The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mystery Boys and Captain Kidd's Message, by Van Powell

The inert colored man was lifted over the gun-wale.
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THE MYSTERY BOYS
AND
CAPTAIN KIDD’S MESSAGE

By VAN POWELL

Author of
“The Mystery Boys Series,” etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
New York Chicago
Printed in U. S. A.

THE MYSTERY BOYS
THRILLING STORIES IN FAR DISTANT LANDS
By VAN POWELL

The Mystery Boys and the Inca Gold The Mystery Boys and Captain Kidd’s Message The Mystery Boys and the Secret of the Golden Sun The Mystery Boys and the Chinese Jewels The Mystery Boys and the Hindu Treasure

Copyright, 1931
By A. L. BURT COMPANY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I. Nicky and the Voodoo Woman] 5 [II. One Half of a Cipher] 13 [III. A “Mystery Boy” Meeting] 22 [IV. Captain Kidd’s Ghost] 30 [V. “Nothing Shall Stop Us!”] 39 [VI. On the Way to the Keys] 49 [VII. An Uncanny Summons] 57 [VIII. Crocodile Key] 68 [IX. Black Caesar’s Buccaneers] 78 [X. Sam Shows His True Colors] 86 [XI. One Mystery Is Solved] 94 [XII. Modern Pirates] 102 [XIII. The Mystery Boys Decide] 110 [XIV. The Chase] 121 [XV. Disaster!] 129 [XVI. Captain Nicky Takes Command] 137 [XVII. A Parley and a Plan] 144 [XVIII. A Surprise!] 155 [XIX. Captain Kidd’s Message] 162 [XX. Nicky Changes a Word!] 168 [XXI. In the Bottom of the Dipper!] 176 [XXII. Gold—Gold—Gold] 186 [XXIII. Marooned] 195 [XXIV. “A Needle in a Haystack”] 203 [XXV. In the Everglades] 214 [XXVI. Nicky Does Some Scouting] 223 [XXVII. In the Enemy’s Hands] 232 [XXVIII. Two in the Toils] 238 [XXIX. One Last Hope!] 248 [XXX. Cliff Plays His Part] 254 [XXXI. Nicky Is a Hero!] 264 [XXXII. How Voodoo Brought Success] 274

THE MYSTERY BOYS AND
CAPTAIN KIDD’S MESSAGE

CHAPTER I
NICKY AND THE VOODOO WOMAN

“What is the matter with that colored boy?” whispered Nicky Lane to his comrades, Tom and Cliff, “Look! He stares up at the sun and then he watches us as if he expects something to happen.”

Cliff and Tom lifted their heads from the shallow pit in which they were digging. A glance toward the top rail of the fence around the field showed them a black-faced boy of about ten, perched there. As they stared at him he looked away.

“He’s only curious to know what we are doing,” Tom declared.

“All these Jamaica colored folks are,” Cliff added. “They can’t understand why we want to find old relics.”

“But why does he look up at the sun?” Nicky persisted. “See! He’s doing it now.”

The boy gave a glance toward the sun, about two hours high, and then resumed his intent stare toward the trench. Nicky leaned on his spade handle and glowered back.

“Do you suppose he expects us to be sun-struck?” Cliff suggested. “Only it isn’t hot enough yet, and we’re not working hard.”

“I don’t know,” Tom declared, “but I wish I did. He seems to be fidgeting and nervous.”

“I’m going to find out!” exclaimed Nicky. Of the trio of chums he was the most excitable and impulsive. As he dropped his spade and strode toward the fence, its occupant tumbled off; scrambling to his feet he ran out of sight around the side of an old, ramshackle cabin in a corner of the enclosure.

“That’s a funny one,” Cliff observed when Nicky returned.

They discussed the strange actions of the colored boy for a moment but since there was no explanation they went back to work.

Nicky Lane was on a holiday with his two bosom companions. The Amadale Military Academy, which they all attended, had been closed because there was an epidemic of “flu” in the suburb of a mid-Western city in which the school was located.

Most of the students had gone to their homes. Cliff Gray lived with his Aunt Lucy in the very suburb most affected by the epidemic; Tom and Nicky were boarding there also. Cliff’s father, whom the boys had helped to rescue from detention among some Incas of Peru, in an old hidden Inca city among the Andes, was, at this time, exploring and studying in the island of Jamaica, among the West Indies. He was a great scholar and a student of old civilizations and was writing some chapters of a book on the Carib Indians, the original inhabitants of the islands when Columbus discovered them.

Cliff’s Aunt Lucy thought it would be wise for Cliff to join his father, to be well away from danger of infection; because the three chums were inseparable, consent was easily secured for Tom and Nicky to go with him. The three friends had been residing on a plantation in the heart of the island for nearly a week. There, with Cliff’s father and a young man, Clarence Neale, who was securing Carib relics for a great Museum of Indian History in New York, they tried to help out by searching for Carib pottery and ornaments. Jamaica had a great lure for them, for Nicky, a “pirate bug,” called Jamaica “Pirates’ Paradise!”

This interest was not due to any desire on Nicky’s part to be a wild, fierce seadog, sailing from some port with letters of marque, to pillage unprotected ships. The days for such things lay far in the past and although Nicky was excitable and impulsive he was, at heart, a very steady, sincere boy, a true American living up to the ideals of all that American boyhood means.

But in Nicky’s family there was an old paper which was a direct message to one of his ancestors from no less a person than the alleged pirate, Captain Kidd!

Naturally Nicky, scarcely more than fourteen, was elated when he knew that he was permitted to accompany Cliff Gray, with their comrade, Tom, slightly older than either, to the island which had once been governed by a reformed pirate, in the heart of the West Indies where once piracy had flourished.

