Once on board the Carrier Dove the mystery was deepened. There was not a trace of Pork Chops, though his blankets lay apparently just as they had been thrown aside when he leaped up at the invasion of the motor-boat intruders. Frank lit a lantern and naturally the first thing the boys hastened to investigate was whether any harm had come to the cases containing the frame of The Golden Eagle II. To their unspeakable relief everything was intact, nor did any of the boxes show traces of having been tampered with.

“The whole thing seems inexplicable,” mused Harry.

“Not at all,” replied Frank, “I suppose that they figured we were asleep ashore and sneaked up in their motor-boat to rifle our possessions.”

“Yes, but why did they carry off Pork Chops?” protested Billy; “for unless they threw him overboard, they must have taken him,—unless he’s been carried off by mosquitoes.”

“They would naturally have carried him off as I figure it,” rejoined Frank, “not wishing to have him meet us and describe the appearance of our visitors.”

“That sounds good horse sense,” put in Ben Stubbs. “And in my opinion them chaps in the motor-boat was the same limpets as stuck around the aerodrome in White Plains,” he continued sagely.

“I don’t think there’s much doubt of that, Ben,” replied Frank, “the thing is how did they get here?”

“Wall, the rate we’ve been coming it would have been mighty easy for them in a light draught motor-boat to have kept track of us from near inshore if they had a good glass,” rejoined Ben.

“But how did they trace us to Miami?” puzzled Harry.

“Easy enough,” replied Billy, “I’ve done it dozens of times—traced people I mean. I guess they just looked up the baggage man and found where our stuff was checked to.”

“Of course I ought to have guessed that,” exclaimed Frank. “It’s really too mortifying,” he concluded in a vexed tone.

“Consarn ’em,” muttered Ben, embracing his rifle longingly, “I’d like to get ’em quartered off this sight. I’d drop a precious bad pair of birds in a couple of shots.”

“No use thinking of that now,” rejoined Frank, briskly shaking off his annoyance over what couldn’t be helped, “the thing to do at present is to finish our night’s sleep and set a watch. We don’t want those fellows coming back and blowing the boat up.”

It was agreed that Ben Stubbs was to sit up and take the watch, and that hardy veteran himself had no small share in influencing the verdict. He felt that he as the oldest of the party and the more experienced should have the responsibility in case real trouble was to come. The boys were not long, even after the exciting interruption to their slumbers, in sinking to sleep again on the transoms in the summer cabin of the Carrier Dove. As for Ben he sat up on the after deck with his rifle between his knees till the moon went down and the stars began to wane. And all the time he never took his eyes off the shore where the dying camp-fire still spread a reddish glow against the blackness of the thick jungle tangle.

He might have been watching an hour when he gave a sudden start.

“Well that’s queer too,” he remarked to himself, as he fixed his eyes with stern intensity on the little glow of light thrown out by the embers. A dark figure had cautiously crossed the illumination, standing silhouetted for a moment against it. Suddenly a loud “hoo-hoo” like the hoot of an owl sounded from the shore. The same moment in the old adventurer’s reckless heart was borne a resolve which bore fruit when at dawn, as the rim of a glorious sun poked itself over the sparkling blue expanse of waters, and showed them vacant, he drew in the Squeegee’s painter and slipped lightly into her. He sculled ashore and approaching the camp crouched almost on his hands and knees. He examined the ground closely for a few minutes, as if in keen search of something. After a few minutes of this concentrated scrutiny he suddenly straightened up and strode off unhesitatingly into the jungle. But as he parted the creepers before him he gripped his rifle in the crotch of his arm with his finger on the trigger. He was not going to be taken by surprise.

The green mystery of the forest had not long closed on Ben’s stalwart form when the boys awoke as the sunlight streamed through the canvas-curtains of the Carrier’s Dove’s “main saloon”. Rubbing their eyes sleepily they hastened out on deck. For a few seconds the glory of the tropic dawn engrossed their attention to the exclusion of all else. Then with a cry of alarm Lathrop shouted:

“The Squeegee’s gone!”

“Gone?” echoed the others.

For answer Lathrop pointed to the stern. It was true, no Squeegee swung there at her painter. It was only a fraction of time before the absence of Ben Stubbs was also discovered. For a minute a dark thought crossed Frank’s mind,—but he dismissed it as unworthy, and was glad he did, for suddenly Billy shouted:

“Why, there’s the Squeegee ashore.”

They all looked and there, sure enough, lay their sneak-box where Ben, a short time before, had deserted her.

“He must have gone ashore hunting,” cried Harry.

Frank shook his head.

“He had some graver reason than that for going,” he said.

“Well, let’s swim ashore and find out what has become of him,” cried Lathrop, and indeed the turquoise water into whose depths one could see, did look tempting enough for an early morning plunge.

“It would be our last swim, Lathrop,” remarked Frank, pointing as he spoke to a wicked-looking triangular black fin that cruised by.

“See that leg o’ mutton?” he continued, “well, that’s hitched onto the back of a man-eating shark and they don’t encourage early morning bathing except for their larder’s benefit.”

