Chapter XXXVII: Tom’s Final “find” 360 (3)

“I’ll follow that trail after a while,” he resolved, “but I’ll say nothing about it now. I might be laughed at for my pains. Not that I mind that, of course. We fellows are well used to being laughed at among ourselves. But when I say anything about this, I want to have something to tell that is worth telling. After all, it may be only the path of a deer or of one of the queer little wild horses—tackeys, they call them—that live in the swamps. Or a wild hog may have made it. I don’t know, and I’m not going to talk about the thing till I can talk to some purpose.”

As he wriggled around in the crotch, he dropped his knife from his pocket.

“That’s a reminder,” he reflected, “that people sometimes drop things when they don’t intend to. If anybody else has been roosting up here he may have dropped things, too. I’ll recover my knife and then I’ll search around the tree.”

He was on the ground now, and having replaced his knife he began a minute search of the space for ten or twenty feet around the tree. It was thickly carpeted with the densely-growing vegetation that is always quick to take possession of every unoccupied inch of ground in the far southern swamps and woodlands. Searching such a space for small objects was almost a hopeless task, and finding nothing, Tom was on the point of giving up the attempt, when he trod upon something. Examining it, he found it to be an old corncob pipe with a short cane stem. It was blackened by long smoking, and that side of it which had lain next to the ground had begun to decay. But there was half-burned tobacco in it still.

From all these facts Tom thought it likely that the pipe, while still alight, had been dropped from the tree, and that its owner had failed to find it upon his descent.

“That means that somebody was using this tree for a lookout a good while ago. I can’t imagine why or wherefore, but I mean to find out if I can. Just now I hear Larry’s whistle calling me to dinner. I wonder how he manages to make that shrill shrieking noise by putting two fingers into his mouth and blowing between them. I must get him to teach me the trick.”

It was decided at dinner that the deer hunt should occur as soon as that meal was finished.

“The deer will be lying down, chewing the cud, at this time of day,” explained Larry to his two guests, who had never shared a deer hunt, “and so we shan’t disturb him in placing ourselves. What’s the nature of the ground, Cal? Can three of us cover it while the fourth drives?”

“We must,” Cal answered. “It may give some one of us a very long shot, but with nitro-powder cartridges these modern guns of ours will pitch buckshot a long way. The marsh in which the deer is feeding is on a sort of peninsula which is surrounded by water except on one side. That land side is a rather narrow neck, narrow enough for three guns to cover it, I think, if the guns are well handled. Fortunately the marsh itself is small. If it weren’t we might drive all day, as we have no dogs, without routing the deer out. As it is, I think I can start him, and I’ll do the driving after I post you three at the three best points of observation.”

“How do you ‘drive,’ as you call it, Cal?” Dick asked.

“Well, if we had dogs and horses, as we always do in a regular deer hunt, the man appointed to drive would ride around to the farther side of the swamp, and put the dogs into it. The dogs would scatter out into an irregular line and zigzag to one side and the other in search of the quarry. In that way they would advance till they found the deer and set him running toward the line of men on the posts. Every one of these would be intently looking and listening till the deer should come running at top speed in an effort to dash past his enemies and escape. The man on the post nearest where he breaks through is expected to bring him down with a quick shot aimed at his side, just behind the shoulder.”

“But what if he misses?”

“In that case the deer has won the game. As we have no dogs and there are only four of us, I mean to post you three at the points I find best suited, and then I’ll play hounds myself. I’ll go round to the farther side of the little swamp, invade it as noisily as I can, whooping and hallooing in the hope of getting the deer up. If I do, he’ll make a dash to get out of the swamp, and if no one of you manages to shoot him in the act, we’ll have none of that juicy venison that you, Tom, thought you had almost in your mouth when I first told you that the deer was here. Now let us be off. We’re burning daylight. Load with buckshot cartridges.”

When the neck of the little peninsula was reached, Cal bade his comrades wait at the point from which their camp could be seen, while he should go over the ground and pick out the places to be occupied as posts.

On his return he placed the others each at the point he had chosen for him, taking care that Tom and Dick should have the places near which the quarry was most likely to make his effort to break through.

“Now, you must keep perfectly still,” he admonished the two inexperienced ones, “and keep both eyes and three ears, if you have so many, wide open. You may see the deer without hearing him, or you may hear him tearing through the bushes before you see him. That will give you notice of his coming, but don’t let him fool you. He may not come straight on from the spot at which you hear him. If he catches sight, sound or smell of you, he’ll veer off in some other direction. So if you hear him coming don’t move a muscle except those of your eyes.

“Now I’m off to drive. If I can, I’ll get him up and away. After that everything will depend upon you.”

It was nearly half an hour before the boys heard Cal’s shoutings in the distance, but slowly coming nearer. After that, in the eager watching and waiting, the seconds seemed minutes, and the minutes dragged themselves out into what seemed hours.

