CHAPTER IX.
A MESSAGE FROM THE UNKNOWN.
After a few minutes' travel they emerged without warning into aspherical clearing, perhaps sixty feet in circumference. All about itstood palmetto-thatched huts in which crouched timid-looking women andchildren. The place was enclosed by a solid wall of trees and closelygrowing vines. Great gray beards of Spanish moss waved from the treesabove them. It was a spot that would have been impossible to find unlessone had the key to the forest labyrinth. It was evidently the men'shome.
In one portion of the clearing was a singular apparatus that attractedthe attention of the boys at once, puzzled though they were over theirposition, and whether they were in the hands of friends or enemies. Thisobject was a huge iron kettle that was placed over a blazing fire of fatpine-knots. This fire was being fed by a youth who might have been thebrother of one of the men who stopped them in the forest. A cover,evidently fashioned from some kind of wood, covered the iron pot andfrom this lid a pipe of metal led to a crude trough. From the end of thepipe was constantly dripping a colorless liquid which was carefullygathered into a small tin by the man stationed at the trough, and fromtime 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 justthen, what the affair might be.
"Don't ask no questions, stranger, and you won't git told no lies," wasthe 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. Whilethe boys were still wondering what sort of a place and into what sort ofcompany they could have fallen, a figure came striding toward them thatthey at once recognized with a thrill of delight at seeing a familiarface.
The newcomer was Ben Stubbs.
He looked rather sheepish as the boys hailed him with loud shouts ofdelight and seemed embarrassed when Frank asked him what he was doing inthis queer settlement.
"Wall, boys," he said at length, "I declar' to goodness I don' know butwhat you'll think I'm a piratical sort of craft, but--but the fact isthat these folks around this yere camp are old shipmates of mine in amanner of speaking, an' so you needn't be a bit afeard. Yer as safe asif you were in your own bunks."
As may be imagined this did not at all clear up the clouds of mysterythat 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 ofall, I am Black Bart."
"What?" was the amazed chorus.
"Sure," was the reply, "but I've reformed now, shipmates, so don't beafeard; but the boys here still call me by the old name."
"Well, go on, Black Bart," said Frank, smiling at the idea ofgood-natured Ben's ever having owned such a ferocious name.
"Wall," drawled Ben, "I got here in the Squeegee after I had seen fromthe _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 onBen--"that there might be some of my friends hereabout. I had reason toknow they were in this part of the country, for after they were drivenout 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--thatthing my young shipmate Lathrop calls a 'funny pot' is a whisky stilland these folks you see around us are moonshiners. There's a price onthe head of most every one of them," concluded Ben.
The boys looked their questions. Their amazement prevented themspeaking.
"Yes," continued Ben in a low voice, "most of the older ones has droppeda 'revenue' at one time or another. Poor devils, if you'd ever seen theway 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," hereplied. "I used to keep a kind of traveling store to help the boysout."
From which the boys gathered that at one period of his adventurouscareer the versatile Ben had been a "runner" of moonshine whisky--as theman is called who, at great risks, carries the poisonous stuff into theouter world from the secret mountain stills where it is made. Thecoincidence of Ben meeting his old friends on the island was after allnot so remarkable as it seemed. Since the government has run most of themoonshiners out of the Tennessee and North Carolina mountains hundredsof them have taken refuge in the keys and among the 'glades where theirproduct finds a ready market among the Seminoles--who gladly destroythemselves 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 triedto get Frank's revolver from under his pillow while he slept--not withintent to do him any harm but because the sight of the weapon earlier inthe evening while they had been singing round the camp-fire--watched asit now appeared by a hundred keen eyes--had excited his desire to ownit. 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 toa meal of yellow corn pone, broiled wild hog, pompano, fried plantainand a sort of orange preserve, to which they did ample justice, thesubject occupied most of their thoughts and conversation. As they atethe moonshiners shyly watched them with their wild, hunted eyes. Theyrefused to sit down to eat with the party of adventurers, but flittedabout evidencing much interest at the boys' table manners and theirplain embarrassment at having no other table utensils but their fingers.