They found very little more than legends and old tales to whet their interest. Piracy had given place to commerce on the seas, as sailing ships had surrendered to steam. And so, instead of digging for buried treasure, on the sixth morning of their visit, they had found themselves digging carefully in a corner of an uncultivated field, to unearth broken bits of earthenware, possibly some small ornaments, or other relics of the Caribs who once roamed the island.

Digging early to avoid the mid-day heat during which everybody was quiet and inactive, they had discovered the unaccountable interest of the colored boy and when he had scuttled away they returned to their work wondering a little about it.

“When we rescued your father from the Incas and got some of their gold the whole business started with a mystery, Cliff.” Tom referred to an adventure during the previous summer in which they had explored a hidden city in Peru and gone through many exciting escapades.

“Wouldn’t it be odd if that boy started up a new mystery?” Nicky suggested. “We’re right in the heart of mystery land. Voodoo—piracy in the past—and—and everything!”

“Look—but don’t let him see you!” Cliff nudged his comrades. “By the right side of that old cabin—there’s our ‘boy-friend!’”

Sure enough, the ebony face protruded around the old shack that stood in the field, not far from their trench.

“Listen, fellows,” whispered Nicky, “there is something queer about this. How can we get hold of him and make him tell us what he expects is going to happen. He’s just looked up at the sun again!”

“You pretend to chase him,” Tom advised. “When he disappears and is out of sight I will go the other way and head him off.”

Nicky promptly started toward the boy, who ran away around the cabin. Tom lost no time in taking a direction around the other side of the shack. There was a shrill yell of fear and the sound of a scuffle, and back came Nicky and Tom, almost dragging a terrified colored boy.

Cliff joined them close to the cabin.

“Now,” said Nicky, “we’re not going to hurt you. But you tell us what made you look at the sun and then watch us!”

The boy was silent. Suddenly he began to wriggle and to struggle and all three took hold of him. They did not intend to harm him but his actions had their curiosity fully aroused.

“Here! White boys! Let that colored boy alone, do you hear!”

A shrill, cracked voice came from the cabin. The three white chums hesitated, looking at one another and then at the cabin.

In its doorway stood an old, bent woman, who seemed to be all skin and bones. Her face looked like crinkled, black parchment, dry and wrinkled. Her hands were skinny and had long nails and clawlike fingers. She leaned on a stick and made them all think of pictures of witches they had seen. Her eyes blazed at them.

A little frightened by the old crone’s evident fury, they let go of the boy who scuttled past the woman into the shack.

“We didn’t hurt him,” Nicky said defiantly. “He was—” and he told her how the boy had acted. “We wanted to know why he did it,” he ended.

The woman scowled at them.

“You know very quick,” she said in her shrill, cracked tones. “You go away or sun make you very sick in the head!”

“Ho!” cried Nicky, “will it? Who says so?”

“Sh-h-h!” Tom nudged him. “Don’t you remember what Cliff’s father told us about Voodoo on these islands?”

“Yes, I do,” Nicky answered under his breath. “But I’m not afraid! Why does she want us to go away? What is there in this field that she doesn’t want us to see?”

“It’s Voodoo, I tell you!” Tom urged. “These old Voodoo witches can enchant people.”

“Do you really believe that?” demanded Nicky. The old woman was fumbling and tugging at an old bag, dirty and of some queer animal or reptile skin, as he spoke.

“Well—” Tom hesitated, “I know they say it’s only the effect on ignorant minds that makes Voodoo hurt people.”

“Well, it can’t hurt me!” declared Nicky, “And, as I say—why would she want to ‘voodoo’ us—white fellows and strangers?”

“I think Nicky’s right,” Cliff declared. “She must have some reason.”

“Listen,” whispered Nicky, excitedly, “one of you run and bring Mr. Gray or the other man—Mr. Neale. Let’s get to the bottom of this. I’ll give you any odds you like that she is trying to drive us away because something’s hidden in this field—maybe—maybe——”

“Treasure!” gasped Cliff and ran like a deer for the older members of their party. Treasure!

CHAPTER II
ONE HALF OF A CIPHER

That the old crone was very much “worked up” was easily to be seen. Tom and Nicky, watching uneasily, saw her fumble in her old bag and draw out with her bony fingers three queer objects.

These were small figures, made rudely of clay or mud. Tom and Nicky started and stared at them. They were made in the shape of small human figures, with heads a little larger than peas, and with dented places to mark out the arms and legs.

“What do you think those things are?” Tom whispered. “I don’t like this. Remember what Mr. Neale said about this woman?”

“Yes,” Nicky answered softly. “He said Ma’am Sib is a Voodoo woman and that the colored people are afraid of her. But I’m not! I want to see what she is going to do.”

That was quickly seen. She laid the little objects in a row on the doorsill; all of them had their tiny heads pointed out from the shade of the roof, so that the heads were in the sunshine.

She scowled at Nicky and Tom, then muttered under her breath and glanced up toward the sun, then back at the boys.

“I know it’s just imagination,” Tom told his chum, “but I feel sort of queer——”

Nicky made a practical suggestion.

“I think she’s trying to scare us away by making us believe that she has bewitched us or something,” he said, “It’s something that the sun will do to us. If you’re uneasy, go and stay in the cabin shade at the side.”

Tom looked sheepish and uncomfortable, but after hesitating for a while his fears overcame his good sense and he went out of sight.

Nicky did not follow; instead, he made an unexpected move.

Quick as a flash he leaped forward, bent and made a scooping movement of his fingers. When he dodged back out of reach of the irate old woman’s cane, his hand was closed over the mud images.