At last, however, Dick heard the deer breaking through bushes just ahead of him. In another second the frightened creature burst into view and Dick fired, missing the game, which instantly changed its course and ran away toward its left, with the speed of the wind. Dick, in his excited disappointment, fired his second barrel at a hopelessly long range.

Almost immediately he heard a shot from Tom’s gun, and after that all was still. Cal struggled out of the swamp, while Larry and Dick made their way toward Tom’s post, “to hear,” Cal said, “just what excuses the novices have invented on the spur of the moment by way of accounting for their bad marksmanship.”

“I have none to offer,” said Dick, manfully. “I missed my shot, that’s all.”

“How is it with you, Tom? What plea have you to offer?”

“None whatever,” answered Tom. “Yonder lies the deer by the side of the fallen tree. He was taking a flying leap over it when I shot him—on the wing, as it were.”

The congratulations that followed this complete surprise may be imagined. Cal fairly “wreaked himself upon expression” in sounding his praises of Tom’s superb marksmanship, and better still, his coolness and calmness under circumstances, as Cal phrased it, “that might have disturbed the equipoise of an Egyptian mummy’s nerve centres.”

Tom took all this congratulation and extravagance of praise modestly and with as little show of emotion as he had manifested while making his difficult shot.

Perhaps this was even more to his credit than the other. For this was the first time Tom Garnett had ever seen a deer hunt, or a live deer, either, for that matter.

X

TOM’S DISCOVERIES

AS no attack had been made upon the camp the boys gradually relaxed the vigilance of their guard duty; but they still maintained a sentry at the lookout tree at night and made occasional visits of observation during the day, going to the tree sufficiently often to avoid being taken by surprise.

“And what if they should attack us in daytime?” argued Dick. “We’d be here, armed and ready for them.”

There was fishing to be done, and a game of chess or backgammon was usually in progress. Moreover, like any other company of bright youths accustomed to think, they had enough to talk about, many things to explain to each other, many stories to tell, and many questions to discuss. Thus the daytime sentry duty was reduced to nearly no activity, except upon Tom’s part. He was apparently fond of going to the lookout and remaining there sometimes for hours at a time.

The others did not know why he should care for that as for an amusement. Tom did, but he said nothing. Tom was finding out something that the others knew nothing about.

On the next morning but one after the deer hunt he had climbed to the crotch of the tree to make a further study of the trail he had discovered. After a little while he decided to climb farther up the tree, in order to secure a better view.

From that loftier perch he saw something at a distance that deeply interested him. It was a sort of hovel, so buried in undergrowth that it would have been scarcely visible at all except to one looking from a high place as he was.

But what interested him most was that presently he saw the lame intruder of two nights before come out of the hovel and limp down toward the shore, where, as Tom easily made out, there was a small, crooked little cove running into the woods, not from the creek, but from the broader water outside.

Tom lost sight of the man when he reached the cove, and so did not make out what he was doing there, but after a time he saw him limp away again and go back to the neighborhood of the hovel, which, however, he did not enter or approach very nearly.

He loitered around for awhile, like one who must remain where he is, but who has nothing to do there during an indefinitely long and tedious waiting time. At last he stretched himself out on a log in the shadow of the trees, as if to pass away the time in sleep.

Tom’s curiosity was by this time master of him. Having seen so much, he was eager to see more. Accordingly he clambered down the tree, and, with gun in hand, set out to follow the blind trail.

He moved silently from the first, and very cautiously toward the end of his half-mile journey. He was careful not to tread upon any of the dry sticks that might make a noise in breaking, and to permit no bush to swish as he let it go.

At last he reached the neighborhood of the hovel, and, securing a good hiding place in the dense undergrowth, minutely studied his surroundings. The lame man lay still on his log and apparently asleep, until after awhile the sun’s changing position brought his face into the strong glare. Then he rose lazily, rubbing his eyes as if the sleep were not yet out of them. Rising at last, with muttered maledictions upon the heat, he limped over to a clump of palmetes and from among them lifted a stone jug, from which he took a prolonged draught.

“That’s the stuff to brace a man up!” he muttered as he replaced the jug in its hiding place.

Tom observed that there were nowhere any traces of a camp fire, present or past, a fact that puzzled him at first, for obviously the man lived there in the thicket, or at least remained there for prolonged periods at a time, and, as Tom reflected, “he must eat.”

The man himself solved the riddle for him presently by going to another of his hiding places and bringing thence a great handful of coarse ship biscuit and a huge piece of cold pickled beef of the kind that sailors call “salt-horse,” which he proceeded to devour.

“Obviously,” reflected Tom, “his food, such as it is, is brought to him here already cooked. He makes no fire, probably because he fears its light by night or the smoke of it by day might reveal his presence here. But why does he stay here? What is he here for? Who are they who bring him food, and when or how often do they come, and for what purpose? It’s a Chinese puzzle, but I mean to work it out.”

Having made his observation of the place as minute as he could Tom silently crept away, not walking in the trail, but through the bushes near enough to let him see it and follow its winding course. He did this lest by walking too often in the trail he should leave signs of its recent use.

