IN THE EVERGLADES
In order to see how Nicky’s plan was, the picture that he had in his
mind must be understood. This was Nicky’s mind picture:
The hi-jackers, after capturing Sam’s sloop, had sent her, with two men
aboard, to make contact with their Little Card Sound headquarters. Nelse
was there and from what he had heard and pieced together, Nicky supposed
that the two men on the _Treasure Belle_ would find Nelse, and have him
go, or send Seminole Indians, across the inland waterways, to take to
the hi-jackers some liquor cases in which to conceal the treasure bars.
When they captured the _Libertad_, the hi-jackers had left three men
floundering in the water; for all they knew or cared, these men might
have been wounded. The _Libertad’s_ own boat had been sunk by bullet
holes during the fight, which was why the boys had been left without a
boat when Senor Ortiga and Mr. Coleson had fled the _Senorita_ in the
tender.
Under such conditions the hi-jackers had started North in _El Libertad_,
the night previous to that on which the cutter arrived.
They would hardly go to the shores of the Southern States bordering the
Gulf of Mexico, Nicky decided, because they would be afraid of having
the gold discovered: it was in bars and had been loaded into the
_Libertad_ without any provision for its concealment and transportation
later on.
The hi-jackers would probably go, Nicky argued, into the inner channel
of the archipelago and then lay up in the Shark River, that small stream
having its source at the edge of the Everglades. It was the most
Southerly place they could get close to the Everglades, and the
Seminoles, bringing the cases to put the treasure in would come up the
inland way through part of Big Cypress Swamp, along the rim of the
Everglades, and meet them. That was the only way Nicky could see for the
hi-jackers to do, because they had no small boat and could not go any
closer to the shallow water of the Florida swamp than the draught of _El
Libertad_ would permit.
They could not have had enough gasoline in the tanks to risk a very long
voyage; that was the reason he did not think they would try to get to
the Southern States and risk themselves in strange waters with no way to
carry the gold from the vessel to their Northern headquarters, wherever
that might be.
With all of this the older heads of the party agreed.
Their first plan, then, was to get the _Libertad_ pocketed and
surrounded; this they must do before the treasure could be hidden.
Without a small boat it was not probable that the hi-jackers could get
into the Everglades, but they might know the Seminoles and might be able
to get hold of a canoe.
A day, and a good part of the night before had passed since they went
away in the _Libertad_, but Lieutenant Sommerlee and Mr. Neale decided
that they had probably gone into the Shark River and laid up. They had
no reason to be afraid: they left the _Libertad’s_ owners in the water;
they left three boys and a Negro in another rowboat. There was not much
danger, from their way of looking at it, in anything that these people
could do.
If they had seen the signal smoke of the day or the fire and the rockets
and lights at night, it would be too late for them to run out in the
_Libertad_; and, unless they had already hidden the treasure, they could
not very easily do so in the darkness. They would be more apt to believe
themselves well hidden, and would not make any move before daylight,
because they would be waiting for their two men in the sloop to get
Southeast and bring help from inland. They did not know, of course, that
the men had been captured.
First of all, Sam and a patrol sailor went over the side of the
_Senorita_, in the dark, with ropes under their arms and fastened to the
rail. They searched about on the reef at the side of the ship where
Nicky and his chums had thrown the rifles and pistols. Lieutenant
Sommerlee did not think that these had been in the water long enough to
be severely damaged or made useless; he wanted them for a purpose.
Sam and his companion by dint of much searching brought up both
submerged rifles and several pistols.
They were set to work cleaning and drying and oiling them at once.
“Cliff,” ordered Lieutenant Sommerlee, taking command, “you—with Sam and
Jim and one of my sailors, will stay on the _Senorita_. Jim has had a
night and a day to rest in and he is pretty strong again. You four are
the guardians of this Shark River channel.”
“If they try to run out past us we must try to prevent that,” Cliff
agreed.
“Yes,” nodded the commander. “My boatswain, Jack, will be with you and,
for the sake of discipline, you must all obey his orders. He has a cool
head and is a fine shot. Four of you ought to be able to block this
channel if the hi-jackers try to run out here.”
“We will!” agreed Cliff, feeling the importance of his share in the
blockade.
