CHAPTER VI ON THE WAY TO THE KEYS
The _Treasure Belle_, when they inspected her with Sam and Mr. Neale,disappointed the chums. She lay, careening to one side, in a place onthe shore of a small ship basin. Her hull, originally painted white, wasa mixture of grays and browns, streaked and dirty. Her cabin, when theycrawled into it, was musty and cramped, up in the bow, with no head roomand with its bunks both narrow and uninviting.
“Quite a difference between her name and her looks,” smiled ClarenceNeale. Nicky nodded and Cliff, standing on deck, pointed toward acluster of boats moored in deeper water.
“Why can’t we charter a boat like that one?” said Cliff, indicating afairly trim looking cruising launch, about thirty feet long, with araised cabin whose windows had neat little drapings at each side, whosepaint showed little wear. Where the _Treasure Belle_ had no bright work,her hardware being discolored and rusting, the other craft showed signsof constant attention.
“That’s a private boat, and not for hire, sar,” explained Sam. “Shebelong to a white man. He use her for run to Cuba. I hear it told he isa politician of Cuba, and he stay here because he is not so well likedin his island. But they say he run there by night for some reason andkeep that boat only for that.”
“Maybe he would charter her to us if he didn’t need her,” urged Nicky.“She’d be a lot nicer.”
Sam, at Mr. Neale’s suggestion, took them to the office of the shipbasin owners but they got no encouragement. The _El Libertad_ was notfor hire or charter. He gave the party the address of her owner readilyenough but without enthusiasm.
When Mr. Neale returned from an interview with Senor Ortiga, he shookhis head.
“_El Libertad_ is not to be ours,” he said. “Senor Ortiga told me thathe is having the engine overhauled and is waiting for parts—even if hewould let us have her, which he did not seem inclined to do, it would bea month before she would be ready, he said.”
“This _Treasure Belle_ look poorly,” Sam said. “But she is Bahama built,sar, and she’s sturdy, and seaworthy.”
“She looks like a tub with a sail,” said Tom.
“Yes, sar, but she has very light draught,” Sam urged. “She can go inchannels between the cays, and if she get aground her hull is strong andnot easy to break. That _Libertad_ is very thin hulled, and draws eightinches more water.”
“Well, we can’t have her, anyway,” Nicky decided. “We’ll have to makethe best of this one and let the name make up for the drawbacks.”
“My cousin own her,” Sam stated. “I have not told him why we charterher, and for the cruise to get relics that I say we use her for, he lether go very cheap, sar.”
They made the necessary arrangements with Sam’s cousin and work wasstarted on the sloop. She was close to thirty-two feet in length, widein her beam and squatty looking, but her engine, though a heavy dutymake and not very fast, was in perfect trim. Her canvas was also neatand complete.
While the paint was scrubbed and the dirty interior of the cabin madepresentable and as comfortable as possible, Sam, who was a good sailorand knew the sloop well, gave Nicky, Tom and Cliff many lessons in ropesplicing, handling the sails, and, without actual practice in steeringhe explained the method of holding a small craft on her course. Sam wasthe only addition to the party, as, with Mr. Neale, who was sufficientlygood at navigation to handle a small boat on the comparativelylandlocked course they would take, it was felt that the boys would makea sufficient crew, standing watch-and-watch.
Few supplies were put aboard. They did not want people to suppose theywere going to be on a desolate series of coral reefs for their cruise;to buy much food would arouse curiosity, because they could get freshsupplies on any of the islands of the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands theywere hinting that they would visit.
On a bright, clear morning Cliff bade goodbye to his father, the othersshook hands with Mr. Gray, and with the _Treasure Belle’s_ enginethudding away without a skip, they maneuvered the sloop out of the smallbasin and laid a course for Cuba, steering for the Eastern end of theisland rather than to their true course toward the Western end, so as tomake it seem that they were bound toward the Eastern group of islands,after touching on the large island for some work Mr. Neale pretendedmust be done there to verify some reports of Carib relics to be found inthe jungles.
But by noon, with the jib and mainsail spread to the steady breeze, theyshifted the tiller and brought the _Treasure Belle_ around again on acourse that would enable them to round the Western nose of Cuba and thensail Northeast to the coral islets which clustered in a long fringealong the Florida Gulf coast, at its lower portion.
“Without a map we will have to take some chances,” Mr. Neale told Nicky,Tom and Cliff. “But we can come pretty close to a guess at the pointwhere we must anchor.”
“Where our half of the map showed the crossmarked ‘reck,’” Nickyasserted.
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Neale. “We will hunt for a spot where there could be aset of conditions like those we know.”
“You mean that there must be needles of coral deep enough for a Spanishgalleon to have gone aground and broken up,” Cliff suggested. “Then twoislands with a channel deep enough between for a heavy boat to use.”
“Right,” nodded the captain of the vessel, for that post had been givento their older comrade. The Mystery Boys had given Mr. Neale hisinitiation into the secret gestures with which they could communicatewithout letting outsiders guess that they were doing so.
“Then we will work in through the keys with the light-draft,glass-bottomed boat we are towing,” the captain went on. “If we fail tofind islands in a formation like the Great Dipper, we can work North andSouth alternately until we do.”
“And then, the treasure!” exulted Nicky.
“I’m not so sure,” Cliff said. “Centuries have passed since it was putthere. The map didn’t show whether the treasure was buried or not.”
“I don’t see how it could have been,” Tom declared. “That coral is toohard to dig in. They’d have had to blast to get a place deep enough tobury it. I imagine they just lowered the chests into the water, maybe ina little cove or where there was a hole deep enough to conceal thechests.”
“We will have to see,” Mr. Neale agreed. “First we must find our GreatDipper.”
They made the end of Cuba without any difficulty, rounded it and set thetiller for the new course, sailing more slowly as they lost the directforce of the steady breeze and had to keep rather close-hauled. They didnot use the engine, preferring not to employ it any more than wasessential. It might help them off if they ran onto a reef, and theyproposed to save their supply of gasoline for such an emergency.
At last, under a glorious sunset, with its rose and coral, its great,vivid bands of green and vivid gold lighting up a few fleecy clouds nearthe horizon, they sighted the low, long cluster of islets.
Not a thing had occurred during the trip to cause uneasiness. Sam hadbeen both courteous and respectful, without being servile. Like mostJamaica colored people he felt himself to be the equal of the race oflighter color, as far as education and morality could be compared. Inthe matter of his color of skin he felt, with justice, that the teachingof the Bible, and of the United States Constitution, that all men areequal, in the sense of all being created by the same Great Creator, wasa true teaching.
Being sensible boys, Nicky, Tom and Cliff made no distinction in thematter of Sam’s color. As long as he preserved the same habits ofdecency as they did, as long as he “acted white,” as Nicky put it, theywere too finely bred to treat him like an ignorant heathen, as so manyrather ignorant people do in their relations with men of dark, or yellowskin. They looked at the intelligence and the inner man, and not aloneat the tint of the skin.
Sam felt the decent attitude and responded. He never tried to be abovehis station but he acted as an equal wherever his education enabled himto do so, and accepted gracefully the superiority of Mr. Neale’strai
ning, Nicky’s deftness with a fish spear, Nicky’s eyes having beenquickened and trained by archery and other sports. Tom’s superior speedas a runner had been proved on the beach before they sailed, as hadCliff’s supremacy in wrestling. But there was no color line drawn, andthat made the cruise more pleasanter.
“The Keys!” cried Nicky from the bow.
They all lined up around the mast, and, just before the twilight and itsafterglow left the long reach of islets looking like ghostly shapes onthe water, they cast anchor.