Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: "LOOK AT THE HIGH CLIFF, CAPTAIN," URGED BOB.--Page 169.]
DAVE FEARLESS
AND THE CAVE OF MYSTERY
OR
_ADRIFT ON THE PACIFIC_
BY
ROY ROCKWOOD
Author of "Dave Fearless After a Sunken Treasure," etc.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
BOOKS FOR BOYS
BY
ROY ROCKWOOD
DAVE FEARLESS AFTER A SUNKEN TREASURE
DAVE FEARLESS ON A FLOATING ISLAND
DAVE FEARLESS AND THE CAVE OF MYSTERY
Copyright 1918 BY
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Splendid Fortune
II. Foul Play
III. Mr. Schmitt-Schmitt
IV. A Pair of Schemers
V. Doctor Barrell's "Accident"
VI. The Pilot's Plot
VII. The Mysterious Jar
VIII. Outwitting an Enemy
IX. A Bold Project
X. The Wooded Island
XI. A Race for Life
XII. Overboard
XIII. Adrift on the Pacific
XIV. Strange Companions
XV. A Perilous Cruise
XVI. Landed
XVII. A Remarkable Scene
XVIII. The Outcast's Secret
XIX. A Day of Adventures
XX. On Board the "Swallow"
XXI. The Island Harbor
XXII. The House of Tears
XXIII. Ready for Action
XXIV. In the Royal Palace
XXV. The Captives
XXVI. A Thrilling Adventure
XXVII. The Poisoned Darts
XXVIII. A Wild Ride
XXIX. Found!
XXX. Disaster
XXXI. A Lucky Find
XXXII. Conclusion
DAVE FEARLESS AND THE CAVE OF MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
SPLENDID FORTUNE
"It's gone! It's gone!"
"What is gone, Dave?"
"The treasure, Bob."
"But it was on board--in the boxes."
"No--those boxes are filled with old iron and lead. We have been
tricked, robbed! After all our trouble, hardship, and peril, I fear that
the golden reward we counted on so grandly has slipped from our grasp."
It was on the deck of the _Swallow_, moored in the harbor of a far-away
Pacific Ocean tropical island, that Dave Fearless spoke. He had just
rushed up from the cabin in a great state of excitement.
Below loud, anxious, and angry voices sounded. As one after another of
the officers and sailors appeared on the deck, all of them looked pale
and perturbed.
What might be called a terrific, an overwhelming discovery had just been
made by Captain Paul Broadbeam and by Dave's father, Amos Fearless, the
veteran ocean diver.
For two weeks, after a hard battle with the sea and its monsters, after
fighting savages and piratical enemies, the beautiful steamer, the
_Swallow_, had plowed through sun-tipped waves, favored by gentle
breezes, homeward-bound.
Every heart on board had been light and happy. Labeled and sealed on
the sandy floor of the ballast room, lay four boxes believed to contain
over half a million dollars in gold coin.
Legally this vast treasure belonged to Amos and Dave Fearless, father
and son. To those who had aided and protected them, however, from
Doctor Barrell, on board the _Swallow_ to make deep-sea soundings and
secure specimens of rare marine monsters for the United States
Government, down to Bob Vilett, Dave's chosen chum and the ambitious
young assistant engineer of the vessel, every soul on board knew that
when they reached San Francisco, the generous ocean diver and his son
would make a most liberal division of the splendid fortune they had
fished up in mid-ocean.
As said, the serenity of these fond hopes was now rudely blasted. Dave,
rushing up on deck quite pale and agitated, had made the announcement
that brought Bob to his feet with a shock.
They were two sturdy boys. The flavor of the briny deep was manifest in
their bronzed faces, their attire, their clear bright eyes, and sinewy
muscles. They had known hardship and peril such as make men resolute
and brave. Although Dave was deeply distressed, determination rather
than despair was indicated in the way in which he took the bad, bad news
now being conveyed with lightning speed, mostly with depressing effect,
all through the ship.
Bob Vilett steadied himself against a capstan and stared in silence at
his chum. Dave's hand grasped the bow rail with an iron grip, as if
thereby seeking to relieve his tense feelings. His eyes were directed
away from Bob, away from the ship, fixedly, almost sternly, scanning the
ocean stretch that spread almost inimitably towards the west. It seemed
as if mentally he was going back over the long course they had just
pursued, never dreaming that they were carrying a ballast of worthless
old junk instead of the royal fortune on which they had fondly counted.
"Well, all I've got to say," observed Bob at length, with a great sigh,
"is that it's pretty tough."
"I fancy," responded Dave, in a set, thoughtful way, "it's a case of
three times and out. We fished it up--one. We've lost it--two. We must
find it again--three. That's all."
"You're dreaming!" vociferated Bob. "Say, Dave Fearless, you're a
genius and a worker, but if you mean that there is the least hope in the
world in going back over a course of over a thousand miles hunting up
men with a two weeks' start of us--desperate men, too--scouring a
trackless ocean for fellows who have to hide, and know how to do it,
why, it's--bosh!"
"Bob Vilett," said Dave, with set lip and unflinching eye, "we are only
boys, but we have tried to act like men, and Captain Broadbeam respects
us for it. We have his confidence. He is old, not much of a thinker,
but brave as a lion and ready for any honest, logical suggestion.
Here's a dilemma, a big one. You and I--young, quick, ardent--we must
think for him. We have been robbed. We must catch the thieves. We
must recover that treasure. Where's the best and surest, and the
quickest way to do it? Put on your thinking-cap, Bob, and try and do
some of the hardest brain work of your life."