When he reached the lookout tree, to his surprise he found his three comrades there.

“Hello! What are you fellows doing here?” he asked, breaking out of the bushes and thus giving the first sign his comrades had had of his approach, for even to the end of his little journey he had been at pains to travel in absolute silence as an Indian on the war path does.

“Why, Tom, where have you been?” was the first greeting the others gave him.

“We’ve been dreadfully uneasy about you,” Larry explained, “and when I whistled through my fingers to call you to dinner and you didn’t come, we hurried out here to look for you. Where _have_ you been and what have you been doing?”

“I say, Larry, that reminds me that I want you to teach me the trick of whistling through my fingers in that way. Will you?”

“I’ll teach you some things that are easier to learn than that,” answered his companion, “if you try any more of Cal’s tricks of beating round the bush. Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been and why, and all the rest of it? Don’t you understand that we’ve been on tenterhooks of anxiety about you for an hour?”

“Well, as I’m here, safe and sound, there is no further need of anxiety, and as for your curiosity to hear what I have to tell, I’ll relieve that while we’re at dinner. Come on! I’m hungry and I reckon the rest of you are, too. Anyhow, what I’ve got to tell you is well worth hearing, and I shall not tell you a word till we sit down on our haunches and begin to enjoy again the flavor of that venison, broiled on the live coals. You haven’t cooked it yet, have you?”

“No. We got the chops ready for the fire, and then I whistled for you, so that we might all have them fresh from the coals. As you didn’t come, we got uneasy and went to look for you. So come on and we’ll have a late dinner and sharp appetites.”

No sooner were the juicy venison chops taken from the fire and served upon a piece of bark that did duty as a platter than the demand for the story of Tom’s morning adventure became clamorous.

With a chop in one hand and half an ash cake in the other, Tom told all that he had done and seen, giving the details as the reader already knows them. Then, after finishing the meal and washing his hands, face and head in the salt water of the creek, he set forth the conclusions and conjectures he had formed.

“In the first place,” he said, “I am certain that our late visitor—he with the game leg—is the only person anywhere around. We are in no danger of an attack, either by night or by day, until his comrades, whoever they may be, come here and join him. We have no need of doing sentry duty out there at the gum tree, except to keep a sufficient lookout to make sure that we know when they do come. In my opinion that will be at night sometime.”

“Why do you think so, Tom?”

“Simply because it is evident that they don’t come here for any good or lawful purpose. If that lame fellow with the whisky jug is a fair sample of the crew, they are the sort that prefer darkness to light because their deeds are evil.”

“Who do you think they are, Tom?” asked Cal, “and what, in your opinion, are they up to?”

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”

“How, Tom?”

“By watching, and, if I don’t find out sooner, by being within sight when they do come. I’m going to reconnoiter the place again to-night to see what that fellow does down there. Perhaps I may make out something from that. At any rate, it’s worth trying.”

“Why shouldn’t we all go with you?” Dick asked eagerly. “Then if by any accident that evil-visaged person with the lame leg should discover you, we’ll be there in force enough to handle him and the situation. I’ve heard that one of your southern generals during the Civil War once said that strategy is ‘getting there first with the most men.’ Why shouldn’t we practice strategy?”

“Why, of course, I counted on that,” Tom answered. “I knew all you fellows would want to go, and I reckon that’s our best plan. Anyhow, we’ll try it.”

“Now,” said Cal, “I have something to report which I regard as of some little importance, particularly as it means that the _Hunkydory_ will have to leave this port pretty soon—probably within the next forty-eight hours, and possibly sooner.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Cal?” asked all the others together.

“Only that our spring is rapidly drying up, and as there is no other fresh water supply within reach, we shall simply be obliged to quit these parts as soon as we can get ourselves in shape to risk it.”

“To risk what?”

“Why, putting off in a boat on salt water. We can’t do that without some fresh water on board. I’ve already begun the filling of the kegs by thimblefuls. It promises to be a slow process, as the spring seems unable to yield more than a gill or so at a time.”

“But, Cal,” interrupted Tom, “we can get all the water we want by digging a little anywhere around here. It doesn’t lie three feet below the surface.”

“Neither does the fever,” answered Cal.

“How do you mean?”

“Why, I mean that the milky-looking water you find by digging a few feet into the soil of these low-lying lands is poisonous. It is surface water, an exudation from the mass of decaying vegetable matter that constitutes the soil of the swamps. To drink it is to issue a pressing invitation to fever, dysentery and other dangerous and deadly diseases, to take up their permanent residence in our intestinal tracts.”

“But why isn’t the water of our spring just as bad?”

“Because it isn’t surface water at all, but spring water that comes from a source very different from that of the swamp soil. You have perhaps observed that the bottom of our spring is composed of clean, white sand, through which the water rises. That sand was brought up by that water from strata that lie far below the soil.”

“What makes it brackish, then?”

