“Come on!” Nicky demanded of his chums. “We don’t want to go.”
“Don’t want to go—” began Cliff. Then he followed Nicky.
The self-appointed leader went hastily down into the forecastle. His two comrades followed, wonderingly.
“I don’t see—” began Cliff.
“Look at it this way,” begged Nicky. “If we go with them we are in their hands, aren’t we? When the cutter has come and gone, without finding anything but the wrecked boat, these men will want to make us tell them where the treasure is supposed to be. Then they’ll desert us!”
“That’s good common sense,” agreed Cliff.
“Yes, it is,” Tom nodded.
“Let them go in the tender,” Nicky pursued his argument. “Then we can take possession of this boat, and when the cutter comes we can signal, and then—isn’t there some reward for claiming salvage on a boat, some way?”
“You’re going to get a treasure out of this adventure somehow, aren’t you?” laughed Tom. “I never saw such a money-grabbing fellow!”
“Whether I do—we do—or not,” Nicky defended, “we are safer here than with those hi-jackers. If the cutter doesn’t come, we have all the food and things—maybe the arsenal. We can stand them off and——”
“Instead of them making us toe the mark, we can make them do it!” Cliff cried, fired by Nicky’s eagerness.
“That’s it!” Tom agreed. “Nicky has the right idea!”
The tender, which was used with muffled oars according to need, had by that time been lowered over the slanting side of the Senorita.
“But suppose she sinks!” a new thought came to Cliff.
“The channels can’t be very deep, even at the deepest, between these islands,” Nicky asserted. “I think she has settled onto the rock now. If she starts down we can almost jump onto that island—and we won’t be as badly off as in the hands of hi-jackers!”
Gathering most of their weapons and some supplies and dropping them into the boat, the crew hurriedly rowed away on the course toward the distant mainland and the mouth of the Shark River where they could hide for a time.
Tom, Cliff and Nicky assured that the ship was completely deserted except for themselves, came on deck and from the points of vantage watched the departure without disclosing themselves.
The cutter, in the meantime, had pursued to the best of her speed during most of the night, but when the Senorita rounded the western end of Cape Sable and was, for the time, out of sight of her pursuer, a man on the cutter sighted what he took to be her lights again.
They were not, however. A coasting schooner, of the old type, blown somewhat off her course, had hove in sight.
Naturally, not being aware of the true facts, and supposing that the quarry had doubled on her course to escape them, believing that her masthead light—which the schooner’s light, from the rear, closely duplicated, was that of the Senorita, the cutter changed her course.
By dawn she overhauled the schooner, saw her mistake and lay to, her commander and Mr. Neale and the others completely baffled.
Had they been pursing that schooner all the while?
At the same time Nicky was delivering an oration, on the silent, stricken Senorita.
“Now, fellows,” he said, “we have to organize. We’re the captain, and crew, and cook and cabin boy, all in three. Which is which? If the cutter doesn’t come, we have to make plans. Those men will come back. They may not be able to use this boat again but they will want to find out what we know about the treasure before they leave—and they may do something to us after we’ve told. We ‘signed on’ in a way as pirates—hi-jackers.”
“And, sure enough, we are hi-jackers!” exclaimed Cliff. “We’ve taken a whole ship!”
“That’s so!” said Tom. “Well, I move that the Mystery Boys nominate the acting chief for this year of their order as Captain in this emergency.”
“Second the motion!” cried Cliff.
“All in favor!” grinned Nicky. “But Tom has the cooler head and you, Cliff, know more than I do.”
“Aye—just the same—you’re elected!” laughed Cliff.
“I’ll volunteer to cook,” Tom offered.
“Then I’m crew and cabin boy,” chuckled Cliff.
“What are your orders, cap’n?” asked Tom with assumed deference, touching his forelock in approved nautical fashion.
“Of course we all are captain, really,” Nicky stated. “But just while we’re in no danger, I’d say we ought to see what weapons the men left, and where the food is and how badly broken the hull is.”
“That’s one job for each of us,” Cliff agreed. “I’ll round up the artillery. Tom will cook, so that leaves the captain the rightful duty of estimating damage to his ship!”