"Hold on--where are you going?" demanded Bob, as his chum went away over
into a remote corner of the bow and sat down on an isolated water
barrel.
But Dave only waved his hand peremptorily, almost irritably, at Bob.
His chum knew that it would be useless to renew the conversation just
now. He had seen Dave in just such a mood on other occasions--it was
when affairs were going wrong and needed straightening out.
"All right," murmured Bob resignedly, moving over to where some
glum-faced sailors were discussing the disappointment of the hour in a
group. "It won't hurt any of us to have Dave Fearless do some of that
tall thinking of his. Oh, dear! All that money gone. And after all we
went through to get it!"
Meanwhile Dave Fearless sat posed like a statue. His gaze was fixed
beyond the little inlet where the _Swallow_ was moored, straight across
the unbroken ocean stretch. His thoughts just then, however, were not
fixed on the west, but rather on the east. A vivid panorama of his
stirring adventures of the past few months seemed spread out to his
mental eye. They went back to the start of what the present moment
seemed to be the finish.
Dave's home was at Quanatack, along the coast of Long Island Sound.
There for many years his father had been an expert master diver, and
Dave himself, reared beside the sea and loving it, had done service as a
lighthouse assistant.
In the first volume of the present series, entitled "The Rival Ocean
Divers," it was told how they one day learned that they were direct
heirs of the Washington family, who twenty years previous had acquired a
fortune of nearly a million dollars in China. This, all in gold coin,
had been shipped in the _Happy Hour_ for San Francisco. A storm
overtook the vessel, which sunk in two miles of water in mid-ocean with
the treasure aboard.
Amos Fearless secured a chart showing the exact location of the wreck.
Unfortunately two distant relatives, a miserly trickster named Lem
Hankers and his worthless son, Bart, learned of the sunken treasure,
too. They proceeded to San Francisco and were joined by a rascally
partner named Pete Rackley. The trio chartered from a wrecking company
the _Raven_, Captain Nesik in command, and engaged a professional diver
named Cal Vixen.
The Fearlesses, learning of this, hastened their plans. An old friend
of the diver, Captain Broadbeam, was just then starting out with the
_Swallow_, to convey a well-known scientist from Washington to
mid-ocean. The _Swallow_ was equipped with the finest diving bells and
apparatus for capturing and preserving rare monsters of the deep.
Broadbeam agreed to incidentally assist Amos Fearless in the search for
the sunken treasure.
The rival divers located this at about the same time. Thrilling
experiences followed, terrific battles with submarine monsters,
hair-breadth perils on the ocean bed. The Hankers and their diver after
several efforts gave up the quest. Dave and his father stuck at it
until one day they located the hull of the _Happy Hour_. Bag after bag
of gold they stored in their Costell diving bell, until all the treasure
was conveyed safely to the hold of the _Swallow_. Then they set sail
for home.
Pete Rackley had managed to secrete himself aboard. He disabled the
machinery of the _Swallow_. This was the starting-point of a new series
of adventures as related in our second volume, "The Cruise of the
Treasure Ship."
It now became plot and warfare on the part of the disgruntled Hankers
and their friends. The result was that one dark and foggy night the
schemers succeeded in stealing aboard of the _Swallow_. Captain
Broadbeam, Bob Vilett, Doctor Barrell, and the Fearlesses were put
ashore on a lonely island, and the _Raven_ steamed away with the
captured convoy.
A sixth person was also marooned. This was one Pat Stoodles, a
whimsical Irishman, who had been previously rescued by the _Swallow_
from this same island, where for several years he had been the king of
its savage inhabitants.
"The Cruise of the Treasure Ship" has told graphically of the many
adventures of the marooned. Stoodles reassumed his kingship temporarily
and helped his friends out of many a sore dilemma. A cyclone and an
earthquake drove all hands to a neighboring island. Finally Dave and Bob
discovered the _Swallow_, somewhat dismantled, lying off the coast of
the island. They boarded her to find Mr. Drake, the boatswain, Mike
Conners, the cook, and Ben Adams, the engineer, handcuffed in the cabin.
These men had refused to navigate the _Swallow_ for Captain Nesik. They
told how the cyclone had parted the two vessels and the _Swallow_ had
been driven to her present isolated moorings. They told also of the
four boxes into which they had seen the Hankers place the sunken
treasure.
For a second time, believing their enemies and the _Raven_ lost in the
storm, the Fearless party started homeward. Incidentally they had
enabled a worthy young fellow named Henry Dale to earn a large sum by
towing with them a lost derelict ship. This they had turned over to an
ocean liner they met. Then, the _Swallow_ needing some repairs, they
had headed for Minotaur Island, their present port of moorage.
This island had originally belonged to the government of Chili. Just
now, however, it was claimed by Peru, and was also in a certain state of
rebellion. The governor was a miserly and tricky individual, and had
demanded a large sum from Captain Broadbeam before he would let him moor
the _Swallow_.
He sent out as pilot a wretched, drunken fellow, who ran the _Swallow_
into an obscure creek where she struck some obstacle, tearing a hole in
her hull.
Thus disabled, Captain Broadbeam found it necessary to shift the various
articles in the hold. The four sealed boxes were removed, and Amos
Fearless naturally suggested that they take a look at their golden
fortune.
Ten minutes later the startling discovery was made which has been
recorded in the opening lines of the present chapter--
The great Washington fortune was not, as had all along been supposed,
aboard of the _Swallow_.