The Boy Aviators on Secret Service; Or, Working with Wireless

CHAPTER IX
A MESSAGE FROM THE UNKNOWN

After a few minutes’ travel they emerged without warning into a spherical clearing, perhaps sixty feet in circumference. All about it stood palmetto-thatched huts in which crouched timid-looking women and children. The place was enclosed by a solid wall of trees and closely growing vines. Great gray beards of Spanish moss waved from the trees above them. It was a spot that would have been impossible to find unless one had the key to the forest labyrinth. It was evidently the men’s home.

In one portion of the clearing was a singular apparatus that attracted the attention of the boys at once, puzzled though they were over their position, and whether they were in the hands of friends or enemies. This object was a huge iron kettle that was placed over a blazing fire of fat pine-knots. This fire was being fed by a youth who might have been the brother of one of the men who stopped them in the forest. A cover, evidently fashioned from some kind of wood, covered the iron pot and from this lid a pipe of metal led to a crude trough. From the end of the pipe was constantly dripping a colorless liquid which was carefully gathered into a small tin by the man stationed at the trough, and from time to time, he and others in the clearing took a sip from the tin. Overcome by curiosity Harry asked a lanky youth, who slouched by just then, what the affair might be.

“Don’t ask no questions, stranger, and you won’t git told no lies,” was the impudent reply that made Harry hanker – as he whispered to Billy – to “land the perambulating clothes-horse one on the jaw.”

But the mystery was soon to be cleared up and in a surprising way. While the boys were still wondering what sort of a place and into what sort of company they could have fallen, a figure came striding toward them that they at once recognized with a thrill of delight at seeing a familiar face.

The newcomer was Ben Stubbs.

He looked rather sheepish as the boys hailed him with loud shouts of delight and seemed embarrassed when Frank asked him what he was doing in this queer settlement.

“Wall, boys,” he said at length, “I declar’ to goodness I don’ know but what you’ll think I’m a piratical sort of craft, but – but the fact is that these folks around this yere camp are old shipmates of mine in a manner of speaking, an’ so you needn’t be a bit afeard. Yer as safe as if you were in your own bunks.”

As may be imagined this did not at all clear up the clouds of mystery that Ben Stubbs’ sudden appearance had aroused in the boys’ minds.

“Yes, but who are these people?” demanded Frank.

“How did you get here?” chimed in Harry.

“And who may Black Bart be?” was Billy’s contribution.

“And what is that funny pot with a pipe on the top of it over there?” concluded Lathrop.

“One at a time, mates, – one at a time or you’ll swamp me,” cried Ben, getting back a little of his easy-going manner; “wail, now, first of all, I am Black Bart.”

“What?” was the amazed chorus.

“Sure,” was the reply, “but I’ve reformed now, shipmates, so don’t be afeard; but the boys here still call me by the old name.”

“Well, go on, Black Bart,” said Frank, smiling at the idea of good-natured Ben’s ever having owned such a ferocious name.

“Wall,” drawled Ben, “I got here in the Squeegee after I had seen from the Carrier Dove a man snooping around our fire and heard the old ‘Hoo-hoo’ cry – the owl hail, you know.”

The boys nodded.

“We heard it in the jungle before we were surrounded,” said Frank.

“That gave me a queer idea – the hearing of the old cry did” – went on Ben – “that there might be some of my friends hereabout. I had reason to know they were in this part of the country, for after they were driven out of Tennessee by the government a lot of them came down here into the ’glades.”

“Driven out by the government?” echoed Frank.

“Sure,” was the easy reply, “and now to answer your last question – that thing my young shipmate Lathrop calls a ‘funny pot’ is a whisky still and these folks you see around us are moonshiners. There’s a price on the head of most every one of them,” concluded Ben.

The boys looked their questions. Their amazement prevented them speaking.

“Yes,” continued Ben in a low voice, “most of the older ones has dropped a ‘revenue’ at one time or another. Poor devils, if you’d ever seen the way they were hounded you maybe wouldn’t blame ’em so much.”

“Were you ever a moonshiner, Ben?” asked Lathrop in an awed tone.

Ben winked with a wink that spoke volumes.

“Say a friend of the moonshiners, younker, and you’ll be near it,” he replied. “I used to keep a kind of traveling store to help the boys out.”

