CHAPTER XVII A PARLEY AND A PLAN
“Ahoy, _Senorita_!” came the second hail. Nicky scrambled from hiswicker chair and started for the companion door; Tom looked at Cliff andthen, catching his eye, glanced at the arsenal. Cliff nodded.
“I don’t know if the rifles are loaded,” Tom commented, picking one upand breaking the breach—with a shake of his head closing it. “Theyaren’t. But they may come in handy.” They carried the weapons as theycame on deck.
Nicky had taken a position beside the little wheelhouse, watching thetender, manned by Tew and one sailor, come around the islet close towhich their boat was careened against the coral.
“Hello!” hailed Tew, catching sight of Nicky. “You boys got lost in theshuffle! Thought you was overboard maybe. We’ll take you off. We arehidin’ on a good island—we can climb the trees and be safe when thecutter comes.”
Cliff and Tom ranged up beside Nicky.
“We’re not going, are we?” whispered Cliff. Nicky shook his head.
“Stay away!” he called. “We aren’t going to leave here.”
Cliff and Tom, rifles held in a menacing position, ranged up besideNicky. The sailor stopped rowing, allowing the tender to drift aboutfifteen feet from the _Senorita_. Tew muttered some unpleasant word.
“You don’t want to be there when the revenue men come,” he said. “If youdo, we don’t mean you to be!”
He spoke to the sailor, but in face of two rifles, the man saidsomething under his breath and Tew nodded.
“Look here!” Tew called, “if they get you you’ll tell where we are! Thatwon’t do! Come—be sensible—we’ll get you one way or another. Comedecent, and we won’t harm you—but come you will!”
“Is that so?” exclaimed Nicky defiantly. “Well we won’t! You’d better goaway!”
Tew and the sailor held a short conference. At Tew’s gesture the sailorpoised the oars, while Tew tugged at a weapon in his belt. Tom leaped uponto the cabin roof, to have a better place from which to pretend tocover the sailor, but an inspiration came to him and he acted upon thatinstead.
Pretending to glance by accident toward the larger expanse of the openGulf he dropped the rifle, and waved his arm, then dragged out ahandkerchief and waved that wildly.
“Here she comes!” he shouted. “Cutter—ahoy!”
With a common fear Tew snatched up a second pair of oars as the sailor,with a mighty heave on one oar, began to swing his tender in a circle;then both began to row away around the islet with all their strength,while Nicky and Tom, seeing Cliff’s deception, and knowing that it hadsucceeded because the men thought they could see from the cabin top whatwas invisible on the water line, leaped up beside their comrade andbegan to hail and to wave their arms.
The tender was quickly out of their sight, and yet they kept up theirshouting, until, at a sign from Cliff, they desisted.
“Well, that’s over—for the time!” Cliff said thankfully.
“But we’re worse off than ever,” Tom added. “They’ll watch——”
“No they won’t!” Nicky argued. “They’ll hide. We are not so badly off.We can load the guns and if we have to we can shoot over their headswhen they come back after us!”
“But they have guns, too,” objected Cliff.
“Well,” Nicky proposed, “let’s fix the cabin so we can take refugethere, barricade it. There’s all the food for a long siege, and we cancommand the doors from those portholes.”
Tom caught their arms, and with a swift whisper and a nod toward amoving figure on the islet, caused them to begin to wave their hands andto beckon, all looking out toward the Gulf.
Tom had espied a creeping figure, low on the ground. Tew, with somepurpose in his mind, had landed on the islet and crept across to theside nearest the stranded vessel. Cliff covered him and called softly,“Stay where you are, Mr. Tew!”
The figure on the ground flattened and stopped.
“I won’t hurt you—I wa’n’t goin’ to hurt you!” he called softly. “Howclost are they?”
“About half a mile off the coast,” Nicky answered, hoping his untruthwould be forgiven under the circumstances.
“I just wanted to warn you—if you let them take you off, don’t saynothing about us—and then no harm’ll come to you. But if any of us getsnabbed—we’ll take care not all are—we’ll hunt you down if it takes allour lives!”
“All right!” called Tom quickly, neither agreeing nor refusing.
Tew waited a moment, then seemed to decide that he had better not staythere since they had discovered him and he could not watch. He creptback out of sight at the far side of the islet, behind its small,tangled trees and bushes, and the chums turned again to their plan.
“One of you go down and see if the cabin doors can be fastened,” Nickyurged. “Tom—you go! Cliff, can’t that skylight on top of the cabin bebattened down?”
“Yes—there’s a covering—but——”
“I know it won’t help once they get on top—but having it fastened wouldmake it take longer to get to us. And we’d have the light switches andcould light the mast light if they come at night.”
Tom returned to the deck.
“Either of you got a screw driver blade on your jackknife?” he asked. “Iclosed the cabin door, but the lock sticks and when I wrenched at theknob to open it again, the screw was loose that holds the knob to theshackle, and it just turned in my hand and I had to screw in the threadswith my finger nail to get it to turn at all.”
“I have one,” said Cliff, but as he produced his knife he went on, “butI’d like to have you listen to a different plan.”
“All right,” agreed Nicky and Tom.
“The trouble with the cabin is that they can come at it from the afterdeck, at the blank rear bulkhead back of the engines, and we can’t coverthe decks.”
“That’s so,” Nicky conceded.
