TRIUMPH.
It was midnight. The moon rode high in a cloudless sky, and the camp
of the Boy Inventors, to all appearances, was wrapped in slumber.
Through the woods came three creeping, cautious figures. Each carried
a spade and a sack. They paused by the camp and looked about them.
Then, by the bright moonlight, they saw the bare plateau below. The
black barren where the adventurers had been working that afternoon.
Masterson was the first to see traces of digging. He seized Eph's arm
and pointed.
"That's the place," he said in a hoarse whisper. "See, they've been at
work there already."
"Tom Tiddler's ground," whispered Eph.
"I guess we'll get some of it, too," chuckled Sam, who had gotten over
his fright in a sudden greed at the thought of riches.
Silently, for they had sacks tied round their feet, the three
interlopers crept down the rocky slope toward the black barren. The
dark ground, thickly sown with mineral wealth, glittered in the
moonlight as if a frost had fallen on it and made it gleam
iridescently with millions of sparkling points of light.
As the trio stole down the slope, dark figures from the Boy Inventors'
camp followed them. Led by Zeb, they found hiding places and watched
operations as Masterson and his cronies began to dig. They wielded
their shovels frantically.
"And we can't stop them," groaned Dick.
"Wait a minute," said the professor.
They continued to watch, and before many minutes had passed they saw
Sam Higgins lay down his shovel with a grunt.
"Go on and dig," ordered Masterson.
"Yes, hurry up, we haven't got all night," urged Eph.
Sam made a few more feeble movements and then quit.
'"I can't do any more," he said languidly.
"Ouch! my hands are burning," cried Eph suddenly, "and I feel as if
all my bones had turned to water. What's the matter with the place?"
After a few minutes more both Eph and Sam gave up, but Masterson stuck
doggedly to his task, although his hands were burning terribly, and
the radio-active stuff was eating through the sacking on his feet. At
last he, too, had to give in. They were too weak to carry the sacks
they had partially filled across the island, owing to the effects of
the black barren, and staggeringly they hid them to call for them at a
later time.
"I thought so," said the professor, as the hidden watchers saw
Masterson and the other two wearily clamber up the slope. "They'll
have bad sores to-morrow and may be crippled for some time."
"But they'll recover?" said Jack, whose conscience began to smite him.
"Oh, yes, but they will have quite a lesson first," rejoined the
professor.
"Let's see what they do next," suggested Jack, and he and Tom
carefully made their way to where the trio had left the boat.
Masterson ordered Sam to get on board; but just as the timorous youth
was about to obey another hideous laugh from near at hand startled him
so that he almost jumped out of his skin.
He leaped forward, but in his alarm missed the boat and gave it a
shove that sent it into the stream. Sam fell flat on his face, while
Masterson, with an exclamation of dismay, leaped for the boat. But the
swift current had it in its grasp and bore it rapidly away. Masterson
sprang on Sam and began beating him violently as the cause of all the
trouble. It was serious enough for them. The loss of the boat had
marooned them on the island.
The boat drifted past a rocky point further down the island shore. Had
they been there, they would have been able to seize it. They watched
it with alarmed eyes as it sailed down the current. All at once a dark
figure dashed from the trees and made a spring from a high rock,
hoping, seemingly, to land in the boat. Instead, there was the sound
of a heavy fall and then a piteous groan.
Whoever it was had jumped for the boat, had missed it and fallen on
the rocks. Not caring whether Masterson and his cronies saw them or
not, the boys raced along the beach. From the groans of the injured
person they knew that he was badly, possibly mortally, hurt.
In a few minutes they reached his side.
"It's the wild man!" cried Jack, as they gazed at a hairy,
wild-looking man who lay stretched out, breathing heavily, on the
rocks where he had fallen. His only clothing was a pair of tattered
canvas trousers and a ragged shirt.
"Poor old Foxy. He's done for at last, is Foxy, for his sins," groaned
the man in an insane voice. "He suffered terrible for his crimes, has
Foxy, but it's all over now."
"Foxy!" exclaimed Jack. "That's the man that came down the river with
Blue Nose Sanchez. The man who stayed in the boat."
"He must have landed here and then gone crazy from privation," said
Jack. "I can't find that any bones are broken," he said after a brief
examination. "Suppose we carry him back to camp?"
"I wonder where that Masterson outfit has got to?" said Tom, as they
picked up the wasted form of Foxy, who was raving and moaning by
turns.
"I don't know. They are in a fine predicament now. They've got no food
and no boat They're marooned on this island."
"I suppose we'll have to help them out," said Tom.
"I guess so, though they don't deserve it."
"I lost that boat," moaned Foxy. "I could have got away in it. Poor
old Foxy. It's tough on Foxy," and he began to weep.
The professor found that the man had not suffered any broken bones
but the fall had bruised and sprained him and he was helpless. From
scattered bits of his ravings they learned what he had endured on the
island and how, when the black sand began to burn him, he had had to
give up working on it. Then his boat had drifted away and since then
he had lived the life of a wild man, setting snares for rabbits and
partridges, and eating them raw, tearing them with his clawlike
fingers.
Early the next day the expected happened. Chastened, and with burned
and swollen hands and feet, Masterson and his cronies came into the
boys' camp at breakfast time. They looked crestfallen and sheepish,
but the boys did not want to make them feel any worse than they did,
so they spared them questions at first.
But when Masterson begged them to get them out of their predicament
and take them back to Yuma, Jack felt that it was time to put them
through a cross examination.
"You followed us here to try to cut out some ground from under our
feet, Masterson," he said, "and you know you told me in Nestorville
you wanted to get even with me."
"Don't rub it in, Chadwick," said the humbled Masterson. "I'll do
anything you say if you'll only get us out of this terrible place. I
can hardly walk, and my hands feel as if they'd been burned in a
fire."
"How did you know our destination?" asked Tom. Masterson made a full
confession and at the end begged forgiveness.
"This ought to be a good lesson to you to mind your own affairs," said
Jack as he concluded.
"I know a man who made a big fortune just minding his business," said
Dick. "For my part," he went on, "I'll forgive you, but I want you to
sign a paper promising not to publish anything about this expedition."
"I will--oh, I will," said Masterson. And then he wrote as Dick
dictated. The boys witnessed and signed the paper.
"And now you'd better eat breakfast," said Jack.
Three days later, the Wondership made two trips to Yuma. On the first
she took the original party with the addition of the insane Foxy, who
was placed in an asylum. He never recovered his reason but died in the
institution. Also, there was carried a part of the leaden carboys
which they had filled.
Masterson and his cronies had been left behind on the island to pack
up the camping equipment and thus make themselves useful. Zeb went to
the U.S. Assay Office and formally filed their claim to the island and
its riches. In the meantime, the professor took charge of Foxy and
turned him over to the authorities.
As for the boys, they sailed back to Rattlesnake Island, after sending
a telegram to Mr. Chadwick. It was brief.
"We win," was all it said.