“I’ll keep these,” he said, trembling a little with natural uncertainty as to the outcome of his bravado.

“Here comes Cliff with Mr. Neale!” called Tom from beside the cabin, while the colored boy poked his head out through the door and made his eyes roll in his excitement.

Cliff and the young archaelogist were climbing the fence. They hurried over and confronted the woman.

“What does this mean, Ma’am Sib?” asked Clarence Neale quietly. He showed no anger, only curiosity. The old woman looked up at the tall, clean-cut young fellow, not much more than twenty-two or so, and frowned.

“White boys not to dig! I order them to go yesterday. They come back! I—” she made a gesture toward Nicky who unclosed his hand. The moisture of his palm was already breaking up the shape of the figures.

“Cliff’s father told us about the Egyptians doing this like this,” Nicky said. “They used to make little images of wax, he said, and put spells on them to injure the magicians’ enemies—then when they stuck pins in the wax, or burned it, the enemies were supposed to suffer with pain. But I didn’t know they did that sort of thing in Jamaica.”

“Sometimes,” Mr. Neale admitted. “But why did you come back to dig when Ma’am Sib ordered you away?”

“It isn’t her field,” Cliff answered. “I asked father. And, besides, there is another trench started. See! Over there.” He pointed to the digging that had been done at a point closer to the cabin.”

“Can they really hurt you—these voodoo people?” Tom asked. “I began to feel sort of uneasy——”

Mr. Neale spoke quietly in reply. “The boy was told to do as he did so as to suggest an idea to you,” he explained. “You see, all sorts of magic depend on our being afraid. We are afraid of things we do not understand. Because we don’t understand them we think ‘maybe they do have power to hurt us.’”

“It’s just the same as if I came to Tom some morning and looked at him as if something was wrong, and then asked him what’s the matter,” Cliff said. “He’d wonder and then begin to think that something was wrong and he would begin to feel sick, if he kept thinking about it long enough.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Neale replied. “Voodoo depends on ignorance and fear. Because people are ignorant and afraid, their own minds work against them. Tom let himself imagine there was danger——”

“I knew it,” Tom said, shamefacedly, “but it got the best of me.”

“But why did she do it?” demanded Nicky. “Not just because we didn’t obey her and stop digging——”

“I claim there must be something hidden here that she knows about and she tried, the way she is used to doing, to drive us away,” Cliff declared.

“There isn’t anything buried here that I have heard about,” Clarence Neale responded. He turned to the woman, “Ma’m Sib, what induced you to try to frighten these friends of mine?”

“Perhaps I can help you?” inquired a voice behind them. So absorbed had they all been in the discussion that they had not noticed the arrival of a slender colored fellow of nineteen. He stood just back of them, smiling pleasantly. He was as black as ebony, with perfect, white teeth which showed in strong contrast when he gave his good-natured smile. He spoke without the Southern Negro’s dialect, as is the custom of all the Jamaica inhabitants whose speech is often of the very best English, with only a few colloquial bits of dialect.

Mr. Neale turned. He recognized the grandson of old Ma’am Sib.

“Your grandmother has been voodooing my young assistants, Sam,” he said pleasantly. “They were digging and she must have thought that voodoo was easier than the natural way—to come and ask me to keep them away.”

The young Negro shrugged his shoulders. He had been sent to a school in the United States and he was better educated than was his ancient grandmother.

“No harm is done, anyhow, sar,” he replied. “I ask you to forgive.”

“Done!” answered the white man, “but I am curious to know just what is so important that she should take that sort of measure to drive off our digging comrades.”

“She thought that there was something buried here,” explained the colored fellow. “She knew that I have been doing some exploring in my spare time. But I found what I was looking for—and I was so disappointed that I did not even bother to tell her, sar.”

“Disappointed?”

“Yes, sar. There is an old legend in our family and my grandmother had told me and I was searching for a letter. When Captain William Kidd traded between New York and these islands, before he was really a pirate, he was much friends with our Governor. In those days the Governor was kind to pirates. He let them come into harbor and he did not give them to the law for punishing.”

Nicky and his friends became alert. Nicky thought of the old paper so carefully preserved by his family, although no one thought it would ever amount to anything. Cliff and Tom were intensely interested because this was becoming a living story, linking the present with the old, piratical days and their natural love of adventure was whetted by the suave words of the colored man.

“You may not know about Captain Kidd,” Sam continued. Nicky knew a great deal but he remained silent, listening eagerly. “He was really not as bad as the story books have made him. He was not one of the terrible pirates. But he did wrong and finally he was made a prisoner in America, and was kept in prison until he could be sent to England to be tried.”

He became very earnest and they all drew closer.

“While he was in prison he sent a letter to his friend, the Governor of Jamaica, who had a house not far from this place. That was the owner of this field and his family holds it yet. We are descendants of old family servants of that Governor. Well, sar, the letter came one day and the Governor began to brag about finding great treasure soon; one of my race who was his body-servant thought the letter must tell about the treasure and so he stole it. But he became disgusted and buried the despatch box. I do not know why. At least, I did not know why until I dug it up last night!”

They were all tense with suspense as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded paper. Holding his hands around it until he made sure that it was the right one, his eyes rolling with the colored race’s love for being the center of the interest, he slowly opened the paper, holding it down low so that they could all see the surface.

It was dirty and brown with age and the ink on it was faint and faded to a faint brownish tint.

They all craned their necks.

What they saw was disappointing, as Sam had said. There were three small, irregular shaped circles toward the top of the paper, in such a relation to one another that if a line had been drawn between each pair so as to connect them, they would have been at the points of a triangle.