From which the boys gathered that at one period of his adventurous career the versatile Ben had been a “runner” of moonshine whisky – as the man is called who, at great risks, carries the poisonous stuff into the outer world from the secret mountain stills where it is made. The coincidence of Ben meeting his old friends on the island was after all not so remarkable as it seemed. Since the government has run most of the moonshiners out of the Tennessee and North Carolina mountains hundreds of them have taken refuge in the keys and among the ’glades where their product finds a ready market among the Seminoles – who gladly destroy themselves with “whyome” as they call the product of the illicit stills.

The boys soon found out that it was one of the moonshiners who had tried to get Frank’s revolver from under his pillow while he slept – not with intent to do him any harm but because the sight of the weapon earlier in the evening while they had been singing round the camp-fire – watched as it now appeared by a hundred keen eyes – had excited his desire to own it. The mystery of the motor-boat that kidnapped poor Pork Chops, however, was in no wise cleared up, and as the boys and Ben sat down to a meal of yellow corn pone, broiled wild hog, pompano, fried plantain and a sort of orange preserve, to which they did ample justice, the subject occupied most of their thoughts and conversation. As they ate the moonshiners shyly watched them with their wild, hunted eyes. They refused to sit down to eat with the party of adventurers, but flitted about evidencing much interest at the boys’ table manners and their plain embarrassment at having no other table utensils but their fingers.

The meal concluded, Ben lit his pipe and gave himself up to after-dinner contemplation. The boys wandered about the camp unchecked. The moonshiners seemed even disposed to be friendly, in an offish sort of way, after Ben’s endorsement of the boys. One of them approached them with a pannikin full of the colorless stuff from the still. He explained that they distilled it from fields of cane they had in another part of the island.

The very smell of the stuff sickened the boys, who waved it away as politely as they could. Their refusal did not ruffle the moonshiner, who drained the pannikin off himself with evident relish although the portion he had poured out had been intended to suffice the entire quartette of boys. “Black Bart,” too, had a little fallen off in the estimation of the moonshiners because he also refused to touch their product. They shook their heads over his negative reply to an invitation to drink as men who regret the downfall of a once upright man.

While the boys were wandering about the camp their attention was attracted to a bottle suspended to a pole outside the hut of one of the moonshiners. It was swathed in ribbons and bits of bright tin and seemed to be regarded as some sort of a costly ornament. This was partly explained by the fact that the wife of the owner of the hut was an Indian woman and was the person who had ornamented the bottle for “big medicine.” But a closer scrutiny revealed to the boys a rolled piece of paper inside it on which there was some faint writing. As it seemed to be in English their curiosity was therefore considerably aroused.

They questioned the woman closely about it. At first they could get no satisfactory replies. At length, however, after Frank had given her a bright silver dollar – she refused a paper one – the squaw became more talkative.

“Um-him come from o-tee (islands) long time go.” She pointed to the westward.

“The islands round Cape Sable?” asked Frank.

She seemed to understand, for she nodded.

“My man find him – he float,” she grunted.

“Boys, this bottle was found afloat. This may be a message from some poor fellow who is cast away on the Ten Thousand Islands,” exclaimed Frank.

The others looked skeptical.

“Most of these bottle messages are fakes anyhow,” said Billy, with an air of finality. But Frank was not satisfied. He questioned the woman at greater length. After a long, patient interrogation he found that her husband, who was absent from the camp, had been delivering a consignment of moonshine to a camp of Seminoles in the wildest part of the ’glades and had found the bottle off the mouth of the Shark River. It had a tiny bit of red flannel tied round its neck as if to attract attention to it. This decided Frank. No joker would have gone to that trouble.

He secured the bottle from the squaw for what seemed to him in his eagerness a ridiculously small amount, while she in her turn thought the young Hot-ka-tee (white man) must be crazy to give so much for it, although to be sure, she esteemed it a valuable possession.

With a heavy stone Frank cracked the neck off his purchase and eagerly shook out the note it contained. What he expected to find even he scarcely knew, but the bottle and its hidden message had appealed strongly to the boy’s nature, – in which there was a strong dash of imaginative mingled with the practical sense that had enabled him to carry so many adventures to a successful issue.

