THE ALARM
Unaware of the possible tragedy that was being developed within a few
hundred yards of them, Tyke and Captain Hamilton had kept on digging in
the excavation. For Tyke had refused to be kept out of the work of
recovering the treasure, and when Drew had strolled off with the
intention of discovering what had frightened Ruth and had been followed
shortly after by the latter, the old man had seized Drew's abandoned
shovel and had gone lustily to work.
"Too much of a strain on that game leg of yours to be heaving up those
shovelfuls," the captain protested.
"Nary a bit of it," answered Tyke. "I ain't ready to be put on the
shelf yet, not by a blamed sight, and I guess if it came to a showdown,
Rufe, my muscles are as good as yours."
"You're a tough old knot all right," admitted Captain Hamilton, his
eyes twinkling. "But there's no sense in your doing Allen's work.
Where in thunder has the boy gone anyway?"
"Oh, he'll turn up in a minute or two," returned Tyke. "Wherever he is
you can bet your boots he's doing something connected with this here
work of treasure seeking. It simply ain't in that boy to lay down on
any job."
"Drew makes a hit with you all right," laughed the captain.
"And why shouldn't he?" asked Tyke belligerently. "He's been with me
for some years now, and I've had plenty of chances of sizin' him up.
If there was a yellow streak in him, I'd have found it out long ago.
If I'd had a son of my own, I wouldn't have asked for him to be any
better fellow than Allen is, and nobody could say any more'n that.
He's got grit an' brains an' gumption, an' more'n that he's as straight
as a string."
"Go ahead," laughed the captain, as Tyke paused for want of breath.
"Don't let me stop you."
"I don't mind tellin' you, Rufe, what I've never told yet to any human
soul," continued Tyke, waxing confidential, "an' that is that when I
lay up in my last harbor, Allen is goin' to come into everything I've
got. He don't know it himself yet, but I've got it down shipshape in
black and white an' the paper's in my office safe."
"He's a lucky fellow," commented the captain briefly.
"An' let me tell you another thing, Rufe," said Tyke, "an' that is that
Allen would make not only a good son, but a mighty good son-in-law."
He nudged the captain in the ribs as he spoke, with the familiarity of
old comradeship.
"Lay off on that, Tyke," said the captain, flushing a little beneath
his bronze.
"You don't mean to say that you haven't seen the way the wind was
blowin'?" rejoined Tyke incredulously. "Why, any one with a pair of
good eyes in his head can't help but see that those two are just made
for each other."
"I'm not blind, of course," returned the captain, who now that the ice
was broken seemed not averse to talking the matter over with his old
comrade. "I know of course that I can't keep Ruth forever and that
some time some fellow will lay me aboard and carry her off right from
under my guns. And I'm not denying that up to a few days ago, I'd
rather it would have been young Drew than any one else. But now--"
here he paused.
"Well, but now," repeated Tyke.
"You know just as well as I do what I'm meaning," blurted out Captain
Hamilton. "This matter of Parmalee's death has got to be cleared up
before I'd even consider him in connection with Ruth. You can't blame
me for that, Tyke."
The old man's face clouded.
"I ain't exactly blaming you, Rufe," he conceded, for despite his
ardent partisanship of Allen, he could realize how Captain Hamilton as
a parent must feel; "but I'm mortal sure that thing will be cleared up
before long. You know just as well as I do that Allen didn't kill
Parmalee any more than you or I did."
"That's what I want to believe," returned the captain. "I mean," he
corrected, as he saw the choleric flash in Tyke's eyes, "that's what I
do believe."
"It's that scoundrel, Ditty, that did it himself," growled Tyke
savagely. "He cooked up the whole thing and then shoved it off on
Allen. You've seen enough of him since then to know that he's capable
of anything."
"Yes," admitted the captain, "he's a dirty dog. But don't you see,
Tyke, that even allowing that Allen is innocent, he's been _charged_
with doing it. And to lots of people, that's just about the same as
though he were actually guilty. Then, too, the matter will have to be
tried out in the courts. Allen will have to stand trial and even if he
gets off, as I hope he will, there'll be a cloud on his name as long as
he lives. How could I let Ruth marry a man who had been charged with
murder and who got off because there wasn't evidence enough to convict?"
"Mebbe Ruth would be willing to take the chance," persisted Tyke
stubbornly.
"Maybe she would," agreed the captain, "but she'd never do it with my
consent. She's too good and sweet and pretty a girl to link her life
with a man whose name was smirched. I wouldn't stand for it for a
minute."