At one side, and a little lower down, was the regulation, old-fashioned representation of a compass to show direction.

Further down, there was part of a word which they made out to be “per.” Still further down, was a mass of tiny dots and marks, too faint to be given any meaning, they were not in the form of letters, but were just like the blotches that break out on the skin during measles-here, there and everywhere. But at the left side they went right to the edge of the paper, and there was a very dim line starting there and running a little way in among the blotches.

Just beneath was a nautical bearing: “25—30—13 N.”

“You can see,” said Sam, his finger running along the left hand edge, “this paper is torn off. It is only half of a cipher, sar.”

Mr. Neale, Cliff and Tom nodded.

“So it is of no good.” said Sam, but he returned it to his pocket. “It may come that the other half will be found. I hope so.”

Then he turned and looked, with surprise, toward Nicky.

“Can it be,” muttered Sam, “that Ma’am Sib’s voodoo has worked, after all?”

Nicky was turning somersaults and rolling about like a boy who has gone mad!

CHAPTER III
A “MYSTERY BOYS” MEETING

Watching Nicky’s contortions, Ma’am Sib began to see pictures in her mind of herself in jail and she became more afraid than she had made the boys.

She knew that the open practice of voodoo was against all laws and she had not really meant to do any more than frighten the boys off. But Nicky’s actions caused her to dread the consequences to herself. But Tom and Cliff, understanding their comrade, had different thoughts. When Tom looked at Cliff he saw the latter calmly but determinedly scratching his left ear. Tom instantly folded his arms!

Tom hastened to Nicky and grabbed his chum between two somersaults.

“Cliff’s calling for a council,” he whispered. Nicky became at once a very sober and quietly normal young fellow.

The three chums were the sole members of a secret order which they named from the fact that each of them had a mystery in his life; so their secret order was called “The Mystery Boys.”

Nicky, to begin with, had in his family the supposed message from the former pirate, William Kidd. Tom’s mystery had to do with the fact that his sister had never been located after an attack on a Mexican mine by bandits; after which no trace of the girl, living there with her father, the mine superintendent, had ever been found. Cliff had solved his mystery the summer before; his father, studying Inca civilization, had been held prisoner by Incas of the old Peruvian race, in a city hidden among the Andes; a letter had reached Cliff, and he, with Tom and Nicky and a history instructor from Amadale, and with “Quipu Bill” whom they had met in Peru, had discovered and rescued the old scholar and had secured some Inca gold at the same time.

The purpose of the secret order was to be able to exchange ideas in the presence of other people who were not members of the clique, without the outsiders knowing about it. The Mystery Boys had made up their order for the purpose of helping one another in every way, but in secret. Their motto was “Seeing All, I see nothing; Knowing All, I know nothing; Telling All, I tell nothing!”

In order to have help in rescuing Cliff’s father, the order had added the young history instructor, a Mr. Whitley, and “Quipu Bill,” but after the thrilling adventures among the Incas, wherein the secret signals of the order had served the members in many “tight” places, Bill went off to a ranch in the West, and the instructor returned to his classes; both retained membership, but not actively.

Cliff’s signal to Tom had been a call for a secret communication, and Tom, folding his arms in sign of agreement, quickly urged Nicky to silence. Cliff understood Nicky’s wild capering.

Nicky, very sober, came up with Tom to rejoin the group.

“I was just cutting up,” he said. “I was letting off steam because it struck me as funny that Ma’am Sib went to all that trouble to scare us away from a map or a cipher that had already been found and that wasn’t any use anyhow!”

Mr. Neale accepted the explanation; it seemed a natural action that Nicky had indulged in, thus explained. Ma’am Sib was greatly upset and began to beg them not to pay any attention to her “spell.” Its effects were all removed, she declared. They agreed and as it was clear that young Sam was eager to have them cause no trouble for his grandmother, the boys and their older friend forgave the old voodoo woman and hurried away.

Mr. Neale returned to his conference with some colored men who were excavating near the plantation house where the white people had their headquarters. Tom, Cliff and Nicky could hardly wait to get off by themselves. As soon as they succeeded, Nicky turned to his companions.

“I saw you signal to me to say nothing,” Nicky told Cliff. “It was all I could do to hold in.”

“I know it,” Cliff replied. “You ‘go off the handle’ easy, anyhow. I guessed what made you get so excited, and I didn’t want you to talk until we had had a meeting of our Order.”

“Nicky’s ‘message’ from Captain Kidd has something to do with it,” Tom guessed.

“Something?” Nicky said. “Everything! Why, that half of the cipher would fit in with a half that my uncle has!”

“Honestly?” cried Tom. “Hooray! We’re off again for adventure!”

“Not yet,” Cliff counseled. “There are some things to decide. First of all, half the cipher is in New York—or with Nicky’s uncle.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Nicky laughed. “I got him to let me take a tracing of it. I held the paper against a lamp shade and traced over it. Here’s the ‘other half of the cipher!’ See what you make of it.”

He dragged a leather billfold from his coat pocket and extracted a neatly folded paper. The others stared at it.

“Was the original torn down on the side where this jagged line shows?” demanded Tom.

“Yep!” responded Nicky, “and you see it’s on the side opposite to where Sam’s paper is ripped away. I think they’d just fit together!”

“So do I,” Cliff agreed. “But even if you have this half, there are things to consider; but let’s see if we can remember the other piece and sketch it on this envelope,” he drew a letter from his pocket. “Here—here’s a pencil!”

They got to work. On the sketch Nicky had already made there were several dots at one side, toward the top. Below them was the word “Dip” and under that were more of the little straggley blotches with a faint line starting at the left hand side and close to a small cross marked “Reck.”

