TOOSA’S VENGEANCE
Cliff and Nicky faced Henry Morgan on the cruiser’s deck. “Well, you are
a fine one,” Cliff sneered. “You wouldn’t dare say what you do if my
father and Andy hadn’t gone to the Indian village to find out if the
fever quarantine is lifted up the river.”
“Yes, I would,” Henry said huskily. “I’d say it just the same. ’Cause
why? ’Cause it’s true. I mean it!”
“You actually mean you’re going to ship on that sloop, lying off the
reef?” Nicky argued.
“And leave us?”
“Ship on that schooner and leave you—yes! ’Cause why? What have you done
about finding Mort Beecher, or—or the Golden Sun? Not one thing! You all
sit around——”
“We had to scrape the hull and straighten the propeller and fix the
shaft while you were gone—” Cliff grew angry.
“Yes—but when I got there, all was fixed and the cruiser was back in
commission. But she’s laid still in the tide-race, here, for three days,
and no move to go to Porto Bello, the way the old Indian said I should.
I told you what word was sent from your friends—but you just sit and
fight sand-flies and mosquitos and sweat and chafe and eat bananas and
fire cocoanuts at sharks’ fins. I’m tired of waitin’. So, when that
cutter comes off from final trading with the Indians, it’s Henry Morgan
for on board and off for Colon or wherever the sloop touches.”
Cliff and Nicky looked at one another dubiously. This was a predicament.
Cliff’s father had gone ashore to pay the Indians in fancy articles for
helping to beach the cruiser first and then to drive her back into the
water. Cliff had caught Henry packing a “ditty bag” and the resulting
declaration that he was “quitting them,” brought Nicky racing to Cliff’s
hail. But they were puzzled to know how to summon the older men from the
village.
Finally, with a shrug, touching his left ear gently, to indicate to his
chum that he wanted the Mystery Boys’ signals to be noted and
understood, Cliff pushed his hair over his right ear with an index
finger, indicating to Nicky, “Come with me!” Nicky promptly swung on his
heel, with a contemptuous glance at Henry, and went below.
“We can’t tie him, or anything!” Nicky objected when Cliff asked what
they could do. “I can’t see what good it will do to stop him. We know
all he knows—that Mort Beecher is at Porto Bello.”
“All right,” Cliff agreed. “We’ll let him go. I guess we can get along
just as well without him.”
“Better,” Nicky declared. “I don’t trust him.”
They took no action, therefore, when Henry climbed aboard the ship’s
shore-boat and went out, across the sand bars, across the reefs, and,
one would suppose, out of their lives.
However, the afternoon was well along before they stopped talking about
him, about Tom and Bill, and about everything that had happened. By that
time Mr. Gray and Andy had arrived.
“What do we care if that Morgan is gone?” demanded Joe Anderson. “He’s a
poor comrade on a cruise. First he almost let us be broken up on the
reefs because he liked ‘tonic’ better than watching; then he deserted
our companions, and for all we know, did worse.”
“We can start up the river, anyhow,” Mr. Gray stated. “The river towns
are no longer quarantined against the lower coast or the upper river. We
can run as far up river as the boat will navigate and then several of us
can go to Tom and Billy Sanders by canoe.”
Accordingly the anchor was raised the next morning and with a river
Indian aboard as pilot, they ran smoothly and quickly up the lagoon.
When they were about a day’s run up the Rio Patuca, Nicky, at the bow,
watching the alligators slide off of the sand banks, seeing the strange,
bright birds flying over the water, suddenly gave a cry.
“Isn’t that white people in that canoe——”
“It is!” echoed Cliff, running to his side. “And it’s——”
“Tom!” shrilled Nicky, dancing about until the pilot, watching the
shifting currents, had to catch his coat and prevent him from toppling
off the sharp bow.
Tom it was, with Bill, both alive, and quite hearty.
The story of their exploits was a thrilling one. They had been in the
first throes of suffering from a violent poison administered in, or with
their food by the Indians conducting them through the mountains.
“Tom recalled that I had a bottle of white vaseline in my pack,” Bill
said, “and he crawled to it and got the stuff. It was not very easy to
take, but we each got some down, and it melted and made a sort of oily
coating, or else it acted as an emetic, for we were very sick, and
almost wore ourselves out struggling—and we couldn’t get enough water!”
