remained in darkness except that the boys could still locate the dark
lantern by the dim halo of light that surrounded it.
For half an hour or more there were no further developments. The man
with the game leg seemed to be sitting still, waiting for time to pass
or for something to happen. At last he opened the lamp again, sending
its flash down the inlet as before. Then he showed his gleam straight
out upon the water.
This time the boys in the tree tops saw a brief answering gleam from
the open water half a mile or more from shore.
It was safe for the boys to speak now, and Tom thought it best for all
of them to come down out of the trees before the man with the game
leg, who had started slowly back toward the camp, should reach their
neighborhood.
“Come down off your roosts, fellows,” he directed, “and secrete
yourselves well in the bushes. The ‘others’ are coming to-night, sure
enough. Be careful to hide yourselves so that a flash from that dark
lantern won’t search you out. By the way, after they come and we see
all we can, we must get out of here. I can’t speak then, but notice
when you see me moving away, and follow my example. Now, no more
talking, even in a whisper.”
The man with the game leg did not return immediately, as Tom had
expected. Instead, he made his way up the bank of the cove and around
its bend, to a point only two or three hundred yards away. Obviously
that was to be the landing place, hidden as it was by the bend and the
dense forest growth from all possible observation on the part of boats
in the sound outside. The man with the game leg had gone to the mouth
of the cove only to send his signals to his companions outside. Now
that they had been seen and answered, he had gone to the landing-place,
there to await their coming.
Fortunately for the purposes of the boys, the landing was in full view
from their hiding place, and after the man with the game leg had gone
thither they had only that one point to watch while they waited.
The wait was a long one, and perhaps it seemed longer because a
drizzling rain had set in, soaking them to the skin. After a long time,
however, the man with the game leg turned his dark lantern and flashed
it once down the cove.
By its light the watchers made out three large boats slowly moving up
the cove, apparently with carefully muffled oars, as their strokes
could not be heard even at the short distance that now separated them
from their destination. As they approached the landing with obvious
care, there were frequent flashes from the dark lanterns that all of
them seemed to be carrying, and by these flashes Tom and his companions
saw that the boats were piled high with freight of some kind, so
bestowed as to occupy every inch of space except what was necessary for
the use of the men at the oars. Of these there were only two in each
boat, each plying a single oar, while a third, perched upon a freight
pile at the stern, was steering. Thus there were nine men in the three
boats, who, with the man on shore, constituted a rather formidable
company for four boys to face if they should decide to attack the
_Hunkydory’s_ camp, as the man with the game leg had threatened.
Whence the boats had come, Tom could not in any wise guess, and of
course he could not discuss the matter with his comrades while hiding
there in the bushes under a life-and-death necessity of keeping
perfectly silent. Two things he was sure of: the boats could not have
come very far, with only two oarsmen to each of them, and they could
not have traversed any but smooth waters, with their freight piled high
above their gunwales, as it was.
As soon as the boats were landed, the men began unloading them and
carrying their freight to the camp, which was evidently to be its
hiding place for a time at least. In the main it seemed to consist of
light boxes or packages, many of them bound together into single large
bundles which one man could carry. There were also some kegs, which
seemed pretty heavy, as the men carried them on their shoulders. But
it was difficult to make out anything more definite than this, as the
darkness was dispelled infrequently by flashes from a dark lantern, and
then only for a fraction of a second at a time.
When the greater part of the freight had been brought to the camp the
man who seemed to be in authority over the rest set some of them to
work bestowing it in the hovels, of which there appeared to be several,
each securely hidden in the thick undergrowth so that a person casually
passing that way would never have suspected their existence. Even
while this work was in progress the man in charge permitted as little
show of light as possible. When all was done a hamper of provisions was
brought from one of the boats, together with a demijohn, and the whole
crew assembled around the midnight spread, eating and drinking in the
dark, except when now and then it became necessary to permit a little
show of light for a moment.
At first they feasted in silence, too, but after awhile the liquor they
were drinking seemed to go to their heads and they quarreled among
themselves a good deal. Some of them wandered about now and then as if
searching the bushes jealously.
It was clearly time for the boys to leave the place and they watched
and listened for Tom’s beginning of the retreat. At last they heard
him moving and, assuming that he had begun the withdrawal, they all
cautiously crept away to the rear. As each was following a separate
trail there was no word spoken among them until Larry, Dick and Cal
came out of the bushes and joined each other at the gum tree.
