Kitabı oku: «The Boy Aviators on Secret Service; Or, Working with Wireless», sayfa 3
CHAPTER V
TWO RASCALS GET A SHOCK
The boy was startled but his presence of mind did not desert him. Lathrop, although, as has been said, a hectoring, dictatorial sort of youth possessed plenty of courage of a certain kind, and was no coward. He therefore exclaimed angrily:
“Take your hand off me. What do you want?”
At the same moment he gave an adroit twist, an old football trick, and in a shake had freed himself from the other’s detaining hand.
“You needn’t crow quite so loudly, my young rooster,” exclaimed the man in the tramp’s dress, “I merely wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Well,” demanded the boy.
“What were you doing up there in the woods while we were talking?”
Lathrop didn’t know whether or not the men were armed, so that he decided that it would be folly to tell them the facts; he therefore took refuge in strategy.
“What do you mean?” he asked with an expression of blank amazement.
“Oh, come,” said the other, but there was a note of indecision in his tones, that showed that he was not as sure of his ground as he had been, “you don’t mean to say that you weren’t lying hidden while we were talking up yonder and heard every word?”
“As I told you,” replied Lathrop, “I don’t know what you are talking about. I am on my way home through these woods and you have stopped me in this unceremonious fashion. If there was a constable within call I would have you arrested.”
“Oh, come on, Bill,” struck in the nattily dressed one of the pair, who had hitherto remained silent, “the kid doesn’t know anything – that’s evident, and we are wasting time here.”
“I’m not sure of that,” retorted the tramp-like man, still unconvinced, “if I thought,” he added with a vicious leer, “that he overheard us, I – ”
The sentence was not completed for the reason that at the moment a lusty voice was heard coming up the path from the aerodrome singing at the pitch of its lungs:
“Three times round went the gallant ship;
Three times round spun she,
Three times round spun the gallant ship
Then down to the bottom of the sea, – the sea, – the sea.
Then down to the bottom of the sea.”
As the singer came upon the scene in front of him he broke off abruptly and the two men who had intercepted Lathrop took to their heels.
“Hullo, there, my hearty,” cried Ben Stubbs, for he was the vocalist, as his eyes took in the situation, “what’s all this?”
His voice held a sharp note of interrogation, for he had immediately recognized one of the two men who had made off as the fellow who had sneaked up the by-street in White Plains the day before.
“Who are you?” demanded the boy suspiciously, not certain whether in the newcomer he had a friend or a fresh source of danger.
“Me? oh, I’m Ben Stubbs, formerly skipper of the tug Mary and Ann, but now one of the crew of the Golden Eagle II, sky clipper. And you, my young middy, I recognize as the chap who was down at the aerodrome a short while ago, and got all het up because Frank Chester wouldn’t let you see the air-ship – now the question is what were you doing with those two fellows, who are as bad a looking pair of cruisers as I ever laid eyes on?”
Lathrop saw at once that unless he told the truth he would be a fair object of suspicion, and at any rate he had made up his mind to warn the boys of the danger that threatened. He therefore in a straight-forward way told of the afternoon’s happenings.
“You come along with me,” exclaimed Ben, as the boy finished his narrative, “we’ve got no time to lose.”
They hurried down the path to the aerodrome and Lathrop repeated his story to the boys.
“Well, forewarned is forearmed,” remarked Frank, “and thank you, Lathrop, for doing the square thing.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Frank,” Lathrop replied awkwardly, recollecting his fiery threats of a short time before. To tell the truth, Lathrop was thoroughly ashamed of himself, and declining the boys’ hearty invitation to supper, hurried home to the house on the hill.
He had learned a lesson he never forgot.
“Now,” said Frank, as soon as he had gone, “we’ll give these fellows a surprise if they come around here to-night that will stick in their minds for a good many years.”
Under his directions everyone got busy for the rest of the afternoon driving wooden posts at six foot intervals all round the aerodrome. When the posts were all in position a copper wire of medium thickness was strung from one post top to another and the ends connected with the dynamo ultimately destined to supply the Golden Eagle II’s searchlight and wireless equipment. By the time Ben Stubbs, who had quite ousted Le Blanc as cook, announced by a clarion summons, beaten on a tin wash-pan, with a big ladle, that a supper, consisting of his famous baked beans, chops, spinach and coffee was ready – not to forget Ben’s masterpiece, a huge strawberry pie, – Frank pronounced his preparations also complete.
After supper everybody sat around the stove in the portable house, for the nights were still chilly, till about ten o’clock. They had all made as much noise as possible early in the evening with the ultimate motive of accentuating the quietness later on.