“It is brackish because a certain measure of sea water from the creek there sipes into it. The sea water is filtered through the sand, losing most of its salt in the process. You’ve noticed, perhaps, that the spring water is more brackish at high than at low tide. That’s because—”

“Oh, I see all that now. I hadn’t thought of it before. But really, Cal, it seems rather hard that we must sail away from here just when we’ve run up against something mysterious and interesting. Now, doesn’t it?”

“Let me remind you,” answered Cal in his most elaborate manner of mock-serious speaking, “that I am in nowise called upon to assume responsibility for the vagaries of a casually encountered spring. I did not bring up that spring. I had no part in its early education or training. Presumably it is even my superior in age and experience. In any case, I feel myself powerless to control or even to influence its behavior. Moreover, I feel as keen a disappointment as you can in the fact that we shall have to abandon our search for knowledge of the purposes of our neighbor with the game leg. But it is not certain that we shall have to sail away with that inquiry unfinished. It will take a considerable time to fill our water kegs, and in the meanwhile we may penetrate the mystery sooner than we expect. Anyhow, we’ll see what we shall see to-night.”

XI

PERILOUS SPYING

AT Dick’s suggestion the boys cut a number of larger logs than usual and placed them on their camp fire that evening before setting out on their expedition.

“It will avert suspicion of what we are at,” Dick said in explanation of his proposal. “So long as the camp fire burns up brightly nobody seeing it from a distance will doubt that we are here. It isn’t much trouble, anyhow.”

The night proved to be an unusually dark one, with an overcast sky, threatening rain, and on the chance of that Cal rigged up the largest tarpaulin the company owned and so arranged it as to conduct all the water that might fall upon it into the bait pail and such other receptacles as would hold it. “If it rains hard,” he explained, “we’ll catch enough water before morning to fill both the kegs.”

Going to the big gum tree, Tom climbed to the top of it to see if he could discover anything the little company might want to know. After a careful scrutiny of the landscape to the west he came down again, reporting that everything was quiet “in the region of our late visitor’s country seat.”

Then the party set out on their exploring expedition. Tom, acting as guide, followed the little blind trail, while the rest made their way through the undergrowth on either side, keeping near enough to the trail to hear even a whispered warning or direction if Tom should have need to give any such.

Slowly, carefully, and in profound silence, they made their way to the point from which Tom had watched the place during the day. Then, as had been arranged in advance, the four stretched out their little line, so as to see the place from different points of view.

At first there was not much to see, and on so dark a night even that little could be seen only indistinctly and with difficulty. The “man with the game leg,” as the boys called him, was moving about the place in a leisurely fashion, but what he was doing none of the investigating party could make out in the darkness, though they had crept very close to the camp and were watching intently.

At last their watching and waiting were rewarded by a happening which interested them, though they did not understand it. The man with the game leg went into the hovel Tom had seen, and after remaining there for a considerable time, came out again. As he did so the boys were easily able to make out that he carried a dark lantern in his hand. It was carefully closed, but there were little leaks of light from its fastenings, as there always are from such contrivances when they are of the common, cheap variety as this one obviously was.

Carrying it in his hand and still closed, the man limped off down the trail that led toward the cove.

No sooner had he got well clear of the camp than the four watchers began scrambling up the trees nearest to them for the sake of a better view. There was nobody to hear them, but under the impulse of that caution which their presence in such a place required of them, they were careful to climb as silently as possible.

Very dimly, but with certainty, they could see the glow of the closed dark lantern and in that way trace the man carrying it throughout his brief journey.

When at last he reached the mouth of the cove where the view opened out toward the broad inlet, he opened his lamp for a brief second, holding it so that its gleam should show down the inlet to his right. A moment later he flashed it again, this time straight across the broad inlet. Presently he opened it for the third time, sending the flash up the inlet.

The whole proceeding did not occupy half a minute, and after that all remained in darkness except that the boys could still locate the dark lantern by the dim halo of light that surrounded it.

For half an hour or more there were no further developments. The man with the game leg seemed to be sitting still, waiting for time to pass or for something to happen. At last he opened the lamp again, sending its flash down the inlet as before. Then he showed his gleam straight out upon the water.

This time the boys in the tree tops saw a brief answering gleam from the open water half a mile or more from shore.

It was safe for the boys to speak now, and Tom thought it best for all of them to come down out of the trees before the man with the game leg, who had started slowly back toward the camp, should reach their neighborhood.

“Come down off your roosts, fellows,” he directed, “and secrete yourselves well in the bushes. The ‘others’ are coming to-night, sure enough. Be careful to hide yourselves so that a flash from that dark lantern won’t search you out. By the way, after they come and we see all we can, we must get out of here. I can’t speak then, but notice when you see me moving away, and follow my example. Now, no more talking, even in a whisper.”