“That word ought to be ‘wreck’ I think,” Nicky suggested. They nodded. “And here, you see, is a nautical direction—but I don’t think it’s the same as on the other paper.”

“It isn’t!” Cliff stated. “The other was some degrees North Latitude, but this is West Longitude. Now—what was the set of figures on the other map?”

Nicky shook his head.

“I recall—let’s see—was it thirty degrees and twelve minutes——”

“You’re away off,” Tom broke in. “It was twenty-five degrees and twelve minutes and thirty seconds.”

“No,” Cliff argued. “It was—no, it couldn’t have been twelve degrees North—that would be in South America, I think—anyway, if I recall my map, it wouldn’t be where the pirates used to go.”

“I wish we could remember it,” Nicky said. “Then we could go and get the treasure.”

“Maybe,” Cliff hesitated. “Maybe not. It would be like stealing to take any treasure by using the part of the map we don’t own.”

“But Sam doesn’t own it by right!” Nicky urged. “It was sent to the Governor of Jamaica and stolen from him. Then Sam found it.”

“But there must be part of the Governor’s family still alive,” Tom said, agreeing with Cliff’s attitude, “and if Captain Kidd sent the map in two parts so that both his friends would be sure to share in his treasure, we have no right to take the other fellow’s share!”

“That’s so,” Nicky agreed. “Anyhow, Sam has no right to it either.”

“But he has part of the map!” Tom reminded Nicky.

“What ought we to do?” Nicky questioned.

“I guess it’s a case for older heads to decide,” Tom suggested. “Cliff’s father——”

“Yes, we can ask him,” Nicky agreed. “How about letting Mr. Neale know about it?”

“I like him,” Cliff asserted. “He’s honest and he knows a whole lot about these islands. And he could help us a lot. My father could advise us but he wouldn’t want to go on any adventure; he had enough of that with the Incas.”

“Then there is Nicky’s uncle, who has the real map,” Tom reminded his chums. “How about him?”

“Let’s tell Cliff’s father first,” Nicky urged. “Then we can do as he says.”

It was agreed that this was the best way out. They found the old scholar sorting some broken bits of pottery. These had been taken out of old mounds of refuse, centuries old, where the Carib Indians had thrown their cast off and broken utensils. Mr. Gray, by reason of his wide experience with such things, and with the help of the young archaeologist, had become proficient at the art of piecing the broken bits into their original places so that many valuable objects were rebuilt, or, at least, reassembled.

After he had heard their story, Mr. Gray deliberated for a while and then he gave them his opinion.

The boys admitted its soundness and decided to act upon it that very evening!

CHAPTER IV
CAPTAIN’S KIDD’S GHOST

Seated around the supper table in the plantation house, the chums could hardly contain their impatience while the colored servant removed the dishes. The abrupt twilight had passed into deep, dark night. A kerosene lamp on the table threw weird shadows on the wall and left uncanny mysteries in the dusky corners.

The table, moved near the window to get the cooler evening breeze during the meal, was finally cleared.

“Do you feel funny?” asked Tom, looking around the room. “Maybe it’s on account of that voodoo stuff this morning, but for some reason I feel kinda nervous.”

“It’s just your mind—your imagination,” laughed Cliff.

Mr. Gray quietly told Clarence Neale why the boys had decided to act on his advice, to initiate the young collector into their mystic order. They had half of a cipher, he explained, and there was reason to believe that Sam had the other half. Then, in order to carry on a search, if they agreed that it was advisable, the young fellows would require a cool, older head to guide them, and perhaps a stout arm to help them. “I can carry on your work here, Clarence,” Mr. Gray finished his explanation. “If you want to try your hand at a different sort of digging.”

“If it’s a choice between potsherds”—he referred to the bits of pottery which were thus named—“or treasure, count me in for adventure every time!”

Using a watch charm of Cliff’s which his father had made from an ancient Egyptian scarab, or sacred beetle, suitably mounted, Nicky gave Clarence Neale the oath of allegiance, which also served as their motto. Clarence Neale with his face serious and with a sincere manner, took the vow.

“I see what it means,” he added. “Seeing All—that you show me—I see nothing that I let others know I see; Knowing All—all of your plans—I know nothing, if anybody asks me; Telling All—that is, letting you know everything I know—I tell nothing, of our plans or mysteries, to any outsider.”

“That’s it exactly,” Nicky exclaimed. “I knew you would be the right sort. Now, we will postpone the initiations and secret signs until tomorrow when we have more time. Now we want to tell you about our map.”

He drew out his copy and the drawing of Sam’s half which Cliff had made from memory. They all bent over them on the table.

“I am very glad that you have taken me into your councils,” Clarence Neale declared. “I know something about this section. It is very easy to see that it is some part of the Florida coral archipelago, what we used to call Ten Thousand Islands, stretching up along the Gulf coast from down toward Cape Sable. I used to fish in those waters.”

The chums were delighted. Here was a real mate and a fine aide.

“Just how did this half come into your family’s possession?” asked the young man.

“Well,” Nicky explained, “you see, Captain William Kidd was supposed to be a mighty pirate and a fearful one. History and story books don’t agree, there. I’ve studied a lot about him because I am pretty much a ‘bug’ about him, on account of this map.”

“Well,” smiled Mr. Neale, “I don’t blame you. I know a bit of the old fellow’s true history too. He was in the regular trade for quite a while, and ran from these Islands to New York with his ship, and he was as honest as any, I guess. That must be the time that he made friends with the Jamaica governor.”

“Yes,” Nicky took up the talk. “He traded with the West Indies during King William’s War, and it was after that time that the citizens of Antigua gave him a bark of the same name. And in 1690 he got a commission from the English—what do you guess for?”