“But where is Tom?” one of them asked.
Nobody knew. Nobody had seen or known anything about him since his
first stirring of the bushes had set the retreat in motion. They had
all heard a commotion in what they called “the scoundrels’ camp,” with
sounds as of angry quarreling and fighting; but they had heard nothing
of Tom.
The boys were in consternation.
“Do you suppose those scoundrels can have caught him?” asked Dick, with
horror in his tones.
“I don’t know,” Larry answered through his set teeth. “But there’s only
one thing to do.”
“Only one thing,” answered Dick. “We must go to his assistance, and if
they have him prisoner we must rescue him or all die trying. I for one
will never come back alive unless we bring him with us.”
“That’s of course,” said Cal, who for once spoke crisply, wasting no
words. “Wait a second, Larry! How many cartridges have you—each of
you?”
When they answered, Cal said:
“Here, take six more apiece. You may need ’em.”
As he spoke he took the extra cartridges from his pockets and hurriedly
distributed them. It was Cal’s rule in hunting never to be without
abundant ammunition.
“Now then, Larry,” he said, when the others had pocketed the
cartridges, “give your orders; you’re the captain.”
“All right! Come on at a run, but don’t trip and fall. There’s no time
to lose.”
Down the trail they went, not at a run, for running was impossible in
such a tangle of vines and bushes, but at as fast a trot as they could
manage. Suddenly there was a collision. Larry had met Tom “head on,”
as he afterwards said. Tom was making his way as fast as he could to
the gum tree, knowing that his friends would be in terror when they
missed him, while they were hurrying to his rescue. In the darkness and
the heavy downpour of rain he and Larry had failed to see or hear each
other till they came into actual collision.
“Where on earth have you been, Tom?”
“Why did you fellows retreat before the time?”
These were questions instantly exchanged.
“Why, you gave the signal, Tom. You began moving off and we followed as
agreed.”
“I understand now,” Tom answered, resuming the journey, “but it was
a mistake of signal. Come on out of here. Let’s go to camp and talk
it all over there. I’ve found out all about this thing and it’s
interesting.”
“What does it mean? Tell us!”
“Not here in the downpour. We’ll go to camp first and get under the
shelter and put on some dry clothes. My teeth are chattering and I
don’t care to imitate them. Come on!”
XII
TOM’S DARING VENTURE
TOM’S teeth were indeed chattering when the company reached their camp.
He was chilled “clear through,” he said, and his companions were very
uneasy. They feared, and not without reason, that he had contracted
a swamp fever, which always begins with a chill. To avoid that, the
Rutledge boys, who knew the coast and its dangers, had carefully kept
on or very near the salt water, and had chosen for their camp a spot
where there were no live oaks, no gray moss and no black sand. Still
Tom might have caught a fever.
Cal piled wood on the fire with a lavish hand, so that an abundance of
heat might be reflected into their dry bush shelter, the open side of
which faced the fire, and Dick busied himself searching out dry clothes
from the lockers, while Larry helped Tom to strip himself as speedily
as possible.
“Now run and jump into the creek,” he directed, as soon as the last of
Tom’s clothes were off. “The salt water is luke-warm or even warmer
than that. I’ll wring out your clothes while your bath is warming you,
and when you come out we’ll give you a rub down that would stimulate
circulation in a bronze statue. Hurry into the water, and don’t hurry
out too soon.”
By the time Tom had been rubbed down and had got into dry clothes, he
declared himself to be “as warm as a toast, as hungry as a schoolgirl,
and ready to stand a rigid examination as to the character and purposes
of our scoundrel friends down there.”
“Good!” exclaimed Larry. “That’s proof positive that you haven’t caught
the fever. I was afraid you might.”
“Fever? Why, I was as cold as the Arctic circle—but then perhaps you
keep your fevers on ice down here and serve ’em cold. You have so many
queer ways that nothing surprises me.”
Larry explained, and Tom laughed at him for his pains, for of course
Tom knew what he had meant.
It was well past midnight, and the others shared Tom’s hunger in full
measure, so they were not greatly disappointed when, in response to
their eager demands for the story he had to tell, he answered:
“I’ll tell you all about it when we get something to eat. Till then my
loquacity will closely resemble that of a clam.”
