OUT OF THE NIGHT
★
It was a dismal adventure and it took real courage to move even another
step forward, but Bob was driven on by the thought that his uncle might
be on the island and that success tonight would bring about his return
and smash the ring of smugglers he had been assigned to break up.
As they neared the light it was plain that the flare was mounted on a
pole about twenty feet tall and Bob stopped the sheriff.
“That looks like a beacon for a plane,” he muttered.
“If it is, it fits in with your theory that they’ll land the smuggled
gems by plane,” replied Sheriff McCurdy.
They went on, treading easily and giving the circle of light cast by the
flare a wide birth.
Against the blackness of the waters of a broad bayou which flanked the
other side of Lost Island loomed the outline of a ramshackle structure
and though the windows appeared to be boarded up, faint rays of light
crept through a number of cracks. Bob half stumbled on a stick and the
noise brought the quick baying of a hound.
“We’re in for it now,” said the sheriff, and Bob felt that trouble, and
serious trouble, was just ahead.
A door in the house was thrown open and against the oblong of light could
be seen the silhouette of a man. Then he stepped out into the night, to
be followed by a second man, stockier and heavier than the first.
“Stay down,” whispered the sheriff. “Maybe they’ll miss us. We don’t want
trouble now.”
Before the men could leave the shelter of the house, the low drone of an
incoming plane could be heard. Bob turned toward the east. A red and
green light, marking the wing tips of a plane, were visible. The craft
was low and evidently coming in fast.
Even above the noise of the plane, they could hear a shouted command near
the old house, and one of the men who had stepped outside turned on a
flash light and raced toward the pier, some distance away. He was
followed, at a slower pace by the second man.
“That’s Hamsa, I’m sure,” said Bob.
“Let’s get inside and see if anyone is there,” said Sheriff McCurdy and
they moved around so that the house was between them and the pier.
Landing lights of the plane blinked on as it circled over them and once
the powerful beams swept down on the clearing, but Bob and the Sheriff,
anticipating that, had dropped to the ground behind an old log and were
safe, for the moment, from discovery.
“Must be either a seaplane or an amphibian,” said Bob as the plane
prepared to alight on the water.
“Get inside,” urged the sheriff, who would feel better when he had some
shelter.
The two men on the pier were concentrating their attention on the plane
swinging over the lagoon and the hound which had sounded the alarm was
beside them, so it was a comparatively simple matter for Bob to jump
across the threshold.
Inside the door, where only an oil lamp cast faint illumination, he
crouched with his rifle in his hands, accustoming his eyes to the light.
There was, apparently, no one in the room.
He spoke softly to the sheriff, who was waiting just outside.
“All clear; come on!”
With one bound the sheriff was inside and like Bob he had his rifle ready
for instant action.
Squinting between cracks in the wall, the sheriff watched the action in
the lagoon. The plane smacked the surface of the water sharply and came
to rest several hundred feet from the end of the old pier. The men
waiting there put out in a motorboat, making directly for the plane,
which was bobbing around on the waves which it had stirred up in the
quiet waters.