Frank and Harry stood at the door of the portable house as Schultz and Le Blanc started for the aerodrome and shouted out “good-night” till the echoes rang back from the hills. Then one by one the lights in the two houses went out and all was quiet. That is, all seemed so to two watchers concealed in a thick mass of brush up on the hill, but in reality no sooner had the houses been plunged in darkness than the boys and Ben Stubbs had crept quietly into the aerodrome and sat down to wait for the crisis they felt sure was coming.
Harry and Billy each carried a long thin package that might have contained anything from dynamite to a pistol. Ben Stubbs, with a grim expression on his rugged face, grasped a stout club he had cut that afternoon. It was pitchy dark in the aerodrome and as they waited, in the absolute silence Frank had enjoined, the watchers could hear one another breathing. Upstairs only the rhythmic snores of Schultz and Le Blanc, who were not in the secret, disturbed the silence.
Frank sat with his hand on the switch that would shoot a current of 500 volts through the copper wires surrounding the aerodrome when he connected it. A hole, bored earlier in the afternoon in the wooden wall of the aerodrome gave the boy a command of the view outside in the direction of the woods. So dark was it, however, that even his keen eyes could detect little in the black murk. He saw they would have to judge of their enemies’ whereabouts solely by sound.
They must have sat there in the darkness for an hour or more, with no sound being borne to their ears but the unmelodious snoring of the two mechanics in the loft when, suddenly, and without any further warning there came a sharp “crack” from up on the hillside as a branch snapped under a heavy foot.
“Here they come,” whispered Frank to the boys, whom he knew were there; but couldn’t see any more than if they were in the antipodes.
“Get outside now, you fellows, and when I give the word, let go!”
Silently as cats Billy Barnes, Harry and Ben Stubbs slipped off their shoes and tiptoed out through the door of the aerodrome, which had been left open to allow for the noiseless exit. Frank was left alone in the barn-like aerodrome save for the two sleepers upstairs. The tension in the silence grew painful. When would the persons who had crackled the broken branch on the hillside recover their courage enough to make a further advance?
All at once, close at hand, Frank heard a loud whisper of:
“Well, they are all asleep, evidently.”
“Yes,” replied another hoarse whisper, “that kid you suspected evidently didn’t hear anything.”
“Confound it, it’s dark as a pit,” came from the first speaker.
“It might be lighter,” replied the other, “but the blacker it is the better for us.”
“Hark at those fellows snoring,” was the next thing Frank heard. The remark was accompanied by a smothered laugh.
“Yes, they are sound asleep as run-down tops,” was the reply.
Frank inwardly blessed the stalwart lungs of Schultz and Le Blanc. All unconsciously the sleepers were helping on their plans.
“Do you think that’s the boys snoring?” asked one of the two men who were cautiously creeping nearer to the aerodrome.
“I hope so,” was the response, “I’d like to see them go skywards with their infernal air-ship.”
“Scudder will have reason to thank us for a good night’s work,” was the next remark of the prowlers.
There was silence for a few seconds and then a jangling sound. One of the men who had the destruction of the Golden Eagle II at heart had collided with Frank’s wire fence.
“Confound it, what’s that?” angrily hissed his companion.
“A wire fence,” replied the other.
“Well, it will take more than that to stop us,” was the angry answer, “come on, grab the top wire and over we go.”
“Now!” shouted Frank, as he threw in the switch and 500 volts coursed through the copper wire both men were grasping.
At the same instant Billy and Harry outside pressed the electric buttons that ignited the Coston navy signal lights they both carried and the whole scene was illuminated in a white glare as light as noonday. And what a scene it was!
On the ground by the fence sprawled the marauders yelling till the air rang with their cries of mingled pain and amazement at the surprise of the powerful shock that had knocked them off their feet.
Above them stood the stout figure of Ben Stubbs belaboring them impartially with the heavy club he had cut for that special purpose.
“Take that, you lubbers, you longshore loafers!” he shouted as his blows fell with the rapidity of a drumstick on the two prostrate carcasses.
The two men, however, had laid their plans better than the boys knew. They were prepared for a surprise, but not one of the kind they had run into.
Without a second’s warning there was a sudden flash from the hill behind them, followed by a sharp report. Ben Stubbs threw up his hands and rolled over with a yell more of surprise than of anything else.
“Put out those lights!” shouted Frank, realizing that in the white glare the group outside presented fine targets for the hidden marksman on the hill, whoever he might be.
The boys instantly shoved their glaring torch tips into the ground. Even as they did so they could hear rapidly retreating footsteps.