The paper was crumpled up and it took a good deal of smoothing out before Frank could read the few faintly pencilled lines that were on its surface. After much puzzling, however, he made out:

“Th-y a – tak – g m-,” then there was a long blank that exposure had obliterated. The next legible words were: “to the ’glades. – stole – ret of – ite. Send help.”

C-p – n, U. S. N.

For a few seconds the full significance of the words did not penetrate Frank’s brain. The gaps puzzled him and he did not pay much attention to the general significance of the screed. Suddenly, however, the full meaning of his find fairly leaped at him from the page.

The letter had been written by the missing Lieutenant Chapin.

There could be no doubt of it. Reconstructed the letter read:

“They are taking me into the ’glades. They stole the secret of Chapinite. Send help. Chapin, U. S. N.”

Wildly excited over his discovery Frank’s shout brought his companions round him in a minute. Hastily he explained his find. The sensation it created may be imagined. Here was the first definite news of the missing man discovered by an extraordinary chance in the camp of a band of outcast moonshiners.

“Where was this yere communication found?” demanded Ben.

Frank explained where and when the squaw had told him the moonshiner discovered the bottle. Ben knitted his brows for a minute and then spoke with decision.

“They took him into the ’glades up one of the west-shore rivers,” he exclaimed at length. “The tides on this coast would never have drifted the bottle round there. It must have come down the river, maybe from the interior of the ’glades themselves, or maybe he threw it overboard from the Mist when she was wrecked.”

At this moment there came a startling interruption. About a dozen of the wild-looking moonshiners appeared, dragging into the clearing a rumpled heap of humanity whom the boys at once recognized as the man they had caught eavesdropping in Washington, and who had, as they believed, followed them to Miami after failing to destroy the Golden Eagle at White Plains.

The captive – who is known to our readers from his signing of the message from Washington to Florida as Nego – recognized in a flash that he was face to face with the Boy Aviators.

For a fragment of time the group stood as though carved from stone.

CHAPTER X
THE CAPTIVE’S WARNING

The captive was the first to break the picture. With a violent wrench he freed himself of the arms of his captors, while the boys gazed in dumb amazement at the unexpected encounter.

“What’s this here buccaneer bein’ a’ doing of now?” demanded Ben, after a few seconds.

“We ’uns caught him trying to scuttle you ’uns canoes,” explained one of the crackers, “and we calculate to have him decorating a tree-bough by sundown on our own account. We don’t like live strangers round here.”

The face of the man we know as Nego grew as yellow as parchment. There was little doubt from the expressions of the moonshiners’ faces that they were quite capable of carrying out their threat. In fact a murmur of approval greeted the cold-blooded proposal. One man – a little short fellow with a tangle of black whiskers that reached to his waist – even pointed to a custard apple-tree that grew at the edge of the clearing and remarked casually:

“He’d look uncommon well decorating that thar tree I’m thinking.”

After the boys had made insistent demands to be given the details of Nego’s capture they were finally informed that a group of the moonshiners, who had been off wild-hog hunting, had been much surprised to see the motor-boat manœuvring off the point on the far side of which the boys had beached the canoes. They stealthily watched the two men who were in the craft from the screen provided by the mangroves. One of them – the man they had captured, – continually scanned the shore with a pair of field-glasses.

“They must have known we had left the sloop and come in pursuit of us,” exclaimed Frank and Harry in one breath as the narrator reached this point of his story.

After rounding the point it appeared that the watchers, who had been sneaking along through the undergrowth, saw Nego order the boat’s head pointed for the shore and when she was fairly close in, get into a small dinghy that towed astern and come ashore at the spot where the canoes were lying. He carried a small axe and was about to raise it and destroy the craft when the crackers, with a startling yell, burst out of the woods and made him a captive. The other man must have seen his comrade’s plight, for he instantly headed the motor-boat about and giving her full speed vanished round the projection on the coast of the island.

The boys’ faces paled as a common thought flashed across their minds. “What if the two men had visited the sloop and scuttled her or destroyed the Golden Eagle II?”

Harry was the first to voice their fears. Frank’s answer, however, gave the adventurers a gleam of hope.

