CHAPTER XXV

IN DEADLY DANGER

It took the boys a moment or two to catch the full significance of this simple question and answer. Phil never boasted of his exploits. He never spoke of them unless directly questioned.

But suddenly they realized just what his simple answer meant. He had swum safely through fifty yards of shark-infested water! Impossible. It couldn’t be done.

“Listen Phil,” cried Steve, eagerly, “Don’t kid us, old boy. You couldn’t pull off a stunt like that and live to tell the tale. It just isn’t being done.”

“The sharks were dead ones,” suggested Tom, skeptically.

“I wish they had been,” Phil returned. “I’d have been saved a lot of bother. Tying myself up in that slimy wet seaweed wasn’t exactly my idea of fun.”

“Seaweed,” repeated Tom while the boys looked more and more mystified. “What do you mean—seaweed?”

Then Phil quickly sketched for them that nightmare journey across the shark-infested lagoon. They drank in his words eagerly, living over with him every moment of that hideous experience.

When he had finished they stared at him with eyes in which there was admiration and a new respect. Bimbo, who, all during the recital, had been edging nearer his idol, now crouched beside him, looking up into Phil’s face adoringly, even while he shook with fright.

“Seaweed,” muttered Jack Benton. “Now who, but you, would have thought of that, Phil? It’s a clever idea, all right.”

“It was a lucky one,” said Phil. “It sure had those maneaters guessing, all right. But now,” he added, going back to the danger which menaced them in the shape of Ramirez and his men, “we’ve got to get busy and hide the treasure. From what I saw last night, that gang of his won’t be held off much longer. For all I know they may attack this morning.”

“At any rate, we’ll have to be prepared for them,” agreed Jack Benton, rising as he spoke. “As you say, the first thing is to dispose of the treasure.”

So in the ghostly first light of the early dawn, the boys filed out of the cave armed with pickaxe and shovel, determined to put the boxes with their precious contents safely out of harm’s way.

As Tom had said, it was hard for them to realize that Phil’s strange story was actual fact. They had gone to sleep the night before so secure in their possession of the treasure. It seemed impossible that now not only it, but their own lives, as well, were menaced.

But Phil, who had discovered the danger and had no doubts whatever as to the reality of it, worked like a beaver, driving them on mercilessly whenever they stopped to take breath.

“We can rest all we want to, afterward,” he reminded them when they protested. “But now our job is to get these chests out of sight and be mighty quick about it. Hi there, Steve, heave to, my lad. You’re wasting time!”

They had chosen a spot for the burying of the chests quite a distance from the cave but not so far but what they could “keep an eye” upon the place.

When they had finished and pounded the disturbed earth down hard over the great hole that contained such riches they scattered stones and twigs over it with apparent carelessness so that when the task was completed to their satisfaction, there was nothing to distinguish the spot from the surrounding scenery.

“There,” said Phil, drawing a great breath of relief. “Now I guess we can take time for some breakfast. I’m about famished.”

As the boys found themselves in the same sad fix they returned to the cave, relieved Bimbo of guard duty—a revolver had been thrust into the darky’s hands but it is doubtful if he would have had the courage to use it in case of necessity—and commanded him to “rustle some grub.”

This Bimbo did willingly, glad to escape to the comparative safety of the cave’s interior.

“Poor Bimbo,” observed Dick, as he examined his revolver to make sure it was ready for action. “Something tells me he isn’t enjoying himself the way he should.”

Steve grinned, but the grin quickly changed to a more serious expression.

“Say, Phil,” he said, uneasily, “Don’t you think we’d better scout about a bit and find out if there’s anybody spying on us? All the time we were burying the treasure I felt as though someone were looking on.”

Phil shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Then you don’t think they’ll attack right away?” put in Dick quickly.

Again Phil shook his head.

“I think Ramirez has them pretty well under his thumb,” he said. “They won’t dare to carry mutiny very far. And as for Ramirez himself, he’s a pretty cautious rascal—and a greedy one too. He must have spent a good deal of his time around these diggings. At the moment we brought in the treasure he was hiding somewhere nearby. Later he came so close to the cave that he listened in on our conversation.”

The boys looked startled and glanced about them uneasily. The sun had risen flamingly giving promise of another fine day, but even its bright rays did not do much to lessen the uncomfortable feeling that someone was lurking near, spying upon them.

“The rat!” muttered Dick under his breath. “How much did he hear, Phil?”

“Enough,” Phil answered earnestly, “to make him sure that we had not only found the treasure but that there was still more to come. That’s his chief reason for not wiping us off the map at once.”

“Wants us to do the work, eh?” said Jack Benton. “And then when we’ve recovered all the treasure for him—which feat he couldn’t hope to accomplish for himself, not having the necessary equipment—he’ll get rid of us and triumphantly carry off the treasure?”

Phil smiled grimly.

“Almost his very words,” he said.

“Well,” Steve fingered his trusty revolver, resolutely, “I have an idea he won’t find it quite as easy as he thinks for. We’ll give him a good fight for his money anyway.”

“For our money, you mean,” corrected Tom with a grin.

“I was a fool to think we had seen the last of that scoundrel, Ramirez,” said Jack Benton, moodily. “The smell of gold to that kind of scum is like raw meat to a pack of wolves. Of course it was he that shadowed us in San Domingo. On the strength of his story of treasure, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to gather about him a band of desperate men, ready for any illegitimate adventure. They have chartered some sort of ship and followed us here. Simplest thing in the world.”

“You bet,” agreed Phil. “And now they think they have everything their own way. They know now certainly there is a treasure and though they know it is temporarily in our possession—”

“Temporarily—say, where do you get that stuff?” demanded Steve indignantly. “You don’t suppose they’ve got a chance in the world of getting that gold away from us, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Phil, adding soberly. “But it won’t do for us to forget for a minute, that they are twenty against our six.”

“Five and a half, you mean,” said Tom with a grin as he thought of Bimbo. “I imagine old Bimbo—” But Phil sent him a warning glance as the black boy himself appeared in the door to announce that “breffus done been prepared dis long time. Done nobody else wanna eat it Ah will, yassir, Ah’s one hungry nigger!”

Phil insisted on keeping watch while the other boys ate and no amount of argument could move him from his stand. However, Dick hastily finished his breakfast and relieved the famished Phil.

As soon as they had fortified themselves with food, they set about to barricade the cave. For, as Phil had said, the odds were tremendously on the side of Ramirez and his men and in order to overcome these odds it was necessary that their position be strongly fortified.

They barricaded the mouth of the cave, leaving a gap only wide enough for one person to squeeze through with difficulty. They were careful to leave peep holes, however, through which they might watch the movements of the enemy.

A heavy stone had been rolled inside the cave so that even the narrow aperture might be blocked up if it became necessary.

“There,” said Phil, grimly as he regarded the operations. “Now let ’em come on.”