CHAPTER VII

TURTLES AND TROUBLE

Notwithstanding the youthful efforts to be optimistic, the _Porto Bello’s_ position was bad. She lay with her stern in deeper, swift water. Sharks and the rapid flow of the tide made it impossible to get under her stern to examine the propeller. They had spare parts, and would be able to repair the stripped gearing, or, at least, to render the clutch and shifts possible to use by substituting new gears. But the damage to the propeller must be estimated.

“My idea,” said Tom, with proper diffidence, when the entire party discussed the situation while they ate the dinner Bill prepared, “my idea would be to get a rope over to those snags of rock, put pulleys fore and aft on the top of the cabin, reave a rope through them, run it to the capstan, forward, then carry it out to the snags, fasten it, and then, steadily take up on it with the winch. The pull would work on the whole boat that way, and if we moved most of our stuff aft and lightened the bow, she might drag off.”

“How would we get a line to those snags—across that deep water?” objected Henry. “I, for one, won’t risk those sharks! They say they don’t trouble the Indians, or Negroes, but white men are different.”

“Probably Indians will come out in canoes,” Tom said hopefully.

This prediction proved true, but not until the next morning; then a canoe containing two stolid Mosquito Indians came out. They wore ragged trousers and shirts worn outside the trousers, hanging down, and their dark faces were almost as expressionless as those of the North American Indians.

They paddled down the water near the stern, and coming into a small bight of water where the current was less violent, they sat still for almost an hour, staring fixedly and without answering a number of hails sent them by various ones.

Finally, however, they did respond. They spoke little, but seemed to comprehend a little English and a trifle more of Spanish. Henry Morgan, who was morose and angry about something, bellowed orders at them. Tom, who knew what made Henry sour, since Tom had already dropped several fat bottles into a swift eddy astern, remonstrated at his angry commands.

“They don’t like to be yelled at,” Tom said.

“You be still!” snapped Henry. “I guess I know how to handle these Indians. You’ve got to bellow and roar at them to get them started. They’re lazy and they’re rough and they’d never move if you don’t get them waked up.”

“They may be all that,” agreed Tom, “but they’re human, too!”

Henry walked away.

Nevertheless, Tom’s way proved the better one, for when Bill held up a flashing bit of ornamental glass, like the crystal pendant from a glass chandelier, they spoke. In time they were induced to catch a rope and carry it out and, in the canoe, fix it fast to a projecting tooth of rock located in the proper direction to help pull the boat out of her sand bed, into which she was burrowing her nose more deeply with every roll.

“We’ll use the rocks that tried to injure us, and make them help us!” Cliff cried, and with a good will they took up slack on the rope until it was taut and throbbing with its tension.

After a long day of effort and patience they saw their craft float free, and, for another bribe, several more Indians were procured, in canoes, to tow them to a convenient beach where their rope was taken well inland to a coco-palm, secured there, and the boat was unloaded the next day, the stuff piled on the hot sand under an improvised shelter of canvas stretched over four upright pieces of timber found by the chums in a search of the beach.

Under another shelter, to which they brought heavy mosquito netting and with it made a tight enclosure, they spent the night. It was no pleasant slumber that came to them, for the Central American mosquitos are not only vicious and persistent, but they are large and their bite, on any but the toughest skin, produces red welts and a sort of itching that is as maddening as it is persistent and painful.

The next day, while Bill and Henry bargained with the Indians for canoes and guides to take them up the Rio Patuca to a tribe further inland where the old Indian, Toosa, lived, and while Cliff and Mr. Gray aided Andy in work of examining the gear and shafting, Nicky joined Tom on the beach.

“Some of the Indians are going turtle hunting,” he said. “Let’s us go along. They’ll take us. I let one young Indian play with my watch, and he promised to take us if I let him wear the watch during the trip.”

They accordingly joined the Indians. The method of hunting was interesting: they went along the beach and, watching until they saw a turtle sunning itself, or, possibly, laying its eggs, they managed to get between it and the water.

Sometimes they were not adroit enough. A turtle will instinctively try for its native element, and once in it, no expert can capture it. On land, however, once headed off, it may be turned on its back, and thus secured. After several wasted tries they managed to get a big fellow, weighing several hundred pounds, headed off and surrounded.

It was both a job and a tussle to get the huge and clumsy shell reversed; and then the boys were amazed at the cleverness of the Indians’ method of getting the creature back to their village, or near to it. To drag such a weight would be very hard. To make it “do its own driving” as Tom said, was the easier way. The Indians fastened ropes to each of its flippers, and then turned it over.