“That occurred to me, Harry,” he replied, “but, on thinking it over, I think it is more likely that they planned to destroy the canoes before attacking the Carrier Dove, as with the small craft stove in they would be able to work without fear of our paddling back and surprising them.”

They agreed that this was a reasonable theory and turned their attention to the captive who stood defiantly with folded arms and a sneering expression on his dark face. He looked very different from the well-dressed man who had first attracted their attention in the dining-room at the Hotel Willard, but he was unmistakably the same despite the fact that now his chin was covered with a heavy stubble and he wore rough clothes and a dark blue flannel shirt.

“Who are you?” demanded Frank finally.

The dark man raised his eyebrows and as he did so the boys noticed at once the cause of his peculiar expression. The man’s eyes were almost almond-shaped, dark and malevolent looking – the eyes of an Oriental. Combined with his dark yellow skin they stamped him at once as an unmistakable subject of the ruler of the far Eastern power the agents of which the Secretary of the Navy was certain, had kidnapped Lieutenant Chapin and stolen the formula of his explosive. When he spoke it was in a rasping voice that matched well his general appearance of sinister energy.

“What if I should refuse to tell you?” he grated.

“In that case you would be very foolish,” rejoined Frank, “you are now in the power of these men, over whom we have some influence. If you will give us some information we will in return try to intervene for you, notwithstanding the fact that you have tried to blow up our aerodrome and now we find you here attempting to scuttle our canoes. What have you done with the colored man you took from the sloop last night?” he demanded suddenly.

“To that I shall simply reply that he is in good hands,” was the rejoinder.

“Not if he’s got anything to do with you, he ain’t, my fine fellow,” put in Ben indignantly. The man looked at him with cold contempt.

“You may do with me what you will,” he said proudly, “I shall not sue Americans for my liberty or even my life.”

The boys were amazed at the cool audacity of the man. With death staring him in the face, surrounded by the cruel faces of men who would have no hesitancy in killing him, he showed no more trace of emotion than if he were still sitting eavesdropping in the Willard dining-room.

“We ’uns will find a way to make him talk,” broke in one of the moonshiners, a big, powerful fellow. “Here, Shadduck, heat up the gun-barrels.”

The boys looked puzzled, but Ben realized at once the horrible thing the man contemplated. They meant to brand the prisoner with the red-hot gun-barrels.

“Avast there,” he cried, “none of that in this yere ship. Fair play and all above board. If you want to string up this fellow to the yard-arm I don’t know, if it wasn’t for my friends here, that I’d say ‘no,’ but we ain’t going to have no branding.”

“Who are you to be giving orders?” demanded the man who had made the suggestion angrily and leaning forward on his rifle, “I reckon we ’uns ain’t asking for your advice or figgering on taking it either.”

Several of the younger men muttered, “That’s right – who’s he to come here ’a ordering us about.”

“I wouldn’t put it past yer that you’re turned a revenue,” went on the first speaker following up his advantage. At this an angry cry went up. The boys and Ben perceived that matters would soon reach a crisis if something were not done. Ben, however, knew how to handle these people better than his young companions imagined.

With two quick steps he was alongside the trouble-maker and seizing him in an iron grasp put his face close to his and fairly hissed in his ear:

“Look a here, ‘Red’ Mavell, one more word like that and you’re as good as dead – understand?”

The other apparently did for he sullenly muttered:

“Ain’t no use a gettin’ het up. You know the way we do these things an’ if you don’t like ’em you don’t have to stay and watch.”

During this scene Nego had stood as impassively as if carved out of wood. Indeed with his parchment-like skin and dark, slit eyes he did resemble an Oriental ivory image almost as much as a human being.

It was of course evident to him that escape was impossible. Rugged, wild-eyed moonshiners stood all about him and the women even had come out of the huts, with their timid children peeping from behind their skirts, to be onlookers at the unwonted scene. The captive retained his posture of proud defiance in the face of this. His bearing was even insolent in fact.

“Look here, mates,” went on Ben, turning suddenly to the boys, “we don’t want to have any hand in killing this here reptile – much reason as we’ve got to – and we don’t want him to be tortured, and I’ll be keelhauled if we want to keep him,” he glanced ferociously at the captive, “the only thing to do is to turn him loose.”

