TOM’S DISCOVERIES

As no attack had been made upon the camp the boys gradually relaxed the vigilance of their guard duty; but they still maintained a sentry at the lookout tree at night and made occasional visits of observation during the day, going to the tree sufficiently often to avoid being taken by surprise.

“And what if they should attack us in daytime?” argued Dick. “We’d be here, armed and ready for them.”

There was fishing to be done, and a game of chess or backgammon was usually in progress. Moreover, like any other company of bright youths accustomed to think, they had enough to talk about, many things to explain to each other, many stories to tell, and many questions to discuss. Thus the daytime sentry duty was reduced to nearly no activity, except upon Tom’s part. He was apparently fond of going to the lookout and remaining there sometimes for hours at a time.

The others did not know why he should care for that as for an amusement. Tom did, but he said nothing. Tom was finding out something that the others knew nothing about.

On the next morning but one after the deer hunt he had climbed to the crotch of the tree to make a further study of the trail he had discovered. After a little while he decided to climb farther up the tree, in order to secure a better view.

From that loftier perch he saw something at a distance that deeply interested him. It was a sort of hovel, so buried in undergrowth that it would have been scarcely visible at all except to one looking from a high place as he was.

But what interested him most was that presently he saw the lame intruder of two nights before come out of the hovel and limp down toward the shore, where, as Tom easily made out, there was a small, crooked little cove running into the woods, not from the creek, but from the broader water outside.

Tom lost sight of the man when he reached the cove, and so did not make out what he was doing there, but after a time he saw him limp away again and go back to the neighborhood of the hovel, which, however, he did not enter or approach very nearly.

He loitered around for awhile, like one who must remain where he is, but who has nothing to do there during an indefinitely long and tedious waiting time. At last he stretched himself out on a log in the shadow of the trees, as if to pass away the time in sleep.

Tom’s curiosity was by this time master of him. Having seen so much, he was eager to see more. Accordingly he clambered down the tree, and, with gun in hand, set out to follow the blind trail.

He moved silently from the first, and very cautiously toward the end of his half-mile journey. He was careful not to tread upon any of the dry sticks that might make a noise in breaking, and to permit no bush to swish as he let it go.

At last he reached the neighborhood of the hovel, and, securing a good hiding place in the dense undergrowth, minutely studied his surroundings. The lame man lay still on his log and apparently asleep, until after awhile the sun’s changing position brought his face into the strong glare. Then he rose lazily, rubbing his eyes as if the sleep were not yet out of them. Rising at last, with muttered maledictions upon the heat, he limped over to a clump of palmetes and from among them lifted a stone jug, from which he took a prolonged draught.

“That’s the stuff to brace a man up!” he muttered as he replaced the jug in its hiding place.

Tom observed that there were nowhere any traces of a camp fire, present or past, a fact that puzzled him at first, for obviously the man lived there in the thicket, or at least remained there for prolonged periods at a time, and, as Tom reflected, “he must eat.”

The man himself solved the riddle for him presently by going to another of his hiding places and bringing thence a great handful of coarse ship biscuit and a huge piece of cold pickled beef of the kind that sailors call “salt-horse,” which he proceeded to devour.

“Obviously,” reflected Tom, “his food, such as it is, is brought to him here already cooked. He makes no fire, probably because he fears its light by night or the smoke of it by day might reveal his presence here. But why does he stay here? What is he here for? Who are they who bring him food, and when or how often do they come, and for what purpose? It’s a Chinese puzzle, but I mean to work it out.”

Having made his observation of the place as minute as he could Tom silently crept away, not walking in the trail, but through the bushes near enough to let him see it and follow its winding course. He did this lest by walking too often in the trail he should leave signs of its recent use.

When he reached the lookout tree, to his surprise he found his three comrades there.

“Hello! What are you fellows doing here?” he asked, breaking out of the bushes and thus giving the first sign his comrades had had of his approach, for even to the end of his little journey he had been at pains to travel in absolute silence as an Indian on the war path does.

“Why, Tom, where have you been?” was the first greeting the others gave him.

“We’ve been dreadfully uneasy about you,” Larry explained, “and when I whistled through my fingers to call you to dinner and you didn’t come, we hurried out here to look for you. Where have you been and what have you been doing?”

“I say, Larry, that reminds me that I want you to teach me the trick of whistling through my fingers in that way. Will you?”

“I’ll teach you some things that are easier to learn than that,” answered his companion, “if you try any more of Cal’s tricks of beating round the bush. Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been and why, and all the rest of it? Don’t you understand that we’ve been on tenterhooks of anxiety about you for an hour?”

“Well, as I’m here, safe and sound, there is no further need of anxiety, and as for your curiosity to hear what I have to tell, I’ll relieve that while we’re at dinner. Come on! I’m hungry and I reckon the rest of you are, too. Anyhow, what I’ve got to tell you is well worth hearing, and I shall not tell you a word till we sit down on our haunches and begin to enjoy again the flavor of that venison, broiled on the live coals. You haven’t cooked it yet, have you?”

