_Mystery Stories for Boys_
Forbidden Cargoes
_By_
ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago New York
_Printed in the United States of America_
_Copyright, 1927_
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
_All Rights Reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A Strange Message 9
II An Underground Sea 29
III A Strange Dark Room 47
IV Johnny Thompson in Jail 58
V Tottering Walls 68
VI An Earthquake Within a Cave 74
VII Johnny Wins a Friend 85
VIII An Ancient Castle in Ruins 96
IX Creeping Shadows 108
X Camp Smoke 117
XI Battling Against Odds 131
XII Destruction 152
XIII A Thousand Pearls 166
XIV Hope Springs Eternal 179
XV Unseen Foes 192
XVI In Battle Array 201
XVII Pant’s Problem Increases 214
XVIII Two Blade Johnny 221
XIX The Unwilling Guest 230
XX Hail and Farewell 247
XXI On the Trail of the Pearls 254
XXII A Startling Revelation 263
XXIII Treasure at Last 274
Forbidden Cargoes
CHAPTER I
A STRANGE MESSAGE
In a plain board shack with a palm thatched roof which had the Caribbean
Sea at its front and the Central American jungle at its back, a slim,
stooping sort of boy, with eyes that gleamed out of the dark corners
exactly like a tiger’s, paced back and forth the length of a long, low
room. His every motion suggested a jaguar’s stealth.
It was Panther Eye, a boy who was endowed with a cat’s ability to see in
the dark, and who spent much of his young life in India and other
tropical lands. He also found himself quite at home in Central America.
Nevertheless, at this moment he was in deep trouble.
The palm thatched shack boasted but one room. As the boy paced the
mahogany floor of this room he passed a desk of roughly hewn rosewood. A
small steel safe stood in one corner, the door slightly ajar. Before it
on the floor lay a litter of papers, a few bundles of letters and a
sizeable roll of currency. The boy paused to consider this litter.
“It was the map they wanted,” he told himself. “Easy enough to see that.
They didn’t even look at the money, nearly a thousand dollars. The map!
They knew we could do nothing without the map. The dirty dogs! If only
Johnny Thompson were here!” Again he paced the floor.
What was to be done? His thoughts were in a tangle. The thieves who had
broken into the safe were now well away in the jungle. There was no time
to be lost. He’d catch them, he was sure of that. A jaguar couldn’t
escape him, much less a man. Yet the map might be destroyed. Without it
nothing could be accomplished. Thousands were at stake, the treasure of a
lifetime. And some one dearer to Pant than life itself was scheduled to
lose. All day in that stuffy office he had waited for Johnny. Now evening
was near.
“If only Johnny would come!” he repeated.
Had he but known it, his good pal, Johnny Thompson, was some three
hundred miles away. What was more, he was behind iron bars in a stout
stone jail. But this Pant could not know, so he continued to pace the
floor.
As the first long shadow of a palm darkened the window he suddenly sprang
into action. Throwing up the lid of a rough chest, he tossed out a
miscellaneous assortment of articles, some small oilcloth wrapped
packages, a black box, some fibre trays, a few articles of clothing and a
curious instrument of iron. These he packed carefully in a kit bag, then
closed the chest.
Seating himself at the desk in the corner, he began pecking at a small
portable typewriter. He destroyed four half written sheets before he did
one to suit him. The following is what appeared on the one he at last
weighted down upon the desk:
/9*::6
5*3 ;@0 8$ -9:3 5*3 $0@:8@4%$
*@'3 85 8 @; -98:- 8:59 5*3
/7:-#3 @!534 85 8 28## -35 85
:3'34 !3@4 #99= 975 !94 @ $0@:-
8@4% :@;3% %8@( *3 8$ @
%3'8# :3'34 547$5 :94 '3#83'3 *8;
!94 @ ;9;3:5
-99% #7?=
0@:5
“There!” he sighed as he turned from the desk. “If Johnny Thompson
doesn’t make that out right away he won’t be coming up to my
expectations. And if any of these blacks and browns and whites that
infest this waterfront can read it, I take off my hat to ’em.”
