CHAPTER XIV

STRANGE COMPANIONS

Dave knew at once that his shouts at the large birds must have attracted the attention of the person who was now hailing him.

"Ahoy, yourself!" he cried, starting to his feet and peering expectantly through the mist in the direction from which the challenge had come.

In a few moments the outline of a yawl somewhat larger than the one Dave was in loomed up in the near distance. A man was seated in its bow, while two others rowed the boat.

They came alongside. All three looked haggard and worn out. In the bottom of their boat lay a broken demijohn. They reminded Dave of sailors he had often seen on shipboard getting over a debauch.

"Why," said the man in the bow, staring in amazement at Dave, "if it isn't young Fearless, the diver!"

"I remember you, Mr. Daley," responded Dave, recognizing the speaker as one of the crew of the _Raven_. Dave had a dim memory, too, of having seen Daley's two companions with Captain Nesik's crew.

Daley drew the two yawls close together with a boathook, and he and Dave were face to face.

"Young Fearless of the _Swallow_," he kept saying, in a marveling tone. "And in this fix. Why, where did you ever come from?"

"Where did you, Mr. Daley?" inquired Dave directly. "Mine is a pretty long story--suppose you tell yours first?"

"Huh, that won't take much time," muttered Daley, with a savage kick at the fragments of the demijohn. "We stole all that gold from you. Little good did it do us. Captain Nesik and the Hankers, after they marooned you fellows, made a landing and divided up the gold into boxes. They put them on the _Swallow_. Well, when the _Swallow_ parted from the _Raven_ in a cyclone, she went down--gold, men aboard, and all."

"And the _Raven_?" inquired Dave.

"She drove on the rocks and has been disabled ever since. It would take a big steamer to pull her into service again," explained Daley. "After she got into that fix Nesik decided to desert her. They made a camp on land on the west island of those you know about."

"What about the natives?" inquired Dave.

"They seemed to have all gone back to the main island except a few. These hung around and spied on us; most of them Nesik shot. He landed lots of provender and rum from the _Raven_. For a week Nesik let the men have their fill. He and the Hankers and that pawnbroker fellow----"

"Gerstein?" suggested Dave.

"Yes, Gerstein," nodded Daley. "Well, those four took the longboat which was saved from the wreck and went scouting, they called it. They went away and returned for several days. One day they came back on foot without the longboat, and said that it and Gerstein had gone down in a quicksand. The men began to grow restive after another week. They couldn't understand what Nesik was lying idle for. They wondered what made him and Cal Vixen the diver and the Hankers so contented to just squat down and loaf. The men got cross when Nesik cut down grub rations. A deputation waited on him."

"What was the result?" inquired Dave, with great interest.

"Nesik told them to do what they liked and go where they liked. Said he was going to take his chances, waiting for a ship to come along. Result was, one by one the small craft of the _Raven_ were stolen. We nabbed this boat one night and put to sea. We were bound to make some kind of a try to get away from those islands."

"Have you any idea where we are now?" inquired Dave.

"Sure, I have," answered Daley. "We're in one of those tidal channels that run around the Windjammers' Island so freely. That's a queer thing about these diggings. A fellow can row miles and drift back to the islands. Those channels are regular whirlpools in a storm."

"And what are you thinking of doing now?" asked Dave.

"Getting back to land of course. We wouldn't run across a ship in a hundred years on this out-of-the-way route. We can never hope to row thousands of miles to a continent coast. No--provender being gone, and especially the rum, we don't feel quite as bold as we did when we started out," confessed Daley, with a dejected air.

"No," put in one of his companions lazily, "we'll go back and take pot-luck with what's left of the _Raven_ crowd."

"If they'll have us," put in his companion. "Looked to me all along as if for some purpose or other Nesik wanted to get rid of us."

"You're right there, mate," declared Daley. "I've thought that, too, many a time. Maybe he and his cronies calculated there would be more grub around with fewer mouths to feed."

Dave thought over all the men had said. He fancied that he guessed out the reason why Nesik was so willing to have his men leave him. He knew that he would be asked to give information in return for what he had received. Dave tried to decide how far he dared to trust the three castaways.

"Now then," just as he expected, Daley spoke, "we've told you our story. How about yours? That's a _Raven_ boat there you're in. How did you get it?"

"I found it drifting loose a few hours ago," said Dave.

