BILLY'S STRANGE TALE.
The next morning, as soon as the alarm clock rang out its summons at
four-thirty, the boys were up and stirring, dashing the sleep out of
their eyes with plenty of cold water. Le Blanc and Sanborn soon joined
them, the latter heavy-eyed and sleepy-looking from the late hours of
the night before. He was smoking a cigarette.
"Look here, Sanborn, I don't want to be too strict, but you know
there's too much gasolene around here for it to be safe to smoke in
the shed," said Frank, with some irritation, as he spied him.
Sanborn threw the cigarette away with an ill-tempered exclamation.
"Gee! It's a wonder you don't start a Sunday-school in here," he said.
"Well, I don't think it would do you any harm to attend one for a
while," answered Frank, "and by the way, can't you make it possible to
come in a little earlier? You are a valuable man to us and you can't
do your best work if you are sitting up till all hours at the village
hotel."
"You ain't got no complaint about my work, have you?" was the surly
rejoinder.
"No, I think that you are a very capable mechanic but I hate to see
you wasting your time and opportunities this way," replied Frank. The
boy was in some doubt as to the wisdom or the utility of calling
Sanborn's attention to the latter's bad habits, but having embarked on
his admonition he was not going to quit just because the man was
surly.
"When are you going to go up?" asked Sanborn, changing the subject
abruptly.
"Right after breakfast," was the boy's reply, as he looked out of the
big sliding doors and surveyed the cloudless sky. "There doesn't seem
to be a breath of wind and it's ideal weather for a good long flight."
But if the boys were up early they were not the only ones astir.
Gladwin, who was an experimenter and who, although he had only been up
a few times, meant to compete in the big race, was already busy
outside his aerodrome, lovingly adjusting the engine of his
queer-looking monoplane which had already been wheeled out. Malvoise,
his hands in his pockets and a red sash about his waist, was also
studying the sky. As Frank gazed about in the crisp morning air a
dozen other aviators opened up their sheds and the day-life of the
aviation camp began.
After breakfast had been despatched the boys at once went to work on
their engine, a hundred horse-powered, eight-cylindered machine which
was capable of driving their twin-screwed craft through the air at a
rate of sixty miles an hour. One of the cylinders needed a new gasket
and they were engaged on the task of fitting it when a sudden hail
outside the shed made them look up inquiringly. A short, fat youth
with a pair of spectacles bestriding his round good-natured face stood
in the doorway. The boys recognized him instantly.
"Why, hullo, Billy Barnes!" they cried, "come on in."
"Hullo, Frank, hullo, Harry," grinned the newcomer, frantically
shaking hands. "I'm an early caller, but I slept at the village hotel
last night and the beds there are as hard as a miser's heart. So I
decided to get out early and take a chance on finding you fellows up
and about."
After the first hearty greetings between the boys and the young
reporter--with whom the readers of the other volumes in this series
have already formed an acquaintanceship--the boys started asking
questions.
"What are you doing here anyhow?" demanded Frank.
"Yes, you mysterious scribe, tell us what you are after--a scoop or a
story of how it feels to ride in an aeroplane?"
"Well," laughed Billy in response, "I've had so many flights in the
Golden Eagles--both one and two--that I really believe I've had too
much experience to write a story about it from the novice's
standpoint. No, the fact is that I am down here on a story--a good one
too."
"You can't keep away from the newspaper field, can you?" laughed
Frank.
"No, that's a fact," agreed Billy ruefully; "I've tried to, but it's
no good."
"Well, you ought to be 'a man of independent fortune' now, as the
papers say," cried Harry.
"You mean with the percentage I got of the recovered ivory?"
The others nodded.
"I always felt I didn't really deserve that money," urged Billy. "You
fellows did most of the work in Africa, I just trailed along."
"Oh, get out, Billy Barnes!" cried Frank. "You did as much as any of
us in overreaching old Barr."
"Go ahead and tell us about this story of yours," demanded Harry.
"Well, it sounds like a weird dream and perhaps you fellows will laugh
at me for taking it seriously, but a few days ago an old fellow in a
tattered blue suit called at the Planet offices and said he wanted to
see the city editor. Of course nobody ever does see the city editor,
so I was sent out to ascertain what the visitor wanted. I saw at once
he had been a seafaring man. He told me his name was Bill Hendricks,
known better as Bluewater Bill. He beat about the bush a good while
before he would tell me what he was after, and finally he unfolded the
wildest tale about buried treasure you ever heard--that is, I don't
mean buried treasure--floating would be a better word to describe it.
He told me that he had been one of the crew of a sailing vessel that
had drifted, after being dismasted in a storm, into the Sargasso Sea."
"You might tell us where the Sargasso Sea is," struck in Harry. "I
never heard of it."
