Kitabı oku: «What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise», sayfa 5
X
TOM’S DISCOVERIES
As no attack had been made upon the camp the boys gradually relaxed the vigilance of their guard duty; but they still maintained a sentry at the lookout tree at night and made occasional visits of observation during the day, going to the tree sufficiently often to avoid being taken by surprise.
“And what if they should attack us in daytime?” argued Dick. “We’d be here, armed and ready for them.”
There was fishing to be done, and a game of chess or backgammon was usually in progress. Moreover, like any other company of bright youths accustomed to think, they had enough to talk about, many things to explain to each other, many stories to tell, and many questions to discuss. Thus the daytime sentry duty was reduced to nearly no activity, except upon Tom’s part. He was apparently fond of going to the lookout and remaining there sometimes for hours at a time.
The others did not know why he should care for that as for an amusement. Tom did, but he said nothing. Tom was finding out something that the others knew nothing about.
On the next morning but one after the deer hunt he had climbed to the crotch of the tree to make a further study of the trail he had discovered. After a little while he decided to climb farther up the tree, in order to secure a better view.
From that loftier perch he saw something at a distance that deeply interested him. It was a sort of hovel, so buried in undergrowth that it would have been scarcely visible at all except to one looking from a high place as he was.
But what interested him most was that presently he saw the lame intruder of two nights before come out of the hovel and limp down toward the shore, where, as Tom easily made out, there was a small, crooked little cove running into the woods, not from the creek, but from the broader water outside.
Tom lost sight of the man when he reached the cove, and so did not make out what he was doing there, but after a time he saw him limp away again and go back to the neighborhood of the hovel, which, however, he did not enter or approach very nearly.
He loitered around for awhile, like one who must remain where he is, but who has nothing to do there during an indefinitely long and tedious waiting time. At last he stretched himself out on a log in the shadow of the trees, as if to pass away the time in sleep.
Tom’s curiosity was by this time master of him. Having seen so much, he was eager to see more. Accordingly he clambered down the tree, and, with gun in hand, set out to follow the blind trail.
He moved silently from the first, and very cautiously toward the end of his half-mile journey. He was careful not to tread upon any of the dry sticks that might make a noise in breaking, and to permit no bush to swish as he let it go.
At last he reached the neighborhood of the hovel, and, securing a good hiding place in the dense undergrowth, minutely studied his surroundings. The lame man lay still on his log and apparently asleep, until after awhile the sun’s changing position brought his face into the strong glare. Then he rose lazily, rubbing his eyes as if the sleep were not yet out of them. Rising at last, with muttered maledictions upon the heat, he limped over to a clump of palmetes and from among them lifted a stone jug, from which he took a prolonged draught.
“That’s the stuff to brace a man up!” he muttered as he replaced the jug in its hiding place.
Tom observed that there were nowhere any traces of a camp fire, present or past, a fact that puzzled him at first, for obviously the man lived there in the thicket, or at least remained there for prolonged periods at a time, and, as Tom reflected, “he must eat.”
The man himself solved the riddle for him presently by going to another of his hiding places and bringing thence a great handful of coarse ship biscuit and a huge piece of cold pickled beef of the kind that sailors call “salt-horse,” which he proceeded to devour.
“Obviously,” reflected Tom, “his food, such as it is, is brought to him here already cooked. He makes no fire, probably because he fears its light by night or the smoke of it by day might reveal his presence here. But why does he stay here? What is he here for? Who are they who bring him food, and when or how often do they come, and for what purpose? It’s a Chinese puzzle, but I mean to work it out.”
Having made his observation of the place as minute as he could Tom silently crept away, not walking in the trail, but through the bushes near enough to let him see it and follow its winding course. He did this lest by walking too often in the trail he should leave signs of its recent use.
When he reached the lookout tree, to his surprise he found his three comrades there.
“Hello! What are you fellows doing here?” he asked, breaking out of the bushes and thus giving the first sign his comrades had had of his approach, for even to the end of his little journey he had been at pains to travel in absolute silence as an Indian on the war path does.
“Why, Tom, where have you been?” was the first greeting the others gave him.
“We’ve been dreadfully uneasy about you,” Larry explained, “and when I whistled through my fingers to call you to dinner and you didn’t come, we hurried out here to look for you. Where have you been and what have you been doing?”
“I say, Larry, that reminds me that I want you to teach me the trick of whistling through my fingers in that way. Will you?”
“I’ll teach you some things that are easier to learn than that,” answered his companion, “if you try any more of Cal’s tricks of beating round the bush. Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been and why, and all the rest of it? Don’t you understand that we’ve been on tenterhooks of anxiety about you for an hour?”