“Then we may try to repair her,” grinned Nicky, “and sail, and sail the seven seas, and spread our sails to every breeze and take our captives as we please——”
“Only we have no sails!” Cliff reminded him.
“Well, then, we’ll gaily man our ocean rover and swiftly turn her engines over and if we’re chased—if we’re chased——”
“We’ll run for cover!” suggested Tom, chuckling.
“‘Rover’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘cover’ but let it go at that!”
Then, with the spirit of youth and daring alert in their strange situation, they departed for their several tasks.
Over a plentiful breakfast, helping to make up for the fast of the long day on the island, they compared notes. There was a long rent in the vessel’s side, below waterline, Nicky reported, not easily to be repaired even if they could float the ship at all. Plenty of canned food and some fresh supplies, Tom stated. Five automatic pistols, two rifles and a small signaling cannon was Cliff’s list of weapons. “So far, so good,” said Nicky. “What next?”
From a little beyond the ship came a hail.
The chums became tense.
“You’re captain,” his chums told Nicky. “Go and parley!”
“Ahoy, Senorita!” came the second hail. Nicky scrambled from his wicker chair and started for the companion door; Tom looked at Cliff and then, catching his eye, glanced at the arsenal. Cliff nodded.
“I don’t know if the rifles are loaded,” Tom commented, picking one up and breaking the breach—with a shake of his head closing it. “They aren’t. But they may come in handy.” They carried the weapons as they came on deck.
Nicky had taken a position beside the little wheelhouse, watching the tender, manned by Tew and one sailor, come around the islet close to which their boat was careened against the coral.
“Hello!” hailed Tew, catching sight of Nicky. “You boys got lost in the shuffle! Thought you was overboard maybe. We’ll take you off. We are hidin’ on a good island—we can climb the trees and be safe when the cutter 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 beside Nicky. The sailor stopped rowing, allowing the tender to drift about fifteen feet from the Senorita. Tew muttered some unpleasant word.
“You don’t want to be there when the revenue men come,” he said. “If you do, we don’t mean you to be!”
He spoke to the sailor, but in face of two rifles, the man said something under his breath and Tew nodded.
“Look here!” Tew called, “if they get you you’ll tell where we are! That won’t do! Come—be sensible—we’ll get you one way or another. Come decent, and we won’t harm you—but come you will!”
“Is that so?” exclaimed Nicky defiantly. “Well we won’t! You’d better go away!”
Tew and the sailor held a short conference. At Tew’s gesture the sailor poised the oars, while Tew tugged at a weapon in his belt. Tom leaped up onto the cabin roof, to have a better place from which to pretend to cover the sailor, but an inspiration came to him and he acted upon that instead.
Pretending to glance by accident toward the larger expanse of the open Gulf he dropped the rifle, and waved his arm, then dragged out a handkerchief 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 had succeeded because the men thought they could see from the cabin top what was invisible on the water line, leaped up beside their comrade and began to hail and to wave their arms.
The tender was quickly out of their sight, and yet they kept up their shouting, 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 heads when they come back after us!”
“But they have guns, too,” objected Cliff.
“Well,” Nicky proposed, “let’s fix the cabin so we can take refuge there, barricade it. There’s all the food for a long siege, and we can command the doors from those portholes.”
Tom caught their arms, and with a swift whisper and a nod toward a moving figure on the islet, caused them to begin to wave their hands and to beckon, all looking out toward the Gulf.
Tom had espied a creeping figure, low on the ground. Tew, with some purpose in his mind, had landed on the islet and crept across to the side 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. “How clost are they?”
“About half a mile off the coast,” Nicky answered, hoping his untruth would be forgiven under the circumstances.
“I just wanted to warn you—if you let them take you off, don’t say nothing about us—and then no harm’ll come to you. But if any of us gets nabbed—we’ll take care not all are—we’ll hunt you down if it takes all our lives!”
“All right!” called Tom quickly, neither agreeing nor refusing.
