Dave Fearless and the Cave of Mystery Part 21

He opened his eyes. It was clear starlight. He lay on a sandy beach.

The waves lapped him to the knees. Beside him was the yawl, stove in at one side. He was still attached to it by the wrist held firmly in the rope loop.

The yawl had proved a loyal convoy. As the tempest swept it along, Dave must have been held at least a part of the time out of the water. This had saved his life. Perhaps, he thought, he might at times also have lain across the upturned keel of the yawl.

At all events he was saved. There was not a bone in his body that did not ache. His wrist was swollen greatly and the arm was numb to the shoulder.

"I'm badly battered," reflected Dave. "I must get my arm loose some way."

The youth groped in his pocket with his free hand. It was a laborious task getting into the soaked garment. When he got his pocket knife out, Dave had to open it with his teeth.

He managed to cut the rope that imprisoned him, and fell away from the yawl with a feeling of great relief. Then he lay on the ground flat on his back, and for some moments tried to think of nothing but absolute rest and comfort.

Dave struggled to an upright position finally. He was amazed at his weakness and helplessness. Twice his feet refused to hold him up, and he fell down. His injured arm was perfectly numb and flabby at his side.

"This won't do at all," he thought, arousing himself. "I'm awful thirsty, too. Well, I may be able to crawl."

Dave attempted to go up the beach. About a hundred feet away, through breaks in a belt of green trees, he could catch the sparkle of water running over the rocks.

The moon had come up during all these various efforts to get into action. Dave could see his way clearly. He made in the direction of the water.

After slowly and painfully progressing for perhaps a hundred feet Dave found that his blood had begun to circulate. He pulled himself to his feet by means of some high bushes he had reached by this time.

Each moment his control increased over the numbed joints and muscles.

"This is better," said he, with satisfaction, as after some stumbling steps, with the aid of a dead tree branch, he was able to limp upright though slowly.

Dave reached the water, a mere rill gushing down the sh.o.r.e bluff over some rocks. It was clear and sparkling, and he took a deep draught of the life-giving element that invigorated him greatly.

"Hungry," thought Dave next. "Thanks to Stoodles--good!"

Right at his side Dave discovered a bush full of pods. When on the Windjammers' Island with Stoodles, the latter had shown him this very bush. Upon it grew pods full of kernels that tasted like cocoa. Dave ate plentifully, though it was not a very satisfying meal.

"Now then," he spoke. "Oh, how could I have forgotten them!" he cried with sudden self-reproachfulness.

It was quite natural in his forlorn, confused condition that Dave should first of all have thought only of himself. Still, his deep anxiety, poignantly aroused now as he thought of Daley and the others who had been in the yawl with him, showed his heart to be in the right place.

He hurried down to the beach again, in his solicitude for his late companions forgetting how crippled he was, and had several falls.

"It's no use," said Dave sadly, after over an hour's search along the lonely sh.o.r.e. "They must have perished, Daley and the others."

The conviction saddened the youth for a long time. He sat down thinking over things for nearly an hour.

"I don't know where I am," he said, rising to his feet, "and I must trust to luck as to what is best next to do. This must be the Windjammers' Island. I think I could tell if I could get to some high point overlooking it or a part of it."

Dave looked doubtfully up beyond the sh.o.r.e cliffs where the higher hills showed. It looked to be a pretty hard task to scale those heights in his present battered-up condition.

"I'm going to try it, anyhow," decided Dave, and he did.

"I can't go any farther--at least not just now," said Dave, an hour later.

He sank down on a moss-covered rock overlooking a kind of valley. Its other side, however, was higher up than the point where he was.

"I think another hundred feet will bring me to where I can get a good view," thought the young diver; "that is in daylight, and daylight will soon be here."

The pods, which tasted like cocoa, had been filling to Dave, but not exactly satisfying.

"It's like a fellow eating candy when he needs beefsteak," he mused. "I shall have to hunt up something more substantial later on."

From his previous acquaintance with the island Dave knew that there were many kinds of sh.e.l.lfish to be found, besides berries and other fruits, for the searching. He was not one bit afraid that he would have to starve.

"I must watch out for the natives, too," he continued. "I must devise some kind of a weapon of defense."

Dave thought over these things, lying restfully on the rock. He had about decided to resume his journey, calculating how long it would take him to reach a certain point on which his eyes were fixed.

"h.e.l.lo!" he exclaimed suddenly, sitting bolt-upright.

What had attracted Dave's attention was a light. It had appeared suddenly on a ledge, almost at the top of the hill he was bent on climbing.

It was no fixed light, but a broad swaying jet of fire. Whoever held it was evidently swinging a lighted wisp of straw or something of that sort.

"I wonder what that means," mused Dave. "I wonder who it can be.

Probably a native. But, native or otherwise, there is method in the way that light is moving. Yes, it certainly is a signal."

Such Dave decided it surely to be after watching the light for some minutes.

It described circular and other figures. It seemed directed at a point somewhere down the valley.

"I would like to know what is going on up there," said Dave, rousing up.

"It would give me an inkling as to whom I have to deal with and where I really am."

After a further rest of a few minutes the young diver resumed the ascent of the hill.

CHAPTER XVII

A REMARKABLE SCENE

"Well, this is queer."

Dave Fearless looked curious and acted as if startled. By the time he had got near to the ledge where he had seen the mysterious signal, daylight had come.

Long since that illumination had been discontinued. Dave had paused with due caution as he approached its cause. He had lurked behind a big rock fronting the shelf of stone.

No other sound or presence was indicated, and after a spell of watchfulness Dave decided to approach closer. It was as he peered around the edge of a cavelike opening fronting the ravine that he uttered the words:

"Well, this is queer."