The man with the game leg did not return immediately, as Tom had expected. Instead, he made his way up the bank of the cove and around its bend, to a point only two or three hundred yards away. Obviously that was to be the landing place, hidden as it was by the bend and the dense forest growth from all possible observation on the part of boats in the sound outside. The man with the game leg had gone to the mouth of the cove only to send his signals to his companions outside. Now that they had been seen and answered, he had gone to the landing-place, there to await their coming.

Fortunately for the purposes of the boys, the landing was in full view from their hiding place, and after the man with the game leg had gone thither they had only that one point to watch while they waited.

The wait was a long one, and perhaps it seemed longer because a drizzling rain had set in, soaking them to the skin. After a long time, however, the man with the game leg turned his dark lantern and flashed it once down the cove.

By its light the watchers made out three large boats slowly moving up the cove, apparently with carefully muffled oars, as their strokes could not be heard even at the short distance that now separated them from their destination. As they approached the landing with obvious care, there were frequent flashes from the dark lanterns that all of them seemed to be carrying, and by these flashes Tom and his companions saw that the boats were piled high with freight of some kind, so bestowed as to occupy every inch of space except what was necessary for the use of the men at the oars. Of these there were only two in each boat, each plying a single oar, while a third, perched upon a freight pile at the stern, was steering. Thus there were nine men in the three boats, who, with the man on shore, constituted a rather formidable company for four boys to face if they should decide to attack the _Hunkydory’s_ camp, as the man with the game leg had threatened.

Whence the boats had come, Tom could not in any wise guess, and of course he could not discuss the matter with his comrades while hiding there in the bushes under a life-and-death necessity of keeping perfectly silent. Two things he was sure of: the boats could not have come very far, with only two oarsmen to each of them, and they could not have traversed any but smooth waters, with their freight piled high above their gunwales, as it was.

As soon as the boats were landed, the men began unloading them and carrying their freight to the camp, which was evidently to be its hiding place for a time at least. In the main it seemed to consist of light boxes or packages, many of them bound together into single large bundles which one man could carry. There were also some kegs, which seemed pretty heavy, as the men carried them on their shoulders. But it was difficult to make out anything more definite than this, as the darkness was dispelled infrequently by flashes from a dark lantern, and then only for a fraction of a second at a time.

When the greater part of the freight had been brought to the camp the man who seemed to be in authority over the rest set some of them to work bestowing it in the hovels, of which there appeared to be several, each securely hidden in the thick undergrowth so that a person casually passing that way would never have suspected their existence. Even while this work was in progress the man in charge permitted as little show of light as possible. When all was done a hamper of provisions was brought from one of the boats, together with a demijohn, and the whole crew assembled around the midnight spread, eating and drinking in the dark, except when now and then it became necessary to permit a little show of light for a moment.

At first they feasted in silence, too, but after awhile the liquor they were drinking seemed to go to their heads and they quarreled among themselves a good deal. Some of them wandered about now and then as if searching the bushes jealously.

It was clearly time for the boys to leave the place and they watched and listened for Tom’s beginning of the retreat. At last they heard him moving and, assuming that he had begun the withdrawal, they all cautiously crept away to the rear. As each was following a separate trail there was no word spoken among them until Larry, Dick and Cal came out of the bushes and joined each other at the gum tree.

“But where is Tom?” one of them asked.

Nobody knew. Nobody had seen or known anything about him since his first stirring of the bushes had set the retreat in motion. They had all heard a commotion in what they called “the scoundrels’ camp,” with sounds as of angry quarreling and fighting; but they had heard nothing of Tom.

The boys were in consternation.

“Do you suppose those scoundrels can have caught him?” asked Dick, with horror in his tones.

“I don’t know,” Larry answered through his set teeth. “But there’s only one thing to do.”

“Only one thing,” answered Dick. “We must go to his assistance, and if they have him prisoner we must rescue him or all die trying. I for one will never come back alive unless we bring him with us.”

“That’s of course,” said Cal, who for once spoke crisply, wasting no words. “Wait a second, Larry! How many cartridges have you—each of you?”

When they answered, Cal said:

“Here, take six more apiece. You may need ’em.”

As he spoke he took the extra cartridges from his pockets and hurriedly distributed them. It was Cal’s rule in hunting never to be without abundant ammunition.

“Now then, Larry,” he said, when the others had pocketed the cartridges, “give your orders; you’re the captain.”

“All right! Come on at a run, but don’t trip and fall. There’s no time to lose.”

Down the trail they went, not at a run, for running was impossible in such a tangle of vines and bushes, but at as fast a trot as they could manage. Suddenly there was a collision. Larry had met Tom “head on,” as he afterwards said. Tom was making his way as fast as he could to the gum tree, knowing that his friends would be in terror when they missed him, while they were hurrying to his rescue. In the darkness and the heavy downpour of rain he and Larry had failed to see or hear each other till they came into actual collision.

“Where on earth have you been, Tom?”

“Why did you fellows retreat before the time?”

These were questions instantly exchanged.

“Why, you gave the signal, Tom. You began moving off and we followed as agreed.”