One of the party had killed some fat black squirrels during the
preceding day, and as these were already “dressed for the banquet,”
in Dick’s phrase, they were spread upon a mass of coals, and within a
brief while the meal—supper or breakfast, or post-midnight luncheon,
or whatever else it might be called—was ready to receive their
attention.
“Now, Tom, tell us!” demanded Larry, when their hunger was partially
appeased.
“Wait a minute,” interposed Dick. “Isn’t this rather risky?”
“What?”
“Why, sitting here on our haunches, rejoicing in the genial warmth
of the fire—over-genial, I should call it, as it’s blistering my
knees—and having no sentry out to see that the scoundrels don’t pounce
down on us by surprise.”
“There’s no more risk in it,” answered Tom, confidently, “than in
wearing socks, or playing dominoes, or trying to trace out the features
of the man in the moon.”
“But why not, Tom?”
“Because the scoundrels down there are all dead—dead drunk, I
mean—and they have all they can do just now in sleeping it off.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, entirely sure. You saw how they were drinking—half a pint of
rum at a dose, repeated every five minutes. Well, they kept that up
as long as they could find the way to their mouths. They had emptied
the demijohn before you fellows left, and not being satisfied, they
got out a keg of the fiery stuff, had a rough and tumble fight over
some question relating to it, beat each others’ faces into something
very much like Hamburger steaks, and then decided to let the keg
arbitrate the dispute. Four or five of them had been arbitrated into
a comatose state before I left, another was trying to sing something
about ‘Melinda,’ setting forth that he had ‘seen her at the windah,’
and was prepared to give his hat and boots if he could ‘only have been
dah.’ The rest were drunkenly silent as they sat there by an open dark
lantern which they had forgotten to close, I suppose, and drinking rum
from tin cups whenever they could remember to do so. They will give
nobody any trouble to-night.”
“But, Tom,” interposed Dick, “how do you know it was rum they were
drinking?”
“Now, see here,” said Tom, “I’d like to know who’s telling this story.
If I’m the one the rest of you had better let me tell it in my own way.
I was going to begin at the beginning and tell it straight through, but
your intrusive questions have switched me off the track. Now listen,
and I’ll tell you all I know and how I know it, and what I think of it,
and what I think you think of it, and all the rest of it.”
“Go ahead, Tom!” said Cal; “I’ll keep the peace for you; you’ll bear me
witness that I haven’t spoken a word since you began. Go on!”
“All right,” said Tom. “I thought you were about to give us a
disquisition when you began to say that, but you didn’t, so I’ll
forgive you. Well, you see when you fellows heard me moving out
there in the thicket and thought I was instituting a retreat, I was
only changing my base, as the military men say. I had seen something
that aroused my curiosity, and my curiosity is like a baby after
midnight—if you once rouse it, you simply can’t coax it to go to sleep
again.”
“What was it you had seen, Tom?” Larry began.
“Silence!” commanded Cal. “Tom has the floor.”
“Oh, I beg pardon—” Larry began apologetically.
“No, don’t do even that. Go on, Tom.”
“I will as soon as you two twin brothers cease your quarreling. As
I was saying, I had seen something that aroused my curiosity. As I
was peering through the bushes, looking toward the main body of the
roisterers, I saw the limping one slip away from the general company
and sneak off. He went very cautiously through the undergrowth to the
hovel nearest me and entered it, closing the door after him. I could
see a little pencil of light streaming out through a crack, so I knew
he had opened his lamp in there. After a little fumbling he came out
again, but he was so drunk he forgot to take his lamp with him, as I
discovered by the continued streaming out of that little pencil of
light.
“That was what aroused my curiosity. I wanted to know what was in that
hovel, and as the lame gentleman with the ‘load’ on had obligingly
left his lamp there for my accommodation, I resolved to embrace the
opportunity offered. I moved cautiously upon the enemy’s works. That
is to say, I crept forward toward the hovel. That’s what you fellows
mistook for the signal to retreat.
“Now I am convinced that our temporary neighbors, the scoundrels,
are disposed to be in all ways obliging. At any rate they had
considerately placed the door of the hovel so that it fronted my side
of the structure and not theirs. Thus, when I opened the door the light
from the burning lamp did not shine toward them and thus give the alarm.