As he spoke the monster glided close to the side of the Carrier Dove, perhaps in search of ship scraps, for which sharks will sometimes follow ships for days to satisfy their insatiable appetites. With an ill-concealed shudder Lathrop watched the great shadowy body flit by the sloop’s side, with a wicked little pig-like eye cocked knowingly up, as much as to say:

“Any breakfast ready yet?”

“I like those fellows less than the snakes,” exclaimed Lathrop.

When the laugh at his expense had subsided Frank suggested that they get into canoes at once and go ashore to discover what had become of Ben. The proposal was greeted as a good one and in short time the light craft were overboard and the boys paddling with all their might for the shore. Lathrop kept his eyes steadily ahead all the way, nor did he once look at the transparent water about them which, as the sun got higher, began to swarm with black fins and queer ill-shaped monsters of the deep,—jew-fish, rays, and huge sun-fish,—which seen through the water looked like so many ill-shaped dragons. On shore the boys hastened at once to their camp-fire of the night before. Its ashes were strewn abroad but in the gray dust, Frank, with an exclamation of surprise, made out the numerous indentations of a queer-shaped flat foot—it was the same mark that had made Ben set off through the jungle. But the boys, less expert than he, could not track their way by looking out for bent ferns or broken bits of undergrowth.

A council of war was held. There were some of the leavings of the feast of the night before in the cooking-pots, and on these and some coffee brought ashore in the small emergency box fitted into each canoe, they made a satisfactory breakfast, after which, as the result of their confab, it was decided to attempt to circumnavigate the island in the canoes. By this means they thought they were pretty sure of finding Ben as the fact that the spot of land being unchartered argued against its being of any considerable size.

In fifteen minutes the canoes were underway and rapidly skirting the island. On the smooth water they made swift progress and in little more than an hour had rounded the southerly point and were working their way up the other coast. The island had turned out to be even smaller than they thought. They were opposite a pretty little bay in which, instead of the everlasting mangroves, an inviting little strip of pure white sand, fringed by a green palm grove, sloped down to the water, when suddenly their ears were saluted by a shot from the woods.

“Ben Stubbs!” was their simultaneous thought and the canoes were at once headed for the shore.

Having landed, the boys with loud shouts of “Ahoy, Ben!” dashed up through the woods which, to their astonishment, were threaded at this point by a path—a crude track certainly, but still a path. They did not give much time to the consideration of their surroundings however, their minds being bent on finding Ben. Suddenly out of the brush right ahead there sounded the “hoo-hoo” of an owl. Now even Lathrop was enough of a naturalist to know that owls do not hoot in the broad daylight, so they all stopped and exchanged wondering glances.

“Well, that’s a new one,” remarked Billy sententiously.

“Who ever heard of an owl that knocked about in the sunlight before?” added Lathrop.

“Even in this enchanted land,” concluded Harry.

Frank put all further speculation to rout by exclaiming, as the hoot was repeated from a further recess of the forest, and yet again in the still further distance:

“That is not an owl’s hoot, boys. It’s a signal given by some human being.”

No wonder the boys looked startled. After the adventure of the previous night they had good reason to distrust any human being they might encounter on the island. Whoever the inhabitants were they certainly had no good will toward the young adventurers, so much at least was patently evident.

“Well, come on, boys,” cried Frank at last, “There’s no use stopping here,” he added, as the “hoo-hoo” sounded uncannily from right behind them, “our escape to the boats is cut off.”

With grave looks they followed their young leader down the blind trail that led to they knew not what. Suddenly, and without an instant’s warning, a number of wild-looking, unkempt men and youths sprang out of the dense growth as if they had sprouted from the earth. They all carried ancient Winchesters and one or two even had an old-fashioned flint-lock. Their clothes were ragged to a degree. As ragged in fact as their hair and beards. With their thin, peaked noses, sunken cheeks, and wild, hawk-like eyes they were sinister looking specimens.

“What d’ye want y’ar, strangers?” demanded one in a high nasal voice.

“We came ashore on a hunting trip,” rejoined Frank.

At this all the crackers set up a loud roar of laughter.

“You ’uns are hunting big game, we reckon,” remarked a gangling youth in tattered blue homespun.

There was an angry murmur. Things looked just about as bad as they could when suddenly an unexpected diversion occurred. A wild-looking young woman, whose movements, despite her miserable rags, were as graceful as those of a wild fawn, dashed through the jungle and appeared in the middle of the group which hemmed the boys in.

“Josh, you’re a fool. Jed, you’re another, and you too, Amelech, and Will. Why for don’t you alls bring they ’uns into camp?”

The men all looked sheepish.

“Yer see—,” began one.

The girl stamped her foot impatiently.

“You alls ain’t none of yer got no more sense than so many loons,” she cried angrily. “Don’t you ’uns see that they ’uns is Black Bart’s friends?”

The men looked incredulous, but nevertheless their attitude changed.

“Wall, bein’ that’s the case, come ahead, strangers,” said the tall man who had first spoken and, with their wild escort clustering about them, the wondering boys followed him down the dim trail.

Of who Black Bart might be or where they were going they had not the slightest idea, but that Black Bart’s influence was so far favorable to them there seemed no reason to doubt.