  In order to see how Nicky’s plan was, the picture that he had in his mind must be understood. This was Nicky’s mind picture: The hi-jackers, after capturing Sam’s sloop, had sent her, with two men aboard, to make contact with their Little Card Sound headquarters. Nelse was there and from what he had heard and pieced together, Nicky supposed that the two men on the Treasure Belle would find Nelse, and have him go, or send Seminole Indians, across the inland waterways, to take to the hi-jackers some liquor cases in which to conceal the treasure bars. When they captured the Libertad, the hi-jackers had left three men floundering in the water; for all they knew or cared, these men might have been wounded. The Libertad’s own boat had been sunk by bullet holes during the fight, which was why the boys had been left without a boat when Senor Ortiga and Mr. Coleson had fled the Senorita in the tender. Under such conditions the hi-jackers had started North in El Libertad, the night previous to that on which the cutter arrived. They would hardly go to the shores of the Southern States bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Nicky decided, because they would be afraid of having the gold discovered: it was in bars and had been loaded into the Libertad without any provision for its concealment and transportation later on. The hi-jackers would probably go, Nicky argued, into the inner channel of the archipelago and then lay up in the Shark River, that small stream having its source at the edge of the Everglades. It was the most Southerly place they could get close to the Everglades, and the Seminoles, bringing the cases to put the treasure in would come up the inland way through part of Big Cypress Swamp, along the rim of the Everglades, and meet them. That was the only way Nicky could see for the hi-jackers to do, because they had no small boat and could not go any closer to the shallow water of the Florida swamp than the draught of El Libertad would permit. They could not have had enough gasoline in the tanks to risk a very long voyage; that was the reason he did not think they would try to get to the Southern States and risk themselves in strange waters with no way to carry the gold from the vessel to their Northern headquarters, wherever that might be. With all of this the older heads of the party agreed. Their first plan, then, was to get the Libertad pocketed and surrounded; this they must do before the treasure could be hidden. Without a small boat it was not probable that the hi-jackers could get into the Everglades, but they might know the Seminoles and might be able to get hold of a canoe. A day, and a good part of the night before had passed since they went away in the Libertad, but Lieutenant Sommerlee and Mr. Neale decided that they had probably gone into the Shark River and laid up. They had no reason to be afraid: they left the Libertad’s owners in the water; they left three boys and a Negro in another rowboat. There was not much danger, from their way of looking at it, in anything that these people could do. If they had seen the signal smoke of the day or the fire and the rockets and lights at night, it would be too late for them to run out in the Libertad; and, unless they had already hidden the treasure, they could not very easily do so in the darkness. They would be more apt to believe themselves well hidden, and would not make any move before daylight, because they would be waiting for their two men in the sloop to get Southeast and bring help from inland. They did not know, of course, that the men had been captured. First of all, Sam and a patrol sailor went over the side of the Senorita, in the dark, with ropes under their arms and fastened to the rail. They searched about on the reef at the side of the ship where Nicky and his chums had thrown the rifles and pistols. Lieutenant Sommerlee did not think that these had been in the water long enough to be severely damaged or made useless; he wanted them for a purpose. Sam and his companion by dint of much searching brought up both submerged rifles and several pistols. They were set to work cleaning and drying and oiling them at once. “Cliff,” ordered Lieutenant Sommerlee, taking command, “you—with Sam and Jim and one of my sailors, will stay on the Senorita. Jim has had a night and a day to rest in and he is pretty strong again. You four are the guardians of this Shark River channel.” “If they try to run out past us we must try to prevent that,” Cliff agreed. “Yes,” nodded the commander. “My boatswain, Jack, will be with you and, for the sake of discipline, you must all obey his orders. He has a cool head and is a fine shot. Four of you ought to be able to block this channel if the hi-jackers try to run out here.” “We will!” agreed Cliff, feeling the importance of his share in the blockade. “The rest of us will start at once in the cutter,” the lieutenant