“To despoil and break up pirate bands,” exclaimed Cliff. “You’ve told us, Nicky—but go ahead. Tell us again. It’s interesting, and especially right now.”

“Why, you could imagine we were in the cabin of a ship, right now,” broke in Tom, “all except the windows. Look at the heavy timbers of the room, and the oil lamp and—s-sh-h-h! What’s that?”

They all stared at him. Tom’s eyes had become round with fear. He was usually of a very level headed type, and not likely to get himself upset; but the voodoo had preyed upon his imagination and this, with the excitement of the treasure map’s discovery, had made him more sensitive to excitement than usual.

He stared through the open window. They all turned their eyes that way.

“What is it, Tom?” demanded Nicky in a hoarse whisper.

“I thought I saw a face—in the shadows—outside the window,” Tom said shakily.

Nicky was up and out of the room like a flash. Cliff, losing no time, raced in the other direction. They went scuttling around the house, from front and back, meeting under the dining room window.

“Nobody here—not a sign!” called Cliff reassuringly.

“Nobody in sight,” Nicky agreed. “Tom, who was it—what did the face look like?”

“I don’t know,” quavered Tom. “It looked like—it was white—it was like a—ghost!”

“Pull yourself together,” said Mr. Gray quietly. “There aren’t any ghosts. Your imagination is keyed up. Perhaps you saw some bird fly past with the light on its wings and your excitement made you see the rest.”

“Come in, boys,” called Clarence Neale, “I am sure there was no occasion for fright.”

The two searchers returned.

“Brace up, Tom,” said Cliff, not unkindly. “Nobody was running away and nobody was in sight. You don’t want us to think that you really believe in ghosts!”

“No,” said Tom, sheepishly, “I don’t. I said it looked like one.”

“Well,” laughed Mr. Neale, “we have ‘sort of interrupted’ Captain Kidd, haven’t we?”

“Maybe it was his ghost!” grinned Nicky. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Mr. Neale and Cliff’s father gave warning shakes of their heads and Nicky apologized for joking at Tom’s expense.

“The poor old fellow wasn’t so bad—there’s no reason for his ghost to walk, even if there was such a chance,” Mr. Neale said. “You know he sailed off in the Adventure Galley to execute his commission, but pirates were few and far between, and he sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. You know, that real and terrible pirate, Thomas Tew, was one of those he was sent to capture or to punish—but he never found him. His crew became mutinous because there was so little to do and it was during a fight that Kidd struck his gunner, William Moore, and killed him. It was really for that act that the man was captured when he finally returned to America, and he was sent eventually to England to be tried for the killing of Moore, rather than for piracy, although he did do a little ‘pirating’ on his voyages.”

“It was while he was in prison,” Nicky took up the story, “he sent for one of my ancestors, a New York merchant, and told him about the treasure. He said—it’s all preserved in writing in my family—he said that while cruising in the Gulf, during his trading and before he got his commission from England as a privateersman, he was blown by a heavy wind quite near what we call the Florida Keys. When the weather calmed there was a signal flying from a coral rock and the Captain took off onto his ship several castaways from a wreck. They told him they had been on a Spanish treasure ship, transporting gold and silver bars from the Spanish settlements in Central America when the hurricane wrecked their ship. Captain Kidd said he had looked for the treasure but there was no sign of any, and so he thought they were telling falsehoods.”

“Then why did he draw a map—if that was what the map was about!” Cliff interrupted.

“The man he had saved—one of the survivors—gave him the map when he was injured by a sabre wound and was dying. He said the men had managed to swim ashore to some of the smaller Keys when the ship ran onto some needle-like coral and began to break up. But they got a couple of boats overside too, and when it was calmer, and the ship was breaking apart and falling away into the water, they got many chests of the treasure into the boats and rowed along into the keys and hid the chests on an island that was in the map.”

“I see,” said Mr. Neale. “Probably, by that time, some of the other members of the crew had gone back and found the chests.”

“Maybe,” Nicky said. “You see, when the ancestor was given the map, he took a passage on a ship to come and find the Jamaica governor, but his ship was besieged by pirates and he was taken by them—and it was years before he got off their ship and back to civilization—that’s a story by itself, but I can’t stop to tell it to you now. Anyhow, he got back, but he had no more taste for the sea and when he died he passed on his map and the story, but nobody else ever tried until my uncle got the paper. He made a trip down here and found out just what Sam told us—that the governor’s paper had been stolen. So, of course, he gave it up.”

“Now, what do you propose to do?” asked Clarence Neale.

“Mr. Gray thinks we ought to talk to Sam and offer to share with him fairly for the use of his part of the map. He’s on his way here, or ought to be. I left word with Ma’am Sib to tell him to come.”

“Perhaps he hasn’t returned to get the message,” Mr. Gray said.

“Or,” said Nicky, unable to resist a little malicious prod at Tom’s fears, “or maybe the ghost got him!”

Before Tom could make a reply they heard the patter of swift feet racing along the path to the house; a voice cried out, shrill and excited, “Help—masters—help! De ghost——!”

With a common impulse they all leaped to their feet. In their excitement not one of them stopped to catch up the map. They moved closer together, Tom clutching Nicky’s arm and staring wide-eyed at the door.

Into their midst scampered the ten-year-old colored boy of the morning experience. His face was ashy colored under his dusky skin, and his eyes rolled wildly.

“Masters—masters!” he panted. “Save me—” He lifted a finger, and pointed it shakingly toward the doorway. They all stared in that direction, and even Cliff felt the hair prickling on his head.

“There—there! It’s chased me—it’s coming—” the boy gasped.