“No. We got the chops ready for the fire, and then I whistled for you, so that we might all have them fresh from the coals. As you didn’t come, we got uneasy and went to look for you. So come on and we’ll have a late dinner and sharp appetites.”

No sooner were the juicy venison chops taken from the fire and served upon a piece of bark that did duty as a platter than the demand for the story of Tom’s morning adventure became clamorous.

With a chop in one hand and half an ash cake in the other, Tom told all that he had done and seen, giving the details as the reader already knows them. Then, after finishing the meal and washing his hands, face and head in the salt water of the creek, he set forth the conclusions and conjectures he had formed.

“In the first place,” he said, “I am certain that our late visitor—he with the game leg—is the only person anywhere around. We are in no danger of an attack, either by night or by day, until his comrades, whoever they may be, come here and join him. We have no need of doing sentry duty out there at the gum tree, except to keep a sufficient lookout to make sure that we know when they do come. In my opinion that will be at night sometime.”

“Why do you think so, Tom?”

“Simply because it is evident that they don’t come here for any good or lawful purpose. If that lame fellow with the whisky jug is a fair sample of the crew, they are the sort that prefer darkness to light because their deeds are evil.”

“Who do you think they are, Tom?” asked Cal, “and what, in your opinion, are they up to?”

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”

“How, Tom?”

“By watching, and, if I don’t find out sooner, by being within sight when they do come. I’m going to reconnoiter the place again to-night to see what that fellow does down there. Perhaps I may make out something from that. At any rate, it’s worth trying.”

“Why shouldn’t we all go with you?” Dick asked eagerly. “Then if by any accident that evil-visaged person with the lame leg should discover you, we’ll be there in force enough to handle him and the situation. I’ve heard that one of your southern generals during the Civil War once said that strategy is ‘getting there first with the most men.’ Why shouldn’t we practice strategy?”

“Why, of course, I counted on that,” Tom answered. “I knew all you fellows would want to go, and I reckon that’s our best plan. Anyhow, we’ll try it.”

“Now,” said Cal, “I have something to report which I regard as of some little importance, particularly as it means that the Hunkydory will have to leave this port pretty soon—probably within the next forty-eight hours, and possibly sooner.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Cal?” asked all the others together.

“Only that our spring is rapidly drying up, and as there is no other fresh water supply within reach, we shall simply be obliged to quit these parts as soon as we can get ourselves in shape to risk it.”

“To risk what?”

“Why, putting off in a boat on salt water. We can’t do that without some fresh water on board. I’ve already begun the filling of the kegs by thimblefuls. It promises to be a slow process, as the spring seems unable to yield more than a gill or so at a time.”

“But, Cal,” interrupted Tom, “we can get all the water we want by digging a little anywhere around here. It doesn’t lie three feet below the surface.”

“Neither does the fever,” answered Cal.

“How do you mean?”

“Why, I mean that the milky-looking water you find by digging a few feet into the soil of these low-lying lands is poisonous. It is surface water, an exudation from the mass of decaying vegetable matter that constitutes the soil of the swamps. To drink it is to issue a pressing invitation to fever, dysentery and other dangerous and deadly diseases, to take up their permanent residence in our intestinal tracts.”

“But why isn’t the water of our spring just as bad?”

“Because it isn’t surface water at all, but spring water that comes from a source very different from that of the swamp soil. You have perhaps observed that the bottom of our spring is composed of clean, white sand, through which the water rises. That sand was brought up by that water from strata that lie far below the soil.”

“What makes it brackish, then?”

“It is brackish because a certain measure of sea water from the creek there sipes into it. The sea water is filtered through the sand, losing most of its salt in the process. You’ve noticed, perhaps, that the spring water is more brackish at high than at low tide. That’s because—”

“Oh, I see all that now. I hadn’t thought of it before. But really, Cal, it seems rather hard that we must sail away from here just when we’ve run up against something mysterious and interesting. Now, doesn’t it?”

“Let me remind you,” answered Cal in his most elaborate manner of mock-serious speaking, “that I am in nowise called upon to assume responsibility for the vagaries of a casually encountered spring. I did not bring up that spring. I had no part in its early education or training. Presumably it is even my superior in age and experience. In any case, I feel myself powerless to control or even to influence its behavior. Moreover, I feel as keen a disappointment as you can in the fact that we shall have to abandon our search for knowledge of the purposes of our neighbor with the game leg. But it is not certain that we shall have to sail away with that inquiry unfinished. It will take a considerable time to fill our water kegs, and in the meanwhile we may penetrate the mystery sooner than we expect. Anyhow, we’ll see what we shall see to-night.”