Tew waited a moment, then seemed to decide that he had better not stay there since they had discovered him and he could not watch. He crept back 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,” Nicky urged. “Tom—you go! Cliff, can’t that skylight on top of the cabin be battened down?”
“Yes—there’s a covering—but——”
“I know it won’t help once they get on top—but having it fastened would make it take longer to get to us. And we’d have the light switches and could 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. “I closed the cabin door, but the lock sticks and when I wrenched at the knob to open it again, the screw was loose that holds the knob to the shackle, and it just turned in my hand and I had to screw in the threads with my finger nail to get it to turn at all.”
“I have one,” said Cliff, but as he produced his knife he went on, “but I’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 after deck, at the blank rear bulkhead back of the engines, and we can’t cover the decks.”
“That’s so,” Nicky conceded.
“So I think we ought to do some other way,” Cliff urged. “And I wish you’d tell me what you think of this: Suppose we take it for granted that they won’t come back for at least an hour—they will scatter and hide because they don’t know but that the cutter may be coming. In that time we can swim over to that island with the heavy trees, after we’ve dumped the guns into the water and flung things around to make them think the cutter’s men have searched a little.”
“That’s a corker!” exclaimed Nicky. “Much better than my plan. They will think the cutter took us off and we were too scared to tell where they were, 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 of cupboards, to simulate the result of a hurried search for liquor or evidence, and dropping the rifles overboard where they showed on the clear bed of coral, as they supposed the officers would do, the chums, carefully making certain by shinning up the short mast that no boat was within immediate range, leaped over the side.
The deeper channel was not wide; they made for an island on the far side, and there, wading up through the ooze covered bed-stone, they got on fairly firm ground and selected good spots in which to lie in case of need for hiding.
Then, by turns, they took up a watch toward the Gulf, alternating with a look once in a while toward the channel and the wrecked boat.
But for some reason the hi-jackers did not return. All day the chums watched, but without result.
“They must have decided that we went away, or they are afraid that a rowboat might be cruising among the islets,” Cliff said. “I wish we had brought something to eat!”
“I thought of it,” Tom said, “but I guessed that they would come back before 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 possible to watch easily. And, about eight o’clock, Tom, on guard, whispered to attract his comrades. They all made out the tender creeping quietly toward 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 see what we can see!”
“But if they discover us—” objected Tom.
“They aren’t looking for us, I feel sure,” Cliff said. “They won’t be watching the water in this direction. They are getting their food and things, it is most likely.”
Going carefully, using a stroke that sent them through the water with little 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 point they could, till their feet touched the bottom, when they discovered him. But, either because he was half asleep, or from confidence that there was no one around, he sat slumped in the stern, and did not appear to notice anything unusual.
Treading water, catching finally the low rail where it almost dipped into 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 cautiously onto the deck. Nicky and Tom followed his example, but remained at the rail as he made a peremptory gesture to them to “stay back!”
Cliff crept closer to the cabin and when no one appeared and his courage rose, 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 whispered rapidly.
Taking Cliff’s screwdriver-bladed knife, Tom went to the rearward door, into the engine room, and with the knife removed the screw from its knob, 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 voice as he could, Cliff hailed the man in the boat in a low tone. “Come into the cabin, you,” he said. Then he hurried away.
Presently those in the cabin—Don Ortiga, Tew, their sailors and the cook, were surprised to see the boatman appear in their midst.
Before they could question him or get his inquiry as to what they wanted, the door behind him slammed as did the engine room door.
There was confusion, then oaths, then excited stamping; of course the time it took them to discover that they were trapped was not long; nor did it take overlong to get the knob back onto the door after an excited hand wrenched it away. But the time was enough.
When the infuriated members of the hi-jacker band finally raced up the deck toward their tender, they found the dipped end of a rope as a memento.
The Mystery Boys, well away and out of sight around the island, were rowing the captured tender with all their strength.
“We can’t——claim salvage!” panted Nicky. “But we are out of the grip of those 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 swinging curve. “We’ll pull for it. It may be the cutter!”
It was stationary, and not very far away; but as they neared it they saw that 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 a suitable 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 one pull your boat up alongside till we have a look!”