“Well, as I’m here, safe and sound, there is no further need of anxiety, and as for your curiosity to hear what I have to tell, I’ll relieve that while we’re at dinner. Come on! I’m hungry and I reckon the rest of you are, too. Anyhow, what I’ve got to tell you is well worth hearing, and I shall not tell you a word till we sit down on our haunches and begin to enjoy again the flavor of that venison, broiled on the live coals. You haven’t cooked it yet, have you?”
“No. We got the chops ready for the fire, and then I whistled for you, so that we might all have them fresh from the coals. As you didn’t come, we got uneasy and went to look for you. So come on and we’ll have a late dinner and sharp appetites.”
No sooner were the juicy venison chops taken from the fire and served upon a piece of bark that did duty as a platter than the demand for the story of Tom’s morning adventure became clamorous.
With a chop in one hand and half an ash cake in the other, Tom told all that he had done and seen, giving the details as the reader already knows them. Then, after finishing the meal and washing his hands, face and head in the salt water of the creek, he set forth the conclusions and conjectures he had formed.
“In the first place,” he said, “I am certain that our late visitor – he with the game leg – is the only person anywhere around. We are in no danger of an attack, either by night or by day, until his comrades, whoever they may be, come here and join him. We have no need of doing sentry duty out there at the gum tree, except to keep a sufficient lookout to make sure that we know when they do come. In my opinion that will be at night sometime.”
“Why do you think so, Tom?”
“Simply because it is evident that they don’t come here for any good or lawful purpose. If that lame fellow with the whisky jug is a fair sample of the crew, they are the sort that prefer darkness to light because their deeds are evil.”
“Who do you think they are, Tom?” asked Cal, “and what, in your opinion, are they up to?”
“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”
“How, Tom?”
“By watching, and, if I don’t find out sooner, by being within sight when they do come. I’m going to reconnoiter the place again to-night to see what that fellow does down there. Perhaps I may make out something from that. At any rate, it’s worth trying.”
“Why shouldn’t we all go with you?” Dick asked eagerly. “Then if by any accident that evil-visaged person with the lame leg should discover you, we’ll be there in force enough to handle him and the situation. I’ve heard that one of your southern generals during the Civil War once said that strategy is ‘getting there first with the most men.’ Why shouldn’t we practice strategy?”
“Why, of course, I counted on that,” Tom answered. “I knew all you fellows would want to go, and I reckon that’s our best plan. Anyhow, we’ll try it.”
“Now,” said Cal, “I have something to report which I regard as of some little importance, particularly as it means that the Hunkydory will have to leave this port pretty soon – probably within the next forty-eight hours, and possibly sooner.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Cal?” asked all the others together.
“Only that our spring is rapidly drying up, and as there is no other fresh water supply within reach, we shall simply be obliged to quit these parts as soon as we can get ourselves in shape to risk it.”
“To risk what?”
“Why, putting off in a boat on salt water. We can’t do that without some fresh water on board. I’ve already begun the filling of the kegs by thimblefuls. It promises to be a slow process, as the spring seems unable to yield more than a gill or so at a time.”
“But, Cal,” interrupted Tom, “we can get all the water we want by digging a little anywhere around here. It doesn’t lie three feet below the surface.”
“Neither does the fever,” answered Cal.
“How do you mean?”
“Why, I mean that the milky-looking water you find by digging a few feet into the soil of these low-lying lands is poisonous. It is surface water, an exudation from the mass of decaying vegetable matter that constitutes the soil of the swamps. To drink it is to issue a pressing invitation to fever, dysentery and other dangerous and deadly diseases, to take up their permanent residence in our intestinal tracts.”
“But why isn’t the water of our spring just as bad?”
“Because it isn’t surface water at all, but spring water that comes from a source very different from that of the swamp soil. You have perhaps observed that the bottom of our spring is composed of clean, white sand, through which the water rises. That sand was brought up by that water from strata that lie far below the soil.”
“What makes it brackish, then?”
“It is brackish because a certain measure of sea water from the creek there sipes into it. The sea water is filtered through the sand, losing most of its salt in the process. You’ve noticed, perhaps, that the spring water is more brackish at high than at low tide. That’s because – ”
“Oh, I see all that now. I hadn’t thought of it before. But really, Cal, it seems rather hard that we must sail away from here just when we’ve run up against something mysterious and interesting. Now, doesn’t it?”
“Let me remind you,” answered Cal in his most elaborate manner of mock-serious speaking, “that I am in nowise called upon to assume responsibility for the vagaries of a casually encountered spring. I did not bring up that spring. I had no part in its early education or training. Presumably it is even my superior in age and experience. In any case, I feel myself powerless to control or even to influence its behavior. Moreover, I feel as keen a disappointment as you can in the fact that we shall have to abandon our search for knowledge of the purposes of our neighbor with the game leg. But it is not certain that we shall have to sail away with that inquiry unfinished. It will take a considerable time to fill our water kegs, and in the meanwhile we may penetrate the mystery sooner than we expect. Anyhow, we’ll see what we shall see to-night.”
