CAPTAIN BELLMAN'S ISLAND.
Silently, as some craft propelled by spirits, they glided along between
the high walls of saw-grass that grew up on each side of the stream they
were navigating. Quatty stood in the stern manipulating the pole with
the skill of a very Seminole, and sending the light craft through the
water at a surprising rate of speed. His elevated position gave him a
chance to peer over the tops of the lower clumps of saw-grass and
judge--by their glitter under the starlight--which leads were the best
to follow.
It was pitchy dark, with the exception of the dim starlight, and to the
boys it seemed that they were passing through an endless tunnel. They
threaded in and out of creeks till it seemed that they must be
progressing in a circle. But Quatty, whatever his other faults might be,
knew the Everglades as a city dweller knows his own streets, and by the
darker landmarks of various hammocks and islets he steered the craft as
unerringly as a cab-driver who wishes to drive in a certain direction.
Occasionally as they brushed against a sunken log, or shoal of
rank-smelling mud, there would be a heavy flop in the water or a
rustling sound in the dry grass.
"Whatever is that, Quatty?" asked Harry after the sound had been several
times repeated.
"Moccasins. Dey bite you, you die plenty quick," responded Quatty.
Harry, who had been trailing his hand in the water, quickly drew it in,
not without a shudder. He had seen cotton-mouth moccasins before and had
a lively recollection of the fat, dirty colored reptiles and their
deadly fangs.
Once, as they were crossing quite a broad sheet of water that suddenly
opened out about them, something bumped up under the boat with such
violence that Quatty was almost upset from his position astern.
"Good gracious, was that an earthquake?" exclaimed Harry much alarmed.
"'Gator," grunted Quatty, "ah'd jes like to stop an' git his ugly hide
fo' dat."
"There'll be no shooting to-night, let's hope," was Frank's reply.
They poled along in silence after this. The boys were completely
bewildered and had no more idea of where they were going than if they
had been blindfolded. But Quatty never stopped poling and fell to his
work with such an air of certainty that the boys were compelled to
conclude that he knew what he was about.
Suddenly the negro uttered a sharp grunt.
"What is it?" asked Frank instantly.
"Look ober dere, massa, an' tell me wad you see," said Quatty, pointing
dead ahead.
At the risk of upsetting the boat and himself Frank stood up and saw
reflected on the sky, not more than a mile ahead, a deep-red glow.
"Fire," he exclaimed.
"Yes, an' it's de furnaces dem debbils has built dere fo' make dere blow
up stuff, drat 'em," was Quatty's response.
They were then at last within sighting distance of the mysterious forces
that had succeeded in filching the formula of the United States' most
deadly explosive and kidnapping one of the bravest and most popular
young officers in the Navy.
"Pole ahead, till I tell you to stop," commanded Frank, resuming his
seat.
"W-w-w-what," stuttered Quatty, "yo' goin' on, Marse Frank?"
"Certainly," was the quiet reply.
"B-b-b-but we may git shot or blowed up wid de debbil powder," protested
the frightened black.
"You will certainly get shot if you don't obey commands," was Frank's
stern rejoinder, "pole ahead!"
Something in the young leader's voice, decided Quatty that it was best
to obey and with chattering teeth he started the canoe moving nearer and
nearer to the red glow. As they approached its source, the light it cast
grew brighter and the boys were enabled to see each other's faces.
"Stop," commanded Frank suddenly.
Quatty breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps now they were going to go
back. But no. After a few seconds' reconnoitering, Frank gave the order
to go ahead and the trembling Quatty, with his eyes on the boys gleaming
revolver, obeyed. Frank stood up in the boat when he took his brief
survey without much fear of being seen by the men on the island, as in
the bright light shed by the furnaces with which they were manufacturing
the explosive they would hardly be able to penetrate the surrounding
blackness.
What he had seen was this: A large barn-like building erected against
the side of a hill surrounded by smaller huts and out in the open,
removed at some distance from the other buildings, a large,
retort-shaped blast furnace, from the mouth of which was pouring a
column of copper-colored flame and a great efflorescence of sparks. It
was this furnace doubtless that had caused the column of smoke they had
seen during the day.
In the bright light cast by the flaming mouth of the retort he could see
dark figures scurrying around, some of them with wheelbarrows which they
pushed up an inclined plane leading to the side of the retort. From
their barrows they constantly dumped something into the furnace. What it
could be of course Frank had no means of knowing, but he guessed that it
was some substance used in the manufacture of Chapinite. The whole scene
reminded Frank of one of the foundries in the iron district, seen from a
car window at night.
With the aid of the night-glasses he could make out details more
plainly. The workmen were being urged to even greater activity by a tall
man who was evidently in authority. From time to time this man raised a
whip he held in his hand and brought its lash down viciously on the back
of some unfortunate worker with a crack that was audible even at the
distance the boys were.
"Oh Lawd, dat look like Hades for sho'!" groaned Quatty as his eyes
almost popped out of his head at the weird scene. "Dem not men, Massa
Frank, dems all debbils."
"Pole her along a bit!" ordered Frank, not paying any attention to this
outburst. He was bent on getting near enough to ascertain, if possible,
if the unfortunate Lieutenant Chapin was one of the crew of laborers.
With frequent orders to stop from Frank which were obeyed by Quatty with
alacrity and commands to proceed once more, which did not meet with the
same eager response, the boat drew nearer and nearer to the blazing
retort and the frenzied workers. As they were still in between high
banks of saw-grass the boys had no fear of being seen unless of course
some canoe from the island happened to come down the stream they were
threading. As it was a narrow twisting, little runnel, however, with
barely a foot of water under their keel, this did not seem likely.