Tyke was framing a reply when suddenly the earthquake which wrought
such dire results to the two of whom they were speaking shook the
ground. The two men were thrown against each other and both went in a
heap to the bottom of the ditch. The breath was knocked out of their
bodies, and every thought was driven from their minds except the
instinctive desire to remain alive until nature's onslaught had ceased.
When the worst was over, they scrambled to their feet, brushed the dirt
from their clothes and faces, and stared grimly at each other.
"If it didn't seem too conceited to think that all this fuss was being
made on our account," growled the captain, as he picked up his spade.
"I'd surely make up my mind that something was trying to shoo us away
from this treasure hunting."
"Yes," agreed Tyke. "Now, if I was superstitious--"
"I wonder," broke in the captain with sudden alarm, as he thought of
the two errant members of the party, "where Ruth and Allen were when
this quake happened."
"The only safe thing is to say that they were together somewhere," said
Tyke. "I notice that they're never far apart. Don't you worry, Rufe.
Allen will take good care of her."
But the captain was already climbing out of the excavation. He gave
Tyke a hand and helped him up.
"Where did you last see them, Tyke?" Hamilton asked, as his eyes
scanned the surrounding landscape without catching a glimpse of the
figures he sought.
"The last I saw of Allen he was going down toward them trees," replied
Tyke, indicating a corner of the jungle, "an' a little later, out o'
the corner of my eye, I saw Ruth going in the same direction. Now,
don't fret, Rufe. They'll turn up as right as a trivet in another
minute or two."
"The jungle!" gasped the captain in alarm. "Don't you see, Tyke, that
some of those trees have been shaken down. Maybe they've been caught
under one of them. Hurry! hurry!"
He set off, running hurriedly, and Tyke hastened after him as fast as
he could.
They were soon at the jungle's edge. Several giant trees had fallen
victims to the earthquake's wrath, but a frantic searching among their
trunks revealed no traces of the missing ones.
The captain wiped his brow and gave a great sigh of relief.
"So far, so good!" he exclaimed. "They've escaped that danger anyway.
I had a fearful scare. I don't mind admitting that my heart was in my
mouth for a minute."
"Same here," assented Tyke, who despite his faith in Drew's
resourcefulness had secretly shared the captain's alarm. "But if
they're not here, where in Sam Hill can they be?"
They raised their voices in a shout, but no answering sound came back.
Several times they repeated the call, but all to no purpose.
"Strange," muttered the captain uneasily. "It isn't like Ruth to go
off to any distance without telling me about it beforehand."
"Nor Allen neither," put in Tyke loyally.
"You might almost think the earth had swallowed them up," pursued the
captain, little thinking how near he was to guessing the truth.
"Well, the only thing to do is to keep looking for 'em until we find
'em," said Tyke. "You take that side of the hill, Rufe, and I'll take
the other. We'll come across them probably before we meet up with each
other."
The two men separated on their quest, calling out at frequent
intervals. It did not take them long to skirt the base of the whale's
hump, but when at last they met each saw only disappointment and a
growing alarm in the eyes of the other.
"We'll have to try it again and make a wider circle," exclaimed
Hamilton desperately. "We've simply got to come across them somewhere
around here."
"Of course we shall," said Tyke heartily, though the crease in his
forehead belied the confidence of his words.
Once more they made the round of the hump, this time ranging out much
further from the base. Still their efforts were fruitless, and when
they met once more, neither tried to disguise from the other the
growing panic in his heart.
"Ruth, Ruth!" groaned the captain.
"Come now, Rufe, brace up," comforted Tyke. "While there's life
there's hope."
"That's just it," replied the captain. "But how do we know there is
life? Something serious must have happened to them, or they'd never
stay away like this. They'd know we'd be worried about them after that
shock came and they couldn't have come back to us quick enough, if
they'd been able to come."
Tyke could not deny the force of this.
"Well now, Rufe, let's get down to the bottom of this," he said. "I'm
afraid just as you be that they're in trouble of some kind. Now what
could make trouble for them on this island? There ain't any wild
beasts of any account here, do you think?"
"Not that I ever heard of," replied the captain. "We're too far south
for mountain lions and too far north for jaguars. There may be an
occasional wildcat, but it wouldn't be likely to attack a single person
let alone two together. There may be snakes here though for all I
know."
