CHAPTER XXVII

AGAINST ODDS

Out from the mainland came a canoe. In it were two white people. They paddled stolidly and steadily, although several other canoes were close behind them, and at their sides, their occupants screaming and demanding in their high, shrill women’s voice, the return of the commandeered canoe.

Bill, Andy, Jack, Mr. Gray and Bob, on the cruiser, at anchor not far from a dingy, white sloop, watched curiously, and a little anxiously. Who were the men? They were men, not boys! But they were too far away to be recognized, if they were known, even with glasses trained on them. All that was to be seen was the anger of the canoeists around them and the lifting of an oar, with which they drove back too venturesome canoes.

The cruiser’s party, having made every effort to locate the missing Tom, Cliff and Nicky, even at risk of getting lost in the jungles themselves, had finally been forced to give up the search. They were lying at anchor, simply waiting, hoping against hope that something would give them a clue to the youths.

Mort Beecher and Henry Morgan, in their commandeered—to use a polite word—canoe, gave the cruiser plenty of seaway, and passed her well on the far side. However, Bill, using the glasses, recognized Henry and set up a shout. It was decided to row over to the sloop, on which they were seen to embark; at once Bob got the boat up and he, Andy and Bill tumbled in; but before they were half-way over the lagoon to the outer water which had depth for the deep-keeled sloop, she had hoisted sail and was bearing away.

“That’s funny,” Bill commented, when, giving up, they returned to the _Porto Bello_. “They didn’t come near us, and how they did hurry that boat away from here.”

“They could not have seen or heard of our boys,” Mr. Gray said. “They would, in decency, have stopped to tell us, no matter how great their haste.”

“They were in a big hurry,” Bill reflected. “I wonder why! They had no one with them. Could they have found Tom’s sister? In that case they would have brought her out.”

“They got into this Chucunaque country and came out safe again,” suggested Andy. “Might the lads have got there too?”

They could come to no conclusion, and while they all agreed that there was something decidedly strange about the haste with which Henry Morgan and Mort Beecher sailed North, and their avoidance of the very men who had helped Henry, they dared not go in pursuit to compel the elusive Henry to reveal his ’Cause why!

Nearly a week later, after being treated with dignity accorded to people of real prestige, Tom Nicky, Cliff and Margery were permitted, well-escorted, to leave the Chucunaque’s village for the coast.

Probably the chief’s experience with the motion picture film helped to establish them as true wonder-workers. The chief had seen Tom’s startling demonstration of fire, when he used the strip of celluloid “leader” torn off the end of a film. He therefore feared Tom until one of his medicine men, a little jealous of the white lad’s superior prestige, whispered that there was no great trick or secret, that he, too, could produce the smoke and flame with a piece of the picture-ribbon.

Nicky, Tom, Cliff and Margery, walking from but to hut, visiting the hammock-bound sick people, who believed that if Tom touched them it. would help to heal them, saw the portable picture projector apparatus, abandoned by Henry, being examined by the chief. He gingerly touched it, but his medicine man, with a contemptuous grunt, drew a length of the coiling film out of the lower magazine and ripped off a short bit. This he handed to the chief with some directions. The chief, hesitating, walked gingerly to the fire over which the community cook-pot hung, and stood irresolute.

“Look, Tom,” Nicky whispered. “He’s trying to nerve himself to make your magic. If he does, we are beaten.”

“Don’t worry!” Cliff retorted. “I examined the film, this morning. I wondered why the film was so combustible when it was to be used on a ship and with an open light. I saw the reason. The ‘leader part’ isn’t supposed to be ‘threaded-up’ in the beam of heat from the light; it is to go down to the lower magazine and so it can be of ordinary celluloid base film. But the real picture is on what is called ‘non-flam’ which is a celluloid base especially treated and with chemical constituents that make it smoulder when it gets hot, but it won’t burst into flame or explode. The chief has a bit of the picture itself, so Tom’s laurels are safe.”

It proved that he was right, for when the film was cast into the fire it only curled up and smouldered into ash, whereas Tom, to “make good” his own standing, at Cliff’s behest secretly secured a bit of “leader” from a second roll of the film and then “put on a show” for the chief which impressed the monarch so much that he ordered his bowmen at once—and the jungle resounded to the crashing escape of a medicine man who had advised jealously but not too wisely.

In time the sick had been touched and Margery’s request that she be allowed to go with the chums was granted; she promised to send back, by the guards, all the medicines on the cruiser, and when, after the days in the jungle trails the quartet reached the head of a small stream, and thence were hurried to the coast in canoes, they set foot again on the smooth white deck, she kept her word. All the medicine was sent, with careful instructions for its use according to the diseases prevalent in the country; other gifts were heaped upon the messengers and they left with the first smiles that any white man had seen on their stolid faces for many years. In return they loaded Margery and the chums with their cloth into which was woven many designs which later proved to be a key to many links of the modern Indians with ancient civilization.

Margery was greeted with much delight by Bill and Jack. Both of them were old enough, as was Mr. Gray, to realize that what worried Tom, her childishness, her habits of the girl of eleven in a body of a miss of sixteen, would soon be outgrown in new surroundings.

There was great excitement and a regular banquet to celebrate the return, and over plates of tinned meats and broiled yams, turtle and freshly caught fish, the youths related their experiences to an eager audience; but they hardly finished when Bill slapped his knee, almost upsetting all their crockery as he shouted:

“So you let Henry Morgan and Beecher go? And you thought they’d quit? Where were you lads when you and Margery talked over her story?”

“In her hut!” cried Tom, starting as he recalled a former time when Toosa had declined certain facts and an eavesdropper had overheard.

“You don’t mean?—” began Nicky. “Why—let me get hold of that—”

“That would explain why they avoided us and why the sloop sailed North in such a hurry,” Jack declared. He was much more of a self-respecting man than he had been even when the youths saw him last. He had control of himself, and took pride in his appearance.

“Andy—Bob—” called Bill, “get up the anchors and make everything shipshape. We’ve got enough provisions for a run back to Mexico?”

“I guess so,” responded Andy, fussing over his spark plugs.

“We’ll make it do.”

“Yes,” agreed Tom. “If what Margery said was overheard and our enemies have a start of us, we’ll have to try hard to catch them before they get to Mexico—”

“Anyway, before they get under those floor boards!” Nicky added.

“Make her hum, Andy,” Cliff said, taking up his duties as oiler and engineer’s assistant.

And so again, Northbound, the _Porto Bello_ nosed into the Caribbean!