A STRANGE STORY.
It was not long before, under the friendly administrations of the
boys, Old Eben Joyce opened his eyes on a cot in their aerodrome and
gave a long sigh. It was several minutes, however, before he realized
what had happened.
"How can I thank you--?" he concluded, after he had informed the boys
of his name and profession.
"Hush," said Frank, "you must not exhaust yourself by talking now,"
and the aged inventor remained silent therefore, till Le Blanc
returned with a doctor from Mineola.
The physician, after a brief examination, pronounced that the wound in
the old man's head was not at all serious, but recommended his removal
to the hospital notwithstanding.
"It is nothing more than a flesh wound," he said, "but at the hospital
he can get better treatment than at home."
And so it was arranged that for the present old Eben Joyce was to go
to the hospital,--being driven thither in Dr. Telfair's rig,--and that
his daughter would return to New York and make her home with relatives
till such time as her father had recovered. These arrangements made,
and the inventor's daughter having being driven to the train, it was
time to think of accompanying Billy Barnes to Bluewater Bill's
cottage, on the outskirts of the little town.
Just as the lads were about to take their departure, leaving Le Blanc
in charge of the aeroplane, Sanborn made his way into the tent shed.
He had heard from loungers about the grounds of the plight of aged
Eben Joyce as he returned from his ride in Luther Barr's car. He was
somewhat perturbed as he entered the shed for fear that he would have
to face the inventor, fresh as he was from an interview with the man
that had practically robbed the aerial genius of his life-work. But
Eben Joyce and his daughter had both left and he had no more of an
ordeal to undergo than Frank's searching glance.
Knowing as he did what he had been talking to old Luther Barr about,
Sanborn's eyes dropped as he met Frank's gaze.
"I--I have been to the village for a little tobacco," he stammered, "I
hope you have not needed me. I did not think you would be back so
soon."
"You had better help Le Blanc bring in the Golden Eagle," rejoined
Frank shortly. He felt no wish to enter into an argument with the man
whom he had already made up his mind to discharge at the first
opportunity.
The two mechanics therefore were soon at work, wheeling in the
aeroplane, as the boys trudged off down the road to the village.
Half-way there they were startled to hear the loud "honk-honk" of a
rapidly approaching auto behind them and to be hailed in an imperious
voice that shouted:
"Get off the road!"
The boys had no choice but to step nimbly aside as the car whizzed by
in a cloud of dust, but quick as had been its passing, Frank and Harry
gave a simultaneous sharp exclamation as they both recognized the face
of its occupant. Luther Barr, once clear of the grounds, had removed
his uncomfortably warm autoing mask and the two lads, as the car
vanished in a cloud of yellow dust, both cried out his name in sharp
astonishment.
"Whatever can he be doing here?" exclaimed Billy.
"I don't know; but you can depend on it he is up to no good," was
Frank's reply.
"The old fox,--I wonder if he recognized us?" cried Harry.
"If his eyes are as keen as they used to be, he did, without a
question," rejoined Frank.
The boy was right. Old Barr had recognized them, and knew them all the
more readily indeed for the reason that at that very moment his mind
was bent on frustrating a plan that Sanborn had informed him the boys
had in mind, and which they were on their way to culminate.
"I'll bet, if he knew what we are on our way to talk over, he'd give a
few dollars to be present at the conversation," remarked Billy.
"You may well say that," laughed Frank, "anything that there seems to
be a dollar in, is old Luther Barr's highest ideal."
By this time they had passed through the village and, after walking
about half a mile down a country road, they emerged on a green,
park-like meadow, at the further side of which stood a neat cottage.
Portions of a whale's huge bones dotted either side of the path as
ornaments, and in front of the cottage stood a flagpole from which
fluttered the Stars and Stripes. The cottage was painted white and was
as neat and ship-shape as the quarterdeck of a man-of-war.
As they walked up the path the door opened and a grizzled face, set in
a perfect forest of white whiskers, protruded itself with a smile of
welcome.
"Hello, boys--welcome to my cuddy," cried Blue-water Bill's hearty
voice. "I've a fine dish of lobscouse, a raisin pie and some cider
from Farmer Goggins's press all ready for you. Come in--come in."
He ushered them into a small sitting-room, furnished with all sorts of
sea curiosities, and, after explaining several of the curios to the
boys, he announced, following an interval of visiting in the kitchen,
from whence proceeded an appetizing odor, that the meal was ready. The
boys were nothing loath to fall to on the sea banquet the old salt
spread before them, and so busy were they despatching the sailor's
cooking, that it was not till after they concluded the meal and
Bluewater Bill had his old brier pipe going that they came down to the
discussion of what each of the boys had uppermost in his mind--namely,
the history of Bluewater Bill's discovery of the lost treasure galleon
of the Sargasso Sea.
As for Bluewater Bill he was delighted to spin his yarn to such
sympathetic listeners and told it with so much embroidery and
discursive oratory that to repeat it in his words would be tedious. We
shall therefore condense it as follows:
Bluewater Bill had been mate on the Bath, Me., barque, Eleanor Jones.
They were bound for South America with a cargo of chemicals and
assorted canned stuffs. From the first day out misfortune assailed the
vessel. She encountered heavy weather and, during a towering climax of
the storm, part of her deck load of American lumber fetched away and
carried with it three of her crew of ten men. Shortly after that the
cook's big copper boiler ripped loose and fell on him, scalding him so
badly that when the ship finally emerged from her storm-battering he
died and was buried at sea.
