by Van Powell
CHAPTER XXIII MAROONED
After a quick handclasp with the other two, Sam counseled delay. “Betterto tell me what has happened to you,” he said. “There are men hiding onthat ship, waiting till the men in the boat get all their dunnage onboard——”
“Dunnage!” interrupted Nicky. “Sam—it’s gold!”
Sam’s eyes rolled with excitement.
“They went and found it!” he gasped.
“We did, and they took it away from us,” Tom explained.
“Who’s hiding?” Cliff asked.
Sam suggested that they had better tell him their story first, and helaid on the oars and listened as they gave him a brief history of theiradventures.
In his turn he told them his story.
“When I got my head full of crazy scares,” he said, “I left you onCrocodile Key, and sailed for the open water. Later on a revenue cutteroverhauled me. Mr. Neale was with the men.”
“Then he was all right?” Nicky asked.
“Yes,” Sam replied, “all right, and mad. When he found out what I’d wentand done he gave me an awful talking to, and then they turned the cutterabout and went back to look for you.”
After that, Sam explained, his conscience bothered him, but he decidedthat the boys must be all right, and so held on his course towardJamaica. But during the late afternoon clouds gathered, wind came up,rain squalls blew over and his work was cut out for him.
“I judged it was a ‘judgment’ on me from On High,” Sam declared. “I hadmore’n I could do, handling the sails to get them down, and all I coulddo I couldn’t get them reefed quick enough——”
“And you lost your boat?” broke in Nicky.
“No, sar,” Sam replied. “Wait—let me tell you. I had to run before thewind and when daylight came and the wind dropped I was so wore out witha sight at the tiller that I just fell down and slept. I let the_Treasure Belle_ drift.”
When he had awakened, he went on, he did not know where he was, but fromthe direction in which the wind had blown, he guessed that he must bewell into the Gulf of Mexico. He trimmed his sails and with the old,heavy-duty engine for a kicker, he set a course Eastward. It broughthim, in time, within sight of what he discovered to be the lower end ofthe Ten Thousand Island archipelago, almost opposite to the wrecked_Senorita_.
“I saw somebody making a signal with a flag, and the flag at themasthead was upside down—a sign of distress,” Sam pursued his story, “Iran close in and found out that the _Senorita_ was a wreck.”
“We were on it when it happened—but we told you. Go on,” said Tom. Samfinished quickly.
“There was a colored cook, a Spaniard, a man named Tew, and some sailorsand the engineer,” Sam concluded. “They offered me money to take themaboard the _Treasure Belle_. I did, but instead of going back aroundCape Sable, they took me and tied me up and threw me in the littlecabin. They talked about capturing a boat or something and the firstthing I knew, they had passed the _Libertad_, here, and went on beyondduring the night. That was at night—last night. They hauled the_Treasure Belle_ out of sight between two islands, a little North ofhere. There they laid quiet all today. One man swam off from my sloopand came back and they all talked. Towards evening they started theengine, came down, hauled alongside and got on board the _Libertad_.They had untied me and told me to swim onto one of the islands andstay—or starve, for all they cared. Then they held guns on me until Iswam to the Key. They said if I warned anybody I saw, they’d pepper mefull of lead. So I hid, and when I saw two white men and a Negro rowingtowards _Libertad_, I didn’t dare to say anything. But nothing happenedto them, and when I saw your boat I guessed it was safe to hail, becausethe men on the _Libertad_ must be hiding and couldn’t hurt me. And so Ifound you.”
“And I’m glad of it,” said Tom.
“I’m right sorry sars, for what I done, and I’ll try to make it up toyou,” Sam said.
“It’s all right,” Nicky stated. “We won’t hold it against you. But youdidn’t say what happened to your sloop.”
“They put two sailors into her and sailed her away down the coast,” Samreplied. “To tell somebody something about bringing up some cases orsomething like that. I couldn’t hear much. They talked about lots ofthings—Indians and sharks and—oh, lots!”
“But why don’t we row to the _Libertad_?” demanded Nicky.
As he spoke the reason became apparent. Jim, in the boat, handed up ontothe deck to the white men the last bars of gold.
“Come aboard,” was presumably his order; the chums and Sam were too faraway to hear. They did see sudden flashes, hear a subdued commotion,hear splashes in the water. Guns were being fired, and people wereshouting.
Almost immediately, before the shots died down, in fact, they heard theroar of _El Libertad’s_ motor, saw her swing to her anchor, and, as itlifted from the coral, turned in a wide sweep, while shots flashed theirspurts of flame through the darkness from her stern.
Then she swung onto a Northerly course and disappeared swiftly beyond anisland at the Northern side of the channel.
“They’ve shot those men who took our gold,” Nicky declared. “Sam, andCliff, row there, quick! We ought to try to pick them up—maybe they’rebadly hurt.” Sam and Tom dipped their oars with a will.
Cliff having donned his clothes, of course, before he took the oars asthey rowed out from the treasure islet, took the tender’s light tillerfrom the floor where it lay while they navigated the shoal water,shipped it and its attached rudder, and steered so that the rowers couldput more force into their strokes and thus cover the water more quickly.
They soon reached the spot, and saw several figures struggling with athird.
Sam and Nicky hailed. An answer came, “Jim, here, was knocked oversidewhen he tried to scramble onto our ship. Help us get him to shore. Hishead hit the coral, we think! They sank the rowboat.”
They pulled close and with some difficulty the inert colored man waslifted over the gunwale and dropped into the tender’s bottom. Then Mr.Coleson, with a smarting flesh wound in his arm, and Ortiga, who was toobusy expressing an unfavorable opinion of his renegade brother toexamine his hurts, seemed to have escaped with a scratched hand.
They began to row toward the island but Nicky made a suggestion.
“Let’s pull for the wrecked _Senorita_,” he urged. “There’s most likelyto be a medicine kit on board her, and food as well.”
It took quite a while to get back down the shore line to the pointalmost opposite the Shark River where the _Senorita_ had grounded; butwhen they got there Nicky’s prophecy proved to be correct and SenorOrtiga, when the surgical and medicinal appliances were brought, made anexamination of Jim, and then dressed a rather bad scalp wound, bringingits edges together with surgical thread after washing it withantiseptics.
Jim came to himself before the bandaging was completed. Though weak anda little bit uncertain in speech, he was in no way permanently injuredin his brain. Rest would restore his usual vigor and help nature to healhis hurt.
Weary and discouraged, because there was nothing to be done toward therecovery of their lost treasure, the chums, after a midnight meal, threwthemselves onto bunks in the engine room, preferring these to morecomfortable wall berths with the two white men who had done them so meana turn.
Sam elected to stay with his own companions, and Jim was put in theforecastle to be alone while he rested.
“I certainly am grateful to you for saving us, just now,” said Mr.Coleson as they separated for the night.
“After the way he acted, he ought to be,” Nicky confided to hiscomrades, when they were alone.
They slept peacefully, thoroughly wearied by hard work and worn down bythe nerve tension of the last few days.
It was Sam who shook them awake.
“That man, Coleson, wasn’t so grateful, after all,” he said when thechums had rubbed some sleep out of their eyes in the early dawn. “Thetender is go
ne. The two white men—gone too!”
“The ungrateful—” began Nicky. But what would calling names do for them?Certainly it wouldn’t help any.
“We are not on an island, and we’ve got food,” Nicky observed,recovering his usual trust in the eventual justice of life. “But we aremarooned! And yet—and yet, I’ll say it again—we’ll come out best in thelong run. You wait and see!”