CHAPTER XIII

TOOSA’S VENGEANCE

Cliff and Nicky faced Henry Morgan on the cruiser’s deck. “Well, you are a fine one,” Cliff sneered. “You wouldn’t dare say what you do if my father and Andy hadn’t gone to the Indian village to find out if the fever quarantine is lifted up the river.”

“Yes, I would,” Henry said huskily. “I’d say it just the same. ’Cause why? ’Cause it’s true. I mean it!”

“You actually mean you’re going to ship on that sloop, lying off the reef?” Nicky argued.

“And leave us?”

“Ship on that schooner and leave you—yes! ’Cause why? What have you done about finding Mort Beecher, or—or the Golden Sun? Not one thing! You all sit around——”

“We had to scrape the hull and straighten the propeller and fix the shaft while you were gone—” Cliff grew angry.

“Yes—but when I got there, all was fixed and the cruiser was back in commission. But she’s laid still in the tide-race, here, for three days, and no move to go to Porto Bello, the way the old Indian said I should. I told you what word was sent from your friends—but you just sit and fight sand-flies and mosquitos and sweat and chafe and eat bananas and fire cocoanuts at sharks’ fins. I’m tired of waitin’. So, when that cutter comes off from final trading with the Indians, it’s Henry Morgan for on board and off for Colon or wherever the sloop touches.”

Cliff and Nicky looked at one another dubiously. This was a predicament. Cliff’s father had gone ashore to pay the Indians in fancy articles for helping to beach the cruiser first and then to drive her back into the water. Cliff had caught Henry packing a “ditty bag” and the resulting declaration that he was “quitting them,” brought Nicky racing to Cliff’s hail. But they were puzzled to know how to summon the older men from the village.

Finally, with a shrug, touching his left ear gently, to indicate to his chum that he wanted the Mystery Boys’ signals to be noted and understood, Cliff pushed his hair over his right ear with an index finger, indicating to Nicky, “Come with me!” Nicky promptly swung on his heel, with a contemptuous glance at Henry, and went below.

“We can’t tie him, or anything!” Nicky objected when Cliff asked what they could do. “I can’t see what good it will do to stop him. We know all he knows—that Mort Beecher is at Porto Bello.”

“All right,” Cliff agreed. “We’ll let him go. I guess we can get along just as well without him.”

“Better,” Nicky declared. “I don’t trust him.”

They took no action, therefore, when Henry climbed aboard the ship’s shore-boat and went out, across the sand bars, across the reefs, and, one would suppose, out of their lives.

However, the afternoon was well along before they stopped talking about him, about Tom and Bill, and about everything that had happened. By that time Mr. Gray and Andy had arrived.

“What do we care if that Morgan is gone?” demanded Joe Anderson. “He’s a poor comrade on a cruise. First he almost let us be broken up on the reefs because he liked ‘tonic’ better than watching; then he deserted our companions, and for all we know, did worse.”

“We can start up the river, anyhow,” Mr. Gray stated. “The river towns are no longer quarantined against the lower coast or the upper river. We can run as far up river as the boat will navigate and then several of us can go to Tom and Billy Sanders by canoe.”

Accordingly the anchor was raised the next morning and with a river Indian aboard as pilot, they ran smoothly and quickly up the lagoon. When they were about a day’s run up the Rio Patuca, Nicky, at the bow, watching the alligators slide off of the sand banks, seeing the strange, bright birds flying over the water, suddenly gave a cry.

“Isn’t that white people in that canoe——”

“It is!” echoed Cliff, running to his side. “And it’s——”

“Tom!” shrilled Nicky, dancing about until the pilot, watching the shifting currents, had to catch his coat and prevent him from toppling off the sharp bow.

Tom it was, with Bill, both alive, and quite hearty.

The story of their exploits was a thrilling one. They had been in the first throes of suffering from a violent poison administered in, or with their food by the Indians conducting them through the mountains.

“Tom recalled that I had a bottle of white vaseline in my pack,” Bill said, “and he crawled to it and got the stuff. It was not very easy to take, but we each got some down, and it melted and made a sort of oily coating, or else it acted as an emetic, for we were very sick, and almost wore ourselves out struggling—and we couldn’t get enough water!”

