  But silently as the attack upon Rob had been made, it had not taken place without causing some disturbance. Moreover, the sharp crack of the snapping twig which had attracted Rob’s attention to his trailers, had also reached Merritt’s sharp ears. In the silence of the night-enwrapped forest sounds carry far. Merritt was all attention in a flash. The snap of the twig might have been caused by some prying animal or—— “Gee whiz! That’s the scuffling of feet!” exclaimed the young sentry the next moment as the sounds of the tussle came to him. His first act was to fire a shot. It should have been aimed in the air, but in his excitement Merritt fired low. The bullet whizzed in the direction of the camp, struck a tin kettle which was piled up with a number of other tin utensils, and brought the whole pile down with a crash. Now Jumbo’s chosen sleeping place was right behind this barricade of tin hardware. When it fell it came crashing about the colored man in an ear-splitting avalanche. Jumbo leaped to his feet with a howl. He was attired in his shirt, trousers and shoes, not having bothered to remove these when he retired. “Fo’ de lan’s sake what dat gum gophulous racket?” he yelled. In a flash his long legs began to move. “Ah’ll bet a pint uv peanuts dat’s Injuns!” he shouted as he sped along, “mah goodness, ah wish ah had mah uncle’s gun. But as ah ain’t ah’s jes’ a gwine te trus’ ter mah laigs.” Jumbo, in great leaps and strides, arrived at the lake-side in a few instants. In the meantime, the camp behind him was in an uproar of excitement over the midnight alarm. The negro had already reached the waterside before he felt himself knocked flat by a heavy blow on the head. Now Jumbo’s head, like all negroes’, was about as hard as a bit of adamant. But the cowardly fellow deemed it better to lie perfectly still when he was knocked flat. Presently he felt himself being picked up and thrown into something that the next instant began to move off. He realized in a flash that he was lying in the bottom of one of the canoes. “Hailp! Hailp!” he began to yell, but was silent instantly as a harsh voice breathed in his ear: “You shut up if you don’t want a bullet in your black head.” Jumbo lay silent after that. But his thoughts were busy. “Bullet in mah haid, eh?” he mused, “mah goodness, ah don’t want nuffin’ lak dat. Mah cocoanut feels now laik ah’d done tried ter butt a locusmocus off’n de track. Wondah what deportentiousness uv all dis unusualauness done mean?” His meditations were interrupted by a shout from the shore. “Bring back those canoes at once!” “Mah goodness, dat am de majah,” exclaimed Jumbo, but to himself. “He shuh am po’ful mad. Wondah if dem boys is playin’ pranks. If dey is dey’ll be sorry fer it.” The black ventured to raise his head a little and peep up to see who was in the canoe with him. In doing so his eyes fell on another figure lying beside him. In the moonlight he could see the cords that bound it. The radiance of the moon also revealed the Boy Scout uniform. “Gabriel’s Ho’hn! Dat’s one of dem Boy Scrouts!” he exclaimed, “an’ mah gracious, ah wondah who dat fierce lookin’ man am whose paddlin’ dis yar boat. Reckon ah’d better lay quiet. He looks pretty frambunctious.” In the meantime, the aroused inmates of the camp had rushed to the shore. They reached it just in time to see their entire flotilla of canoes being paddled swiftly off across the smooth, moonlit waters. Tubby and Hiram raised their rifles when a hoarse laugh of defiance greeted the major’s command to the marauders to halt. But in a flash the officer saw what they were about to do. “None of that, boys,” he ordered sharply, “put down those rifles.” “No use for them now,” grumbled Tubby, “see, they’ve disappeared round that point.” “Let’s get after them,” suggested Hiram. The major shook his head. “Over this rough ground they could easily outdistance us,” he said, “is anyone missing?” It took but a few minutes to ascertain that both Rob and Jumbo were not among them. “This is even more serious than the theft of the canoes,” exclaimed the professor, “do you suppose that it was Hunt’s gang that took them?” “I don’t doubt it,” said the major, “who else would be interested in annoying us? But let’s hear Merritt’s story. What did you hear, my boy?” Merritt soon told his narrative of the crackling twig and the struggle. A visit to the beach showed that there had, indeed, been a struggle before Rob had been landed in the canoe. A disconsolate silence fell on the little party. “What are we to do now?” wondered Hiram. “Get in pursuit of them as quick as possible, I should think,” opined Tubby. The major shook his head. “Not much use in that,” he decided, “we would not be likely to find them. No, the best plan is to wait right here. If Rob escapes he will be able to find his way back again.” “Do you think they mean him harm?” inquired little Andy Bowles tremulously. “I hardly think so,” responded the major, “they wouldn’t dare to do much more than keep him prisoner. But even that’s bad enough.” “But what object can they have in all this except to annoy us?” asked the professor. “Simple enough,” said the major, rather bitterly, “I guess they are going to hold Rob as a hostage.” “What do you