“Out of the frying pan—” breathed Cliff! He and Tom elevated their hands and Nicky, with reluctant strokes, drew close to the bow. Tom discerned a name in glimmering gold against white paint.
“Fellows,” he whimpered, “it’s that boat we saw in Jamaica!”
It was—El Libertad!
“That’s a nice way to welcome mariners!” exclaimed Cliff as they came alongside; the colored man on deck merely grunted.
“Pass your line!” he said.
When they clambered onto the small aft deck they saw that their new captor was a large, heavy, but lithe-looking negro.
“I wanted you to go away, before,” he said, more pleasantly. “When I saw you this time I wouldn’t take chances on letting you go!”
“What do you mean by that?” Nicky demanded.
“Oh!” replied the man, “it’s this way: we got the maps back in Jamaica, and got El Libertad ready. When you tried to hire her Senor Ortiga let your chief think she was laid up waiting for machinery—but before you were ten miles away we started for the archipelago.”
“Then I suppose it was one of your crowd who tried to scare us with the blue light and rapping on the sloop,” cried Nicky.
“It was me,” he answered, not very grammatically. “I used a blue ship’s flare we had on the boat, burned in a box so you only saw the light and not the flame. Then I swam out under water and hit the sloop and then coaxed you back to the island with another flare.”
“So it was you who put the message there,” Tom exclaimed, feeling somewhat ashamed of his terror of the past, now that a perfectly natural explanation made it all seem so easy to understand.
“I put it there, but Cap’n Ortiga, he planned it—with the man who got the maps.”
“And who was that?” demanded Nicky.
“You’ll see,” declared the colored man. “Come this way!”
He led them into the cabin, a much smaller one than on the Senorita, since the Libertad was a narrower, shorter vessel.
Under the ceiling electric dome two men sat at a table, playing some game of cards. The man facing them was of Spanish type, not as tall or as excitable as his brother, but clearly related to the hi-jacker they had just before their escape been able to imprison in his own cabin.
He looked up and as the man whose back was toward them did so and made a half turn on his folding seat, all three boys started and their jaws dropped.
“Mr. Coleson!” gasped Nicky.
It was Mr. Coleson all right—the owner of the plantation where they had stayed in Jamaica.
“Hello, young fellows!” he replied briskly, swinging further around in his chair. “So you came back!”
They were still speechless with surprise.
“I’m rather glad you did,” Mr. Coleson went on. “Did you find any treasure?” He turned a grinning face to wink at Senor Ortiga who frowned heavily at the boys.
Nicky shook his head. “You know right well we didn’t!” he declared. “You sent us away to have a clear field here.”
“Nevertheless I gather that there is treasure buried in such spots,” said Mr. Coleson. “You might have found some.”
“We found something else, though,” said Nicky, fixing a meaning look upon the Spaniard.
“Liquor! Of course!” Rodriguez Ortiga agreed shortly. “How did it happen that my beloved brother didn’t put an end to you—I rather expected that he would!”
Tom was caressing his left ear rather hurriedly; Nicky, lips half open, suddenly recognized the sign of their secret call for a council, or for silence, and folded his arms.
Cliff took up the answer to Ortiga.
“Your brother,” he said, meaningly, “has a better use for us!”
Ortiga leaned back, scowling, looking sharply at the trio.
“Just what does that mean?” he demanded.
“You’ll see!” Cliff said. Ortiga pursued the inquiry but with Cliff the others remained stubbornly silent. They saw that Cliff’s plan, for some reason they did not yet grasp, was to puzzle the two men. Nicky, to get away from the subject, turned on the estate owner.
“How did you come to be on this boat?” he asked.
Mr. Coleson, smiling a little, answered readily. “Quite simple. You see, I have the maps!”
“How’d you get them?” Tom broke in.
“Equally simple, my lad. I was not far away when I observed your little difficulty with the voodoo woman, and being curious, half intending to interfere, I came closer, just beyond the heavy fringe of brush near the cabin. From there I overheard enough of your talk with Sam to become interested. I followed you three and since you held your supposedly secret meeting quite close to my own windows I overheard some more.”
