CHAPTER IX.

WHEREIN CAPTAIN HUDGINS’ BEES SWARM.

As Rob and the soldier sprawled in the road “hugger-mugger,” Merritt darted forward. He succeeded in seizing Dugan’s gnarled fist just as it was about to come crashing down in the boy’s face, but as his fingers closed upon Dugan’s arm a convulsive pain shot through the corporal of the Eagles. Switching round he saw, bending over him, the grinning face of the Jap. The Oriental had merely pressed upon some nervous center of Merritt’s being, and had for a second paralyzed all effort. It was the lad’s first introduction to jiu-jitsu.

“Ouch!” yelled Merritt, in spite of himself.

The next instant his exclamation was echoed by the Jap. Tubby’s rotund form had come hurtling upon the Oriental like a thunderbolt, bearing him to the ground. Temporarily his jiu-jitsu tricks were at a discount.

But all this did not materially aid Rob, who felt his strength fast ebbing under ineffectual attempts to throw off the mighty grip of the massive Dugan. The giant encircled the lad’s windpipe with his rough fingers and squeezed till Rob grew purple in the face. In the meantime, the other lads had their hands full with the Jap, who had again exercised his cunning, and by a simple pressure upon a spot near Tubby’s heart had rendered that youth inactive for some moments.

Dugan’s great paws were sliding under Rob’s jacket to search his inside pockets, when a voice, suddenly hailing them, caused both attacked and attackers to look up. So engrossed had they been in defense and aggression that not one of them had noticed the approach of a stout, thick-set man, in clothes that somehow suggested a sailor. The newcomer’s hair was iron gray and a tuft of the same colored growth adorned his square chin. Under his arm he carried a large box of some kind, carefully covered with newspapers.

For a second he stood petrified with astonishment at the scene upon which he had so unexpectedly come. The next instant his blue eyes snapped steelily, and with a roar he dashed toward the combatants.

“Avast there!” he bawled. “Lay aft, you lubbers! Boy Scouts, ahoy!”

“Captain Hudgins!” shouted Merritt.

“Aye, it’s the captain!” bawled the valiant ex-tar, leaping forward and dealing Dugan a terrific blow with his free arm. With the other he kept tight hold of his big box.

“You interfering old lummox!” bawled Dugan, springing erect, with a roar of fury. “Keep out of this!”

“Not much I won’t,” bellowed the captain, just as loudly. “Lay aft, you military pirate, or the navy’s goin’ to wipe up the ground with the army.”

As the captain spoke, brandishing aloft his free arm, Dugan sprang for him, aiming one of his terrific swings. The captain, who was nimble for his years, sidestepped swiftly, but not quick enough to altogether avoid the blow. Dugan’s fist fell upon the box he was carrying with a crunching, crackling sound.

“Now you’ve done it!” bawled the captain, dancing about as if executing a hornpipe. “’Vast afore they board yer!”

“Don’t try to bluff us,” roared Dugan; “we——”

But before he could complete the sentence there was an angry buzzing sound in the air, like the drone of a sawmill cutting through a tough, knotty log. Simultaneously, from the broken box, there poured a dark stream of flying things.

“Bees!” shouted Merritt.

“Honey makers!” exclaimed the experienced Tubby, as the dark swarm surged down upon Dugan.

“Ho! ho! ho! Here’s where you get stung!” shouted the captain. “Come close to me, boys, and they won’t hurt yer. Hey there, after ’em, sting the scoundrels. Get your hooks inter that yaller-faced lime juicer. Hooroh! That’s the time he got you! I guess them bees is thar with ther business ends!”

In these, and a dozen similar exclamations of satisfaction, did the captain indulge, as the bees angrily settled in swarms upon Dugan and his Oriental companion. Rob, who had scrambled to his feet, stood with the others close to Captain Hudgins, and not a bee bothered them. The intelligent insects knew their owner too well to attack him. With Dugan and the Jap, however, the case was different.

In vain did the two rascals wave their arms about and beat the air in a desperate effort to free themselves of their tormentors. It was of not the slightest avail. The bees settled upon them in angry masses in every exposed part. Some even dropped down the Jap’s back, and commenced an attack there.

Yelling like Comanches and whirling their arms frenziedly about their heads, the two ruffians fairly leaped the fence at one bound in their pain and astonishment, and dashed off across the fields toward the sea. About them, as they ran, hovered a dark, angrily buzzing cloud.

“Hey, come back thar! You’ve took my prize Eye-talian queen!” the captain bawled at the top of his voice, but, somewhat naturally, the fugitives paid no attention to his words. Straight for the sea they dashed, and, plunging into the surf, rolled over and over in frantic attempts to rid themselves of the clinging, stinging pests.