“I understand now,” Tom answered, resuming the journey, “but it was a mistake of signal. Come on out of here. Let’s go to camp and talk it all over there. I’ve found out all about this thing and it’s interesting.”

“What does it mean? Tell us!”

“Not here in the downpour. We’ll go to camp first and get under the shelter and put on some dry clothes. My teeth are chattering and I don’t care to imitate them. Come on!”

XII

TOM’S DARING VENTURE

TOM’S teeth were indeed chattering when the company reached their camp. He was chilled “clear through,” he said, and his companions were very uneasy. They feared, and not without reason, that he had contracted a swamp fever, which always begins with a chill. To avoid that, the Rutledge boys, who knew the coast and its dangers, had carefully kept on or very near the salt water, and had chosen for their camp a spot where there were no live oaks, no gray moss and no black sand. Still Tom might have caught a fever.

Cal piled wood on the fire with a lavish hand, so that an abundance of heat might be reflected into their dry bush shelter, the open side of which faced the fire, and Dick busied himself searching out dry clothes from the lockers, while Larry helped Tom to strip himself as speedily as possible.

“Now run and jump into the creek,” he directed, as soon as the last of Tom’s clothes were off. “The salt water is luke-warm or even warmer than that. I’ll wring out your clothes while your bath is warming you, and when you come out we’ll give you a rub down that would stimulate circulation in a bronze statue. Hurry into the water, and don’t hurry out too soon.”

By the time Tom had been rubbed down and had got into dry clothes, he declared himself to be “as warm as a toast, as hungry as a schoolgirl, and ready to stand a rigid examination as to the character and purposes of our scoundrel friends down there.”

“Good!” exclaimed Larry. “That’s proof positive that you haven’t caught the fever. I was afraid you might.”

“Fever? Why, I was as cold as the Arctic circle—but then perhaps you keep your fevers on ice down here and serve ’em cold. You have so many queer ways that nothing surprises me.”

Larry explained, and Tom laughed at him for his pains, for of course Tom knew what he had meant.

It was well past midnight, and the others shared Tom’s hunger in full measure, so they were not greatly disappointed when, in response to their eager demands for the story he had to tell, he answered:

“I’ll tell you all about it when we get something to eat. Till then my loquacity will closely resemble that of a clam.”

One of the party had killed some fat black squirrels during the preceding day, and as these were already “dressed for the banquet,” in Dick’s phrase, they were spread upon a mass of coals, and within a brief while the meal—supper or breakfast, or post-midnight luncheon, or whatever else it might be called—was ready to receive their attention.

“Now, Tom, tell us!” demanded Larry, when their hunger was partially appeased.

“Wait a minute,” interposed Dick. “Isn’t this rather risky?”

“What?”

“Why, sitting here on our haunches, rejoicing in the genial warmth of the fire—over-genial, I should call it, as it’s blistering my knees—and having no sentry out to see that the scoundrels don’t pounce down on us by surprise.”

“There’s no more risk in it,” answered Tom, confidently, “than in wearing socks, or playing dominoes, or trying to trace out the features of the man in the moon.”

“But why not, Tom?”

“Because the scoundrels down there are all dead—dead drunk, I mean—and they have all they can do just now in sleeping it off.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes, entirely sure. You saw how they were drinking—half a pint of rum at a dose, repeated every five minutes. Well, they kept that up as long as they could find the way to their mouths. They had emptied the demijohn before you fellows left, and not being satisfied, they got out a keg of the fiery stuff, had a rough and tumble fight over some question relating to it, beat each others’ faces into something very much like Hamburger steaks, and then decided to let the keg arbitrate the dispute. Four or five of them had been arbitrated into a comatose state before I left, another was trying to sing something about ‘Melinda,’ setting forth that he had ‘seen her at the windah,’ and was prepared to give his hat and boots if he could ‘only have been dah.’ The rest were drunkenly silent as they sat there by an open dark lantern which they had forgotten to close, I suppose, and drinking rum from tin cups whenever they could remember to do so. They will give nobody any trouble to-night.”

“But, Tom,” interposed Dick, “how do you know it was rum they were drinking?”

“Now, see here,” said Tom, “I’d like to know who’s telling this story. If I’m the one the rest of you had better let me tell it in my own way. I was going to begin at the beginning and tell it straight through, but your intrusive questions have switched me off the track. Now listen, and I’ll tell you all I know and how I know it, and what I think of it, and what I think you think of it, and all the rest of it.”

“Go ahead, Tom!” said Cal; “I’ll keep the peace for you; you’ll bear me witness that I haven’t spoken a word since you began. Go on!”

“All right,” said Tom. “I thought you were about to give us a disquisition when you began to say that, but you didn’t, so I’ll forgive you. Well, you see when you fellows heard me moving out there in the thicket and thought I was instituting a retreat, I was only changing my base, as the military men say. I had seen something that aroused my curiosity, and my curiosity is like a baby after midnight—if you once rouse it, you simply can’t coax it to go to sleep again.”

“What was it you had seen, Tom?” Larry began.