The trio of chums felt sheepish. For once their mysteries had been carelessly pursued; they had talked openly instead of by signs, as they all recalled clearly on looking back upon that day of many excitements.
“Knowing the island superstitions, it was easy to frighten the child—the little negro boy—I merely held a handkerchief over my face as I crouched by the dining room window, watching for a chance to get the map you were discussing. My white suit accomplished the rest.”
He had worn a light suit, as did most of the people of Jamaica, the youths recollected.
“I was sorry to have to strike Sam, but I saw that your part of the chart was insufficient and so I took the balance from Sam.”
“It’s all very easy to see, now that you explain it,” said Nicky, ruefully recalling that they had attached some ghostly importance to perfectly ordinary causes. Nicky also recalled that Mr. Coleson had, himself, that night, mentioned the ghosts—for his own purpose, it now became clear!
“I suppose you climbed into a window after you got our map,” said Tom, vowing mentally never to accept a single ghostly bit of evidence again as long as he lived.
“I did better than that,” replied Mr. Coleson, appearing to take a grim delight in explaining how easily he had hoodwinked them. “I merely crouched beside the white part of the house, back of the shrubbery. You looked all about except right behind you, that time!”
“But see here!” cut in Ortiga, “what is it that my brother has use for you for?”
Again the chums became silent; actually, there was no answer but they pretended mystifying knowledge, in a way paying back the debt they owed Mr. Coleson and the colored man for the blue light and old tin can.
“Well, it doesn’t matter—now that we shall use you first!”
“Use us?” cried Nicky. “Use us for what?”
In his turn Ortiga smiled enigmatically.
Mr. Coleson spoke. “You see, boys,” he said, “we have the maps, and we have cruised among the islands for days—but we haven’t located the Dipper Islands—and, of course, no treasure is found. You must have the clue we lack. We will share with you after you help us to find the treasure.”
“Supposing we won’t help?” inquired Nicky defiantly. “It’s ours by right. And, suppose we don’t even know a clue?”
“In the first case, we will find ways to make you tell,” snapped Senor Ortiga, with a clenching fist crumpling the hand of cards he held. “In the latter case—we won’t believe you!”
Nicky turned with helpless dismay to his two chums. They still had their arms folded.
“Say nothing!” was the sign Tom made and Nicky nodded.
“I suppose my brother has learned from you about the treasure,” said Ortiga, rising. “That is what he would use you for. Well—we will be just a little ahead of him—as usual!”
For once, as they sprawled on the cushioned side seats which had to serve as bunks, the three comrades admitted to their own secret selves, although not to each other, that there seemed to be no way out of this dilemma. For once their self-reliance was a very small spark, indeed!
“But the right always wins out somehow,” Nicky consoled himself. “If it didn’t then the world would have been smashed up long ago!”
Then, a little braced by his trust, he dozed.
When they awoke the three comrades found their clothes, soaked by their swim the night before, dry enough to put on. There was very little conversation during breakfast, but immediately after the meal Senor Ortiga drew from his pocket the two halves of Captain Kidd’s map, laid them on the folding table and summoned the boys to his side.
There were the two halves of the real map, together for the first time in Nicky’s sight.
The two halves fitted exactly when Mr. Coleson held them together. They showed the complete sign of the Dipper, with small islands indicating a very close resemblance to the real constellation of the heavens, as the chums saw it at night. Beneath them, the two separated syllables formed, as they had inferred, the name Dipper.
The faint line, zigzagging among the small and irregular dots below, ran from the wreck to a point at what was the eastward of the reproduced constellation; but the line ended without pointing to any particular islet.
“There’s your map,” Mr. Coleson said. “Now, lads, you can see that it means very little. It shows the point where the wreck occurred many years ago. It shows a channel that must have been used by the castaways in transferring the treasure.”
“But,” Don Ortiga broke in, irritably, “we have located the islands that make the Dipper—they lie inward about half way between the Gulf side and the inside channel. And we have dug every one of them over, torn roots apart, plumbed with leads and grappled with hooks——”
“And all we’ve got for our work,” Mr. Coleson growled, “is the ache in our backs.”