“Ho! ho! ho!” roared the captain. “That’s as good as a fair breeze arter a c’am. But avast thar, lads, how come you ter be in such a pickle?”

Rob, whose throat still showed the red marks where Dugan’s fingers had clutched, hastily explained, being frequently interrupted by the captain with exclamations of:

“Belay thar! The deck-swabbing, land-lubbers! Heave ahead!” and “Douse my glimmering sidelights!”

“Wall,” opined the captain, when Rob had concluded, “I reckon them fellers is off on a long cruise. They shore did heave their anchors sudden. The worst of it is my bees has gone with ’em, and I’m generally mighty partic-lar who my bees associates with.”

But it was now the captain’s turn to explain how he came to be on the road between Hampton and the isolated De Regny place at such an opportune moment. It appeared that the lone recluse of Topsail Island had been to the distant farm of a friend of his to aid him in wintering some bees. He had taken a hive of his own honey makers with him to obviate the chance of being stung by the strangers.

“Bees won’t attack any one they knows, or who they has an introduction to,” he explained. “Now you see them bees wouldn’t touch any of you boys. Now then, that’s——”

“Ouch!” exclaimed Tubby suddenly, clapping one hand to the back of his neck.

“Belay thar, lad, what’s in yer rigging?” demanded the captain anxiously, rising from the broken box which he had set down in the road and had been using as a seat.

“I—I think it’s a bee,” rejoined the stout youth. “I—I’m sure it is, in fact. Wow! there’s another!”

The lad began dancing about as if he were on springs.

“Thought you said they wouldn’t sting any one they were introduced to,” said Rob, with a half smile.

“Wall, I guess in the hurry I must hev overlooked them two,” responded the captain, without the quiver of an eyelid. Stepping up to the capering Tubby, he deftly removed two bees from the back of his neck.

“Consarn ye!” he said angrily, as if he were addressing human beings. “What’s the matter with you, you mutinous dogs.”

The boys burst into a roar of laughter at such talk addressed to bees, but the captain solemnly assured them that the little winged creatures understood every word.

“Will those that flew away come back to you?” inquired Rob, with interest.

“No, lad. They’ve deserted ther ship,” was the rejoinder. “But they done it in a good cause, so I ain’t got a word to say. But now let’s trim our sails, up anchor, and lay a course for home. My boat’s at the Inlet, and I’ve got ter make ther island by dark.”

“How is Skipper?” asked Rob, as they accordingly strode forward at a brisk pace.

“Just as good a shipmate as ever,” was the response. “That thar dog gits more sensible every day. I thought that time when he found them uniforms thet Jack Curtiss and that rascal Bender stole that he was just about the limit in dog sense, but he does smarter things than that right along. Speakin’ uv that, what’s come of Jack Curtiss and his piratical shipmates?”

The boys soon told him what they knew of those two worthies. The captain shook his head as he heard.

“Bad craft them two,” he observed, shaking his head with renewed energy. “But, to my thinkin’, they ain’t much worse than that yaller-skinned feller and his mate wot attacked you on the road.”

“No,” Rob agreed; “if it hadn’t been for you, we should have been in bad straits.”

“If it hadn’t a bin fer them bees, lad, you mean,” amended the captain earnestly.

Soon after, they reached the Inlet and the captain set out for the wharf, having exacted a promise from the boys to visit him at an early date.

“Ther island’s seemed kind er lonesome since the Boy Scout camp weighed anchor,” he said.

“We’ll be back again this summer,” Rob assured him.

When Rob reached home he found a telephone message awaiting him. It was from Lieutenant Duvall. The boy soon obtained connection with his friend, one of the improvements at the mansion having been the installation of a ’phone. The lieutenant actually gasped as he listened. He had trusted Dugan implicitly up to that afternoon, and the revelation of his brutal attack following the lad’s disclosures of what they had overheard in the hut had shaken his faith in human nature tremendously.

“I don’t know who to trust,” he exclaimed over the wire. “No,” in answer to Rob’s question, “Dugan has not come back. When he does I shall see that he is sent to Washington under guard.”

But Dugan did not return to his duty with the aero squad that night, nor on any succeeding night. He and the Jap disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed them. A visit to the hut revealed a cot-bed and the rough furniture the lads had noticed, but there were no other traces of human occupancy.

“Good-by, Dugan,” chorused the lads, as it became certain that the ruffianly wearer of the army uniform had vanished from their midst, but could they have looked into the future they would, perhaps, have changed their form of farewell to “Au revoir.”