Turning about, he slung the strap of his kit bag across his shoulder and
leaving the cabin, disappeared into the gathering night and the jungle.
Some hours later he might have been found crouching close to the side of
a bamboo hut at the heart of the jungle.
His hands trembled as he unwrapped a water-proof package. They trembled
still more as he poured a gray powder from the package to a narrow V
shaped piece of iron. A little of the powder was spilled over the side
and, sinking into the deep bed of tropical moss, was lost forever.
“Won’t do,” he told himself, stiffening his shoulders. “I’ve got to get
hold of myself. If I don’t keep cool I’ll make a mess of it and like as
not get caught in the bargain.
“Caught by those Spaniards in the heart of the jungle!” He shuddered at
the thought. “Caught. And what then?” He dared not think.
“No!” His resolve was strong. “They shall not get me, and I shall
succeed. I must!” His face grew tense.
At that he went ahead with his task. Having spread the gray powder evenly
along the iron trough, he ran a small black fuse half through it, then
gave the fuse five turns about it. When he had finished, the lower end of
the fuse hung some six inches below the trough.
“There!” he sighed.
A half hour later found him still crouching at the back of that cabin.
This shelter, for it was little more, was of the sort common to the
Central American jungle. In its construction not a board and not a single
nail was used. A number of cohune nut palms had been felled. Their great
fronds had been stripped. The fibre stripped from the stems had been
piled in a heap, the stems themselves in another heap. Crotched mahogany
limbs were fastened together with tie-tie vines. This made a frame.
Rafters were added. The bamboo leaf fibre had been laid carefully in
tiers over the rafters. This made a perfect roof. After that the ten foot
stems of a great number of leaves were fastened side by side in a
perpendicular position to form walls. When this was completed the house
was ready to be occupied.
The cracks between the upright bamboo stems forming the walls were wide.
A faint light shone through these cracks, and through them the boy could
see all that went on within. All this interested him, but he was filled
with a fever of impatience. He had come to act, not to listen.
Two dark-faced Spaniards sat in the center of the room. Two black bushmen
lay sprawled upon the dirt floor. Before them, suspended upon a bamboo
frame, was a map. The map, some four feet across, showed certain boundary
lines, creeks and rivers. There were spots that had been done in blue.
Still others were crisscrossed by pen lines, while larger portions were
left white. The figure of one Spaniard hid part of the map.
“Ah!” The boy breathed an inaudible sigh of relief as the man moved,
allowing a full view of the map. “Now, if only I can do it!”
With the greatest care, he thrust the triangle of steel upon which the
powder rested through a crack. Next he adjusted a small black box before
the crack, but lower down. Then, with a hand that still trembled slightly
in spite of his efforts at self control, he drew a sulphur match across a
dry bit of wood.
The sulphur fumes rose and floated through the cracks. At the same time
there came the faint sput-sput-sput of a burning fuse. One of the
Spaniards arose and sniffed the air. He spoke a word to a companion. They
turned half about. And still the fuse burned. Shorter and shorter it
became, closer and closer to the powder.
The boy’s heart was in his throat. Was the whole affair to be spoiled by
a whiff of sulphur or a fuse that burned too long?
“If they rise, if they block the view,” he thought, “then all will be—”
But no, they settled back. The whiff of sulphur had passed. But what was
this? A black man jumped. Had the smell of burnt powder reached him? Had
the sput-sput of the fuse reached his sensitive ear?
Whatever it was, it came too late. Of a sudden there sounded out a loud
boom, and at once, for a fraction of a second, the whole place, cabin,
bamboo trees, and the surrounding jungle was lighted as with a moment’s
return of the sun. Then came sudden and complete darkness.
Within was noise and confusion. A bushman had overturned the candle. It
had gone out. In fright and rage at an unknown phenomenon, an unseen
enemy, the men fought their way to the door, then out into the night.
Before this happened, however, the boy, hugging his precious black box
under his arm, had lost himself in the jungle.
As we have said, this boy had lived much in the tropics. The Central
American jungle was not new to him. Deep secrets of these wilds had come
to him by day and by night.
With the startled cries of Spaniards and bushmen ringing in his ears, he
made his way swiftly, silently down a narrow deer path to a spot where he
had hidden his canvas bound kit bag.