All at once, however, they emerged without warning into a broad
smooth-flowing channel worthy of the name of a river. The boys saw at
once that this was indeed a main-traveled water-course and most probably
the one used by the men on the island in getting to and from the coast.
"Get back where we were as quick as you can," sharply ordered Frank as
they glided out onto its broad current.
With a dexterous twist Quatty--quite as much alarmed as the boys at the
prospect of discovery by the workers on the island--shot the boat back
into the narrow grass-walled creek they had been traversing. It was well
they had done so, for hardly had they gained the welcome shelter of the
tall saw-grass when they heard the rapid "dip-dip" of paddles coming
toward them down the main channel.
"Keep perfectly quiet," ordered Frank, and scarcely breathing the boys
listened with straining ears to catch the conversation the men in the
approaching craft were carrying on.
"Hurry there, you miserable Indian, or I'll fill you full of lead," were
the first words they heard in a harsh, rough voice. The command was
evidently addressed to the Indian paddler for they heard the reply:
"All right. Me hurry all I can," and a quicker dip of the paddle.
"You're a rough fellow, my dear Scudder," another voice commented, "are
you never in a softer mood?"
"Not me, Foyashi;" came the reply, "and if you'd been working for
Captain Mortimer Bellman as long as I have you wouldn't be either. He
learned his lesson in your government I suppose."
"Captain Bellman is a remarkable man." went on the other speaker, whose
accent was distinctly foreign and mincing.
"Remarkable? You may lay your head on that," replied the other; "nobody
but a remarkable man would have got Chapin to visit him in his hotel and
there drug him and get from him the keys of the safe where the formula
was kept."
"How did he induce him to visit him?" asked Foyashi.
"Why, they were classmates at Annapolis before Bellman was kicked out of
the navy for conduct unbecoming an officer. Chapin's a good-hearted chap
and when Bellman turned up in Washington one day and sent him a message
that he was ill and in trouble Chapin came to the hotel like a bird dog
when you whistle it to heel. But you deserve a lot of credit for your
part of the business, Foyashi," he went on. "How did you get the
lieutenant under your control. He swore he'd die before he told us the
method of making Chapinite when we first got him aboard the Mist."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the man, addressed as Foyashi, "to the Jiu Jitsu
expert many nerves are common knowledge that you foolish Americans do
not know anything about. A little pressure on the nerve I had selected
while the lieutenant slept; and I had dulled his brain till he did as we
directed."
"Wonderful," exclaimed Scudder admiringly, "I wish I knew the trick."
"I hope I may never find it necessary to practice on you," was the reply
of the other, uttered in a tone of voice that made Harry feel, as he
said afterward, as if he had touched the back of a moccasin.
"What are your plans?" continued Scudder, who was evidently an inferior
in command to Foyashi and the man spoken of as Captain Bellman, "here
you start me off in the dark in a canoe with enough Chapinite to blow
half the Everglades sky high and you don't even tell me where we are
taking it."
"You know as well as I do," replied the other, "that we are bound for
the coast and that we are going to put the last consignment aboard the
submarine to-night at the mouth of the Jew-Fish river. What follows
to-morrow will be simply the tapping of the furnace taken to-night and
we will work that up into Chapinite in the government's yards at home."
"Then we are through here," commented Scudder.
"Practically, yes. We shall meet the cruiser in the South Atlantic next
week and then sail for home."
"The cruiser!" exclaimed Scudder, "ain't you afraid of the United States
government being suspicious?"
"My dear friend," replied the other, "the wisdom of the Oriental has
been left out of your composition. The cruiser, as I call her, has been
converted into the likeness of a peaceful passenger ship."
"Where do you coal her?" demanded Scudder, a certain admiration in his
tones.
The boys were unable to catch the reply. Indeed they could not have
heard as much of the conversation as they did had not the small creek
fortunately run parallel with the larger water-course for some distance.
By dint of shoving along the banks with their hands the boys had managed
to keep a short distance in the rear of the other canoe. Her speed,
however, prohibited their keeping up with her and they were compelled to
satisfy themselves with what they had already heard, which, however, was
of sufficient importance to cause them to order Quatty to pole back at
top speed to the mound-builders' island.
It was evident from the conversation they had been lucky enough to
overhear that the stealers of the formula, headed by Captain Mortimer
Bellman, were to leave the 'glades the next day. That the plotters had a
submarine and that it lay at the mouth of the Jew-Fish river.
Furthermore a cruiser, belonging to the power whose agents the men were,
was waiting to pick them up and carry them back to their own country and
that Lieutenant Chapin had been subjected to a cruel operation in order
to force him to submit to a betrayal of his country.
It was a time to act quickly. There was in fact not a moment to spare.
They arrived at the camp on the mound-builders' island shortly before
dawn. A hasty survey with a lantern indicated, to their great
satisfaction, that nothing had been disturbed and that everything was as
they had left it. From the height of the summit nothing was visible now
of the red glow of the blast furnace, which indicated to the boys that
the plotters had concluded their work and that the blast had been
extinguished forever. Satisfactory as their night's work had been in one
respect, however, it had been a dire failure in another and so the boys
could not help admitting to each other.
They had learned a pretty good outline of the plans of Captain Bellman
and Foyashi, but they had not gained a single bit of information about
Lieutenant Chapin that would aid them in any way in rescuing him from
what was likely to prove imminent death.