CHAPTER XX.
CAPTAIN BELLMAN'S ISLAND.
Silently, as some craft propelled by spirits, they glided along betweenthe high walls of saw-grass that grew up on each side of the stream theywere navigating. Quatty stood in the stern manipulating the pole withthe skill of a very Seminole, and sending the light craft through thewater at a surprising rate of speed. His elevated position gave him achance to peer over the tops of the lower clumps of saw-grass andjudge--by their glitter under the starlight--which leads were the bestto follow.
It was pitchy dark, with the exception of the dim starlight, and to theboys it seemed that they were passing through an endless tunnel. Theythreaded in and out of creeks till it seemed that they must beprogressing in a circle. But Quatty, whatever his other faults might be,knew the Everglades as a city dweller knows his own streets, and by thedarker landmarks of various hammocks and islets he steered the craft asunerringly as a cab-driver who wishes to drive in a certain direction.
Occasionally as they brushed against a sunken log, or shoal ofrank-smelling mud, there would be a heavy flop in the water or arustling sound in the dry grass.
"Whatever is that, Quatty?" asked Harry after the sound had been severaltimes repeated.
"Moccasins. Dey bite you, you die plenty quick," responded Quatty.
Harry, who had been trailing his hand in the water, quickly drew it in,not without a shudder. He had seen cotton-mouth moccasins before and hada lively recollection of the fat, dirty colored reptiles and theirdeadly fangs.
Once, as they were crossing quite a broad sheet of water that suddenlyopened out about them, something bumped up under the boat with suchviolence that Quatty was almost upset from his position astern.
"Good gracious, was that an earthquake?" exclaimed Harry much alarmed.
"'Gator," grunted Quatty, "ah'd jes like to stop an' git his ugly hidefo' dat."
"There'll be no shooting to-night, let's hope," was Frank's reply.
They poled along in silence after this. The boys were completelybewildered and had no more idea of where they were going than if theyhad been blindfolded. But Quatty never stopped poling and fell to hiswork with such an air of certainty that the boys were compelled toconclude that he knew what he was about.
Suddenly the negro uttered a sharp grunt.
"What is it?" asked Frank instantly.
"Look ober dere, massa, an' tell me wad you see," said Quatty, pointingdead ahead.
At the risk of upsetting the boat and himself Frank stood up and sawreflected on the sky, not more than a mile ahead, a deep-red glow.
"Fire," he exclaimed.
"Yes, an' it's de furnaces dem debbils has built dere fo' make dere blowup stuff, drat 'em," was Quatty's response.
They were then at last within sighting distance of the mysterious forcesthat had succeeded in filching the formula of the United States' mostdeadly explosive and kidnapping one of the bravest and most popularyoung officers in the Navy.
"Pole ahead, till I tell you to stop," commanded Frank, resuming hisseat.
"W-w-w-what," stuttered Quatty, "yo' goin' on, Marse Frank?"
"Certainly," was the quiet reply.
"B-b-b-but we may git shot or blowed up wid de debbil powder," protestedthe frightened black.
"You will certainly get shot if you don't obey commands," was Frank'sstern rejoinder, "pole ahead!"
Something in the young leader's voice, decided Quatty that it was bestto obey and with chattering teeth he started the canoe moving nearer andnearer to the red glow. As they approached its source, the light it castgrew brighter and the boys were enabled to see each other's faces.
"Stop," commanded Frank suddenly.
Quatty breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps now they were going to goback. But no. After a few seconds' reconnoitering, Frank gave the orderto go ahead and the trembling Quatty, with his eyes on the boys gleamingrevolver, obeyed. Frank stood up in the boat when he took his briefsurvey without much fear of being seen by the men on the island, as inthe bright light shed by the furnaces with which they were manufacturingthe explosive they would hardly be able to penetrate the surroundingblackness.
What he had seen was this: A large barn-like building erected againstthe side of a hill surrounded by smaller huts and out in the open,removed at some distance from the other buildings, a large,retort-shaped blast furnace, from the mouth of which was pouring acolumn of copper-colored flame and a great efflorescence of sparks. Itwas this furnace doubtless that had caused the column of smoke they hadseen during the day.
In the bright light cast by the flaming mouth of the retort he could seedark figures scurrying around, some of them with wheelbarrows which theypushed up an inclined plane leading to the side of the retort. Fromtheir barrows they constantly dumped something into the furnace. What itcould be of course Frank had no means of knowing, but he guessed that itwas some substance used in the manufacture of Chapinite. The whole scenereminded Frank of one of the foundries in the iron district, seen from acar window at night.
With the aid of the night-glasses he could make out details moreplainly. The workmen were being urged to even greater activity by a tallman who was evidently in authority. From time to time this man raised awhip he held in his hand and brought its lash down viciously on the backof some unfortunate worker with a crack that was audible even at thedistance the boys were.
"Oh Lawd, dat look like Hades for sho'!" groaned Quatty as his eyesalmost popped out of his head at the weird scene. "Dem not men, MassaFrank, dems all debbils."
"Pole her along a bit!" ordered Frank, not paying any attention to thisoutburst. He was bent on getting near enough to ascertain, if possible,if the unfortunate Lieutenant Chapin was one of the crew of laborers.
With frequent orders to stop from Frank which were obeyed by Quatty withalacrity and commands to proceed once more, which did not meet with thesame eager response, the boat drew nearer and nearer to the blazingretort and the frenzied workers. As they were still in between highbanks of saw-grass the boys had no fear of being seen unless of coursesome canoe from the island happened to come down the stream they werethreading. As it was a narrow twisting, little runnel, however, withbarely a foot of water under their keel, this did not seem likely.