Thrusting his black box deep within the bundle, still without a light, he
made his way swiftly forward until the shouts died away in the distance.
“If only it is a success!” he thought with a sigh as he paused to adjust
his pack.
Coming at last to a narrow stream he cast a few darting glances about
him. The jungle here was new to him, yet the bubbling stream, the moss on
the tree trunks, the tossing leaves far above him, told him all he needed
to know.
Turning sharply to the right, he followed a narrow trail up the winding
bank of the stream.
He had been traveling steadily up this stream for more than three hours
when he came upon a place where the stream was a roaring young cataract,
tumbling down a series of little falls. This was the thing he had
expected. He was sleepy. The night was far spent. In his pack was a
mosquito bar canopy and a light, strong hammock, woven from linen thread.
With these he could quickly build a safe wilderness home. In the low
swamp land, where malaria and mosquitoes lurked, he did not dare to camp.
There were wild creatures in all this jungle; crocodiles, droves of wild
pigs, great boa constrictors and golden coated jaguars. For this boy all
these held little terror. But the swamps were not for him. The higher
slopes of the narrow peninsula offered fresher air, and cooling breezes
that lull one to sleep.
“Sleep,” he whispered to himself, “and after that a dark place.”
At that moment the moonlight, falling through an open space among the
trees and spreading a yellow gleam upon the trail, showed him that which
brought him up short. In a damp spot at the base of a rock were
footprints, the marks of a slim foot clad in sandals, and stranger than
this in so wild a spot, the marks of a leather shoe.
“Huh!” He stood for a moment in perplexity.
One who knows the jungle is seldom surprised at what he finds there. Pant
was surprised. This portion of the jungle was new to him. “Twenty miles
from the coast,” he murmured. “How strange!”
More was to follow. He had not gone a hundred yards farther before he
came upon a well-beaten road. A little beyond this spot, in the midst of
a broad clearing, half hidden by stately royal palms, gleaming white in
the moonlight, was a long, low stone house which in this land might
almost pass for a mansion.
Pausing, he stood there in the moonlight, staring and irresolute. It had
all come to him in a flash.
“The last of the Dons,” he said to himself. Something akin to awe crept
into his tone. “I had forgotten.”
“But what now?” he asked himself a moment later. “The jungle or this?”
In the end he chose the castle before him. “Might be a dark place up
there somewhere, an abandoned cellar perhaps,” was his final comment.
Having chosen a secluded spot at the side of the trail where he might
hang his hammock and spread his canopy to sleep the rest of the night
through, he went quickly to rest.
“I have heard that they are friendly, and honorable Spaniards. There are
such, plenty of them. I’ll risk it. I—”
At that, with the breeze swaying his hammock, he fell asleep.
The sun was sending its first yellow gleams among the palms when he
awoke. For a time, with the damp sweet odor of morning in his nostrils,
he lay there thinking.
A strange mission had brought him into the jungle. This strange boy had
grown up with little or no knowledge of blood relations. His father and
mother were but a dim, indistinct memory. They had passed from his life;
he did not know exactly how. No cozy home fireside had gleamed for him.
He had gone out into the world with an unanswered longing for some one
whom he might think of as a kinsman. Bravely he had fought his way
through alone. When Johnny Thompson came into his life and remained there
to become his inseparable pal, life had been more joyous. Yet ever there
remained a haunting dream that somehow, somewhere in his wild wanderings
he would come upon one who bore his name, who could give him the
traditions of a family and of a past.
Strangely enough, it had been at the edge of the Central American jungle
that he came upon this person of his dreams. While walking upon the coral
beach he had met a stately, white-haired old man who had the military
bearing of a colonel.
In this old man he had found a friend. Little enough was left of the
fortunes which from time to time had come to the venerable southerner.
But such as he had he shared unsparingly with the young stranger who had
come so recently from the land of his birth; for Colonel Longstreet, as
the patriarch styled himself, though now for more than sixty years a
resident of Central America, had fought valiantly for a lost cause when
the Gray stood embattled against the Blue in that long and terrible
struggle, the Civil War.