Clarence Neale leaped past the frightened child, and on a sudden impulse Nicky, feeling a strange hunch, swung part way around toward the table. He meant to reach for the map, forgotten in the instant of excitement.

In his turn he gave a gasping cry.

Their map was gone!

CHAPTER V
“NOTHING SHALL STOP US!”

Nicky wasted no time going around through the door. He scrambled to the windowsill and leaped out into the darkness. Springing clear of the bushes which were planted close to the house, he landed on his feet and looked hurriedly about him.

Nothing was to be seen!

As soon as his eyes became used to the dark he strained them in every direction. But there was nothing to reward his eager eyes.

Finally, after poking around in the brush just beyond the clearing in which the house stood, he returned to his friends. The colored boy was recovering slowly from the effects of his terror. Tom, too, had regained some of his usual steadiness, though he seemed to be much more excited than either of his chums. The older men had discovered the absence of the map but had thought that Nicky took it.

“No!” he panted, still laboring under his excitement and his exertions in running from one dump of brush to another, “it was gone when I looked around before I jumped through the window.”

“But where did it go?” demanded Cliff.

“That’s the puzzle,” replied Clarence Neale.

“De ghos’ done taken it!” gasped the small colored boy.

“Nothing of the sort! There aren’t any ghosts!” declared Mr. Gray.

The boy stared. “Yes, they is!” he retorted. “I seen it! It was white! It——”

“Where did you see it?” Nicky asked quickly.

“By de window, sar!”

“Was it looking in?”

“It was comin’ to’ds”—toward, he meant—“to’ds me!”

“What is all this?” a new voice spoke. The owner of the plantation, a rough, stocky Englishman with a bronzed face, stood in the doorway. He had been out on another of his many properties for several days and had, apparently, come back in time to discover the excitement without understanding its meaning.

Mr. Gray explained the boy’s fright without mentioning the loss of the map. Nicky, about to speak, saw Cliff make a gesture which unmistakably was the Mystery Boys’ signal for silence; he closed his lips and waited.

“These colored people are afraid of shadows,” said the plantation owner. “Run along home, boy. Nothing will hurt you!”

“No, sar, Mister Coleson, sar, I dassent go in de dark alone!”

“The natives of this island are full of legends and stories about ghosts,” Mr. Coleson explained to the group. “Why, I have even heard them declare that the ghosts and spirits of the old pirates appear at times. Joe, my overseer, here on the plantation, says he once heard where treasure was hidden and he decided to try to get it. But when he got near the place his superstitions got the best of him. The way he tells about it, he saw pirates, in red bandana head cloths, with glittering cutlasses, and smoking pistols, stalking toward him. Naturally, being a coward, he ran. Of course,” he added, “I’m only telling you what he said. Personally, I think the fellow built it all up in his mind!”

“Oh—sar!” broke in the colored boy. “No! I see dem, too! I see Cap’n Kidd in my dream, de odder night. He come and he say ‘Boo!’ an’ wake me up!”

Clarence Neale laughed.

“That shows how easy it is to believe in ghosts if you hear about them and think about them all your life!” he told Tom. “This lad even dreams about them.”

“Captain Kidd, eh?” repeated the Englishman, laughing and then becoming half serious. “Well, if there’s any truth in superstition, the old boy must be watching over some of his treasure that is threatened!” He winked toward Clarence Neale, but neither Tom nor the colored boy saw it and both thought he was quite serious.

“Don’t, sar—please, don’t!” begged the boy, beginning to snivel. “He say ‘Boo’ at me. Den I mus’ have see him, tonight again!”

“Well,” said the Englishman, “I’ll leave you people to argue with this little scare-cat! I’m tired and I think I will turn in!”

He said goodnight and went to the quarters he occupied.

“Wasn’t Sam to come here?” asked Mr. Gray.

“Yes, he was—” began Cliff; he paused, and glanced at Nicky. The latter opened his eyes wider as the thought struck him too.

Could Sam have had anything to do with the “ghost business?” Sam had half a map; he saw Nicky, earlier, displaying his excitement when the map was shown. Maybe he had become suspicious, followed them, overheard something; perhaps he had even listened at the window.

They discussed the strange disappearance of their map, stated their suspicions, brought up the question of Sam’s possible guilt.

The colored boy, not understanding, stood with his eyes rolling, afraid to depart.

“There is an easy way to settle the question, and, at the same time to dispose of this boy’s fears,” suggested Clarence Neale. “I will walk home with him!”

That seemed to be the best course and so Mr. Neale, reassuring their dusky charge, put a hand on his shoulder and gently urged him from the room.

“I don’t care much for this situation,” said Mr. Gray. “It seems to me that some human agency is at work, trying to frighten you lads. I assure you that there is no ghost. Whatever Tom may have seen, and whatever the boy saw, there is a human being behind it. And no ghostly hands took your paper!”

“I think that way too,” Nicky declared, and Cliff nodded his agreement. Tom also gave a rather lame assent.

“Anyhow,” stated Nicky, practically, “if there was a ghost—if Captain Kidd did watch!—he sent part of the map to my own ancestor. He wouldn’t want to scare us! If he scared anybody, or took a map from anywhere, he would go after the colored fellow, Sam. His half of the cipher wasn’t rightfully his, the way mine is.”

“But there is no ghost,” repeated Mr. Gray. “If you ever get the true facts you will see that some person is at the bottom of this.”

“Sam, most likely!” declared Tom, entering into the spirit of the discussion and reassuring himself.

“No,” said Mr. Neale, coming in, his arm around the shoulders of the colored man they had just named, “no—Sam isn’t at the bottom of it.”