“I entered the place and rather minutely examined its contents.”
“What was in there?” asked Cal, forgetting in his eagerness that he had
himself undertaken to prevent the interruption of Tom’s narrative by
questions from any source.
“I’ll tell you about that when I come to it. Story first, Cal.
“I had just finished my inspection when I heard footsteps of rather
uncertain purpose passing round the hovel toward the door, which of
course I had closed behind me. As there is only one door to that
hovel and it has no windows by which ‘lovers might enter or burglars
elope’—that’s wrong end first but it’s no matter—I realized that
there was no time to lose. I hurriedly settled down behind a pile of
cigar boxes—”
“Their plunder is cigars, then?” asked Dick, forgetting.
“I did not say so,” Tom answered teasingly. “I made no mention of
cigars, so far as I can remember. I spoke only of cigar boxes. They
might be filled with anything, you know. At any rate your interruption
has spoiled the most thrilling part of my narrative, which must now be
continued prosaically and without the dramatic fire and fervor I had
planned to put into it.
“My concealment was hasty and at best very imperfect. In my haste
I forgot to conceal my gun, which stuck up a foot or two above the
barrier of boxes that imperfectly hid my person. Fortunately, however,
the lame gentleman was too blind drunk even to see double and, as he
made no mention of the matter, I refrained from alluding to it.
“Apparently he had entered the hovel with a single purpose, namely, to
close his lantern and take it away. With what I cannot help regarding
as praiseworthy persistence, he carried out that purpose, giving heed
to nothing else. He omitted even to close the door after him, and as
the place was without heating apparatus of any kind—except rum for
internal combustion—I took my leave as soon as I felt confident that
the lame gentleman had either rejoined his comrades or had fallen
into dreamless slumber on his way to do so. My next adventure was the
head-on collision with Larry in the trail.”
[Illustration: “IN MY HASTE I FORGOT TO CONCEAL MY GUN.”
_Page 126._]
Tom paused, took another bite at the squirrel’s leg he had been eating
between sentences, and it seemed necessary to set him going again by
means of questions.
“Why don’t you go on, Tom? You haven’t told us yet what you found in
the hut.”
“I’m thirsty,” answered the boy. “Speaking is dry work, as you know, if
you ever read Hawthorn’s ‘A Rill from the Town Pump!’ Have we enough
water in the spring, Cal, for me to waste it in slaking my thirst?”
“We’ve caught all our things full, I reckon. I’ll see.”
When Cal returned he brought with him a small supply of rain water.
“What made you so long about it, Cal?” asked Larry. “We’re all waiting
for you.”
“So I see,” answered Cal. “I make all required apologies for having
kept this distinguished company waiting while I attended to some
matters that are even more vitally interesting to all of us than is
Tom’s promised inventory of the things discovered by him in the tents
of the wicked, if I may so designate a slab hovel in a cane brake.”
“What have you been doing, Cal? And why didn’t you call the rest of
us to help you?” asked Dick, whose New England conscience was apt to
scourge his spirit if he thought he had been doing less than his share
of whatever there was to do.
“I’ll reply to your questions in inverse order,” Cal replied. “I did
not call for help because I did not need help. In what I had to do one
person was as good as a dozen. I may have been a trifle slow about
it, but that is chiefly because water won’t run through a hole faster
than nature intended it to do. As for your other question, I’ve been
engaged in a job of water-supply engineering. All the receptacles I
set to catch water were nearly full, and as it still rains—a fact
that you may have observed for yourselves—I thought it best to empty
their contents into the water kegs and set them to catch more. As
nobody thought to bring a funnel along, I have had to resort to simpler
methods, and I have found that it is by no means easy to pour water
from a four-gallon bait pail into a one-inch bung hole without spilling
it. For the rest, Captain Larry, I beg to report that one of our water
kegs is now full and the other perhaps one-third full. I hope to catch
enough more water before the rain ceases to finish filling that keg and
to serve all camp purposes during the few hours that we shall probably
remain here.”
“Why, I should think we might stay as long as we like, now,” said Tom;
“this rain must have filled up our spring.”
“It has, and it has spoiled it for use for many days to come.”