The meal concluded, Ben lit his pipe and gave himself up to after-dinnercontemplation. The boys wandered about the camp unchecked. Themoonshiners seemed even disposed to be friendly, in an offish sort ofway, after Ben's endorsement of the boys. One of them approached themwith a pannikin full of the colorless stuff from the still. He explainedthat they distilled it from fields of cane they had in another part ofthe island.
The very smell of the stuff sickened the boys, who waved it away aspolitely as they could. Their refusal did not ruffle the moonshiner, whodrained the pannikin off himself with evident relish although theportion he had poured out had been intended to suffice the entirequartette of boys. "Black Bart," too, had a little fallen off in theestimation of the moonshiners because he also refused to touch theirproduct. They shook their heads over his negative reply to an invitationto drink as men who regret the downfall of a once upright man.
While the boys were wandering about the camp their attention wasattracted to a bottle suspended to a pole outside the hut of one of themoonshiners. It was swathed in ribbons and bits of bright tin and seemedto be regarded as some sort of a costly ornament. This was partlyexplained by the fact that the wife of the owner of the hut was anIndian woman and was the person who had ornamented the bottle for "bigmedicine." But a closer scrutiny revealed to the boys a rolled piece ofpaper inside it on which there was some faint writing. As it seemed tobe in English their curiosity was therefore considerably aroused.
They questioned the woman closely about it. At first they could get nosatisfactory replies. At length, however, after Frank had given her abright silver dollar--she refused a paper one--the squaw became moretalkative.
"Um-him come from o-tee (islands) long time go." She pointed to thewestward.
"The islands round Cape Sable?" asked Frank.
She seemed to understand, for she nodded.
&nb
sp; "My man find him--he float," she grunted.
"Boys, this bottle was found afloat. This may be a message from somepoor fellow who is cast away on the Ten Thousand Islands," exclaimedFrank.
The others looked skeptical.
"Most of these bottle messages are fakes anyhow," said Billy, with anair of finality. But Frank was not satisfied. He questioned the woman atgreater length. After a long, patient interrogation he found that herhusband, who was absent from the camp, had been delivering a consignmentof moonshine to a camp of Seminoles in the wildest part of the 'gladesand had found the bottle off the mouth of the Shark River. It had a tinybit 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 hiseagerness a ridiculously small amount, while she in her turn thought theyoung 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 eagerlyshook out the note it contained. What he expected to find even hescarcely knew, but the bottle and its hidden message had appealedstrongly to the boy's nature,--in which there was a strong dash ofimaginative mingled with the practical sense that had enabled him tocarry so many adventures to a successful issue.
The paper was crumpled up and it took a good deal of smoothing outbefore Frank could read the few faintly pencilled lines that were on itssurface. 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 penetrateFrank's brain. The gaps puzzled him and he did not pay much attention tothe general significance of the screed. Suddenly, however, the fullmeaning 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 ofChapinite. Send help. Chapin, U. S. N."
Wildly excited over his discovery Frank's shout brought his companionsround him in a minute. Hastily he explained his find. The sensation itcreated may be imagined. Here was the first definite news of the missingman discovered by an extraordinary chance in the camp of a band ofoutcast moonshiners.
"Where was this yere communication found?" demanded Ben.
Frank explained where and when the squaw had told him the moonshinerdiscovered the bottle. Ben knitted his brows for a minute and then spokewith decision.
"They took him into the 'glades up one of the west-shore rivers," heexclaimed at length. "The tides on this coast would never have driftedthe bottle round there. It must have come down the river, maybe from theinterior of the 'glades themselves, or maybe he threw it overboard fromthe _Mist_ when she was wrecked."
At this moment there came a startling interruption. About a dozen of thewild-looking moonshiners appeared, dragging into the clearing a rumpledheap of humanity whom the boys at once recognized as the man they hadcaught eavesdropping in Washington, and who had, as they believed,followed them to Miami after failing to destroy the _Golden Eagle_ atWhite Plains.
The captive--who is known to our readers from his signing of the messagefrom Washington to Florida as Nego--recognized in a flash that he wasface to face with the Boy Aviators.
For a fragment of time the group stood as though carved from stone.