IN DEADLY DANGER
It took the boys a moment or two to catch the full significance of this
simple question and answer. Phil never boasted of his exploits. He never
spoke of them unless directly questioned.
But suddenly they realized just what his simple answer meant. He had
swum safely through fifty yards of shark-infested water! Impossible. It
couldn’t be done.
“Listen Phil,” cried Steve, eagerly, “Don’t kid us, old boy. You
couldn’t pull off a stunt like that and live to tell the tale. It just
isn’t being done.”
“The sharks were dead ones,” suggested Tom, skeptically.
“I wish they had been,” Phil returned. “I’d have been saved a lot of
bother. Tying myself up in that slimy wet seaweed wasn’t exactly my idea
of fun.”
“Seaweed,” repeated Tom while the boys looked more and more mystified.
“What do you mean—seaweed?”
Then Phil quickly sketched for them that nightmare journey across the
shark-infested lagoon. They drank in his words eagerly, living over with
him every moment of that hideous experience.
When he had finished they stared at him with eyes in which there was
admiration and a new respect. Bimbo, who, all during the recital, had
been edging nearer his idol, now crouched beside him, looking up into
Phil’s face adoringly, even while he shook with fright.
“Seaweed,” muttered Jack Benton. “Now who, but you, would have thought
of that, Phil? It’s a clever idea, all right.”
“It was a lucky one,” said Phil. “It sure had those maneaters guessing,
all right. But now,” he added, going back to the danger which menaced
them in the shape of Ramirez and his men, “we’ve got to get busy and
hide the treasure. From what I saw last night, that gang of his won’t be
held off much longer. For all I know they may attack this morning.”
“At any rate, we’ll have to be prepared for them,” agreed Jack Benton,
rising as he spoke. “As you say, the first thing is to dispose of the
treasure.”
So in the ghostly first light of the early dawn, the boys filed out of
the cave armed with pickaxe and shovel, determined to put the boxes with
their precious contents safely out of harm’s way.
As Tom had said, it was hard for them to realize that Phil’s strange
story was actual fact. They had gone to sleep the night before so secure
in their possession of the treasure. It seemed impossible that now not
only it, but their own lives, as well, were menaced.
But Phil, who had discovered the danger and had no doubts whatever as to
the reality of it, worked like a beaver, driving them on mercilessly
whenever they stopped to take breath.
“We can rest all we want to, afterward,” he reminded them when they
protested. “But now our job is to get these chests out of sight and be
mighty quick about it. Hi there, Steve, heave to, my lad. You’re wasting
time!”
They had chosen a spot for the burying of the chests quite a distance
from the cave but not so far but what they could “keep an eye” upon the
place.
When they had finished and pounded the disturbed earth down hard over
the great hole that contained such riches they scattered stones and
twigs over it with apparent carelessness so that when the task was
completed to their satisfaction, there was nothing to distinguish the
spot from the surrounding scenery.
“There,” said Phil, drawing a great breath of relief. “Now I guess we
can take time for some breakfast. I’m about famished.”
As the boys found themselves in the same sad fix they returned to the
cave, relieved Bimbo of guard duty—a revolver had been thrust into the
darky’s hands but it is doubtful if he would have had the courage to use
it in case of necessity—and commanded him to “rustle some grub.”
This Bimbo did willingly, glad to escape to the comparative safety of
the cave’s interior.
“Poor Bimbo,” observed Dick, as he examined his revolver to make sure it
was ready for action. “Something tells me he isn’t enjoying himself the
way he should.”
Steve grinned, but the grin quickly changed to a more serious
expression.
“Say, Phil,” he said, uneasily, “Don’t you think we’d better scout about
a bit and find out if there’s anybody spying on us? All the time we were
burying the treasure I felt as though someone were looking on.”
Phil shook his head.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Then you don’t think they’ll attack right away?” put in Dick quickly.
Again Phil shook his head.
“I think Ramirez has them pretty well under his thumb,” he said. “They
won’t dare to carry mutiny very far. And as for Ramirez himself, he’s a
pretty cautious rascal—and a greedy one too. He must have spent a good
deal of his time around these diggings. At the moment we brought in the
treasure he was hiding somewhere nearby. Later he came so close to the
cave that he listened in on our conversation.”
The boys looked startled and glanced about them uneasily. The sun had
risen flamingly giving promise of another fine day, but even its bright
rays did not do much to lessen the uncomfortable feeling that someone
was lurking near, spying upon them.
“The rat!” muttered Dick under his breath. “How much did he hear, Phil?”
“Enough,” Phil answered earnestly, “to make him sure that we had not
only found the treasure but that there was still more to come. That’s
his chief reason for not wiping us off the map at once.”
“Wants us to do the work, eh?” said Jack Benton. “And then when we’ve
recovered all the treasure for him—which feat he couldn’t hope to
accomplish for himself, not having the necessary equipment—he’ll get
rid of us and triumphantly carry off the treasure?”
Phil smiled grimly.
“Almost his very words,” he said.
“Well,” Steve fingered his trusty revolver, resolutely, “I have an idea
he won’t find it quite as easy as he thinks for. We’ll give him a good
fight for his money anyway.”
“For our money, you mean,” corrected Tom with a grin.
“I was a fool to think we had seen the last of that scoundrel, Ramirez,”
said Jack Benton, moodily. “The smell of gold to that kind of scum is
like raw meat to a pack of wolves. Of course it was he that shadowed us
in San Domingo. On the strength of his story of treasure, it would have
been the easiest thing in the world to gather about him a band of
desperate men, ready for any illegitimate adventure. They have chartered
some sort of ship and followed us here. Simplest thing in the world.”
“You bet,” agreed Phil. “And now they think they have everything their
own way. They know now certainly there is a treasure and though they
know it is temporarily in our possession—”
“Temporarily—say, where do you get that stuff?” demanded Steve
indignantly. “You don’t suppose they’ve got a chance in the world of
getting that gold away from us, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Phil, adding soberly. “But it won’t do for us to
forget for a minute, that they are twenty against our six.”
“Five and a half, you mean,” said Tom with a grin as he thought of
Bimbo. “I imagine old Bimbo—” But Phil sent him a warning glance as the
black boy himself appeared in the door to announce that “breffus done
been prepared dis long time. Done nobody else wanna eat it Ah will,
yassir, Ah’s one hungry nigger!”
Phil insisted on keeping watch while the other boys ate and no amount of
argument could move him from his stand. However, Dick hastily finished
his breakfast and relieved the famished Phil.
As soon as they had fortified themselves with food, they set about to
barricade the cave. For, as Phil had said, the odds were tremendously on
the side of Ramirez and his men and in order to overcome these odds it
was necessary that their position be strongly fortified.
They barricaded the mouth of the cave, leaving a gap only wide enough
for one person to squeeze through with difficulty. They were careful to
leave peep holes, however, through which they might watch the movements
of the enemy.
A heavy stone had been rolled inside the cave so that even the narrow
aperture might be blocked up if it became necessary.
“There,” said Phil, grimly as he regarded the operations. “Now let ’em
come on.”