CHAPTER X SAM SHOWS HIS TRUE COLORS
On shore a queer light appeared. It was queer in more ways than one. Itwas of a peculiar green, an uncanny green; it was not the light of alantern, shining all around; it seemed like a small window lighted upwith an uncanny glow—and it was where no window could be. The lightseemed to be moving, very slowly, when Cliff discovered it and without aword directed his comrades’ attention toward it.
While they stared, the light came slowly closer to the shore—and yet itdid not seem to be carried—it glided along almost imperceptibly.
Tom, with a nervous clutch on Mr. Neale’s arm, indicated the open waterof the Sound. Across it a boat was moving, slowly, steadily, towardthem.
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 pliedthem—bend! straighten!—bend! straighten!
The light had stopped moving and seemed to hang, a queer window ofillumination, 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 theslow 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 hisarm.
“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 awhite blur under the white head covering, made a menacing gesture, as ofone thrusting at them, with the implement in his hand.
Then he lifted the cutlass and with it pointed away toward the passagebetween 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 awaytoward 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 andthey saw it progress steadily to shore.
The light, green and gruesome, seemed to grow larger and brighter, andit turned slightly so that it lighted up the shelving bit of sand at themouth of the inlet.
Onto this small beach, with no sound that could be heard, the boat-loadof wraith-like figures debarked.
They seemed to be all white, like ghosts, in sheets or some sort ofglimmeringly pale garments. They bent toward the boat in the glow thatmade 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 repeatedhail.
Sam, who had refused to leave his retreat in the stuffy cabin, began towhimper. Through a port-hole, at their captain’s hail, he had stolen oneglance. It was enough!
Tom, too, was demoralized; but he dared not speak; only by the shakingof his hand on Nicky’s arm did his terror show.
On shore there seemed to be a ghostly argument—suddenly, in the greenishglow, knives flashed out, were lifted, were plunged into action! Yet nosound of a fight came across the water.
Figures dropped! Forms strove, hand in hand, knives upraised and drivendownward!
And at one side, a little above the rest, and sharply silhouetted as atall form in white, stood the one who must be the leader, his cutlassheld ready, but making no move.
And then, all but one of the contending silent figures was down! Thesurvivor of the battle turned and rushed toward his chief—the glowdisappeared and the silence, the darkness, closed down more eerily thanever!
“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 ofencouragement, assuring them that he felt that the strange scene hadmore than supernatural explanation, rowed away.
The wait seemed interminable. They heard his oars squeal in therowlocks, saw the dinghy reach the shore and lose way; then there was asilence 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 hischum’s tardy return of courage.
But the dinghy was returning!
“It’s queer,” Mr. Neale said when he had transferred himself to thecockpit, “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 thesky begin to turn gray, then lighter, in the East, as dawn came.
Sam came out sullenly to prepare breakfast. Their supplies were very lowfor they had laid in only a small store, to keep up their pretence ofcruising among islands where food was plentiful. At several points ofthe shore they had secured yams, corn flour and other necessities, butthe meal, with a lean larder and a morose, intimidated cook, yieldedlittle zest or nourishment for even such good appetites as the MysteryBoys usually possessed.
“I’m going to suggest that you fellows go ashore,” Mr. Neale said. “I’llset you on the beach—and be careful about snakes! Then I’ll take thedinghy and go around the point to see that chap we met last night. Thereis 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 verylast explanation I will accept!”
He put Nicky and Cliff on the bank of the inlet, noting that by daylightthe sand and undergrowth was trampled and muddied.
“No ghosts did all this,” he said. “There is a human agency at work andI 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, andtook Tom aboard the dinghy. When he landed the third of the comrades Mr.Neale, repeating his warning about snakes, bade them reconnoiter andfind all the signs they could, against his return. Then he rowed offtoward 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—andthen how emphatic he was about danger?”
They did. As they looked about there were plenty of signs to show thathuman agencies and not ghosts had produced the strange scene the nightbefore.
Not only was the ground trampled, but on one mangrove root that bentupward and curved into a sort of prong, they discovered a strip of cloththat 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 Samdoing? 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 looktoward them. Then he picked up a small megaphone that was part of theboat’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 goaway——”
“——And leave us—and Mr. Neale!” cried Tom.
Nicky began kicking off his shoes. As he doffed coat and cap, his chumsfollowed his example. Together they plunged into the water and swamlustily toward the _Trea
sure 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, afew strokes in the lead, redoubled his efforts.
The _Treasure Belle_ began to move through the water, taking a puff ofwind in the early morning gusts.
Nicky and Cliff desisted from their effort. Tom, desperate, seemedfairly to race toward the stem of the moving slope—but her paceaccelerated. She stood away toward the neck through which she wouldapparently head out toward Biscayne Bay and the open water.
From the stern Sam waved a hand in farewell!