ANDY FIRST HEARS OF KING CAJOU
Before ten o’clock the next morning, Andy, with the savage-looking Ba
rowing the little _Red Bird_, had been to the Leighton cottage on Goat
Creek, and was back with the model of the bird-tail guide and a box of
special metal-working tools. By noon the projected aeroplane was under
way.
While daylight lasted, Captain Anderson and his assistant applied
themselves to selecting timber, roughing out the frame of the flying
machine, with frequent conferences. From Andy’s handbook, dimensions
were readily secured, and that evening a working sketch of the car was
made.
The following morning, Andy began a search for batteries. Those found
at his uncle’s cottage were practically exhausted. There was much that
the boy would have to do at the forge in his uncle’s shop in the way of
metal work, but he was anxious that the batteries should be secured to
test the engine.
“We’ll have to get cloth, too, for covering the planes. We ought to
have balloon silk, but that is out of the question. Good muslin will
do――we’ll waterproof it――I know how――alum and sugar of lead, equal
parts in warm water――”
“I’m afraid we haven’t muslin enough,” interrupted the captain.
“Certainly not,” exclaimed the boy, “nor alum, nor sugar of lead, nor
batteries. So I’ll go to Melbourne this afternoon and get ’em――it’s
only eight miles. I can be back this evening――”
“There’s a nice breeze,” volunteered the captain, “and it’s abeam.
We’ll have Ba sail the _Valkaria_, and you can take your mother and
Mrs. Anderson.”
“Won’t you come along?” asked the boy, overjoyed, but feeling a little
guilty.
“When I get set on a job,” answered the industrious captain, “I like to
keep agoin’. I ain’t goin’ to let this one get cold on my hands. We’ve
got to have those things, so hurry along and get ’em.”
By one o’clock, the supply expedition set sail, with a long list of
needed material. In a half hour, Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Leighton being
comfortably busy with their fancy work well up in the bow, Andy found
opportunity to interview the mysterious Ba.
“Ba,” he began, “didn’t you like it over there in the Bahamas?”
“Didn’ Ah like it? Ah liked it all right in de big town――Ah liked it in
Nassau, but dey ain’t gwine ’low me stay dar.”
“Why not?”
“’Case I done had my trial.”
“What did you do?”
“Me? Ah don’ do nuthin’. Me an’ Robert was in de sisal fiel’ and dar
was de machete. Dis Robert he done say de machete was hissen. An’ I
done rutch ober and tuck it to gib it to him. An’ Robert he riz up an’
cut hissef on de neck. Ah don’ do nuthin’.”
“Then what?” urged the interested boy.
“De big judge he jes look at me, an’ den dey put me in de jail.”
“And you served your term?”
“Ah don’ know nothin’ ’bout dat. But Ah pushed de bars out an’ Ah comed
away.”
“Didn’t you have a home?” asked Andy.
Ba shook his head, and his eyes widened.
“I ain’t gwine back to no out islands.”
“Out islands?” repeated Andy. “What are they?”
But Ba made no answer. He looked at the boy with narrowed eyes, and
then gave his attention to the flying boat. After a few moments, still
ignoring the boy’s question, the strange black man, without facing Andy
and in a new tone, said in a low voice:
“You ain’t nebber gwine on dat Timbado Key, is you?”
“Timbado Key?” asked Andy. “Where’s that?”
The slow-spoken Bahaman made no answer.
“Was that your home?” suggested the lad.
Again there was no immediate reply. Then, suddenly, in a whisper, the
black said:
“Dat’s fetich. You ain’t gwine dar?”
The boy nodded his head reassuringly. He knew what “fetich” meant――the
African’s sign of ill-omen. Alarmed over a fetich! Finally he went
forward and asked Mrs. Anderson what she knew about the blacks of the
Bahamas.
She told him that they were mostly descended from real Africans; that,
in the days when slave stealing was being practised, it was the custom
when slavers were caught by English or American men-of-war, to liberate
the victims on the tropic Bahamas.
“There may be old men there now,” she said, “who were born in the
wilds of Africa. And the second and third generation are not much more
civilized. Ba is probably almost as much African as if he were living
in the Congo,” she concluded.
“Where is Timbado Key?” asked Andy.
Mrs. Anderson shook her head. “All the Bahama Islands, except
Providence, are ‘out islands.’ This must be one of the smaller ‘out
islands.’ I never heard of it.”
When the boy returned to the stern he again attempted to learn from Ba
why Timbado was fetich, and where it was. But there was only blankness
on the boatman’s immobile face. In a short time, Andy was to know a
great deal about Timbado Key, but for the time he had to restrain his
curiosity.
In Melbourne, Andy was greeted by a clerk from the general store. He
had a message received by telephone from Captain Anderson. In addition
to the things the boy was to get, there was a new list, which included
more straight-grained and knotless pine.
The rather delicate question of who was to pay for the needed material
might have embarrassed the boy and his mother had not Captain Anderson
made it easy by assuming half the expense as a partner and insisting
on paying for the other half until Mr. Leighton could send a check for
it.
The aeroplane architects were most anxious to secure a quantity of
No. 12 piano wire for bracing the aeroplane, but as there was none
available, Andy took an entire roll of the same size in plain steel.
The next anxiety was that they might not be able to find needed
turn-buckles for tightening the bracing wires. The store had a few――a
little larger than absolutely necessary――and the town boatmaker had,
fortunately, enough more to fill out Andy’s list.