“It was lucky for us that we were right by the stream, almost in it,” Tom added. “The Indians didn’t move a hand to help. If we hadn’t kept sense enough to hold onto our pistols I guess they would have jumped on us. We found out later that they had picked some sort of mushroom—‘fruit of the earth’ it’s called, in the lower levels, and put some in folds of the pork meat when they gave it to us.”

“How did you find that out?” Nicky demanded.

“Did they confess?” asked Cliff.

“Toosa told us,” Tom explained. “He claims that he knew by his magic spells that we were in danger, and that he came to save us; and for that he expected Bill to give him Henry’s rifle when we left—which Bill was glad to do. But he and I privately think it was more chance than planning that brought him just in time to help us.”

“When you have lived as long as I,” said Mr. Gray quietly, “you will understand that there isn’t any such thing as ‘luck’ or ‘chance’ or ‘coincidence.’ It is all a part of a Great Purpose, that is deeper than most of us can see; but it is there, and we do not have to depend on ‘chance’ to get out of difficulties. If we believed in ourselves, and do our honest best for ourselves, help will come as we need it. Toosa, perhaps, was worried about you and so his intuition was keen and he felt that he should follow you.”

“I guess you are right,” Tom admitted. “Anyway, Toosa got there in time to stop the Indians from running away, after they divided our packs and while they were hoping we would die so they could get our gun and pistols and cartridges.”

“What did Toosa do?” asked Cliff.

“He threatened he would revenge himself if they hurt you, Bill has told us,” Nicky added.

“He had his vengeance, but in a curious way,” Tom said, glancing at Bill, as if for his backing-up of the story. Bill nodded encouragement and Tom continued:

“Toosa called the Indians back and they came, slinking and cowering, like whipped dogs. I don’t know yet what there was about him that scared them so, but he certainly ruled them by fear. He called them to him and then he made them stand there while he looked them steadily in the eye. Bill, the Indian he had with him was close to you, what did he tell you Toosa said in their own language?”

“Toosa said, ‘Which you like best, to eat rest of “fruit of earth” with roast wild pig, or have mountain spirits follow you and drive you into chasm?’” Bill related it with a reminiscent grin.

“They picked the wild pig and the poison mushrooms,” Nicky guessed. “I know that much about these Central American Indians.”

“We urged Toosa to be easy on them,” Tom said. “But he said it must be a lesson, and he made them go through with it.”

“What happened?” asked Cliff.

“He wouldn’t let us wait to see,” Bill replied. “He winked at me and told me to leave what there was in the vaseline bottle, and let them see how their own medicine man can save them with ‘white man’s butter.’ They weren’t even sick when we started back. The river was free of quarantine and so, of course, after we got back to it, we had no trouble at all.”

“I’ll never forget Toosa, waving to me with the very sign of the Mystery Boys, again, as we canoed away down stream,” Tom added.

“I’m glad your adventure ended so pleasantly—for you,” Mr. Gray stated.

“I hope it wasn’t too unpleasant for the hill Indians,” Andy said. “But if they were as sick as you that would be justice.”

“And in the long run, if you wait long enough,” said Bill. “Justice is always done, one way or another.”

“Then Henry Morgan still has some punishment due him,” said Nicky and the desertion and falsehood of the departed pilot was discussed.

“We sent no message,” said Bill, telling how Henry had turned savage and stolen his rifle and a canoe. “Wait till I catch him!”

“He said he was going to Porto Bello,” said Nicky. “Aren’t we?”

“No,” said Tom. “At least, only for a brief stop to see if Mort is there and if he really knows anything. Toosa told us, after Henry made his mad dash, that if we want to find out about Golden Sun—it isn’t a mine, either, he says!—we are to ask the San Blas Indians.”

“They live on reef islands down below Panama, I think,” Bill said.

“They do,” agreed Mr. Gray.

“And,” finished Tom, “if the Golden Sun isn’t a mine—my sister had golden hair—do you suppose?——” No one answered.