“There is nothing on the chart to indicate where the treasure was put,” Ortiga commented. “Unless you know something about it that we do not see.”
“Do you?” demanded Mr. Coleson.
His look penetrated the eager interest of the boys and he thought he saw something in Nicky’s expression that meant more than it showed.
“You—Nicky, aren’t you?—you know something,” he declared. “Now, what is it?”
Cliff and Tom also saw a strange expression in Nicky’s eyes.
As a matter of fact, Nicky had just recollected a part of his family’s legend that had not come into his mind before for the reason that it was not written down anywhere and had been told to him only once by his uncle.
Nicky, glancing at his two young companions, wanted to smile. Both were making vigorous efforts to make him realize that they were signaling; each scratched a left ear almost wildly. It was the call for a secret communication.
Nicky folded his arms and stood, pretending to pore over the map, his brows knitted. He was watching for the next sign, although he already sensed what it would be.
His guess was correct. Cliff was making the sign to call for the part of their oath that said “Telling All, I tell nothing!”
Nicky, deliberately, grinned at his chums.
Turning to Mr. Coleson Nicky made a flat statement.
“Yes,” he said, “I do know something!” Everyone bent forward. Ortiga and Mr. Coleson had eager, intent faces; Cliff and Tom were anxious and worried. With the key to a treasure in his grasp, was this impulsive comrade going to “tell All,” or “tell nothing?”
Nicky grinned, a little maliciously, it seemed to Cliff.
“Mr. Coleson,” he said, “you’ve got us ‘in your power.’ It’s no use to try to fib to you.”
“You’d better not!” snapped Senor Ortiga, while the colored man, listening in the after cockpit, rolled his eyes and shook his head and Mr. Coleson bored Nicky with piercing eyes.
“I’ve got to save my friends and myself,” Nicky declared. “If you will promise——”
“Oh! Certainly!” broke in Senor Ortiga, impatiently. “You will get what is coming to you! Let us have the secret!”
Nicky’s chums were so far forgetting their usual poise that they shook their heads vigorously, but Nicky seemed not to notice.
“When Captain Kidd was in prison, as my family remembers the story, he sent for one of my grandparents—great-great-great, I guess it was! And he said——”
“Yes! Yes! What?”
“He said, ‘Here is half a map, and I am giving it to you——’”
“Never mind all that!” rasped Mr. Coleson. “Get to the point!”
Nicky nodded.
“Look!” he said, and traced the faint line with his finger. They followed his movement in fascinated eagerness. “You see, it finally runs around the top of the islands, the North part, and then straight as an arrow, points South!”
“Yes. We see that!”
“Well, the message Captain Kidd gave was, as well as I can repeat it—‘At the end of the line, in the lowest part of the Dipper!’”
“‘At the end of the line, in the lowest part of the Dipper!’” Ortiga repeated. He snatched the map and pulled it closer. He studied it.
“The line points South,” Nicky said, “so I suppose Captain Kidd meant to dig or search down at the part that is the lowest part on the chart. That would be—” He fished out a stubby bit of pencil and placed its tip on the Westernmost of the lowest islands, drew a slim line from it to the one opposite, at the East, prolonged the line until it was at a point below the end of the faint line already on the chart. Then he made dots to prolong that one until they met.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Senor Ortiga, leaping up in such excitement that he threw over his chair and almost upset the table. “We did not think of that place. We dug all the islands, but this is far better.”
“Come—Jim, get the boat ready! We will go at once!” cried Mr. Coleson.
“As for you fellows,” said Senor Ortiga, “we can’t take you; we can’t trust you with the Libertad. So we will tie you until we return!”
In spite of vigorous protests, the powerful men quickly overcame opposition, bound ropes around the boys’ arms and legs, knotted them, dropped the helpless bundles unceremoniously on the cabin floor, and hurried to climb into their own rowboat and the tender which had brought the chums. The quick orders, followed by a rythmic plash of oars and voices dying away gradually in the distance was the story their ears told.
“You’re a nice one!” said Cliff, sourly.
“Why?” said Nicky, wrenching futilely at his well-trussed arms.