“So I think we ought to do some other way,” Cliff urged. “And I wishyou’d tell me what you think of this: Suppose we take it for grantedthat they won’t come back for at least an hour—they will scatter andhide because they don’t know but that the cutter may be coming. In thattime we can swim over to that island with the heavy trees, after we’vedumped the guns into the water and flung things around to make themthink the cutter’s men have searched a little.”
“That’s a corker!” exclaimed Nicky. “Much better than my plan. They willthink the cutter took us off and we were too scared to tell where theywere, and then they won’t come back or bother us any more.”
“That’s my idea,” Cliff nodded.
They lost no time carrying it out. Tossing a good deal of dunnage out ofcupboards, to simulate the result of a hurried search for liquor orevidence, and dropping the rifles overboard where they showed on theclear bed of coral, as they supposed the officers would do, the chums,carefully making certain by shinning up the short mast that no boat waswithin immediate range, leaped over the side.
The deeper channel was not wide; they made for an island on the farside, and there, wading up through the ooze covered bed-stone, they goton fairly firm ground and selected good spots in which to lie in case ofneed for hiding.
Then, by turns, they took up a watch toward the Gulf, alternating with alook once in a while toward the channel and the wrecked boat.
But for some reason the hi-jackers did not return. All day the chumswatched, but without result.
“They must have decided that we went away, or they are afraid that arowboat might be cruising among the islets,” Cliff said. “I wish we hadbrought something to eat!”
“I thought of it,” Tom said, “but I guessed that they would come backbefore night and then leave us alone. And no cutter has shown itself.Well—shall we swim back before dark?”
“No,” counseled Cliff, “let’s wait. They may come back after dark.”
Night closed down clear and with the stars very bright it was possibleto watch easily. And,
about eight o’clock, Tom, on guard, whispered toattract his comrades. They all made out the tender creeping quietlytoward the careening hulk across the channel from them.
“If only we could get their boat—” Cliff mused.
“Well, maybe we can!” exclaimed Nicky. “Let’s swim back closer and seewhat we can see!”
“But if they discover us—” objected Tom.
“They aren’t looking for us, I feel sure,” Cliff said. “They won’t bewatching the water in this direction. They are getting their food andthings, it is most likely.”
Going carefully, using a stroke that sent them through the water withlittle sound, they soon came close enough to see clearly the situation.One man sat, apparently waiting, in the tender, at the forward quarter;the chums held their breath and let themselves sink to the lowest pointthey could, till their feet touched the bottom, when they discoveredhim. But, either because he was half asleep, or from confidence thatthere was no one around, he sat slumped in the stern, and did not appearto notice anything unusual.
Treading water, catching finally the low rail where it almost dippedinto the limpid water, at the shore side of the listing boat, Nicky,Cliff and Tom drew close together.
There was no one on deck. From the cabin came sounds of voices.
“I’m going to see—” whispered Cliff, and he began to climb up cautiouslyonto the deck. Nicky and Tom followed his example, but remained at therail as he made a peremptory gesture to them to “stay back!”
Cliff crept closer to the cabin and when no one appeared and his couragerose, he became bolder and slipped on his wet feet to the cabin doorway.He listened a moment and then crept back to his chums and whisperedrapidly.
Taking Cliff’s screwdriver-bladed knife, Tom went to the rearward door,into the engine room, and with the knife removed the screw from itsknob, leaving the inner side of the door with no means of opening it.Then he “stood by,” watching, listening.
In the bows, hiding his face, using as gruff an imitation of Tew’s voiceas he could, Cliff hailed the man in the boat in a low tone. “Come intothe cabin, you,” he said. Then he hurried away.
Presently those in the cabin—Don Ortiga, Tew, their sailors and thecook, were surprised to see the boatman appear in their midst.
Before they could question him or get his inquiry as to what theywanted, the door behind him slammed as did the engine room door.
There was confusion, then oaths, then excited stamping; of course thetime it took them to discover that they were trapped was not long; nordid it take overlong to get the knob back onto the door after an excitedhand wrenched it away. But the time was enough.
When the infuriated members of the hi-jacker band finally raced up thedeck toward their tender, they found the dipped end of a rope as amemento.
The Mystery Boys, well away and out of sight around the island, wererowing the captured tender with all their strength.
“We can’t——claim salvage!” panted Nicky. “But we are out of the grip ofthose men—and we have a boat—we’re free men again!”
“And there’s a light—a boat or something, up the coast,” cried Tom.“Nicky, pull hard on your port oar—you too, Cliff.”
“Right-o!” they answered with a will, pulling the tender on a swingingcurve. “We’ll pull for it. It may be the cutter!”
It was stationary, and not very far away; but as they neared it they sawthat it was not the cutter.
It was another cabin boat, lying, apparently, at anchor.
Cautioning his chums not to hail until they knew whether it was asuitable craft for their rescue, they drew slowly closer.
From the vessel came a gruff hail.
“I’ve got you covered!” it cried. “Two of you put your hands up, and onepull your boat up alongside till we have a look!”
“Out of the frying pan—” breathed Cliff! He and Tom elevated their handsand Nicky, with reluctant strokes, drew close to the bow. Tom discerneda name in glimmering gold against white paint.
“Fellows,” he whimpered, “it’s that boat we saw in Jamaica!”
It was—_El Libertad_!