With slackened ropes, the creature instantly drove for the water. But once it plunged into its favorite retreat, the ropes were manipulated in such a way that the animal was actually made to swim and, in addition, was pulled, along the shore line, with comparatively little effort. Once opposite the camp, the turtle was dragged onto the beach and despatched, to be cut into choice portions. For their efforts during the hunt, Tom and Nicky were given some large chunks of the meat which made a wonderful addition to eggs they had discovered, and their regular fare.

Days passed with little happening. Outside of the tedious work of dismantling the gear assembly, and taking out the propeller shaft and bearings to be certain that all was sound, and hammering at the propeller to get its bent flanges back to proper pitch, there was only eating, fighting mosquitos and other annoying insects, and trying to be patient.

In spite of, or, maybe, because of Henry’s shouts and orders, the Indians made no move to take the party upstream.

It was only when the combined arguments of Mr. Gray, Bill, Tom and his chums made Henry desist, that finally, after about ten days, the Indians signified that on the morrow two canoes would start.

“Bill, and Henry will go, of course,” said Mr. Gray. “Tom, I feel, has a right to be with them because of his intense interest in any news concerning his sister.”

“But Nicky is all bitten up with—or by—mosquitos,” said Cliff, “and he can’t risk getting away from the ointment jars—and I must help with the readjustment of the engine and stay with Andy and Dad.”

It was arranged in that way. The next morning two canoes came to the beach and Bill and Tom climbed into the larger, while Henry took his place in the smaller one. With many farewell waves, and promises to get back as quickly as the information could be discovered, they were rowed—or paddled—away.

In turning the sand-spit into the inlet’s swift current, the canoe containing Henry, still morose and soured, went fairly near the jagged rock formation on which the propeller had been damaged. Through the clear water, as a swirl of mud settled, he caught sight of something, and with a sharp word, ordered the four Indians paddling to swing in closer. He got very close to the rock, leaned over the side, then jumped into the water up to his waist.

“What’s the matter with him?” demanded Bill in amazement.

“Gosh!” whispered Tom, “I wish I’d broken the darn things. I did try to shy the bottles of his ‘tonic’ so they’d smash, but they missed.”

And Henry had discovered them. More, he recovered them!

“So that’s where they went!” he cried furiously red, holding the fat bottles aloft and shaking them toward the other boat. “Which one of that boatful did that—threw my stuff away?”

No one answered.

Suddenly he turned on Tom, about twenty feet away, in the larger canoe. “I’ll bet you—” he snarled, “you was the one. ’Cause why? ’Cause you was hollerin’ about it!”

Tom’s face turned red. Henry saw it and, in his sudden rage, he drew back his arm and flung one of the flasks—or almost did!

With Henry’s arm at the point of coming forward, Bill, a marksman of no mean ability, caught up the rifle with which he had armed himself, and almost at the instant that it appeared above the gunwale, there came the spit of its bullet and the shivering of glass as the bottle broke in Henry’s hand. So close was the shot, so perfect the aim, that only the neck of the bottle remained.

Henry dropped it, staring in rage and disappointment at the roiling spot where his good “tonic” was blending swiftly with the Caribbean water.

“Drop that other one!” snapped Bill.

Henry did so—but into the canoe; and, so furious and beyond reason was he that his hand groped for and brought out his own rifle.

“You drop that rifle,” snapped Bill. “You crazy coot! Don’t you know I mean business!”

“Yes,” growled Henry. “You’ve got the drop on me—just now!”

The way he replaced the rifle and climbed into the tilting canoe, as well as the tone in which his husky words were spoken, indicated that this was only one time, that there would be more.

“Let’s turn back,” suggested Tom, dubiously.

“No! Forget his crazy stunt!” urged Bill. “Any day that I can’t handle a loon like him, I’ll eat scorpions’ tails!”

“But he gets so angry!” said Tom. “And he’s got a bottle——”

“Getting angry is better for us—as long as we keep cool!” Bill grinned, his rifle lazily resting on the canoe’s edge. “A cool man can out-guess, out-plan, out-shoot a fellow in a temper, any day! As for that bottle—watch it splinter the first time it starts for his lips.”

Bill motioned to the Indians, who had hardly moved, and who had certainly not spoken or changed expression. “Go on!” he said. Tom thought that just a hint of admiration showed in the faces of the five paddling their own craft.

“And you saved his life on the boat, when that wave washed him down,” grunted Bill.

“And I’d do it again!” said Tom.

Little he guessed how prophetic his words would prove to be!