They looked at Sam. He was weak and shaken, and slumped down in a chair, rather limp and groggy.

“I found Sam out by the gate,” Mr. Neale explained. “He had been knocked out, actually, by a blow. He was on his way here, he managed to tell me. He thought he saw something light-colored near the house and he stopped by the gate. But whatever—whoever—it was, disappeared behind the house and he stood a moment wondering. Then he heard the voice in the house, here, and wondered whether to come in or to wait. Before he guessed what was happening, some one was behind him and struck him. That is all he remembered.”

“No ghost did that!” exclaimed Nicky.

“I don’t—know,” Sam said, weakly. “They tell, on the island, that ghosts have terrible power. I never did believe much in it, but—I don’t know—now!”

“Well, I do know!” declared Mr. Neale defiantly. “Your part of the map is gone, of course!”

“Yes, sar—yes——”

“Of course! Does that seem like the work of a ghost?”

“It might be!” Sam said uncertainly. He drank the water Nicky had brought him, and seemed to be pulling himself together, but his age-old instinct of fear was beginning to triumph over his education.

“At any rate,” Mr. Gray summed up, “whatever and whoever did these things, the result amounts to this: neither Sam nor we have any clue to the treasure——”

“You wouldn’t let that stop you, would you?” demanded Nicky.

“I wouldn’t, if Father would let us go on,” Cliff stated.

“Nor I,” agreed Clarence Neale. “We can remember the map closely enough—we know the longitude—we could even cable Nicky’s uncle and get the original if necessary——”

“But we don’t remember the latitude on Sam’s half,” said Cliff. “Unless Sam does——”

“When he gets over his bump—it won’t be serious—he will be able to help. Anyway, we know in a general way that the place is somewhere in the Florida Keys, about twenty-five degrees and some minutes of North latitude and we all recall the longitude—and one-half of the map had the phrase ‘dip’ and the other ‘per’—put them together and they mean ‘Dipper.’” Mr. Neale sketched on a bit of envelope the picture of the constellation know as “The Dipper.”

“There!” he said, triumphantly. “Doesn’t that show you the same little marks that were on the two maps?”

Nicky, Cliff, Tom and Mr. Gray nodded.

“Well, then, we can find that set of islands,” declared Mr. Neale, “and, if Mr. Gray would carry on my work here, I, for one, would vote to go ahead!”

“Here too!” cried Nicky.

“Same for me!” stated Cliff, giving his father an imploring look.

“I’m with you,” Tom chimed in, not as aggressively, but with his will power overcoming his uncertainty.

“I’d go if you would let me,” said Sam, while Mr. Gray bandaged a lump on his head after it had been disinfected and washed. “I know where I could get a sloop with a little engine to kick it along if the wind failed——”

“That would be fine!” exclaimed Nicky. “I vote we take Sam in!”

“Share and share alike!” cried Cliff eagerly. “That is, our part of whatever we find! Of course we’d give some to the governor’s family if we can find them.”

“We’d have to keep it secret—our plan!” said Nicky, earnestly. “We’d have to pretend to be going——”

“To cruise for Carib relics on smaller islands!” broke in Clarence Neale, as excited as his younger companions.

“Fine!” agreed Nicky. “Is the sloop big enough, Sam? Where is it? What’s it like? Is it seaworthy for a cruise like this?”

Sam said “yes” and described the one-masted, thirty-foot boat with its heavy duty motor. “Maybe close quarters to sleep in,” he said, “but she has shorely got a good name for treasure hunting!”

“What?” demanded all three chums in unison.

“The Treasure Belle——”

“Oh!” cried Nicky. “With a name like that we simply must get her! Mr. Gray, you can’t refuse us permission.”

Three eager youths pleaded. The older man, counseled and reassured by Clarence Neale, finally agreed.

“Hooray!” Nicky exulted. “Treasure bent in the Treasure Belle! Nothing can stop us!”

Tom, a little silent, hoped that nothing could!

CHAPTER VI
ON THE WAY TO THE KEYS

The Treasure Belle, when they inspected her with Sam and Mr. Neale, disappointed the chums. She lay, careening to one side, in a place on the shore of a small ship basin. Her hull, originally painted white, was a mixture of grays and browns, streaked and dirty. Her cabin, when they crawled into it, was musty and cramped, up in the bow, with no head room and with its bunks both narrow and uninviting.

“Quite a difference between her name and her looks,” smiled Clarence Neale. Nicky nodded and Cliff, standing on deck, pointed toward a cluster of boats moored in deeper water.

“Why can’t we charter a boat like that one?” said Cliff, indicating a fairly trim looking cruising launch, about thirty feet long, with a raised cabin whose windows had neat little drapings at each side, whose paint showed little wear. Where the Treasure Belle had no bright work, her hardware being discolored and rusting, the other craft showed signs of constant attention.

“That’s a private boat, and not for hire, sar,” explained Sam. “She belong to a white man. He use her for run to Cuba. I hear it told he is a politician of Cuba, and he stay here because he is not so well liked in his island. But they say he run there by night for some reason and keep that boat only for that.”

“Maybe he would charter her to us if he didn’t need her,” urged Nicky. “She’d be a lot nicer.”

Sam, at Mr. Neale’s suggestion, took them to the office of the ship basin owners but they got no encouragement. The El Libertad was not for hire or charter. He gave the party the address of her owner readily enough but without enthusiasm.

When Mr. Neale returned from an interview with Senor Ortiga, he shook his head.

“El Libertad is not to be ours,” he said. “Senor Ortiga told me that he is having the engine overhauled and is waiting for parts—even if he would let us have her, which he did not seem inclined to do, it would be a month before she would be ready, he said.”