“The rest of us will start at once in the cutter,” the lieutenant
continued. “We will tow our own light dory, and when we reach the inner
mouth of the Harney River, Mr. Neale, Nicky, and one of my men who has
been into the Everglades, will drop off in the dory and go up the Harney
River as fast as they can by night. By submerging a flashlight in the
water, training its beam on the bottom, and rowing carefully they can
get almost to the head of the stream, where it has its source at the rim
of the Everglades. From there, as soon as dawn comes, my man will direct
the course South along the rim of the Everglades to the nearest point he
sees fit to the Shark River. The Harney starts a few miles North of the
Shark, at the rimrock, and by sending the boat there, we can block the
Everglades side and stop any Indians who may come there from Big
Cypress.”
“And we will stop them, never fear!” declared Nicky stoutly.
“I know that you will,” said the lieutenant with a smile. “The cutter
will proceed carefully down the inner channel. I will be in command, and
will lie-to close to the bank, not far from the Shark. Unless the
hi-jackers rush out I will do nothing until we are all in position. We
shall need some signals.”
“Have you any smoke-rockets on the cutter?” asked Nicky. “They would
make enough light to be seen at night, and smoke to see by day.”
“We have,” answered a sailor. “Plenty of them.”
“Then we will take four,” Nicky suggested. “How will we use them?”
“One at night will call for help. One right after the other at night
will call urgently for help. Do not use them for any other purpose
tonight, and I will be watching the sky over the ’Glades.”
“All right, sir,” said Nicky in proper nautical deference. “Then, when
we get into place at the inside end of the Shark, shall we signal?”
“No,” replied the lieutenant. “But if you see that there is no boat in
the Shark River at all, send up a rocket, wait a minute and then send up
a second. Watch for the same signal in reply; if you do not get it,
repeat with your other two rockets. If the boat is there, make no signal
unless the men are escaping. In that case, send up three rockets in
quick succession, as fast as you can.”
“How shall we be able to set them up?” asked Mr. Neale.
“You will find clumps of tall saw-grass almost everywhere; it is from
four to eight or nine feet high, and you must be careful not to let its
sharp edges gash you, but it is strong enough to support a rocket in an
upright position while you set and light it.”
Hasty repetition by each member of the party of plans in which they must
participate, the arranging of signals from the cutter, and of others
from the _Senorita_, completed the arrangements.
Cliff, with Jim, Sam and the boatswain, Jack, busily getting the
recovered arsenal into good shape again, saw the cutter disappear into
the gloom.
The run up the channel into the Harney River was without event, and
since Lieutenant Sommerlee had cruised in those waters, making a chart
for the U. S. Geodetic Survey, he knew the safest way, and finally, with
tense, thrilling nerves, Nicky dropped into the light dory with Mr.
Neale and a sailor called Brownie because his last name was Brown and he
was a short, fat, jolly little man. With whispered directions from the
cutter’s commander, they pushed off and with Mr. Neale at the oars and
Nicky in the stem, Brownie being at the bow to give the course up the
rapidly narrowing stream, they slipped into a darkness that seemed to
close down about them like a curtain.
By following the lieutenant’s directions they made steady progress as
far as their boat dared go in the dark, feeling-out the channel with the
tip of their flashlight under water so they could see the coral bottom
of the river. Finally they stopped, tied to a heavy root and got such
sleep as they could, curled up on their hard seats.
At about four-thirty, before dawn cut through the heavy tangle of trees,
intertwined overhead, Brownie awoke his companions and they ate their
hardtack, and picked the bones of a chicken from the cutter’s recent
purchases, cooked the night before on the _Senorita_; this they washed
down with cocoa from tin cups, cocoa hot out of a thermos bottle.
The hot liquid helped to drive away the night chill, and Nicky declared
that he felt fit for anything.
“That’s good,” chuckled Brownie. “We’re going to have to stand in
shallow water and walk in it, too. We must drag our dory up over the
rock bed here at the rim of the Everglades.”
In spite of the cold of the water, fed by the overflow from the
Everglades which, themselves, are renewed by many streams that spout out
cold and clear, from holes in the limestone, they dragged and tugged and
laughed softly as they slipped, until, when the dory was over the rim,
and into fairly good water, they were quite warm from their exertions.
“Here we are!” said Brownie softly, with a wave of his hand. “Here we
are—in the Everglades!”