“But how?” persisted Tom.
“Let me remind you, Tom, that we are all eagerly waiting for you to
tell us some things that are distinctly more interesting to us than
the condition and prospects of a swamp spring can be when we’ve enough
water for our present and immediate future need. Go on with your story.”
“Oh, the story is finished,” Tom replied, “but you want to hear about
the contents of the hovel. They consist in part of little kegs—three
or five gallon kegs, I should think—of Santa Cruz Rum. At least that’s
what I made out the letters branded on them to mean. These kegs are
lying on the ground in rows that impressed me as far more orderly than
the scoundrels themselves ever think of being. I should say there are
fifteen or twenty of the kegs in that hovel.
“The rest of the stuff consists of cigars in boxes, and the boxes are
carefully tied together in parcels—thirty boxes to the parcel. That’s
the way we all saw them carry them up from their boats.”
“Where on earth can they have got all that rum and all those cigars,
anyhow? And what do they bring them away down here in the woods for, I
wonder?” speculated Dick. “What’s your guess, Tom?”
“Pirates,” answered Tom; “and those things are their plunder.”
“Curious sort of pirates,” said Cal, scoffingly. “Unlike any pirates
I ever heard of. Why, Tom, did you ever hear of pirates contenting
themselves with taking the rum and cigars they found on the ships they
overhauled? You’ve got to guess two or three times more if you’re going
to guess right.”
“Well, what do you think they are?” asked Tom, a trifle disappointed to
find his theory bowled over so easily.
“Smugglers,” answered Cal. “And I don’t just think it either—I know.”
“But, Cal,” interrupted Larry, “smugglers must bring their goods from
foreign ports, and we all know enough about boats to know that those
flat-bottomed tubs of theirs wouldn’t live five minutes in a little
blow on blue water.”
“No, nor five seconds either, and those precious rascals know all that
quite as well as we do. For that reason, among others, they refrain
from risking their valuable lives by venturing upon blue water.”
“Then how do they carry on their traffic?”
“I have often remonstrated with you, Larry, for your neglect to read
the newspapers. But for that you might have been as well informed on
this and other subjects as I am. About a month ago I read in a New York
newspaper that fell in my way a somewhat detailed account of the way in
which certain kinds of smuggling is carried on along the Atlantic and
Gulf coasts wherever the conditions are favorable, and the conditions
are nowhere so favorable as right here on this South Carolina coast,
where deep, but often very narrow and crooked, inlets and creeks open
from the broader waters of the sounds directly into densely wooded
regions that are often wholly unpeopled for many miles in every
direction.
“This is the way they do it: Schooners and other small sea-going craft
load at West Indian ports and take out clearance papers for New York or
Halifax or some other big port which can be best reached by skirting
this coast. Under pretense of stress of weather, or shortness of water
or provisions, they put into some harbor of refuge like that sound out
there. They make no effort to land anything, and if questioned by the
revenue officers they can show perfectly regular papers. Then when
opportunity offers, their shore gangs—like the one over there—slip
out in the darkness, take on full loads of freight, and land it in some
secluded spot like the one down there, and the schooner sails away to
her destination.”
“But how do they get their goods from the woods to market?” Tom asked.
“By wagons, I suppose, and a little at a time. That doesn’t concern us
very deeply. What does concern us, is that we’ve got to get away from
here as soon as this rain stops. The clouds seem to be breaking, by the
way, and the wind has shifted to the northwest,” said Cal, stepping
out of the shelter to observe the weather. “It will clear pretty early
in the morning, I think, and in the meantime I for one want to get a
little sleep.”
“But what’s the hurry, Cal?” asked Tom. “Why can’t we stay here a day
or two longer? I’d like to see what the smugglers do when they come to.”
“There are several reasons for getting away at once,” answered Cal.
“For one thing, we’re running short of some necessary supplies and must
go to Beaufort to replenish our stores. Then there’s the question of
water supply. After I finish filling the kegs we’ll have barely enough
left to get through the day on.”
“But how has the rain put the spring out of commission, Cal?” asked
Tom. “You promised to explain that.”
“By filling it full of surface water. It will be a week or more before
the water there is fit to drink, at least as a steady diet.”
“There’s a much better reason than that,” said Larry.
“What is it?”