“Don’t let them get away,” shouted Harry wildly.
Frank, who by this time had switched off the current, and was outside, seized him with a detaining grasp.
“No good, Harry,” he exclaimed. “It would be taking needless chances. Now, let’s look to Ben.”
“Only a hen-peck,” hailed that redoubtable ex-mariner, coming up, “just nicked my starboard ear, but I thought for a minute they had done me.”
“That was no fault of theirs,” answered Billy, “they – ”
He was interrupted by a series of guttural shouts and piercing shrieks.
“Ach Himmel – donnerblitzen vass iss – !”
“Sacre nom de nom! Qu’est-ce que cela! To the aid. Monsieur Chest-e-erre!”
The cries came from the aerodrome and were uttered by the awakened Schultz and Le Blanc, the latter of whom was almost in hysterics. Frank laughingly quieted them and explained what had happened.
“Ve vos only eggcited on your aggount,” remarked Schultz bravely when he learned that all danger was over.
“Comment, vee fight lek ze tiger-r-r n’ c’est pas?” demanded Le Blanc, flourishing a pillow fiercely. “A pitee I deed not see zee ras-cals.”
CHAPTER VI
THE START FOR THE ’GLADES
The incident related in the last chapter determined Frank to abandon his half-arrived at intention to enter the Everglades from the Atlantic side. The appearance of the dark man in Washington – he was now certain their plans had been overheard – the episode of the tramp and the attempt to blow up the aerodrome all combined to convince him that his original scheme of invasion of the little known wastes of Southern Florida was as an open book to the men who had only too evidently their destruction at heart.
A hasty trip to Washington resulted, and a consultation with the Secretary of the Navy. The result was that arrangements were made whereby the boys’ expedition was to gather at Miami as openly as possible, and then under cover of night run down Biscayne Bay and eventually double Cape Sable by the inland passage. Then they were to beat up through the Ten Thousand Island Archipelago to the mouth of either Shark or Harney River and thence into the trackless wastes of unmapped swamp and saw-grass known as the Everglades.
The Tarantula was to cruise off and on around the coast and in case of dire need was to be signaled by wireless. These details completed, Frank and Harry returned to New York and a week later, the Golden Eagle II being completed, and loaded in small cases marked “Glass, Fragile,” and other misleading labels, the Boy Aviators bade farewell to their mother and friends and started by the Southern Limited for Miami. With them they carried in ordinary trunks their mess and camp kit outfits, rifles and medical supplies as well as two of the Government’s field wireless outfits. The rest of the party was to follow a week later in a private car with all the other baggage, including the boxed sections of the Golden Eagle II. The canoes and boats for the trips were to be purchased at Miami or along the coast in the vicinity, as the boys deemed fit. In the meantime the Tarantula had been dispatched from Hampton Roads for Southern waters under sealed orders. Not till her commander opened his instructions at sea did he know the real nature of his errand.
At this point it may not be amiss to give a brief description of the little known country to which the boys were bound. Everyone has heard of the Everglades, few have any accurate idea of them beyond a sort of hazy conception of a vast tract of morass, overgrown with giant forests and rank growth of all kinds. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is without doubt the peculiar, even extraordinary, character of this great stretch of country that has caused its geography to remain obscure. Even recent maps are extremely inaccurate. It seems remarkable in these days of African and Polar discovery that here in our own country is a vast waste, 130 miles long and 70 wide, that is as little known to the white man as the heart of the Sahara. The Everglades are bounded on the north by Lake Okeechobee, on the east by a belt of scrub pine-land about six miles wide facing the Atlantic, on the south by the great mangrove swamps facing the Bay of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west by the Big Cypress Swamp which runs right up to the uninhabited region verging on the west coast of the peninsula.
The prevailing idea that the Everglades are unhealthy is about as far as it is possible to get from the truth. So far as the few expeditions that have penetrated the great mystery have reported, the water is fine and the air healthful. The saw-grass, the Seminoles and the snakes – rattlers and cotton-mouth moccasins – are the worst enemies the explorer ordinarily encounters, with an occasional panther.
Over the watery wastes of the Everglades which are not tree grown, but on the contrary great expanses of saw-grass grown prairie, the Seminole poles his cypress dug-out defying the government which wishes to place him on a reservation but has no means of “smoking him out” of the impassable wilds he has chosen for his refuge. The Seminoles also haunt the Big Cypress Swamp and observe numerous tribal rites and legends of which we know little. They are dignified, trustworthy people – but the bad treatment they have received from the government has made them the implacable foe of the white man for whom their word is the same as “liar” – such has been their impression of civilization.