"Nothing doing there," said Tyke decisively. "Mebbe there's boas, but
if so there're a mild and harmless kind, such as those they make
household pets of in some places to keep away the rats. And if there
are any poisonous snakes, it's against all likehood that both Ruth and
Allen would be bitten. One of them would come scurrying to us at once
for help for the other.
"Besides," he went on, "I know that Allen had his revolver along with
him and he's a sure shot. No, I don't think we have to worry about
animals or snakes."
"What is there left then?" groaned the captain.
"There's two things left," replied Tyke reflectively. "One of 'em is
old nature herself. What she can do is a plenty, as we've seen since
we come to this island----."
"This infernal island," broke in the captain viciously. "I wish to
heaven we'd never seen it. I wish some one of these earthquakes had
sent it to the bottom of the sea."
"I don't blame you much," assented Tyke. "But being here, we've got to
take things as they come. Now, as I was saying, old nature may have
taken a hand in causing trouble for the two young folks. But for the
life of me I don't see how. We've already seen that they weren't
caught under those falling trees. And there didn't any lava flow come
with that last quake. And that being so I can't see where nature's got
into the game.
"Now," he continued, "there's just one thing left--and that's men!
There may be some natives on this island that feel sore at our butting
in on 'em and they may have come across them youngsters and captured
'em."
"I don't think that's at all likely," rejoined the captain. "There'd
certainly have been some sign of them, some boat, some hut or something
else of the kind. But we haven't seen hide or hair of anything since
we landed. The boat's crew, too, have been roaming over the island and
they'd have reported to us anything they'd seen that looked as though
people lived in this God-forsaken spot."
"Yes," assented Tyke. "And it stands to reason that Allen with his
automatic would have put up a fight and we'd have heard the sound of
shots. But there are other men besides natives on the island."
"What do you mean?" asked the captain in surprise.
"I mean Ditty and his gang of water rats," replied Tyke.
"You don't think that skunk would dare--" spluttered the captain.
"I think that one-eyed rascal would dare almost anything," answered
Tyke. "And it struck me as barely possible that he might have come
sneaking around to see what we were doing and perhaps run across Allen
and Ruth. There's bad blood there, as you know, and it wouldn't take
much to bring about a scrap.
"Not that I think that has happened," he went on, "because it isn't
likely that Ditty's plans are far enough forward yet for him to show
his hand. Still I may be wrong. I tell you what I think you'd better
do. You can git around faster than I can with this old game leg of
mine. Suppose you run back to the shore and see if Ditty is hanging
around there. If he is and everything seems shipshape we can leave him
out of our calculations. Then we'll have to figure out what we're to
do next."
It was grasping at straws, but in their utter ignorance of the real
facts they had nothing but straws to grasp at. The captain set off
hurriedly, while Tyke went once more around the mountain base in the
forlorn hope that this time something tangible would come to reward his
efforts.
Once he thought he heard something that sounded like shots and he
stopped short in his tracks. His old eyes, keen yet, despite his
years, looked eagerly around. But as far as his eyes could reach there
was nothing to be seen, and he came to the conclusion that he must have
imagined the sounds or that they were caused by some rumbling of the
earth.
In a surprisingly short time, the captain was back, panting and winded
by his exertions.
"Well," asked Tyke eagerly, "did you find out anything?"
"The men were all huddled down on the shore evidently scared out of
their wits. I guess we can cross them off our slate. But how about
you? Did you find any clue?"
"Nary a thing," answered Tyke dejectedly. "I thought at one time that
I heard shots, but when I come to look it up there was nothing in it."
"We must find them!" cried the captain excitedly, pacing back and forth
like a wild animal and digging his nails into his palms as he clenched
his fists in anguish. "We'll go over every foot of this island. I'll
get out every man on the ship and set him to work searching."
"I wouldn't do that--at least not yit," adjured Tyke, laying his hand
on the captain's arm. "Of course we may have to do that as a last
resort. But you know what sailors are, an' we don't want to have 'em
cracking their jokes 'bout Allen an' Ruth going off together. Wait a
bit. The day's young yet an' they may turn up any time of their own
accord. In the meantime, we'll explore places that we haven't tried
before an' mebbe we'll run across 'em. If everything else fails, then
we'll turn out every man jack of the crew and go over every inch of the
island."
To the agonized father, everything that savored of delay seemed
intolerable, but he yielded to the wisdom of Tyke's suggestion and once
more they started out in their desperate search.