mean?” “That if they manage to keep him prisoner we shan’t see him again till I have given them the plans to the location of the Dangerfield treasure cave.” “They wouldn’t dare——” began the professor. But the major interrupted him. “We have already had a proof of what they will dare,” he said, “they are as desperate a band of ruffians as I have ever heard of.” “I guess that’s right,” agreed Tubby, “but I’ll bet,” he added stoutly, “that Rob will find a way out of it yet.” In the meantime the canoes sped on through the night. Rob mentally tried to keep some track of the distance traversed, but he was totally unable to do so. He judged, however, when the paddles finally ceased their splashing, that they must have come some distance, for it was day-break when the canoes came to a halt. Rob was roughly jerked to his feet and then, for the first time, became aware of Jumbo. For his back had been toward the negro in the canoe. “Mah goodness, Marse Blake,” exclaimed the black, “ain’ dis de mostes’ parallelxillus sintuation dat you ever seen. Ah declar’——” But further remarks on Jumbo’s part were roughly checked by the man who had paddled the two prisoners to their present situation. He was none other than the big-limbed rascal, Jim Dale, who had played such a prominent part in the theft of the pocket-book. “Shut your black head, nigger,” he ordered gruffly. “Ah ain’t no niggah. Ah’s a ’spectabilious colored gent”; protested Jumbo, “’nd I kain’t shut mah haid nohow ’cos it keeps openin’ an’ shuttin’ of its own accord whar you busted me on it.” But a fierce look from the man made even the garrulous negro subside. As for Rob, he disdained to talk to the fellow, or bandy words with him. Instead, he gazed around while the other canoes, filched from the Boy Scout camp, were coming up. He noted that one was paddled by Peter Bumpus, while the third one contained Stonington Hunt and his son Freeman, the lad who had already given the Boy Scouts so much trouble. It was a curious place in which the boy found himself. But Rob, with his scout instinct, could not but admire the skill with which it had been chosen as a retreat. The spot was like a large basin with steep rock walls on all sides but one. On the open side a narrow neck of the lake led into this natural fortress. Great trees and luxurious water growth masked the entrance and anybody, not knowing of it, might have passed by it on the lake side a hundred times without noting its presence. The canoes had been paddled through this natural screen of water maples and rank growth of all kinds, which had closed like a curtain behind them. A beach, narrow except at the far end of the cove, ran round the water’s edge at the foot of the rocky walls. A small tent was pitched there, and a fire was smoldering. Evidently the place had been occupied for some little time as a camp. Rob found himself wondering how the men, in whose power he now was, had ever found the place. He did not know then that Jim Dale and Pete Bumpus had once been associated with a gang of moonshiners, whose retreat this had been before the officers of the revenue service broke the gang up and scattered them far and wide. Hunt had gleaned enough knowledge from the plan, during his brief possession of it, to divine which route the party would take to the hidden treasure trove. He had, therefore, sought out this place when Dale and Bumpus told him of it. The boys’ enemies had made straight for it, and had been encamped there some days awaiting the arrival of the party. The notes of Andy Bowles’ bugle floating out across the lake the night before had apprised them of the arrival of the party, and plans had immediately been made for a hasty descent on the Boy Scouts’ mountain camp. How successful it had proved we already know. But of course, to Rob, all this was a mystery. The canoes were grounded at the end of the cove on the broad strip of beach. Rob and Jumbo were at once ordered to get out, and Rob’s leg-bonds being loosened and gag removed, he followed Jumbo on to the white sand. Hardly had their feet touched it before Stonington Hunt and his rascally young son, the latter with a sneer on his face, also landed. “Fell neatly into our little trap, didn’t you?” jeered Stonington Hunt, staring straight at Rob with an insolent look. “Yo’ alls kin hev yo’ trap fo’ all I wants uv it”; snorted Jumbo indignantly, as Rob disdained to answer. “Be quiet, you black idiot!” snapped Hunt, “we didn’t want you, anyhow. I’ve a good mind,” he went on with a brutal sort of humor, “to have you thrown into the lake.” “By golly yo’ jes bring on de man to do it,” exclaimed the negro with great bravado, “ah reckon ah kin tackle him. Ah’m frum Vahgeenyah, ah is, an——” But Hunt impatiently checked him. He turned to Peter Bumpus. “Cook us up a meal,” he ordered. “For them, too?” asked Bumpus, jerking his thumb backward at Rob and Jumbo. “Of course. You may as well get used to it. I expect they’ll make quite a long stay with us.” Rob’s heart sank. He was a lad who always schooled himself to look on the brightest side of things. But no gleam of hope lightened the gloom of their present situation. Things could not have been much worse, he felt. |
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