“It was lucky for us that we were right by the stream, almost in it,”
Tom added. “The Indians didn’t move a hand to help. If we hadn’t kept
sense enough to hold onto our pistols I guess they would have jumped on
us. We found out later that they had picked some sort of mushroom—‘fruit
of the earth’ it’s called, in the lower levels, and put some in folds of
the pork meat when they gave it to us.”
“How did you find that out?” Nicky demanded.
“Did they confess?” asked Cliff.
“Toosa told us,” Tom explained. “He claims that he knew by his magic
spells that we were in danger, and that he came to save us; and for that
he expected Bill to give him Henry’s rifle when we left—which Bill was
glad to do. But he and I privately think it was more chance than
planning that brought him just in time to help us.”
“When you have lived as long as I,” said Mr. Gray quietly, “you will
understand that there isn’t any such thing as ‘luck’ or ‘chance’ or
‘coincidence.’ It is all a part of a Great Purpose, that is deeper than
most of us can see; but it is there, and we do not have to depend on
‘chance’ to get out of difficulties. If we believed in ourselves, and do
our honest best for ourselves, help will come as we need it. Toosa,
perhaps, was worried about you and so his intuition was keen and he felt
that he should follow you.”
“I guess you are right,” Tom admitted. “Anyway, Toosa got there in time
to stop the Indians from running away, after they divided our packs and
while they were hoping we would die so they could get our gun and
pistols and cartridges.”
“What did Toosa do?” asked Cliff.
“He threatened he would revenge himself if they hurt you, Bill has told
us,” Nicky added.
“He had his vengeance, but in a curious way,” Tom said, glancing at
Bill, as if for his backing-up of the story. Bill nodded encouragement
and Tom continued:
“Toosa called the Indians back and they came, slinking and cowering,
like whipped dogs. I don’t know yet what there was about him that scared
them so, but he certainly ruled them by fear. He called them to him and
then he made them stand there while he looked them steadily in the eye.
Bill, the Indian he had with him was close to you, what did he tell you
Toosa said in their own language?”
“Toosa said, ‘Which you like best, to eat rest of “fruit of earth” with
roast wild pig, or have mountain spirits follow you and drive you into
chasm?’” Bill related it with a reminiscent grin.
“They picked the wild pig and the poison mushrooms,” Nicky guessed. “I
know that much about these Central American Indians.”
“We urged Toosa to be easy on them,” Tom said. “But he said it must be a
lesson, and he made them go through with it.”
“What happened?” asked Cliff.
“He wouldn’t let us wait to see,” Bill replied. “He winked at me and
told me to leave what there was in the vaseline bottle, and let them see
how their own medicine man can save them with ‘white man’s butter.’ They
weren’t even sick when we started back. The river was free of quarantine
and so, of course, after we got back to it, we had no trouble at all.”
“I’ll never forget Toosa, waving to me with the very sign of the Mystery
Boys, again, as we canoed away down stream,” Tom added.
“I’m glad your adventure ended so pleasantly—for you,” Mr. Gray stated.
“I hope it wasn’t too unpleasant for the hill Indians,” Andy said. “But
if they were as sick as you that would be justice.”
“And in the long run, if you wait long enough,” said Bill. “Justice is
always done, one way or another.”
“Then Henry Morgan still has some punishment due him,” said Nicky and
the desertion and falsehood of the departed pilot was discussed.
“We sent no message,” said Bill, telling how Henry had turned savage and
stolen his rifle and a canoe. “Wait till I catch him!”
“He said he was going to Porto Bello,” said Nicky. “Aren’t we?”
“No,” said Tom. “At least, only for a brief stop to see if Mort is there
and if he really knows anything. Toosa told us, after Henry made his mad
dash, that if we want to find out about Golden Sun—it isn’t a mine,
either, he says!—we are to ask the San Blas Indians.”
“They live on reef islands down below Panama, I think,” Bill said.
“They do,” agreed Mr. Gray.
“And,” finished Tom, “if the Golden Sun isn’t a mine—my sister had
golden hair—do you suppose?——” No one answered.