"Why, it's a vast expanse of floating seaweed brought together by
circling ocean currents," explained Billy. "There are hundreds of
miles of seaweed in it and from the name of the weed it gets its title
of Sargasso. It is in the north Atlantic, just about off the Gulf of
Mexico roughly speaking, though many hundred miles from land. It is
shifting all the time though, I understand, and a ship that once gets
into it never gets out. The weed just holds her in its grip till she
rots. Bluewater Bill told me that, after his ship drifted into it, he
counted ten steamers and four sailing vessels drifting idly about on
the brown expanse that spread like a desert on all sides. But the most
remarkable of all, according to his story, was a high-pooped,
castle-bowed affair with three masts that the tattered sails still
hung to. According to him she was a real, sure-enough galleon. One of
the old treasure vessels that used to ply the Spanish Main."
"Oh, I say, Billy, you don't believe such a yarn as that, do you?"
burst out Frank and Harry, both at once.
"Well, I don't know," replied Billy, "the fellow seemed serious enough
and I am half inclined to believe he was telling the truth. He wanted
to get somebody to finance an expedition to go down there and prove
that he was not falsifying, and give him a small share of the treasure
he is sure the vessel is laden with, in return for his information."
"In other words he is seeking a backer for an enterprise that looks
ridiculous on the face of it," commented Frank.
"I'm not so certain of that," went on Billy. "Look here," and with the
air of a conjurer producing a card from the empty air, he dived into
his pocket and then, after a moment's fumbling, held out a round gold
coin for the boys' inspection.
"A Spanish pistole!" exclaimed Frank, as his eyes fell on the dull
yellow metal of the golden coin.
"That's right," said Billy. "I took it to a coin-dealer and had him
give it a name. Of course the paper laughed at the story, so I'm after
it now on my own hook. I got a leave of absence to dig it up.
Bluewater Bill lives in Mineola and I'm going to see him later to-day
and get more details from him. The more I think it over the more I
think it's worth looking into."
The boys, whose opinion of the old sailor's story had been much
altered by Billy's production of the indisputable evidence of the gold
coin, agreed with him that it was indeed worth investigating further.
"But you haven't told us half the story, Billy," objected Frank. "How
did Bluewater Bill escape? What became of the other men on the ship?
How did he get aboard the galleon and get the coin? Oh, and heaps of
other hows? and whys?" he broke off, laughing at Billy's serious face.
"I haven't got time to tell you all that now, and besides I am not
clear on many of those points myself," replied Billy. "Suppose, if you
are not doing anything this evening, you come round with me to
Bluewater Bill's home and talk to him about it yourselves."
"Say, are you trying to lure us into any fresh adventures?" said Frank
with mock seriousness. "Didn't we have enough of them in Africa?"
"I don't see how we could get at the galleon, supposing there is one
there, even if we did go after it," chimed in Harry, whose active mind
had already jumped ahead of the boys' conversation.
"Why not?" demanded Billy.
"Why, you chump, if ships get in there and can't get out, how are we
going to sail in there--get the treasure--always supposing there is
any--and then return to civilization?"
"Do you mean to say that your gigantic brain can't grasp that?"
demanded the reporter.
"No, my brilliant literary friend, it cannot--can yours?"
"It can."
"Well, let us have it."
"Well, in the first place," began Billy, "if--I only say if--the
galleon is there and--if--please remark I say 'if' once more--if we
should decide to go after the treasure--if (useful word that) we did
do so, we wouldn't have to sail INTO the Sargasso Sea at all."
"No?"
"No. We could sail OVER it."
"By George! that's so, isn't it?"
"Of course it is," concluded the young reporter; and he artfully
added, "it would be a great chance to demonstrate Frank's pet theory
that an aeroplane that can float on the water on pontoons would be as
easy to construct as one that will fly in the air."
"What if a storm came up?"
"It is always calm in the Sargasso Sea, so Bluewater Bill told me. The
great mass of tangled weed prevents the waves breaking while the
severest storm may be raging all about. Nothing more alarming than a
gentle swell ever disturbs its repose."
Frank, the mechanical-minded, already had fished out an envelope, and
on its back was scribbling the rough outlines of the aluminum
pontoons, he had frequently made a mental resolve to attach to the
aeroplane, so as to render it safe on the water as well as over the
land. He had no intention then of embarking on the enterprise that
Billy had outlined--at least he didn't think he had--but any
suggestion of aeroplane improvement always interested the boy keenly
and set his inventive mind at work.
While the three boys had been discussing Bluewater Bill's strange tale
there had been a fourth auditor whose presence, had they known it,
would have caused them to talk in lowered voices. Sanborn, the
mechanic, from behind the canvas screen where he was supposed to have
been eating his breakfast, had been listening greedily to every word
the young reporter said. His eyes fairly burned in his head as he
listened and a half-formed resolve entered his mind.
There might be other persons who would be interested in learning of
the treasure ship which Sanborn's greedy mind already had regarded as
a reality.
"Guess I'll take a run down to Bluewater Bill's myself to-night," he
said to himself as he prepared to go to work on the aeroplane, at
which Le Blanc had been busy tinkering during the boys' talk.
"Well, Frank," said Billy at length, "what do you think of it?"
"I'll reserve decision till we see Bluewater Bill to-night," quietly
rejoined the other, rising from the box on which he had been sitting
and slipping into his leather coat.