Broken hearted because of the outcome of the war, he had left his native
state of Virginia and had come to Central America. His life had been
further embittered by the early death of his wife. His only child, a boy
of ten, had been sent back to Virginia while he struggled on, wresting a
fortune from the jungle.
Life in Central America is one gamble after another. Longstreet had
played in every game. He had always won, in the end to lose again.
Fortunes in sugar, bananas and mahogany had been his. Sudden drops in
prices, a revolution, the dread Panama disease, had cost him all of
these. Now he was playing a last, lone card. Influential friends were
endeavoring to secure for him a concession for gathering chicle on broad
tracts of Government land.
This was the state of affairs when Pant had made his acquaintance. Hardly
had their acquaintance ripened into deep friendship when they made the
sudden and startling discovery that Pant was the son of the boy who had
been sent back by Colonel Longstreet to Virginia, that Colonel Longstreet
was none other than Pant’s grandfather. From that time forth the strange
boy, who had longed for so many lonely years for one of kin, became the
old man’s devoted slave.
There was need enough at the present time for such devotion.
Fortune had seemed to smile at last. Through the influence of his
friends, a concession from the British Government for gathering chicle
had come from England to Colonel Longstreet.
“Chicle, as you may know,” the old man had smiled, as he told Pant of it,
“is the basis of all good chewing gum. Were it not for the great American
game of chewing it wouldn’t be worth a red cent. As it is, with one
company importing two million dollars worth a year and other smaller
companies competing and yelling for more, there’s a fortune in it. There
is a net profit of twenty-five cents a pound on chicle. With proper
working, our tract should yield between twenty-five and fifty thousand
pounds a year.”
With the writings of agreement had come a map showing the exact
boundaries of the Government tract they had leased. To the right and
above this tract was shown on the map the holdings of a powerful American
organization. To the left were tracts leased by an unprincipled Spaniard
named Diaz.
Two days after news of the fortunate concession had gone about the little
city, Diaz had appeared in the Colonel’s small office. He offered a
ridiculously low price for the concession. His offer was rejected. He was
told that the owner meant to work the concession. He shrugged his
shoulders and said:
“No get the men.”
The old man had straightened to his full height as he informed the
Spaniard that he had men who could be depended upon to go anywhere, to do
anything. They had worked with him and knew the honor that lay behind the
Longstreet name.
Diaz had begged, entreated, stormed, threatened, then in a rage had left
the office.
Two days had passed. On the third day Pant had come to the office only to
find the safe looted, the map gone.
“What can we do?” he asked. “We know Diaz has it, but we can’t prove it.”
“We cannot,” the old Colonel had agreed. “Nor is there a chance of
getting another before it is too late. The bleeding season for chicle
begins with the first rainfall. To begin without a map is to court
disaster. With a big and jealous American company on one side of us and a
crooked Spaniard on the other, we are between the rocks and the tide. We
are sure to encroach upon one or the other. And if we do, it will take
all we have to fight their claims. It looks like defeat.” He had cupped
his hands and had stared gloomily at the sea.
“Wait,” Pant had said. “Johnny Thompson will help us out. Give us a
little time. We’ll find the map. Leave it to us.”
Johnny Thompson, as you already know, could not help. He was not there.
Two days before he had gone up the Stann Creek Railway. He had not
returned. He was in jail. Pant had been obliged to go it alone. “And now
in this short time,” he told himself, “I have located the map here in the
heart of the jungle. No, I haven’t got it. That couldn’t be done without
bloodshed. But I have its equivalent, I hope.
“A dark place!” he exclaimed. “I must find a spot that is absolutely
dark.”
As he sprang from his hammock he paused to listen. Some one was singing.
In a clear girlish voice there came the words of a quaint old Spanish
song.
As he parted the branches he saw a plump Spanish girl, with a round face
and sober brown eyes, tripping barefoot down the path. Balanced on her
head was a large stone jar.
“Going for the morning water,” the boy told himself. “How like those old
Bible pictures it all is!”
Twenty minutes later he found himself within the white walls of that
ancient and mysterious castle, which had a few hours before loomed so
wonderfully out of the night.