Chapter 13

THE STRANGE MAN AGAIN

They came out of the cave into a hollow, grown to a wilderness of small trees, yet carpeted between with a brilliant sod of short grass. On the steep sides were larger trees; but evidently, at a time not then long past, the cup of the hollow had been cleared. And at one side was the ruin of a log hut.

"The man who lived alone at this end of the island, and climbed up and down Boulder Head, used to occupy this hut," said Chet.

"But those logs were cut a hundred years ago!" cried Dora Lockwood. "See how they have rotted at the ends."

"I guess that's so. Nobody knows who built the cabin."

"Indians!" cried Jess.

"Indians didn't built log houses. The first settlers did that. Indians lived in wigwams," declared Laura.

"Some old hunter lived here, maybe, when the woods were full of bears and wildcats," suggested her chum.

"What's that!" suddenly shrieked Bobby. "There's a wildcat, now!"

"Behave!" commanded Laura, shaking the smaller girl. "You can't scare us that way."

"Nothing more ferocious inhabits these woods than a Teddy-bear," laughed Jess Morse.

"Then it was a Teddy bear I saw in that tree," declared Bobby, pointing. "And it was a live one."

The girls--some of them, at least--drew together. "What did you see, Clara?" demanded Nellie Agnew.

"A little brown animal----"

"A red squirrel!" cried Lance.

"Hark!" cried Chet. "I hear him."

There certainly did come to their ears a chattering sound.

"That's no squirrel," announced Otto. "I haf been hunting enough for them alretty."

"No squirrel was ever so noisy as that, Chet," said his sister.

"There! I see it again," cried the quick-eyed Bobby.

"My goodness, gracious me!" gasped Purt, who was craning his neck to see into the tree tops so that the back of his high collar sawed his neck. "I--I thought it looked like a blue-jay."

"Say!" exclaimed Lance. "You're looking in the wrong direction."

"It's a monkey!" cried Dora Lockwood, at that moment.

"It's Tony Allegretto's monkey," added her twin.

Some of the others caught sight of the animal then. It was truly the large monkey the friends had seen only the week before at the amusement park at the other end of the island.

"He's run away!" cried Laura.

"I hope he has," Dorothy Lockwood said. "That Italian didn't treat him kindly. What was his name?"

"He called the monk 'Bébé'," said Lance.

"Let's see if he will come down to us," suggested Laura, crossing the hollow.

"Now, keep back, the rest of you," commanded Lance. "If anybody can get the little beast, Laura can do it."

"Sure!" chuckled Bobby. "Mother Wit can charm either boys, or monkeys--and right out of the trees!"

But they gave way to Mother Wit and she went alone to the foot of the tree in which Bébé was swinging. He chattered when she came near, and swung upright on the branch. But he did not appear to be much afraid.

Laura found an apple in her pocket, and she offered it to the monkey, calling to him soothingly. Whether his monkeyship was fond of apples, or not, he was curious, and he began to descend the tree slowly.

He was dressed in a part of his odd Neapolitan suit; but it was torn and bedraggled. A cord was fastened to his collar, but it had become frayed and so was broken. His queer, ugly face was wrinkled into an expression of doubt as he approached Laura, and his little eyes snapped greedily. The apple tempted him.

"Come down, Bébé," coaxed Laura.

"Talk Italian to him--he understands that better," giggled Jess.

Bébé chattered angrily.

"Hush!" commanded Lance. "She'll get him yet, if you'll let her alone."

The monkey did seem, when all was quiet, to be about to leap into Laura's arms.

"Come, Bébé," she coaxed, and finally the chattering creature timidly dropped from the branch of the tree and snuggled down into her arms, grabbing the apple on the instant and sinking his sharp teeth into it.

At the very moment of her success there were crashing footsteps in the bushes and into the opening rushed Tony Allegretto, the monkey's master.

"Ah-ah!" cried the Italian, his face glowing and his black eyes snapping. "You try-a to steal-a da monk! Come to me Bébé--or I break-a da neckl!"

He rushed toward the girl holding the monkey. The animal chattered angrily and cowered in Laura's arms.

"Hold on," said Chet, stepping forward. "Nobody's stealing your monkey, and don't you say we are. He was up the tree there and my sister got him down for you. I reckon if you treated him half decently he wouldn't run away from you."

"You! Ha!" sputtered Tony. "You one o' dem fresh boys, eh? Give-a me da monk!"

"Let him have the creature, Laura," said Chet.

"He'll beat him. See how frightened poor Bébé is!"

"Can't help it," said her brother. "He belongs to the dago----"

"Calla me da dago, too!" stammered the angry Italian. "I fix-a you for dis!" and he shook his fist at Chet.

"Come on and do your fixing right now," advised the big boy, easily. "You won't find me as easy as Bébé, I bet you!"

"You 'Merican boys and girls want to steal my monk--want-a spoil-a da act!" cried Tony. He grabbed Bébé out of Laura's arms, although the monkey shrieked his protest at the exchange. But Tony did not beat the little beast, and it clung to him with one arm around Tony's neck while it finished the apple.

"You ought to thank us for finding your monkey for you," said Lance Darby, in disgust.

Tony growled something in Italian and started off up the side of the hollow. Before he got out of sight he was joined by a man who stepped out of hiding in a clump of brush.

"Did you see that?" cried Lance, eagerly, in Chefs ear. "There's another of 'em here."

"Another monkey?" laughed Chet.

But Dora whispered to Dorothy: "That man has whiskers. Do you suppose he is our lone pirate?"

"I'd like to see this piratical individual you girls are talking about," laughed Laura, who was nearest to the Lockwood twins.

At that moment Lance and Chet were walking back toward the entrance to the cave.

"Say, old man," Lance asked his chum, "what were you searching that chamber in the cavern for? What did you expect to find?"

"I don't know that I expected to find anything," answered Chetwood Belding. "But I'll show you what I _did_ find," and he drew from his pocket an old knife and placed it in Lance's hand.

The latter turned it over, and whistled under his breath. "I ought to know this old toad-stabber," he said. "Broken corkscrew--yes; small blade broken short off, too. Why, Chet, that's Short and Long's knife!"

"That's right."

"And you mean to say you picked it up in the cavern?"

"Right in that place where somebody had been camping," declared his chum. "But don't say anything about it. We can't do anything toward finding him with all these girls about. But, later----"

"You bet!" agreed Lance.

So the boys rather hurried the departure of the crowd for the place where the boats had been left, and where they had lunched. The walk through the cove did not take long, and the party, happy and laughing, crowded out upon the shore of the cove in front of the subterranean passage.

Instantly one of the twins drew the attention of all by uttering a startled little scream.

"What's the matter with you--er--Sister?" demanded the other Lockwood girl, with a chuckle.

"That wasn't the man we saw with Tony!" declared the girl who had cried out.

"What man?"

"The pirate," said the twin.

"How do you know?" demanded Laura, laughing.

"For I just saw him again. And he couldn't have gotten through the cave ahead of us."

"There are prowlers about," declared Chet to Lance.

"What sort of a looking man, Miss Lockwood?" demanded Lance.

"Oh, he's all bushy black whiskers and hair. I only saw the upper part of his body again. He dodged down behind that boulder yonder."

"Say! the other cave opening is over there," cried Bobby Hargrew.

"And that's a fact," admitted Chet.

"Let's see if the boats are all right," cried Lance, starting on a run for the landing.

"And the rest of the lunch, dear boy!" cried Prettyman Sweet, following him. "Weally, if that has been stolen it is a calamity."