CHAPTER XXIV “A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK”
To say that Clarence Neale, the leader at the start of the Mystery Boys’adventure, was worried would be a tame statement of the truth. ClarenceNeale was more than that. He felt that without intending to do so he hadshirked a responsibility.
Mr. Gray, the scholar and writer, had entrusted Cliff to his care on anadventure that promised to be merely a cruise; Nicky Lane, and Tom, hadcome under his protection without permission from their relatives; andnot one of them was with him, nor was their whereabouts known to him.
No wonder the young archaeologist, himself not too far from boyhood torecall what dangers its headstrong impulses lead to, dreaded many direthings.
Two things he knew definitely. The boys were not on Crocodile Key, nordid any boatman or native in Little Card Sound or on its shores know athing about them. The second point he was sure about was that they werenot on Sam’s sloop. He had overhauled that in the government cutter andmade sure.
Where were they?
A lieutenant in charge of the patrol had set him ashore where agovernment sub-station of the patrol service enabled him to use thetelephone, to communicate with other stations. Not a sign of the boysresulted from his several calls.
“No word?” asked the young lieutenant later in the afternoon.
Mr. Neale shook his head dejectedly, climbing aboard the cutter.
“I can’t see anything to explain it except that the lads must have goneinland, and become lost,” he asserted. Lieutenant Sommerlee discountedsuch a suggestion. The outcrop of coral on which they landed while hewent to interview Nelse and Pompey, was cut off by water too deep towade; they would hardly dare swim to the further shore; it was swampy ascould be seen from Crocodile Key if they took pains to look, hedeclared.
“I suggest that you come aboard again,” Lieutenant Sommerlee invited,holding to his own idea, without stating it, that the boys had beentaken off the key by some fisherman. “I have word that a band ofhi-jackers is somewhere around and I have to watch for them; we caneasily hail the different natives as we pass up and down the coast andsee which one rescued the boys.”
Clarence Neale accepted the invitation and was on board the cutter when,that night, she pursued, and lost touch with, the _Senorita_.
It was Lieutenant Sommerlee’s notion that the _Senorita_, if it was she,had turned tail and run for her home port in Cuba. He was ready to giveup the search for her, and the more so because of a growing intensity ofinterest in the boys.
Naturally, not knowing they were on the _Senorita_, or that she had goneinto the archipelago, neither Mr. Neale nor the lieutenant thought ofsuch a thing as looking for the adventuresome trio in those waters. Itseemed almost certain that they must have hailed some small boat, and onbeing taken aboard, had found no means of communicating their plight, orof getting back.
But as day followed day, the idea had to be given up. There was no spotthat the cutter had not touched, where the boys could possibly be.Unless they had been taken off on a coasting sloop—but none had beenseen in Little Card Sound, nor would it have excuse for being there. Ofcourse the few who knew the truth about the _Senorita_ and her hidingplace on the day that the boys had been missed, kept their mouthstightly closed.
“I cannot imagine what has become of them,” Mr. Neale said, with anxietyin his voice and deep wrinkles of worry on his forehead.
“Oh, they’ll turn up, as boys do, and usually safe and sound,” thelieutenant said.
One of their men sighted a sail and gave her position. LieutenantSommerlee gave orders; the helm was shifted and a course was laid tointercept the vessel, not because the boys might be on it, but to hailit and see if any news had been picked up somewhere.
As they came within better sighting distance, Lieutenant Sommerleehanded Mr. Neale his binoculars.
“Didn’t you say Sam’s sloop we overhauled was going back to Jamaica?” heasked. Clarence Neale nodded. “I told Sam he was discharged, as far asour party was concerned,” he acknowledged.
“Look!” ordered the lieutenant. Mr. Neale lifted and focused theglasses.
“Great—guns!” he cried. “That’s the _Treasure Belle_, now, as sure as Ilive!”
They lost no time in laying alongside and hailing.
But Sam did not answer. Instead one of two men spoke through thedeepening twilight.
“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 onthe way to Jamaica the afternoon before the squall. How did these menget on his boat?—and——”
“And why are they bound Eastward along the coast when he ought to benearly to Jamaica by now—here, heave to!”