The captive’s face lost its impassivity for a moment. So completely had Ben’s determined manner cowed the more ruffianly moonshiners that even they did not demur.

“But there’s a string hitched to the offer,” went on Ben, “if we do let yer go you’ve got to make tracks in that thar motor-boat of yours for the north and swear to follow us no further. And tell us what you’ve done with that thar poor coon.”

“Yes, that is our proposal,” said Frank, “if we get you out of the hands of these people you will have to pledge us your word to trail us no further and to leave this part of the country at once – will you do that?”

“If we were only north we’d have you in jail by this time,” put in Billy angrily.

The man was silent for a moment with his eyes downcast, then he looked up but with some of the expression of sullen cunning obliterated from his dark face at least temporarily. It was plain the Americans’ generosity had affected him.

“I do promise – yes,” he said quietly. “My companion was to wait for me in the motor-boat till I signaled to him that I was going to put off again. If you will let me go I promise to go straight on board and never trouble you again.”

“But they said your companion put about and drove the boat round the point when he saw your capture,” objected Harry.

The other smiled.

“Simply a measure of prudence,” he said. “I can easily signal him with this,” he drew from his pocket a small whistle, of the shrill kind known to seafaring men as the “bos’n’s pipe.”

“But,” he went on in a grave tone, “I want to do something to repay you for your kindness which I confess I do not understand – you Americans are a queer people.”

“Blame lucky for you we are,” snorted Ben, who didn’t much like the cool way the captive took his good fortune.

“Do not fear for your negro. He is safe. We put him ashore this morning, and by this time he must be at your camp. We only carried him off in an attempt to prevent his giving the alarm. But,” and his voice sank to a whisper, “give this attempt up. Do not go into the Everglades.”

Frank gazed at him in astonishment. The tone he used was full of import.

“Grave danger threatens you there,” the other went on, “more than danger – death itself and in a terrible form. As for me I have pledged you my word. I am your country’s enemy, but I know brave and generous men when I see them; you have no more to fear from me – ”

“Well, you haven’t done us much harm anyway,” Frank could not refrain from saying, “though I’ll admit you have tried,” he added.

“I have but been the agent for others more powerful, more unscrupulous and more to be feared than I,” the other replied, “even now your coming is being looked for.”

“Then you did spy on us in Washington,” cried Frank.

“I did, and telegraphed my report to my superiors,” replied the man, “it was my duty. We soldiers of the Samurai know no word but duty when we are assigned to a task.”

“Then you are an officer?” asked Frank.

“I am in the Onaki regiment. I fought through the Russian war and was afterward given the honor to assist in the enterprise which you are about to try to frustrate.”

“I don’t see much honor in what you and your countrymen have done,” rejoined Frank warmly; “it looks to me like plain everyday stealing and worse.”

“Perhaps,” replied the other with a slight shrug. “Our points of view are different. Now,” he said abruptly, “I must be going. We must be well on our way north by dark for the inland channels are very intricate to navigate in and our boat draws a good deal of water.

“Recollect what I have said and be warned,” he repeated impressively.

As he spoke there came a low growl of thunder in the distance and a heavy splotch of rain fell on the back of Frank’s hand. They all looked up astonished. So engrossed had they been by the remarkable scene that had just transpired that they had not noticed that for some time the sky had been growing blacker and that one of the sudden storms, peculiar to the tropics, had been advancing towards them with all the rapidity that marks the advent of a “Black Squall,” as they are sometimes called. The sky had in a few minutes become overcast completely with an ominous slate-colored pall. A hush as if of expectancy had fallen on the jungle about them.

“You are likely to get a ducking if you don’t git aboard before this yere squall breaks,” growled Ben as his seaman’s eye noted the signs of bad weather. The Oriental swept the overcast sky with a quick glance. He nodded.

“Good-bye and thank you,” he said, and the next minute, guided by one of the moonshiners, he vanished down the trail leading to the shore. The moonshiners turned to the adventurers with sardonic looks as he disappeared.

“You ’uns might better have let us hang him,” said one of them, “he’ll work you a pesky lot of mischief yet.”

“I don’t believe he will trouble us any more,” rejoined Frank, who had been impressed by the man’s earnest manner and evident gratitude. How soon and how literally his words were to be fulfilled he little imagined.