CHAPTER XIX

WASTED EFFORT

When all attempts to persuade the chief to listen had resulted in a final, and rather angry order for them to go, Bill and Jack gave up.

“It’s no use,” Bill said. “We are stumped. Let’s go to the dock and meet Bob—he ought to be back with the boat pretty soon.”

They went to the ramshackle wharf made of old, rotting poles stuck into the water, with old boards, from some wreckage, loosely laid on them for a footpath. The dock was seldom used—only for the few occasions when government launches came to the island to transact business with the chief.

But after a long wait, when Bob failed to show up, Bill became uneasy and finally hailed the cruiser by firing his pistol three times.

The boat was too far away for voices to carry, and also signs could not be distinguished.

Bill and Jack impatient and worried, for they could not see the small boat anywhere about, commandeered a canoe and paddled to the anchored cruiser.

“The boys have not come back,” said Mr. Gray uneasily when they came alongside. He told how he had given them permission to go to the river. Andy, summoned, was crestfallen and alarmed. He related his suggestion to the youths and Bob said that he had not been asked to be one of the party.

“We will take the canoe and paddle over,” said Bill. “No time to waste. It won’t be over-long till dark.” Without further word he and Jack paddled toward the mainland. They worked swiftly, for both knew that time was of supreme importance if any harm had come to their younger comrades.

“You don’t think the Indians?—” began Jack.

Bill shook his head.

“Here they come, anyhow,” he stated, pointing with his paddle to the fleet appearing at the river mouth. “We’ll ask.”

The canoes seemed to be bent on avoiding them, but Bill drew out a soiled but fairly white handkerchief and waved it, then beckoned. A canoe containing several younger women veered closer and the paddles ceased to sweep the glassy water.

“You see boat—boys?” hailed Bill.

One of the women nodded and pointed back the way they had come from the river.

“They’re back there,” Bill told Jack. “They must be all right. But we’d better go on and make sure.”

They passed through the squadron of canoes and up the river. Long before they reached the small, sandy beach, they discerned the rowboat, drawn up on shore. The Indian women had left it untouched, after a curious examination of its scanty contents.

“They’re nowhere around,” Bill exclaimed when they came closer: with tight lips he ran the canoe into shallow water and vaulted into the shallows.

“Tom—Nicky—Cliff!” he shouted, and waited.

The echoes were silent. Jack added his high pitched call, and they shouted together; but the jungle held its secret. The boys, at that time, were two miles beyond hearing, on a trail that ran almost parallel to the course of the river.

“If they’re in the jungle, how will we locate them?” asked Jack. “I know something about these places—once you get in, you wander and get further away all the time.”

“We’ll fire our pistols,” cried Bill. “Push in, here, as far as we dare go without getting lost ourselves!”

There they shouted and, at intervals, fired their pistols. But only the silent glades and the sentinels towering high above heard the hails and quivered a little to the strange sound of exploding powder.

“There’s nothing we can do by waiting here,” Bill said, finally. “My idea is to go to the chief and offer him all we’ve got to put out parties who know the trails, give them torches, and try to get some trace of what has happened. The boys are lost. We would be lost in no time, looking; but the Indians might not. We’ll try it. It’s the only thing to do.”

Tired as they were, their paddles fairly flew as they made their way back toward the cruiser.

“If the sun is setting in the open, it must be night back in the jungle,” began Jack.

“Be still!” snapped Bill, refusing to think of harm and thus lose his hold on his plans. They delayed at the boat only long enough to give the details of their discovery to a perturbed Mr. Gray, a penitent engineer and an excited colored pilot. Then they paddled for the shore.

Without ceremony they burst in at the chief’s big hut, where he was partaking of his evening meal.

He listened to Bill’s excited story, related in Spanish.

Then he sat in his hammock, munching on a yam, without retort.

“Well,” said Bill finally, exasperated out of all patience, “we will pay well to have men and boys take torches and scour the jungle.”

“What do you say?” demanded Jack, also in Spanish and dialect.

The chief put down his yam and stared without expression.

Finally he spoke, coldly.

“You say you much doctor-magic man!” he declared. “All right. You make magic. You find!”