PURRING SHADOWS
As Johnny’s interest in the red lure lost much of its intensity, Pant’s
seemed to grow stronger. He left no stone unturned if its turning would
in any way hinder the treacherous Daego and his band.
“Johnny’s ghost is doing much,” he told himself, “but it’s not enough.
There must be other ways of annoying him.”
He thought of Daego’s black boats that moved by night and of the
stationary engine he had heard pop-popping in the heart of the
wilderness.
“I’ll go down there and look into that engine business,” he mused. “There
may be something to it, something big. I’ll go down to-night.”
He left camp in his low, black dugout that night and paddled swiftly down
the river. For some time he drove straight on; then of a sudden, as his
keen eye caught a speck of light that flashed on and then blinked out
like a match that is lighted and blown out, he swerved to the shore,
threw a rope over the low limb of a mangrove, then sat there motionless,
watching the river.
His thoughts were of that Spanish half-caste, Daego. “Isn’t it strange,”
he mused. “There’s a man worth millions. If he never made another cent
and lived a thousand years he’d never come to want. Yet he’s so greedy
that he does crooked things that he may gain more. If someone tries to
break into the mahogany or chicle business, instead of helping them in a
brotherly fashion as he could well afford to do, he tries to throttle
them.
“I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s all in the start one gets. If he
starts out crooked, it doesn’t seem to matter much whether he succeeds or
fails, he remains crooked to the end. One would think—”
Of a sudden his musings were cut short off. Something was moving out
there in the water. Something like a shadow. Pant scarcely breathed as he
watched that long shadow until it had disappeared up a bend in the river.
“That’s no shadow,” he muttered as he sat up. “It’s a pit-pan, one of
those dugouts the natives use for coming on long journeys up the river.
Must have been sixty feet long. The most marvelous pit-pan that ever was.
Those pit-pans they used in other days had at least a dozen men at the
paddles. I didn’t see a single man, and still it moved straight on
upstream. Seems like I heard a purring sound. Surely here is mystery—a
purring shadow.”
“Hardgrave spoke of Daego’s black boats,” he said to himself. “That thing
must be one of them. And there’s nothing good about the thing they’re up
to. Men don’t go creeping up the river in the silence of the night with
an eel-like craft such as that for nothing. If I can find out what it’s
all about and can trap one of his pit-pans I’ll be in a way to keep him
so busy he won’t so much as have time to find out when our raft starts
down the river.”
He arrived at the mouth of the creek, up which he had located the
pop-popping of a stationary engine a half hour later. Taking a chance of
being seen, he began skirting the bushes at the edge of the creek. For
this move he was thankful. He had not gone a mile when, upon rounding a
cocoanut palm that overhung the water, he came in sight of two long, dark
objects that lay close to shore, half concealed by foliage. Seen from a
little distance they resembled nothing quite so much as great, black
water snakes asleep by the bank.
“Pit-pans!” he murmured as he came closer.
Pit-pans indeed they were, slender boats cut from the trunk of a tree,
sixty or more feet in length.
“Blockade runners! Black devils!” he muttered as he passed. He dared not
stop to inspect them. There might be men on the bank, watching.
Soon he caught the pop-pop of that stationary engine which had once so
mystified him. This time, instead of turning back, he paddled straight
on. A mile, two, three miles of water passed beneath his craft. Still he
moved steadily forward until, when it seemed he must be almost upon the
engine, he suddenly discovered that the sound was behind and to the right
of him.
“Back in the bush,” he told himself. “Passed the trail without seeing
it.”
Turning his boat about, he drifted slowly.
“There it is. Drift down thirty yards and hide my boat.”
This done, he struggled back along the bank to the entrance of the path.
Following a winding trail, with the sound of the motor growing louder,
ever louder, with his heart keeping tune to its throbbing, he made his
way forward until caution bade him slink into the shadows of the great
leaves of a cohune tree.
There, with only the ceaseless throb of the motor to disturb his
reflection, he had time to think things through. How was this all to end?
His men were making progress, but Tivoli had told him that many of the
men were becoming frightened by the wild tales they were hearing of the
doings of the man-eating jaguar. Would fright drive them back down the
river before their task was completed? He wished Johnny was here. Then he
would feel more free to hunt that beast down. Must do it, anyway, very
soon.
And what was Daego plotting up the river? He could not bribe the Caribs.
Would there be a fight in the end? Well, if so, Daego would not find them
unprepared. He was training his men in a new form of warfare. They were
handy with their long-bladed machetes, very handy indeed. Daego should
see!
He glanced about him. It was strange that he should be in such a place at
such a time. Yet he wanted to know, to be sure. If things were as he
thought, he’d make Daego no end of trouble. He’d trap one of those black
shadows of his, show him up.
“Trap one,” he whispered, “but how?”
This was a puzzler. Moments of reflection, and then an inspiration.
“The very thing! Rivers have been blocked against war boats by chains.
This is better than chains; it floats. It—”
His whisper broke short off. Someone was coming. They carried a lantern.
He had not thought of a light. What if they should catch sight of him.
Shuddering, he shrank farther into the bushes. Just then he caught sight
of the foremost man’s face.
“Daego!” he breathed. “Daego himself!”
As he listened he crowded farther and farther back among the palm leaves.
He was hearing voices, many voices. They were talking in Spanish. He did
not understand Spanish. It was not what they said that increased his
fright, but the numbers of them.
“Must be twelve or fifteen of them,” he thought with a shudder. “What
they won’t do to me if one of them chances to spy me!”
By great good fortune the leader, Daego, passed without looking to right
or left. With him passed the bright light and much of the danger of
detection. Pant watched the passing line with increasing interest. The
men following Daego went in pairs, one before and one behind. Suspended
on long poles between each pair was a square, black box which, from the
bending of the poles and the labored tread of the men, would appear to be
heavy.
For a moment the boy’s imagination played tricks on him. These men were
ghosts of the pirates and buccaneers who inhabited these waters a century
or more ago. The heavy black boxes were filled with doubloons and pieces
of eight.
Then with a mental jerk he brought himself back to reality. These men
were men of to-day. The boxes they carried were indeed treasure chests,
but chests of power, not of gold.
“Batteries,” Pant murmured. “There is no need to go farther. I see it
all.”
And so he did. The long, black pit-pans near the river’s mouth were only
waiting these black boxes to give them the power to steal silently up the
river. They were electrically driven. The stationary engine back there
was connected to an electric generator. By day it was at work charging
batteries. By night these batteries were busy driving the long black
shadows with their burdens up the river. What sort of freight did they
carry? That he could not tell.
“Have to trap them to find out,” he told himself.
As it happened, he found out before he trapped them.