He searched the town for shoemaker’s twist, but shoemaking seemed
to have gone out of style, and he had to content himself with what
approximated it, a skein of fine thread-like linen cord used by
fishermen in making nets. As he could not get shoemaker’s wax to wax
it, he bought a cake of beeswax.
The selecting of the wood screws, which had to be of various and exact
sizes, was a task that Andy relegated to the storekeeper while he
visited the lumber yard.
“Spruce is really what we want,” explained the boy to the proprietor,
who also ran the livery stable, “but we’ll have to use pine――”
“Spruce?” exclaimed the dealer. “Then I’m your boy, if this’ll do.” He
led Andy to a bundle of boards, 2 × 2 stuff, and some thin rib-like
slats. “This is spruce.”
“How’d you happen to have that down here?” exclaimed Andy.
“I’ve had it two years,” answered the man. “I got it for two college
boys from Boston, who were going to make two racin’ shells. But they
didn’t make nothin’ but a lot of bills and some quick tracks.”
“I’ll take it all,” broke in Andy, highly elated.
By five o’clock, the _Valkaria_ was considerably lower in the water.
With a fine burst of generosity, Andy conducted his mother and Mrs.
Anderson back to the store, regaled them with some not over cold pop
and a box of chocolates, bought a can of smoking tobacco and some new
magazines for the captain, and with a couple of two-for-a-nickel cigars
for Ba, assisted the ladies aboard the boat.
Ba was all smiles over the cigars. He appeared all smiles over
something else, too.
“What’s doin’, Ba?” joked Andy.
“Ain’t nothin’ doin’,” replied Ba, licking his cigar preliminary to
lighting it. “Leastways, ain’t no wind. She’s a dead cam.”
“Why, so it is,” exclaimed Mrs. Anderson, “and here it is five o’clock.
Do you think it’ll freshen up later, Ba?” she went on, with some
concern.
“Ain’t gwine be no win’ dis eben, Miss Anderson,” was Ba’s verdict, as
he rolled out an odorous volume of smoke.
“What in the world shall we do?” cried Mrs. Leighton.
Mrs. Anderson laughed.
“There isn’t any train, and we can’t walk. Ba,” she said to the happy
Bahaman, “you’ll have to pole us home.”
The obedient darkey, without any great gusto, however, began unlashing
two long poles that were made fast to the deck alongside the washboard.
Andy understood.
“Can you do that?” he asked. “Is the river shallow enough?”
“The Indian River is like a lot of people,” answered Mrs. Anderson,
laughing. “It’s not anyways as deep as it looks. And Captain Anderson
has one weakness――he’ll never leave his boat if he goes sailing. He’ll
come home in it if he has to push it every foot of the way. That’s why
we’ve got the poles.”
Ba had already cast off and (having extinguished his cigar and stowed
it away in his pocket), was getting the _Valkaria_ under way. As the
boat began to move, he walked along the deck gangway to the bow, and
dropping the end of his twelve-foot pole to the bottom, rested the
other end against his shoulder and began to walk aft. As he did so, the
boat moved forward under the pressure of Ba’s feet.
“Great!” shouted Andy, catching up the other pole. “That’s fun. We’ll
get you home quicker’n a couple o’ canal boat mules.”
Ba did not protest. Showing Andy how to alternate with him so that one
of them was pushing forward while the other was returning to the bow,
the colored man and the eager boy soon had the little yacht moving on
her course.
Andy’s black and blue shoulder was good proof the next day that he did
his share. Ba crooned the songs of the “out islands” when the time
dragged, and at last, after eight o’clock, Mrs. Anderson detected the
pin-point light of the lantern she knew Captain Anderson would hang on
the end of the pier.
The captain, receiving the tired stragglers with many a joke, showed
his skill as a cook in the hot supper he had ready. The evening meal
disposed of, it was a new pleasure to Andy, in spite of his stiff
limbs and sore shoulder, to help carry the aeroplane material to the
boathouse, and almost a supreme happiness to sit in the light of the
rising moon and recount all his experiences to his friend.
After a time, Andy went into the house and soon returned with the
captain’s chart of the Bahamas. Spreading it out on the desk, the boy
began studying it intently.
“Got it again?” asked the captain laughing. “Well, I don’t blame you.
They’re curious islands――”
“Where’s Timbado Key?” interrupted Andy.
“Timbado? Oh, I see! Old Ba has loosened up. That’s Ba’s notion of a
good place to keep away from.”
“Why?” asked the boy quickly. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Nor me,” answered the captain, freshly charging his pipe. “I’ve heard
it’s a place colored men never go back to a second time and that white
men never go to even once.”
Andy dropped the map, and Captain Anderson walked over and picked it
up. He pointed to a nameless speck on the southern edge of the Bahama
Banks.
“It’s about here,” he indicated. “They told me over on Andros Island,
when I put in there two years ago, that if you want to see real African
savagery, you don’t need to cross the ocean――just go to Timbado.”
Andy’s eyes dilated.
“At other places there are white men, Englishmen and Americans, growin’
fruit and spongin’ and fishin’, but on Timbado, there’s nothin’ doin’.”
“What do you mean?” interrupted the boy.
“Well,” went on the captain, “they _say_, mind you I just say they
_say_, that there is a village o’ blacks over there bossed by an
old African who thinks he’s a king, King Cajou. And,” laughed the
captain, “they _say_ that old Cajou ain’t ever been cured o’ eatin’ his
enemies――and sometimes those who ain’t.”