“Silence!” commanded Cal. “Tom has the floor.”

“Oh, I beg pardon—” Larry began apologetically.

“No, don’t do even that. Go on, Tom.”

“I will as soon as you two twin brothers cease your quarreling. As I was saying, I had seen something that aroused my curiosity. As I was peering through the bushes, looking toward the main body of the roisterers, I saw the limping one slip away from the general company and sneak off. He went very cautiously through the undergrowth to the hovel nearest me and entered it, closing the door after him. I could see a little pencil of light streaming out through a crack, so I knew he had opened his lamp in there. After a little fumbling he came out again, but he was so drunk he forgot to take his lamp with him, as I discovered by the continued streaming out of that little pencil of light.

“That was what aroused my curiosity. I wanted to know what was in that hovel, and as the lame gentleman with the ‘load’ on had obligingly left his lamp there for my accommodation, I resolved to embrace the opportunity offered. I moved cautiously upon the enemy’s works. That is to say, I crept forward toward the hovel. That’s what you fellows mistook for the signal to retreat.

“Now I am convinced that our temporary neighbors, the scoundrels, are disposed to be in all ways obliging. At any rate they had considerately placed the door of the hovel so that it fronted my side of the structure and not theirs. Thus, when I opened the door the light from the burning lamp did not shine toward them and thus give the alarm.

“I entered the place and rather minutely examined its contents.”

“What was in there?” asked Cal, forgetting in his eagerness that he had himself undertaken to prevent the interruption of Tom’s narrative by questions from any source.

“I’ll tell you about that when I come to it. Story first, Cal.

“I had just finished my inspection when I heard footsteps of rather uncertain purpose passing round the hovel toward the door, which of course I had closed behind me. As there is only one door to that hovel and it has no windows by which ‘lovers might enter or burglars elope’—that’s wrong end first but it’s no matter—I realized that there was no time to lose. I hurriedly settled down behind a pile of cigar boxes—”

“Their plunder is cigars, then?” asked Dick, forgetting.

“I did not say so,” Tom answered teasingly. “I made no mention of cigars, so far as I can remember. I spoke only of cigar boxes. They might be filled with anything, you know. At any rate your interruption has spoiled the most thrilling part of my narrative, which must now be continued prosaically and without the dramatic fire and fervor I had planned to put into it.

“My concealment was hasty and at best very imperfect. In my haste I forgot to conceal my gun, which stuck up a foot or two above the barrier of boxes that imperfectly hid my person. Fortunately, however, the lame gentleman was too blind drunk even to see double and, as he made no mention of the matter, I refrained from alluding to it.

“Apparently he had entered the hovel with a single purpose, namely, to close his lantern and take it away. With what I cannot help regarding as praiseworthy persistence, he carried out that purpose, giving heed to nothing else. He omitted even to close the door after him, and as the place was without heating apparatus of any kind—except rum for internal combustion—I took my leave as soon as I felt confident that the lame gentleman had either rejoined his comrades or had fallen into dreamless slumber on his way to do so. My next adventure was the head-on collision with Larry in the trail.”

Tom paused, took another bite at the squirrel’s leg he had been eating between sentences, and it seemed necessary to set him going again by means of questions.

“Why don’t you go on, Tom? You haven’t told us yet what you found in the hut.”

“I’m thirsty,” answered the boy. “Speaking is dry work, as you know, if you ever read Hawthorn’s ‘A Rill from the Town Pump!’ Have we enough water in the spring, Cal, for me to waste it in slaking my thirst?”

“We’ve caught all our things full, I reckon. I’ll see.”

When Cal returned he brought with him a small supply of rain water.

“What made you so long about it, Cal?” asked Larry. “We’re all waiting for you.”

“So I see,” answered Cal. “I make all required apologies for having kept this distinguished company waiting while I attended to some matters that are even more vitally interesting to all of us than is Tom’s promised inventory of the things discovered by him in the tents of the wicked, if I may so designate a slab hovel in a cane brake.”

“What have you been doing, Cal? And why didn’t you call the rest of us to help you?” asked Dick, whose New England conscience was apt to scourge his spirit if he thought he had been doing less than his share of whatever there was to do.

“I’ll reply to your questions in inverse order,” Cal replied. “I did not call for help because I did not need help. In what I had to do one person was as good as a dozen. I may have been a trifle slow about it, but that is chiefly because water won’t run through a hole faster than nature intended it to do. As for your other question, I’ve been engaged in a job of water-supply engineering. All the receptacles I set to catch water were nearly full, and as it still rains—a fact that you may have observed for yourselves—I thought it best to empty their contents into the water kegs and set them to catch more. As nobody thought to bring a funnel along, I have had to resort to simpler methods, and I have found that it is by no means easy to pour water from a four-gallon bait pail into a one-inch bung hole without spilling it. For the rest, Captain Larry, I beg to report that one of our water kegs is now full and the other perhaps one-third full. I hope to catch enough more water before the rain ceases to finish filling that keg and to serve all camp purposes during the few hours that we shall probably remain here.”