The captain of the craft, however, was what Bluewater Bill termed "a
masterful man." Despite the urgent entreaties of his depleted crew to
put into some port and refit, he kept on, with favoring breezes, and
soon entered what are called the "doldrums" in which fierce hurricanes
alternate with periods of dead flat calm in which a ship will float on
a rippleless sea "as idle as a painted craft upon a painted ocean."
The Eleanor Jones drifted about in one of these flat, hopeless calms
till the pitch boiled in her seams and the sails seemed dried to
tinder.
After a week of this, without the slightest warning, one of the sudden
storms, that are common to the region in which she was navigating,
came up.
"Caught aback," as they were, with all canvas set in the hope of
catching what breeze might come to disturb the flat calm, the Eleanor
Jones' main and fore masts were ripped out of her as if by a giant's
hand. The crew managed to cut the wreckage away before it had pounded
a hole in her side, and with what canvas they could set on the mizzen
the captain attempted to drive her before the wind. But naturally
enough the ship had no steerage-way and simply revolved in the huge
seas.
Every time a comber caught her broadside, the water swept over her
decks in tons of overwhelming fluid. As they fought desperately to
retain footing, under the constant assaults of the waves, there came a
sudden cry of:
"Heaven help us!"
More from instinct than anything else Bluewater Bill cast himself flat
on his face, clinging to a ring-bolt in the deck. Dazed and almost
senseless, he felt the mighty onslaught of the wave, which, strong as
was his grip, plucked him from his hold and sent him tumbling and half
drowned into the lee scuppers. Fortunately he managed to get a firm
grip on the mizzen shrouds and clung there till the wave had passed.
As he staggered to his feet he gazed about him on the seemingly doomed
ship.
He was alone.
Every soul on board but himself had been swept from the deck by that
mighty mass of water.
For two days the storm tossed the ship about like a plaything. Her
lone voyager had no means of knowing whither he was being driven. He
ate at times mechanically and scarcely emerged on deck at all. The
fear of sharing the fate of his comrades possessed him and he remained
in the cabin, not knowing from one minute to the next whether the
succeeding instant would not prove his last. At last, however, the
storm blew itself out and Bluewater Bill ventured on deck.
What a sight met his gaze!
At first he thought he was dreaming.
All about him for miles--as far as he could see in fact--stretched a
gently-heaving, brown expanse. It looked like a vast prairie. From it
rose the sharp, pungent odor peculiar to seaweed and the old mariner
had no difficulty in recognizing the stunning fact that he was adrift
in the Sargasso Sea of which he had heard so many ominous tales.
The realization was a shocking one. It meant, as he knew, that he was
to all intents and purposes a doomed man. Despairingly he gazed about
him and almost uttered a shout as at a distance of not more than a
mile or two he made out the outlines of a queer-looking three-masted
ship. Here at least was company. Obtaining the glasses, which the
ill-fated skipper had left in his cabin, the mate of the Eleanor Jones
scanned the neighbor vessel eagerly. She was as motionless under the
cloudless blue dome of the sky as the ship on which he stood.
But she seemed to have men on board of her.
At least there were figures leaning against her rail.
The castaway lost no time in lowering the one boat that had not been
smashed and sliding down the "falls" into her. Then he sculled, not
without difficulty, through tangled weed to the side of the strange
vessel. But a strange sight met his eyes as he drew nearer. His
neighbor in the vast entangling expanse was a high-sided craft with
great ports, of which one or two had fallen away, revealing the
grinning muzzles of great guns. Her sails hung in torn fragments from
her square yards, and on her lofty poop the gilding had faded from
three big battle-lanterns and the carved scroll work surrounded her
name, El Buena Ventura. (The Fortunate Venture.)
But the men leaning over the side?
Alas for poor Bluewater Bill's hopes of human companionship.
It was many long years since they had been men, and it was a dozen or
more grinning skeletons in time-tattered garments that gazed over the
galleon's faded side at the lone castaway in his cockle-shell. How
they had died, the sailor, even after he had clambered on board, could
make no guess; but there they stood, a ghastly row of dead sailors,
held upright, as they had died, between the big gun-carriages of the
lost galleon's deck carronades.
Whatever Bluewater Bill's failings might have been, he was no faint
heart, and despite the shock of the gruesome discovery he continued
his investigation of the silent ship. Apparently some attempt had been
made when first the Buena Ventura was caught in the deadly embrace of
the Sargasso to convey her treasure to the boats, for, at the head of
the main companion-way, Bluewater Bill found a chest of antique
pattern, the lid of which he ripped open without much opposition from
the moldering lock.
He staggered back at the sight that greeted him as the lid fell open.
Within the chest were gold pieces, jeweled candlesticks and other
costly articles. A score of other chests examined by the castaway, in
what had evidently been the officers' cabin, yielded like discoveries.
The galleon was a veritable treasure ship.
The castaway was examining a marine candlestick that fairly blazed
with its setting of precious stones when he dropped it with a crash.
A hoarse cry from outside the cabin had caused his scalp to tighten
and his heart to start pounding like a trip-hammer.