All at once, however, they emerged without warning into a broadsmooth-flowing channel worthy of the name of a river. The boys saw atonce that this was indeed a main-traveled water-course and most probablythe one used by the men on the island in getting to and from the coast.
"Get back where we were as quick as you can," sharply ordered Frank asthey glided out onto its broad current.
With a dexterous twist Quatty--quite as much alarmed as the boys at theprospect of discovery by the workers on the island--shot the boat backinto the narrow grass-walled creek they had been traversing. It was wellthey had done so, for hardly had they gained the welcome shelter of thetall saw-grass when they heard the rapid "dip-dip" of paddles comingtoward them down the main channel.
"Keep perfectly quiet," ordered Frank, and scarcely breathing the boyslistened with straining ears to catch the conversation the men in theapproaching craft were carrying on.
"Hurry there, you miserable Indian, or I'll fill you full of lead," werethe first words they heard in a harsh, rough voice. The command wasevidently addressed to the Indian paddler for they heard the reply:
"All right. Me hurry all I can," and a quicker dip of the paddle.
"You're a rough fellow, my dear Scudder," another voice commented, "areyou never in a softer mood?"
"Not me, Foyashi;" came the reply, "and if you'd been working forCaptain Mortimer Bellman as long as I have you wouldn't be either. Helearned his lesson in your government I suppose."
"Captain Bellman is a remarkable man." went on the other speaker, whoseaccent was distinctly foreign and mincing.
"Remarkable? You may lay your head on that," replied the other; "nobodybut a remarkable man would have got Chapin to vis
it him in his hotel andthere drug him and get from him the keys of the safe where the formulawas kept."
"How did he induce him to visit him?" asked Foyashi.
"Why, they were classmates at Annapolis before Bellman was kicked out ofthe navy for conduct unbecoming an officer. Chapin's a good-hearted chapand when Bellman turned up in Washington one day and sent him a messagethat he was ill and in trouble Chapin came to the hotel like a bird dogwhen you whistle it to heel. But you deserve a lot of credit for yourpart of the business, Foyashi," he went on. "How did you get thelieutenant under your control. He swore he'd die before he told us themethod of making Chapinite when we first got him aboard the Mist."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the man, addressed as Foyashi, "to the Jiu Jitsuexpert many nerves are common knowledge that you foolish Americans donot know anything about. A little pressure on the nerve I had selectedwhile the lieutenant slept; and I had dulled his brain till he did as wedirected."
"Wonderful," exclaimed Scudder admiringly, "I wish I knew the trick."
"I hope I may never find it necessary to practice on you," was the replyof the other, uttered in a tone of voice that made Harry feel, as hesaid afterward, as if he had touched the back of a moccasin.
"What are your plans?" continued Scudder, who was evidently an inferiorin command to Foyashi and the man spoken of as Captain Bellman, "hereyou start me off in the dark in a canoe with enough Chapinite to blowhalf the Everglades sky high and you don't even tell me where we aretaking it."
"You know as well as I do," replied the other, "that we are bound forthe coast and that we are going to put the last consignment aboard thesubmarine to-night at the mouth of the Jew-Fish river. What followsto-morrow will be simply the tapping of the furnace taken to-night andwe will work that up into Chapinite in the government's yards at home."
"Then we are through here," commented Scudder.
"Practically, yes. We shall meet the cruiser in the South Atlantic nextweek and then sail for home."
"The cruiser!" exclaimed Scudder, "ain't you afraid of the United Statesgovernment being suspicious?"
"My dear friend," replied the other, "the wisdom of the Oriental hasbeen left out of your composition. The cruiser, as I call her, has beenconverted into the likeness of a peaceful passenger ship."
"Where do you coal her?" demanded Scudder, a certain admiration in histones.
The boys were unable to catch the reply. Indeed they could not haveheard as much of the conversation as they did had not the small creekfortunately run parallel with the larger water-course for some distance.By dint of shoving along the banks with their hands the boys had managedto keep a short distance in the rear of the other canoe. Her speed,however, prohibited their keeping up with her and they were compelled tosatisfy themselves with what they had already heard, which, however, wasof sufficient importance to cause them to order Quatty to pole back attop speed to the mound-builders' island.
It was evident from the conversation they had been lucky enough tooverhear that the stealers of the formula, headed by Captain MortimerBellman, were to leave the 'glades the next day. That the plotters had asubmarine and that it lay at the mouth of the Jew-Fish river.Furthermore a cruiser, belonging to the power whose agents the men were,was waiting to pick them up and carry them back to their own country andthat Lieutenant Chapin had been subjected to a cruel operation in orderto force him to submit to a betrayal of his country.
It was a time to act quickly. There was in fact not a moment to spare.
They arrived at the camp on the mound-builders' island shortly beforedawn. A hasty survey with a lantern indicated, to their greatsatisfaction, that nothing had been disturbed and that everything was asthey had left it. From the height of the summit nothing was visible nowof the red glow of the blast furnace, which indicated to the boys thatthe plotters had concluded their work and that the blast had beenextinguished forever. Satisfactory as their night's work had been in onerespect, however, it had been a dire failure in another and so the boyscould not help admitting to each other.
They had learned a pretty good outline of the plans of Captain Bellmanand Foyashi, but they had not gained a single bit of information aboutLieutenant Chapin that would aid them in any way in rescuing him fromwhat was likely to prove imminent death.