“Why, I should think we might stay as long as we like, now,” said Tom; “this rain must have filled up our spring.”

“It has, and it has spoiled it for use for many days to come.”

“But how?” persisted Tom.

“Let me remind you, Tom, that we are all eagerly waiting for you to tell us some things that are distinctly more interesting to us than the condition and prospects of a swamp spring can be when we’ve enough water for our present and immediate future need. Go on with your story.”

“Oh, the story is finished,” Tom replied, “but you want to hear about the contents of the hovel. They consist in part of little kegs—three or five gallon kegs, I should think—of Santa Cruz Rum. At least that’s what I made out the letters branded on them to mean. These kegs are lying on the ground in rows that impressed me as far more orderly than the scoundrels themselves ever think of being. I should say there are fifteen or twenty of the kegs in that hovel.

“The rest of the stuff consists of cigars in boxes, and the boxes are carefully tied together in parcels—thirty boxes to the parcel. That’s the way we all saw them carry them up from their boats.”

“Where on earth can they have got all that rum and all those cigars, anyhow? And what do they bring them away down here in the woods for, I wonder?” speculated Dick. “What’s your guess, Tom?”

“Pirates,” answered Tom; “and those things are their plunder.”

“Curious sort of pirates,” said Cal, scoffingly. “Unlike any pirates I ever heard of. Why, Tom, did you ever hear of pirates contenting themselves with taking the rum and cigars they found on the ships they overhauled? You’ve got to guess two or three times more if you’re going to guess right.”

“Well, what do you think they are?” asked Tom, a trifle disappointed to find his theory bowled over so easily.

“Smugglers,” answered Cal. “And I don’t just think it either—I know.”

“But, Cal,” interrupted Larry, “smugglers must bring their goods from foreign ports, and we all know enough about boats to know that those flat-bottomed tubs of theirs wouldn’t live five minutes in a little blow on blue water.”

“No, nor five seconds either, and those precious rascals know all that quite as well as we do. For that reason, among others, they refrain from risking their valuable lives by venturing upon blue water.”

“Then how do they carry on their traffic?”

“I have often remonstrated with you, Larry, for your neglect to read the newspapers. But for that you might have been as well informed on this and other subjects as I am. About a month ago I read in a New York newspaper that fell in my way a somewhat detailed account of the way in which certain kinds of smuggling is carried on along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts wherever the conditions are favorable, and the conditions are nowhere so favorable as right here on this South Carolina coast, where deep, but often very narrow and crooked, inlets and creeks open from the broader waters of the sounds directly into densely wooded regions that are often wholly unpeopled for many miles in every direction.

“This is the way they do it: Schooners and other small sea-going craft load at West Indian ports and take out clearance papers for New York or Halifax or some other big port which can be best reached by skirting this coast. Under pretense of stress of weather, or shortness of water or provisions, they put into some harbor of refuge like that sound out there. They make no effort to land anything, and if questioned by the revenue officers they can show perfectly regular papers. Then when opportunity offers, their shore gangs—like the one over there—slip out in the darkness, take on full loads of freight, and land it in some secluded spot like the one down there, and the schooner sails away to her destination.”

“But how do they get their goods from the woods to market?” Tom asked.

“By wagons, I suppose, and a little at a time. That doesn’t concern us very deeply. What does concern us, is that we’ve got to get away from here as soon as this rain stops. The clouds seem to be breaking, by the way, and the wind has shifted to the northwest,” said Cal, stepping out of the shelter to observe the weather. “It will clear pretty early in the morning, I think, and in the meantime I for one want to get a little sleep.”

“But what’s the hurry, Cal?” asked Tom. “Why can’t we stay here a day or two longer? I’d like to see what the smugglers do when they come to.”

“There are several reasons for getting away at once,” answered Cal. “For one thing, we’re running short of some necessary supplies and must go to Beaufort to replenish our stores. Then there’s the question of water supply. After I finish filling the kegs we’ll have barely enough left to get through the day on.”

“But how has the rain put the spring out of commission, Cal?” asked Tom. “You promised to explain that.”

“By filling it full of surface water. It will be a week or more before the water there is fit to drink, at least as a steady diet.”

“There’s a much better reason than that,” said Larry.

“What is it?”

“Why, we must hurry to put ourselves in communication with the authorities, so that they can come down on that place before the scoundrels get away, or get their plunder away.”

“Yes,” said Tom, who was reluctant to leave the place and give up the adventure, “I suppose we ought to do that.”

“Ought to? Why, we simply must. Every decent citizen owes it as a duty to give notice of crime when he discovers it, and to aid the officers of the law in stopping it. Civilized life would come to an end if men generally refused to support the authorities in their efforts to enforce the law. We’ve discovered a den of thieves, engaged in robbing the Government—that is to say, robbing all of us. So we’ll get away from here just as early in the morning as we can. Now let’s get some sleep.”