemed to be leaking.
“The cutter must be laying outside,” the sailor declared. “One man on the shore was in uniform. They must have tried to surround us. Lucky for us, the lad fell into our hands!”
“Yes,” said the engineer coarsely laughing. “If they offer to hurt us we can shoot him—or whatever we like!”
At the head of the Shark River Mr. Neale was helping with the dory; its keel grated and rubbed, offering resistance. They lifted and bumped it along until it seemed safe to leap in; but the added weight plumped it down onto the coral again and they had to tumble out and push once more. Then Mr. Neale leaped in, Brownie gave a shove and fell onto the stern on his chest, and clambered aboard. They caught the oars and gave way with insane eagerness.
On theLibertadNicky lay in his corner.
“Let us go—if they don’t—we’ve got him——”
“Sort of tight corner,” Nicky said to himself, and with all the cunning at his command he kept his face impassive to the chance sight of a passing sailor while, under him, cramped as they were, he tugged fiercely at the hurriedly made knots, his jaws aching from the wedge of soiled linen crushed between his teeth, his body bent toward one end—liberation!
Early in the morning Tom, on board the cutter with Mr. Sommerlee, his engineer and two of the patrol, decided that a brisk bit of exercise would be just about the finest appetizer he could desire.
There had been no signs at all of any excitement, although Tom had taken his turn with the others at watch while the cutter lay anchored a stone’s throw beyond the mouth of the Shark River.
While Lieutenant Sommerlee got the dry-alcohol stove lit up for their hot cocoa and fried eggs, Tom saw no harm in a brisk swim to the mouth of the river and back. Accordingly, while the sun was giving Nicky his first view of the ’Glades, Tom lowered himself from the cutter’s stern, not caring to risk a dive in the poor light, and struck out gaily for shore, wondering, as he swam, how Nicky’s party was getting along, back there beyond the heavy growth that fringed the inner channels.
Crawling out on a root, Tom slapped the early morning chill of the water out of his body, and rested before returning to the cutter.
He wondered, as he lolled on the roots, whetherEl Libertadwas actually hiding in the river or not. He half wished that he had asked Mr. Sommerlee for permission to swim up the river a ways; it might help them to discover the truth; they had no small boat and would not wish to risk having the cutter discovered before the landing party had its position and gave a signal.
“I think I’ll swim up the river a few strokes,” Tom decided. “Nicky swam a ways in Crocodile Creek and we discovered the liquor stores; it won’t hurt me to do a hundred yards and back.”
Accordingly he slipped down into the limpid stream, and against a slight current that did not tire him at all, he pulled his lithe, muscular young body along steadily. But when he lifted his head to glance ahead he saw nothing; nothing, that is, but water and low-clustered tree roots on the banks, tall grass, and leaves meeting in a heavy tangle along the banks and, far beyond him, meeting overhead. TheLibertadwas too close in, behind a tangle of weed and grass, to be visible from his low point of vantage in the water.
Suddenly his ears were assailed by a distant thud—like a shot!
Tom listened. There was the deep silence of the morning over all of Nature. “Perhaps an Indian is out hunting—or a white man has just shot his breakfast,” Tom mused, and deciding that he had gone far enough he swung lazily, and then set off with brisk strokes.
Then he beached and stood up on a ledge of sandy coral reef. The three signal shots bore their triple crash through the woods, followed by Nicky’s final shot.
“That sounds more like fighting than hunting,” mused Tom. “I wonder if our land party has made contact! I guess I had better go back to the cutter and see if they have noticed any rocket signals.”
He turned and began to swim back.
He had gone further than he had intended to, however, and he felt pretty well tired out by the time he came back to the river mouth; so, deciding to rest and to hail the cutter and ask for information, he drew himself up on the root.
He saw a flurry of activity on the cutter; quite clearly he had been totally forgotten in some new excitement. The motor was running and Lieutenant Sommerlee, eyes fixed on the far reaches of the river was maneuvering, backing and turning to bring the cutter broadside to the channel. Tom turned to look back up the stream he had recently swam in, and saw, afar, the white spot that would soon becomeEl Libertad, backing out because she could not turn in the channel.
Mentally, Tom summed up the situation quickly; if he tried to swim out to the cutter he would interfere with the lieutenant’s plans, and perhaps be in the line of fire if the white vessel continued to approach. He would surely be in line of fire from her stern if he tried to swim to the cutter.
Yet, naked and white against the dark foliage, he would be just as much of a target, and quite as noticeable, on his root.
Hastily, but warily, remembering saw-tooth grass and snakes as very real menaces to unshod feet and an unprotected body, Tom melted into a thicket of heavy creeper and leaves, and with his eyes peering through his green lattice, he saw the white boat crawl out into view.
Then he saw something more. Nicky, still gagged and bound, was up on the after deck, held there by the arm of a man who cleverly kept as much of his person below the coaming of the after cockpit as he could.
Tom compressed his lips to hold back his first impulse to call out.
How had Nicky gotten into that predicament? What was he doing in the hands of the enemy? He was prompted to shout to Nicky; then sober second thought told him that this might endanger Nicky, and it would certainly draw attention to himself, not very desirable to a white-skinned boy, minus his clothes, and menaced by a pack of men evil enough to treat his chum so rudely.
Tom held his position and watched.
Evidently it was the intention of the hi-jackers to have Nicky discovered and recognized by the crew of the cutter. Such was, in fact, their aim. Mr. Coleson, compelled to expose a portion of his arms in order to keep Nicky in view, did not like his place nor the rough treatment the boy had received. While he had, it is true, helped to tie the boys on a previous occasion, and had then deserted them in their tender, and, later, with Senor Ortiga, had stolen the tender in order to chase the hi-jackers, he had not in any of this actually intended any violence toward his youthful captives or—as they later became—rescuers!
It irked him, and went against his sense of decency, weak though that was, to have Don Ortiga cold-bloodedly crouch beside the engine with a pistol in his hand, holding it trained on Nicky, and, as Mr. Coleson made no doubt, ready to fire with deadly aim.
Tom, on the shore, took in Nicky’s plight. Being elevated above the water edge, he was able to see downward beyond the coaming of the cabin sides, and he observed Don Ortiga’s position and its menace.
Still he held his lips pressed together. A warning would do no good; silence could do no harm.
From theLibertadthe hoarse hail of Senor Ortiga came across the water. TheLibertadhad lost way and drifted very slowly stern-first out of the mouth of the river. Those in the cutter caught the hail also, and the hand Lieutenant Sommerlee had partly raised to call for full speed across the oncoming stem, was suspended in midair.
“There’s a gun trained on this boy,” cried the younger Ortiga. “We have his life in our hands. We mean to get free and if you stop us or fire or try any tricks, the boy pays for it!”
The position into which theLibertadhad drifted was stern-out, so that the cutter was on her quarter, and to the side farthest from Tom’s hiding place.