continued. “We will tow our own light dory, and when we reach the inner mouth of the Harney River, Mr. Neale, Nicky, and one of my men who has been into the Everglades, will drop off in the dory and go up the Harney River as fast as they can by night. By submerging a flashlight in the water, training its beam on the bottom, and rowing carefully they can get almost to the head of the stream, where it has its source at the rim of the Everglades. From there, as soon as dawn comes, my man will direct the course South along the rim of the Everglades to the nearest point he sees fit to the Shark River. The Harney starts a few miles North of the Shark, at the rimrock, and by sending the boat there, we can block the Everglades side and stop any Indians who may come there from Big Cypress.” “And we will stop them, never fear!” declared Nicky stoutly. “I know that you will,” said the lieutenant with a smile. “The cutter will proceed carefully down the inner channel. I will be in command, and will lie-to close to the bank, not far from the Shark. Unless the hi-jackers rush out I will do nothing until we are all in position. We shall need some signals.” “Have you any smoke-rockets on the cutter?” asked Nicky. “They would make enough light to be seen at night, and smoke to see by day.” “We have,” answered a sailor. “Plenty of them.” “Then we will take four,” Nicky suggested. “How will we use them?” “One at night will call for help. One right after the other at night will call urgently for help. Do not use them for any other purpose tonight, and I will be watching the sky over the ’Glades.” “All right, sir,” said Nicky in proper nautical deference. “Then, when we get into place at the inside end of the Shark, shall we signal?” “No,” replied the lieutenant. “But if you see that there is no boat in the Shark River at all, send up a rocket, wait a minute and then send up a second. Watch for the same signal in reply; if you do not get it, repeat with your other two rockets. If the boat is there, make no signal unless the men are escaping. In that case, send up three rockets in quick succession, as fast as you can.” “How shall we be able to set them up?” asked Mr. Neale. “You will find clumps of tall saw-grass almost everywhere; it is from four to eight or nine feet high, and you must be careful not to let its sharp edges gash you, but it is strong enough to support a rocket in an upright position while you set and light it.” Hasty repetition by each member of the party of plans in which they must participate, the arranging of signals from the cutter, and of others from the Senorita, completed the arrangements. Cliff, with Jim, Sam and the boatswain, Jack, busily getting the recovered arsenal into good shape again, saw the cutter disappear into the gloom. The run up the channel into the Harney River was without event, and since Lieutenant Sommerlee had cruised in those waters, making a chart for the U. S. Geodetic Survey, he knew the safest way, and finally, with tense, thrilling nerves, Nicky dropped into the light dory with Mr. Neale and a sailor called Brownie because his last name was Brown and he was a short, fat, jolly little man. With whispered directions from the cutter’s commander, they pushed off and with Mr. Neale at the oars and Nicky in the stem, Brownie being at the bow to give the course up the rapidly narrowing stream, they slipped into a darkness that seemed to close down about them like a curtain. By following the lieutenant’s directions they made steady progress as far as their boat dared go in the dark, feeling-out the channel with the tip of their flashlight under water so they could see the coral bottom of the river. Finally they stopped, tied to a heavy root and got such sleep as they could, curled up on their hard seats. At about four-thirty, before dawn cut through the heavy tangle of trees, intertwined overhead, Brownie awoke his companions and they ate their hardtack, and picked the bones of a chicken from the cutter’s recent purchases, cooked the night before on the Senorita; this they washed down with cocoa from tin cups, cocoa hot out of a thermos bottle. The hot liquid helped to drive away the night chill, and Nicky declared that he felt fit for anything. “That’s good,” chuckled Brownie. “We’re going to have to stand in shallow water and walk in it, too. We must drag our dory up over the rock bed here at the rim of the Everglades.” In spite of the cold of the water, fed by the overflow from the Everglades which, themselves, are renewed by many streams that spout out cold and clear, from holes in the limestone, they dragged and tugged and laughed softly as they slipped, until, when the dory was over the rim, and into fairly good water, they were quite warm from their exertions. “Here we are!” said Brownie softly, with a wave of his hand. “Here we are—in the Everglades!” |
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