XI
PERILOUS SPYING
At Dick’s suggestion the boys cut a number of larger logs than usual and placed them on their camp fire that evening before setting out on their expedition.
“It will avert suspicion of what we are at,” Dick said in explanation of his proposal. “So long as the camp fire burns up brightly nobody seeing it from a distance will doubt that we are here. It isn’t much trouble, anyhow.”
The night proved to be an unusually dark one, with an overcast sky, threatening rain, and on the chance of that Cal rigged up the largest tarpaulin the company owned and so arranged it as to conduct all the water that might fall upon it into the bait pail and such other receptacles as would hold it. “If it rains hard,” he explained, “we’ll catch enough water before morning to fill both the kegs.”
Going to the big gum tree, Tom climbed to the top of it to see if he could discover anything the little company might want to know. After a careful scrutiny of the landscape to the west he came down again, reporting that everything was quiet “in the region of our late visitor’s country seat.”
Then the party set out on their exploring expedition. Tom, acting as guide, followed the little blind trail, while the rest made their way through the undergrowth on either side, keeping near enough to the trail to hear even a whispered warning or direction if Tom should have need to give any such.
Slowly, carefully, and in profound silence, they made their way to the point from which Tom had watched the place during the day. Then, as had been arranged in advance, the four stretched out their little line, so as to see the place from different points of view.
At first there was not much to see, and on so dark a night even that little could be seen only indistinctly and with difficulty. The “man with the game leg,” as the boys called him, was moving about the place in a leisurely fashion, but what he was doing none of the investigating party could make out in the darkness, though they had crept very close to the camp and were watching intently.
At last their watching and waiting were rewarded by a happening which interested them, though they did not understand it. The man with the game leg went into the hovel Tom had seen, and after remaining there for a considerable time, came out again. As he did so the boys were easily able to make out that he carried a dark lantern in his hand. It was carefully closed, but there were little leaks of light from its fastenings, as there always are from such contrivances when they are of the common, cheap variety as this one obviously was.
Carrying it in his hand and still closed, the man limped off down the trail that led toward the cove.
No sooner had he got well clear of the camp than the four watchers began scrambling up the trees nearest to them for the sake of a better view. There was nobody to hear them, but under the impulse of that caution which their presence in such a place required of them, they were careful to climb as silently as possible.
Very dimly, but with certainty, they could see the glow of the closed dark lantern and in that way trace the man carrying it throughout his brief journey.
When at last he reached the mouth of the cove where the view opened out toward the broad inlet, he opened his lamp for a brief second, holding it so that its gleam should show down the inlet to his right. A moment later he flashed it again, this time straight across the broad inlet. Presently he opened it for the third time, sending the flash up the inlet.
The whole proceeding did not occupy half a minute, and after that all remained in darkness except that the boys could still locate the dark lantern by the dim halo of light that surrounded it.
For half an hour or more there were no further developments. The man with the game leg seemed to be sitting still, waiting for time to pass or for something to happen. At last he opened the lamp again, sending its flash down the inlet as before. Then he showed his gleam straight out upon the water.
This time the boys in the tree tops saw a brief answering gleam from the open water half a mile or more from shore.
It was safe for the boys to speak now, and Tom thought it best for all of them to come down out of the trees before the man with the game leg, who had started slowly back toward the camp, should reach their neighborhood.
“Come down off your roosts, fellows,” he directed, “and secrete yourselves well in the bushes. The ‘others’ are coming to-night, sure enough. Be careful to hide yourselves so that a flash from that dark lantern won’t search you out. By the way, after they come and we see all we can, we must get out of here. I can’t speak then, but notice when you see me moving away, and follow my example. Now, no more talking, even in a whisper.”
The man with the game leg did not return immediately, as Tom had expected. Instead, he made his way up the bank of the cove and around its bend, to a point only two or three hundred yards away. Obviously that was to be the landing place, hidden as it was by the bend and the dense forest growth from all possible observation on the part of boats in the sound outside. The man with the game leg had gone to the mouth of the cove only to send his signals to his companions outside. Now that they had been seen and answered, he had gone to the landing-place, there to await their coming.
Fortunately for the purposes of the boys, the landing was in full view from their hiding place, and after the man with the game leg had gone thither they had only that one point to watch while they waited.
The wait was a long one, and perhaps it seemed longer because a drizzling rain had set in, soaking them to the skin. After a long time, however, the man with the game leg turned his dark lantern and flashed it once down the cove.