The sail came down with a run—the men were careless sloopmen or veryignorant of a single-masted boat and her handling. The cutter swung in acircle and ranged up beside the sloop.
It was practically dark, for the twilight is short in the season, andthe men sat with their heads well covered. But if this was a ruse toescape detection of their identity it failed. Lieutenant Sommerleemotioned to a patrol member, and the man caught the rail of the_Treasure Belle_ and 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 carryout their intention—which might have been to plunge over the side andtake chances of swimming away and escaping in the dark—the young officerhad 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 promiseus a fair break if we tell you the truth?”
“Yellow-livered, of course,” he said. “I guessed you would try that.” Hewent close, called for a flashlight and trained it on the two anxioussailors. “Ho! You—‘Runty’—you, too—‘Jack O’ the Keys.’ What are youdoing in this sloop? Where is Sam—but I may as well tell you that youare under arrest right now, and if you expect any leniency, which Iwon’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 the_Senorita_, as well as of Nelse’s part in that, and in the hi-jacker’splans, in which Nelse figured as a receiver for their stolen cargoes,since he owned Crocodile Key; they also learned of the wreck, of theboys’ ruse, and escape, and of the latest escapade, as far as the menknew it.
Full speed for the archipelago, was the present order, after the twosailors had been handcuffed and two of the cutter’s crew took over the_Treasure Belle_, to sail her to the patrol base until Sam could claimher.
“It looks as though there’s a fire up yonder,” said LieutenantSommerlee, as the cutter doubled the Westermost nose of Florida, “Seethe 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’ssailors, could resist a cheer of delight when they got close enough tosee that the fire was merely a great heap of wood, on a small islet nearthe channel to Shark River.
They sent up a rocket at the first verification of this fact, and urgedtheir speedy engine to its fullest power as rockets began to burst inthe sky, blue, green and red flares showed and a dull boom from asignaling cannon floated across the water to them.
It seemed an age, but was not so very long, before the chums wereleaping, skylarking, dancing, standing on their heads, slapping oneanother on the back, adding a slap or so for delighted Sam.
They had collected wood, cut parts from the wrecked vessel, made asignal fire on the islet, and kept it burning all day, and into thenight, since the discovery that they were marooned, that morning. Thepurpose was to create a smoke smudge during the day, a
nd a light atnight, with the certainty that some coasting vessel or other ship mustsee it and come closer to investigate.
The rockets and colored flares were the signal stores of the _Senorita_,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’sown signal.
“Thank Heaven you boys are safe!” cried Mr. Neale for the tenth time,pumping Nicky’s hand again and again, sharing fist-cuffs impartiallybetween 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 weshall have to let the gold wait. What I am interested in is not goldbut—hi-jackers!”
“And pirates,” added Cliff. “Don’t forget they are in a stolen boat—the_Libertad_ belongs to one Ortiga, and the other one has it.”
“But, Lieutenant,” protested Nicky, “if you get the hi-jackers we’ll getthe gold. They have it!”
“That is true,” agreed the officer. “At the moment I am puzzled aboutthe course through which we can secure either men or gold.”
Nicky jumped up eagerly.
“When the _Senorita_ was running away,” he reminded his chums, “rememberthat 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 tothe two on her about bringing liquor cases or cases of liquor, andsomething 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 the _Libertad_ North of this place, and turned Northagain 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 allthat 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 twoof her fighting patrols, and because neither Sam nor Mr. Neale was anexpert with a rifle or pistol, the more vigorous plans for pursuit andcapture had to be shelved in favor of more adroit measures.
And so it came about that a plan partially suggested by Nicky andelaborated by the lieutenant, in which the boys must figure, was the oneto be adopted.
And again the Mystery Boys were adventure bound.
“But,” said Cliff, as a new thought struck him, “those hi-jackers musthave seen our lights—we made plenty of excitement.”
“Yes,” agreed Tom. “They may have seen them—then, they will either turnand run across the Gulf, or somewhere else, or they will unload thetreasure in Shark River and hide it in the Everglades.”
“Once it’s hidden there, any effort to find it would be like looking fora needle in a hay-stack!” declared Mr. Neale.
“Then let’s hurry!” cried Nicky, and from that instant all was activityon the stranded _Senorita_.