The boys had familiarized themselves with the nature of the country by a close study of all the available works on the subject – which were not many. The government had placed the latest maps and charts of the region at their disposal. Even these, however, showed them little. In fact the parting words of the Secretary of the Navy to them were:
“Boys, you’ll have to blaze your own trail.”
Of course in selecting an equipment for such a region the boys had made lightness the prime essential.
They knew that on much of the journey in search for a spot for a permanent camp they would have to pole over shoal water, in some places not more than two feet deep. An overloaded canoe might therefore cause a lot of trouble and delay. Like true old campaigners they had prepared elaborate lists and then gone through them again and again till nothing appeared on them but the barest necessities.
Ben Stubbs had put in several days making a number of light but strong chests twenty-two inches by thirteen and nine inches deep. These contained, among other necessities, an aluminum cooking outfit weighing nine pounds. There were two pots, a frying pan and four plates nesting into each other. And then there was a coffee pot in which was stowed away four cups (nested) pepper and salt castors, knives, spoons and forks, the frying-pan and coffee-pot had detachable handles for lifting on and off the campfire with ease and comfort, no matter how the wind might be blowing the flames about.
The grocery chest contained flour, sugar, salt, cornmeal, pepper, sliced bacon, beef extracts, soup-tablets (three varieties), root-beer, lemonade and sarsaparilla tablets, oatmeal and evaporated fruits of various kinds. These were all put in glass jars with screw tops and rubber gaskets so that even in case of an upset the contents would remain dry. There was also a blue-flame double burner kerosene stove of the marine type, lanterns, and a supply of candles and matches in waterproof jars. The medical outfit consisted of some antiseptics, pills, several tablets of permanganate of potassium for the same purpose and a hypodermic outfit, bandages and lotions.
Each boy carried an automatic rifle for big game or defense, the kind chosen being a weapon carrying .49-50 nickeled steel cartridges. This gun was heavy enough for alligators; or the more savage crocodile, pumas, leopards, gray wolves or any human enemy. They also purchased two three-barreled guns having two parallel barrels, twelve gauge, for shotted shells, and another rifled barrel underneath of .35-55 caliber. Two 16-gauge shot-guns for duck and small game were also stowed away in the “armory” chest. In addition each boy had his magazine revolver of .38 caliber, and a six-inch bladed hunting-knife with a heavy back so that it might even be used for chopping.
Shovels, axes, picks, etc., were back with the heavy baggage to be brought on by Ben Stubbs and Billy. Frank, of course, carried his nautical instruments. A sextant, a compass, two tested watches of the finest split-second make and an artificial horizon.
Their clothes were stout hunting boots, khaki trousers and Norfolk jackets of the same material and flannel shirts with campaign hats. Each carried a change of underwear and socks in his toilet bag which also held two towels, toothbrush, cake of soap and brush and comb.
For transportation into the Everglades the boys soon managed with little difficulty to secure canoes and a lighter draught “cruiser,” similar to a Barnegat duck-boat. The flotilla was to be taken down the coast by an auxiliary sloop also chartered at Miami.
On the appointed day the boys were at the railroad station of the Florida East Coast railroad to meet the arrivals from New York, and warm were the greetings as Billy Barnes and Stubbs stepped from the private car which had been attached for them when they left the north. The car was sidetracked at Miami and the train kept on its way to Key West along the wonderful chain of cement bridges constructed over the numberless keys that run out from the “leg” of Florida. The boys and Ben were busily engaged getting the various bales and crates in some sort of order for transfer to the trucks by which they were to be taken to the flotilla of canoes when they were startled at being hailed by a voice that sounded familiar.
The boys hastened to the door of one end of the car and were amazed to see standing on the steps, looking rather embarrassed and doubtful, Lathrop Beasley. He wore a well cut suit of white serge and a straw hat with a light blue ribbon. In addition he sported snowy canvas shoes, topped off with light purple socks and a pale pink tie. Altogether he looked as if he had just stepped from a clothing ad. Even in their astonishment at seeing him there the boys could not help laughing at the contrast they presented to him.
In their rough working garb, and all begrimed with dust as they were from handling the kit in the car, two more unpresentable youths from a sartorial standpoint, could not well be imagined. The three boys gazed at each other in silence for a few seconds and then Lathrop said rather shamefacedly:
“Hello, fellows.”
“Well, Lathrop, what on earth are you doing here?” naturally demanded Frank.
“I guess I came on a wild impulse,” began Lathrop, and then stopped.
