CHAPTER XXIV

CHEATING THE SHARKS

An immensity of stars glittering in the sky, staring indifferently down upon an endless waste of water, and upon this waste of water, close up toward the shore, a little clump of seaweed, agitated by the motion of the sea.

Inside the covering of seaweed which was so slight a protection against the danger that menaced him on every side, Phil made his tedious, nightmare journey toward the farther side of the lagoon.

The bodies of the sharks edged in closer. They were becoming bolder as their suspicions grew. They could smell the unmistakable odor of human flesh and they could not much longer be denied.

Knowing this, Phil had a mad desire to throw all caution to the winds and swim rapidly toward the safety of the beach. However, he knew that the moment he gave way to this desire the suspicion of the sharks would change to certainty. And the instant that happened all chance of escape would be gone.

He turned sick as he felt the hideous creatures nosing at his disguise. They were pressing so close upon him that it was all he could do to make any progress at all. They were becoming bolder with each second. Just a little while more and it would be all over. Over—Phil repeated to himself, trying to gather fortitude to meet his fate.

He thought of the fellows, Jack Benton and poor old Bimbo. In one agonizing moment there came to him the realization of what would happen to them when he did not come to warn them of the danger lurking on the island.

They would search for him, of course. His disappearance would always be a mystery to them. They would not have time to think much about him though—again that blood-curdling, inquisitive pressure against his sides, his legs, his hands. They were closing in—closing in—his body was cold and numb—he wondered if he were dying—he could hardly move his hand—closing in—closing in—he shivered convulsively—then—what was that?

He could not have been mistaken. His knee had struck bottom. He had reached shallow water! The renewed hope that flooded him was like pain. If he reached his foot downward he could touch bottom—stand up.

Without stopping to think, acting merely upon a quick impulse born of desperation, he sprang upright, splashing madly about him.

The ruse worked. The sharks, momentarily puzzled and bewildered by his quick action, drew back. That was all Phil wanted. With a wild shout he sprang forward, and a moment later felt the sand beneath his feet.

He staggered a few feet and then fell down in the sand, half-crazed with joy. He stripped off the clinging seaweed and half-buried his shivering body in the sand, letting handfuls of it slip through his fingers for the sheer delight of feeling it and knowing that he was safe. Never would he be again any closer to death than he had been in the last hideous few minutes. His escape seemed a miracle. He could scarcely believe yet that he was safe.

For a long time he lay there, gazing up at the stars, the warmth of the sand comforting his chilled body, luxuriating in the mere fact of living.

Then as he became quiet and the strength came back to him, the faint gray of dawn coloring the horizon in the east warned him that he must get back to the cave.

What had he been thinking of, wasting all this precious time when he should be back there warning his comrades, putting them on their guard!

As he scrambled to his feet, brushing the sand from him, he was conscious of a queer glow of exultation. The blood was pounding once more warmly through his veins. In spite of the tremendous odds against him he had come safely through that death-haunted lagoon. By means of strategy he had outwitted the monster fish, any one of which could have ended his life with one snap of his murderous jaws.

He had braved one of the worst dangers that can confront a man and now he was safe, free to warn his comrades of danger, free to ward off the attacks of Ramirez and his men, free to guard the treasure from all comers.

No wonder he was exultant. He raised his arms above his head and gazed up at the star-gemmed sky.

“The treasure is ours,” he cried aloud to the night. “I’d like to see anyone get it away from us.”

And with this challenge he turned and hurried toward the cave. By the time he reached it, it was almost morning.

As he stopped at the mouth of the cave it seemed impossible, after all that had happened to him, that the boys could still be sleeping soundly. While he had been making his tremendous discovery, been fighting his fight with death, they had slept on without ever a worry to disturb their dreams.

“They’re going to wake up now, just the same,” he muttered. “They’ve had all the sleep they’re going to have for one night.”

Whereupon he shook Dick by the shoulder, calling upon him urgently to give up slumber and come back to earth.

“Say, what’s the matter with you?” groaned Dick, trying to shake off Phil’s grip of his shoulder. “We only just got to bed. Don’t you know that?”

“Snap out of it,” retorted Phil and there was a note in his voice that caused Dick to blink at him owlishly. “When you hear what I have to tell you, you’ll agree with me that this is no time for sleeping!”

One after another, the boys roused up, helped no doubt by the urgent quality in Phil’s voice. When they were awake enough to know what he was talking about he began swiftly to tell them of his adventure.

At his first words, they forgot all about their desire to go back to bed. Bimbo had lit the one lamp their quarters boasted and in the light of this they stared at Phil as though they thought he were weaving fairy stories for their benefit.

“Ramirez—on this island,” said Tom, dazedly. “How did he get here?”

“How many men were there with him, Phil?” asked Jack Benton quietly. In the light of the lamp his eyes glowed and his lips were set in a straight line.

“About nineteen or twenty, I should say,” returned Phil, adding with a grim smile, “If the fellow is dead that Ramirez took a shot at that makes one less against us, anyway.”

“It’s—it’s hard to realize yet,” said Tom, softly. “How could they have been here all the time on the island and we not know about it? It seems as if we must have heard something or seen something—”

“I did,” Phil interrupted him. “But when I told you about it, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You mean that shot you thought you heard?” broke in Steve excitedly.

“The shot I’m sure I heard, you mean,” Phil corrected, and then went on to tell about the first time he thought he had caught sight of a man slipping from the cave. “I thought at the time, I must have dreamed it,” he finished. “But now of course I know it was as real as my adventure to-night.”

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” asked Dick, who was always eager for action. “Why couldn’t we make a surprise attack upon those ruffians and clean them out—”

“It’s nearly morning,” Phil interrupted the wild scheme. “By the time we reached them they’d probably be up and stirring and your surprise would come to nothing. Beside,” he added with an unpleasant memory of the lagoon, “we would have to wait till the tide went out, anyway. We’d have to swim a stretch of about fifty yards of water that’s packed full of sharks.”

He had not told them yet about his narrow escape from death and now Jack Benton leaned forward, intense interest on his face.

“Then how did you get here?” he demanded.

“I _swam_ that fifty yards of water,” Phil answered, quietly.