“After we’d signalled, and all,” Tom cut in. “Tell all, and tell nothing—oh, yes! Then you tell all!”
“What would you have done?” demanded Nicky.
“Gave them a false direction!”
“Would you?” asked Nicky and worked again on his bonds.
Cramped and aching in every muscle, the chums struggled uselessly throughout a long and irksome day. The ropes were tied too securely to be loosened; they would not stretch.
It was almost twilight when they heard the returning sweep of oars and the grate of the boats alongside.
“Jim, see if those lads are still safe, and let them stretch a bit,” came a voice the chums recognized as that of Mr. Coleson. Jim, the colored Jamaican, came into the cabin with leisurely slowness and they saw, from his downcast face, the answer to a question in the minds of at least two cramped prisoners.
He was frowning and his whole bearing was dejected. They had found no treasure!
This was borne out by the faces of the white men when they came in and dropped heavily onto the cushioned side seats. “Look here,” said Senor Ortiga, morosely, fixing Nicky with a cold glare, “are you sure you remembered that message correctly?”
“I’m sure,” said Nicky, rubbing his arms and legs to get the blood into circulation again, still seated on the cabin flooring.
“Well, then,” said Mr. Coleson, “it’s all a myth, or someone has been ahead of us.”
“Repeat that message,” commanded Ortiga, not convinced.
Nicky, looking him in the eyes, did so. “‘At the end of the line, in the lowest part of the Dipper,’” he stated.
“And you say that’s the truth?”
“It’s the truth——”
“The whole truth?”
“Yes—and ‘nothing but the truth!’”
“Well, we searched the bottom where those lines join, and then we rowed over to the two islands, went over them again, and then searched the bottom between them—that’s the ‘lowest part of the islands,’ too,” stated Mr. Coleson.
Neither Nicky, Cliff nor Tom cared much. Their bodies were too sore, too tired from staying in one position, too full of aches, to enable them to give much thought to treasure.
Almost nothing was said as Jim prepared supper, for which the chums were waiting as eagerly as their weary bodies allowed. A low-voiced conference was held between the white men, but it was not until the meal was ended, Cliff lifting his cup with cramped arm and hand, Tom feeling his feet prickle as circulation fed the life fluid to them, Nicky feeling as though he had been trussed up for years, that Senor Ortiga delivered the result of the conference.
“We noticed that the tender you came in was marked from the Senorita,” he stated to Tom. “We rowed down the inner channel a way, wondering how you came to be in it!”
“We found the wreck,” added Mr. Coleson.
“Again my dear brother failed to get ahead of me!” snapped the Spaniard, glowering. “But that is aside from the point, which is that we are through here.”
“Then you’ll take us back to Jamaica with you?” asked Cliff.
Ortiga shook his head.
“You have the tender,” he replied. “We will put some food in it and let you use it to get to wherever you want to go. Do you suppose we want to get mixed up with the American Government for tying up its younger citizens? Not we! But we won’t set you adrift or maroon you. We’ll let you have the tender and some food.”
It was almost half an hour later that Cliff, Tom and Nicky, seated in the tender, with a few days’ supply of canned foods in her bottom, saw the anchor of El Libertad come up, heard the pulsing throb of her single, four-cylinder speed motor, and watched her swing in a graceful curve into the wide waters of the Gulf and lay a course Southward.
“There she goes,” said Cliff morosely. “Now we’d better lay to, on some island for the night, and then start rowing for civilization.”
“I half wonder if they found the treasure, after all,” said Tom, “and just acted the way they did to ‘steer us off’ and wait till we get away.”
“No,” said Nicky.
“No?——”
“No. At least, if they did, I’ll bet the treasure was moved up to a new place.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Cliff sharply.
“You see,” said Nicky, “I did tell the truth—the whole thing and nothing else except the truth. But——”
He grinned at his chums in the dull light. “I saw your signals, even though I would have done what I did without them.”
If they had suddenly been touched by a “live” electric wire the other two could not have jumped more, or assumed more interested and amazed expressions.
“Tell us what you mean!” cried Tom.