Chapter XXXIII

OUT OF THE NIGHT
★

It was a dismal adventure and it took real courage to move even another step forward, but Bob was driven on by the thought that his uncle might be on the island and that success tonight would bring about his return and smash the ring of smugglers he had been assigned to break up.

As they neared the light it was plain that the flare was mounted on a pole about twenty feet tall and Bob stopped the sheriff.

“That looks like a beacon for a plane,” he muttered.

“If it is, it fits in with your theory that they’ll land the smuggled gems by plane,” replied Sheriff McCurdy.

They went on, treading easily and giving the circle of light cast by the flare a wide birth.

Against the blackness of the waters of a broad bayou which flanked the other side of Lost Island loomed the outline of a ramshackle structure and though the windows appeared to be boarded up, faint rays of light crept through a number of cracks. Bob half stumbled on a stick and the noise brought the quick baying of a hound.

“We’re in for it now,” said the sheriff, and Bob felt that trouble, and serious trouble, was just ahead.

A door in the house was thrown open and against the oblong of light could be seen the silhouette of a man. Then he stepped out into the night, to be followed by a second man, stockier and heavier than the first.

“Stay down,” whispered the sheriff. “Maybe they’ll miss us. We don’t want trouble now.”

Before the men could leave the shelter of the house, the low drone of an incoming plane could be heard. Bob turned toward the east. A red and green light, marking the wing tips of a plane, were visible. The craft was low and evidently coming in fast.

Even above the noise of the plane, they could hear a shouted command near the old house, and one of the men who had stepped outside turned on a flash light and raced toward the pier, some distance away. He was followed, at a slower pace by the second man.

“That’s Hamsa, I’m sure,” said Bob.

“Let’s get inside and see if anyone is there,” said Sheriff McCurdy and they moved around so that the house was between them and the pier.

Landing lights of the plane blinked on as it circled over them and once the powerful beams swept down on the clearing, but Bob and the Sheriff, anticipating that, had dropped to the ground behind an old log and were safe, for the moment, from discovery.

“Must be either a seaplane or an amphibian,” said Bob as the plane prepared to alight on the water.

“Get inside,” urged the sheriff, who would feel better when he had some shelter.

The two men on the pier were concentrating their attention on the plane swinging over the lagoon and the hound which had sounded the alarm was beside them, so it was a comparatively simple matter for Bob to jump across the threshold.

Inside the door, where only an oil lamp cast faint illumination, he crouched with his rifle in his hands, accustoming his eyes to the light. There was, apparently, no one in the room.

He spoke softly to the sheriff, who was waiting just outside.

“All clear; come on!”

With one bound the sheriff was inside and like Bob he had his rifle ready for instant action.

Squinting between cracks in the wall, the sheriff watched the action in the lagoon. The plane smacked the surface of the water sharply and came to rest several hundred feet from the end of the old pier. The men waiting there put out in a motorboat, making directly for the plane, which was bobbing around on the waves which it had stirred up in the quiet waters.