"That's likely enough," said Daley suspiciously, "but where was you waiting for such things to drift around loose?"

"I was floating on a piece of driftwood," explained Dave. "You know you people marooned us on the island."

"I didn't," declared Daley; "that was Nesik's work."

"You helped," said Dave, "and you've had nothing but bad luck since. Now, Mr. Daley, I'm going to tell you something. You think the _Swallow_ was lost in the cyclone."

"Know it. Men, gold, and all."

"No," said Dave, watching his man closely to note the effect of his disclosures. "The _Swallow_ was not lost at all."

Daley stared hard and incredulously at Dave.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Because I was aboard of her not twenty-four hours since. The truth is, in that cyclone she was driven ashore on the west island you speak about. There Captain Broadbeam and the rest of us discovered her. We found Mr. Drake, the boatswain; Bob Adams, the engineer, and Mike Conners, the cook, prisoners on board."

"That's right," nodded Daley; "those fellows wouldn't come in with us, and Nesik put them in irons. Go on."

"We also found some labeled boxes in the hold."

"The treasure!" cried Daley excitedly. "Alas, yes, it was all divided and made into portions, so much for the Hankers, so much for Nesik, so much for the crew. Why, we saw the Hankers divide it with our own eyes, didn't we, mates?"

"That we did," declared his two companions in unison.

"So Mr. Drake told us," resumed Dave. "Well, we liberated our friends, got the _Swallow_ in trim, and steamed away from the Windjammers' Island about three weeks ago."

"With all that gold!" cried Daley, with disappointed but covetous eyes. "Oh, my mates, think of it!"

"No," interrupted Dave, "we thought the gold was there. The second home port we reached we opened the boxes to see."

"It must have been a sight," said Daley gloatingly.

"It was," nodded Dave, with a queer little smile--"sand, lead, old junk, every box full of them, and not a gold coin there."

Daley sprang up in the boat with a wild cry. His companions partook of his excitement.

"Then--then----" panted Daley, with blazing eyes.

"Why, the Nesik crowd just deluded you poor foolish fellows. Exactly as he did us," spoke Dave quietly, but with a definite emphasis. "As I say, there was none of the treasure in the boxes. Where was it, then? Easy to guess. It was put in the boxes to delude you fellows and later secretly removed to the _Raven_. Nesik intended to lose the _Swallow_ some way. The cyclone helped him out."

Daley drew out a long-bladed knife. He began abusing Nesik and the Hankers. He slashed the air in a frantic manner.

"I'll kill them for this, I'll kill them!" he raved. "Men, you'll help me? Why," he exclaimed suddenly, "then the gold must be on the _Raven_, stuck on the rock, eh?"

"Hardly," answered Dave. "No, Nesik intended losing the _Swallow_, sailing for South America, getting rid of you fellows cheap, and then he and the Hankers and Gerstein would make a grand division of the spoils. Their plans miscarried. The _Raven_ got wrecked. Don't you see they got you all ashore quick as they could? Without doubt those mysterious days of scouting in the longboat, as you call it, were devoted to getting the gold ashore to some safe and secret hiding-place."

"Then we'll have our share," shouted Daley. "Mates, for shore; for shore, mates, to find those measly robbers, to pounce on them and make them give up what belongs to us. Ha, more," declared Daley. "We'll kill them off; well take it all."

"Why, Mr. Daley," quietly suggested Dave, "it appears to me you are forgetting something."

"What's that?"

"That treasure belongs to my father and myself."

Daley looked sheepish, then surly.

"If you should get hold of it what could you do with it?" pursued Dave. "You can't spend it on the Windjammers' Island. You can never get it away from there except in a stanch vessel, such as may not come along for years. I should think," added Dave, "after all the trouble you have seen grow out of the Hankers stealing what was not their own, you would take a new tack."

"How, a new tack?" demanded Daley, surlily surveying Dave from under his bushy, bent brows.

"Be square and honest. The _Raven_ people have deceived you. I have a proposition to make you. Put this whole matter in my hands, promise to help me work it out as I think best, and I'll guarantee you two things."

"What are they?" demanded Daley.

"First, that I will soon locate the hiding-place of the treasure--which you never may."

"That's so," mumbled one of Daley's companions, "everything has been queered that we tried to do so far."

"Secondly," added Dave, "when that treasure is found, I promise, if you come in with me, to give each of you a liberal share of it."