“Well?” questioned Harry.
“When I heard of your trip, from hanging around the aerodrome after you left – oh, it wasn’t Ben Stubbs or Barnes that told me, they were close as clams,” – he hurried on, “but when old Schultz told me that you were going to cross the Everglades I thought that maybe you’d need an extra hand so I got permission from my folks and here I am.
“If you want to say the word I’ll go back,” he concluded rather lamely but with a longing look in his face that told of his eager desire to be allowed to join the expedition.
“Well, you certainly have an impetuous way of doing things,” commented Frank. “Did you come on this train?”
“Yes,” replied the boy. “I’ve just been up to the hotel and engaged rooms and tidied up a bit and then hurried right down here.”
Frank and Harry exchanged glances of amusement, the cause of which Lathrop was at a loss to fathom.
“Well,” began Frank, after a brief whispered conversation with his brother, “you are here now and I suppose you’ll have to stay. We can find some work I dare say for you to do and there are a lot of ways you can be useful.”
“I’ll start right in at anything you tell me,” began the boy eagerly. “It’s mighty good of you – ”
“Not much you won’t. Not in that fancy rig,” burst out Harry, “if you are coming with us you’d better go up to the village store and get an outfit as much like ours as possible and forget you ever patronized a tailor.”
Lathrop gladly agreed and hurried off to get himself a working outfit. As he hastened down the tracks, Frank turned to Harry with a grin.
“Well, we have gone and done it now,” he said. “But we really have use for another hand, and I think that we can make something out of Lathrop, besides we owe him a debt of gratitude for helping us out at White Plains. If it hadn’t been for him we might have lost the Golden Eagle II and all our work.”
“That’s so,” assented Harry. “I guess he will work out all right. But those fancy duds he had on – ”
And the boy burst out laughing at the recollection.
By sundown most of the “duffle” in the car had been transferred to trucks and carted down to the wharf, where the boys, with considerable pride, exhibited to Ben Stubbs, Billy, and the newly overalled Lathrop, the light draught thirty-foot sloop, with an auxiliary five-horse engine, the four canoes and the light draught “sneak-box,” they had secured for their transportation round the Cape and into the Thousand Island Archipelago. The canoes were of the “Ontario” type, fitted with narrow decks round the edges and canvas covered. The sneak-box was of the spoon-bowed variety familiar to duckers in Barnegat Bay. It drew only a few inches of water and afforded a lot of space in its sixteen feet of length for the stowage of the heavier baggage. It rejoiced in the name of Squeegee.
Ben Stubbs was delighted with the “fleet” as he called it, and declared that the sloop was a “witch.” After a dinner at the quiet boarding house at which the boys had been stopping the adventurers that night finished the stowage of their impedimenta aboard the sloop and piled the canoes on the top of the canvas enclosed “summer cabin.” The “sneak-box” was towed astern.
The owner of the sloop, a coal-black negro called Pork Chops – the boys could never discover that he had any other name – was to take them round the cape as far as the Thousand Island Archipelago where they were to be left. From there on their course would lie up the Shark River into the heart of the little known Everglades.
Of course the wharf loungers were full of curiosity as the work of transferring the boys’ belongings and outfit to the sloop proceeded, but Frank and Harry had allowed it to become widely circulated that they were a hunting party bound for some of the keys to the east of Cape Sable, and “Pork Chops” also was of this belief, so that the boys were pretty sure that none but the members of their own immediate party knew of the real goal of their journey.
By midnight everything was in readiness and the tide served for start. With her big mainsail flapping lazily in the breath of wind that was stirring Pork Chops’ sloop, which held the poetic name of Carrier Dove dropped down Biscayne Bay with her “kicker” going and dawn found her well on her journey south with a spanking breeze out of the northeast to fill her canvas. As she skimmed along over the sparkling blue of the tropical waters in whose crystalline depths hosts of fish of all kinds could be easily seen and on the surface of which floated great masses of yellow gulf weed, the boys rejoiced that their momentous expedition had started so auspiciously. As for Lathrop he acted like a boy out of his head with joy at his unexpected good fortune. Ben Stubbs and the inky Pork Chops relieved each other at the wheel, and Frank and Harry, at the table in the stuffy little cabin, worked at plans and lists trying to devise ways of still further cutting down their outfit without impairing its usefulness. Billy Barnes, with a knowing air, scrutinized the sails and from time to time admonished Ben Stubbs to “keep her up a bit,” to which suggestion Ben with an air of ineffable contempt replied:
“I never knowed they taught navigation on a newspaper but it’s a good school for nerve.”