By its light the watchers made out three large boats slowly moving up the cove, apparently with carefully muffled oars, as their strokes could not be heard even at the short distance that now separated them from their destination. As they approached the landing with obvious care, there were frequent flashes from the dark lanterns that all of them seemed to be carrying, and by these flashes Tom and his companions saw that the boats were piled high with freight of some kind, so bestowed as to occupy every inch of space except what was necessary for the use of the men at the oars. Of these there were only two in each boat, each plying a single oar, while a third, perched upon a freight pile at the stern, was steering. Thus there were nine men in the three boats, who, with the man on shore, constituted a rather formidable company for four boys to face if they should decide to attack the Hunkydory’s camp, as the man with the game leg had threatened.
Whence the boats had come, Tom could not in any wise guess, and of course he could not discuss the matter with his comrades while hiding there in the bushes under a life-and-death necessity of keeping perfectly silent. Two things he was sure of: the boats could not have come very far, with only two oarsmen to each of them, and they could not have traversed any but smooth waters, with their freight piled high above their gunwales, as it was.
As soon as the boats were landed, the men began unloading them and carrying their freight to the camp, which was evidently to be its hiding place for a time at least. In the main it seemed to consist of light boxes or packages, many of them bound together into single large bundles which one man could carry. There were also some kegs, which seemed pretty heavy, as the men carried them on their shoulders. But it was difficult to make out anything more definite than this, as the darkness was dispelled infrequently by flashes from a dark lantern, and then only for a fraction of a second at a time.
When the greater part of the freight had been brought to the camp the man who seemed to be in authority over the rest set some of them to work bestowing it in the hovels, of which there appeared to be several, each securely hidden in the thick undergrowth so that a person casually passing that way would never have suspected their existence. Even while this work was in progress the man in charge permitted as little show of light as possible. When all was done a hamper of provisions was brought from one of the boats, together with a demijohn, and the whole crew assembled around the midnight spread, eating and drinking in the dark, except when now and then it became necessary to permit a little show of light for a moment.
At first they feasted in silence, too, but after awhile the liquor they were drinking seemed to go to their heads and they quarreled among themselves a good deal. Some of them wandered about now and then as if searching the bushes jealously.
It was clearly time for the boys to leave the place and they watched and listened for Tom’s beginning of the retreat. At last they heard him moving and, assuming that he had begun the withdrawal, they all cautiously crept away to the rear. As each was following a separate trail there was no word spoken among them until Larry, Dick and Cal came out of the bushes and joined each other at the gum tree.
“But where is Tom?” one of them asked.
Nobody knew. Nobody had seen or known anything about him since his first stirring of the bushes had set the retreat in motion. They had all heard a commotion in what they called “the scoundrels’ camp,” with sounds as of angry quarreling and fighting; but they had heard nothing of Tom.
The boys were in consternation.
“Do you suppose those scoundrels can have caught him?” asked Dick, with horror in his tones.
“I don’t know,” Larry answered through his set teeth. “But there’s only one thing to do.”
“Only one thing,” answered Dick. “We must go to his assistance, and if they have him prisoner we must rescue him or all die trying. I for one will never come back alive unless we bring him with us.”
“That’s of course,” said Cal, who for once spoke crisply, wasting no words. “Wait a second, Larry! How many cartridges have you – each of you?”
When they answered, Cal said:
“Here, take six more apiece. You may need ’em.”
As he spoke he took the extra cartridges from his pockets and hurriedly distributed them. It was Cal’s rule in hunting never to be without abundant ammunition.
“Now then, Larry,” he said, when the others had pocketed the cartridges, “give your orders; you’re the captain.”
“All right! Come on at a run, but don’t trip and fall. There’s no time to lose.”
Down the trail they went, not at a run, for running was impossible in such a tangle of vines and bushes, but at as fast a trot as they could manage. Suddenly there was a collision. Larry had met Tom “head on,” as he afterwards said. Tom was making his way as fast as he could to the gum tree, knowing that his friends would be in terror when they missed him, while they were hurrying to his rescue. In the darkness and the heavy downpour of rain he and Larry had failed to see or hear each other till they came into actual collision.
“Where on earth have you been, Tom?”
“Why did you fellows retreat before the time?”
These were questions instantly exchanged.
“Why, you gave the signal, Tom. You began moving off and we followed as agreed.”
“I understand now,” Tom answered, resuming the journey, “but it was a mistake of signal. Come on out of here. Let’s go to camp and talk it all over there. I’ve found out all about this thing and it’s interesting.”
“What does it mean? Tell us!”
“Not here in the downpour. We’ll go to camp first and get under the shelter and put on some dry clothes. My teeth are chattering and I don’t care to imitate them. Come on!”
