Swept Out to Sea Part 24

"Wait a bit; wait a bit," returned the Yankee, puffing on his cheroot.

"Let's see what these Yaller-skins have to offer. If we hadn't tailed onto the whale as we did they'd had their hooks in it by this time."

A few words in Spanish to Pedro had stirred up the mate and crew of the Sea Spell. They seemed wonderfully busy getting a lot of gear and litter upon deck. The uninitiated might have thought that we were getting ready to cut up the whale and boil down the blubber in the most approved style.

Finally a man aboard the tug hailed us. Captain Tugg answered in Spanish, and an excited conversation ensued--at least, excited upon the side of the man aboard the steam vessel and his compatriots. The skipper of the Sea Spell seemed particularly calm and unshaken. I could understand but little of the talk, although I had begun to pick up the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Spanish spoken along the coast. I knew the Yankee and the dagos were bargaining.

Finally Tugg sang out to Pedro to belay the work he and the crew were engaged in, and to lower a boat again. The captain was rowed to the tug and after some further conversation I saw certain moneys counted out and paid over to the master of the Sea Spell. He was then rowed back and when he was aboard he ordered the dead whale cast off.

"And git some of your watch down there, Pedro," added Captain Tugg, "and swab the grease off her side. Ugh! There ain't nothing nastier than a whale."

"Yet you were going to cut her up?" I suggested, curiously.

He favored me with a wink. "Buncome, Bluff," he murmured. "That little play-acting turned me two hundred dollars in gold. Our lying becalmed here wasn't such a bad thing after all--and here comes the breeze. Jest like finding money in an old coat, Mr. Webb--that's what that was."

And so the shrewd old fellow turned everything to account. We got a breeze and were out of sight of the place before the small craft had got the big whale towed into the inlet--where they would beach it and cut it up. Captain Adoniram Tugg was two hundred dollars in pocket, and just because some mysterious sea-beast had seen fit to kill a whale for its tongue!

We had a fine breeze after the long calm, but nothing but fair weather until we rounded the Cape of the Virgins. There the broad entrance of the magnificent Straits of Magellan lay before the nose of the schooner.

A little later we had furled all but the topsails and were sailing due north into an inlet masked by many dangerous looking reefs. The mate of the Sea Spell, Pedro, seemed to know the channel well, however, and although Adoniram Tugg remained on deck he did not seem to be worried at all about the schooner's safety.

"We'll drop anchor before morning," he told me. "That is, if the wind holds in the same quarter. You'll have a chance to see what sort of a good fellow the Professor is tomorrow."

"What! are we so near your headquarters?"

"That's the checker," returned Tugg. "Just a short sail now."

The inlet was never more than a mile wide; in places the rocks crowded in toward the channel until a strong man could have flung a stone from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. The waterway was really a series of quiet salt pools.

The sh.o.r.es were wild and rugged. I had never seen a more forbidding coast. When the night dropped down upon us--as it did suddenly, and a starless sky o'er-head--I wondered how Pedro could smell his way through. I heard Tugg roaring something in Spanish about "the beacon"

and then a spark of fire flared out in the darkness far ahead. It looked like a stationary lamp and burned brightly. The captain came over to me, chuckling.

"That's my partner's light," he said, with satisfaction. "He rigged that beacon, and it's lit every night that the Sea Spell is on a cruise.

Pedro can work the schooner up the inlet by that light without rubbing a hair."

And so we sailed on, and on, without a thought of danger until, of a sudden, I felt the schooner jar throughout her whole length. Captain Tugg jumped and yelled to Pedro:

"What in tarnation you doin', numbskull? Hi, one o' you boys! git into the chains with the lead."

But before the man could sound the Sea Spell grounded again, and this time she ran her keel upon a sand bank so solidly that she stopped dead, with the sails above cracking! There was a hullabaloo for a few minutes, now I tell you. Shouts, commands, the grinding of the schooner's keel, the slatting of sails. The Sea Spell had driven so hard and fast upon the shoal that she canted neither to port, or starboard. And although the sea was still so that she would not be beaten by the waves, it looked much to me as though she were piled up on this unfriendly coast for good and all!

CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH WE FIND THE NATIVES MORE UNFRIENDLY THAN THE COAST

The bright light ahead had disappeared. Tugg was berating Pedro for getting off his course and running the schooner aground. In a minute, however, another light flashed up nearby and I saw that a huge bonfire had been kindled on the sh.o.r.e not more than a cable's length away.

"What in the e-tar-nal snakes is that?" bawled Captain Adoniram Tugg, seeing this fire. "That ain't the Professor--not a bit of it."

In a minute the flames rose so high that we could see figures moving in the light of them. And wild enough figures they were--half naked fellows, taller than ordinary men, and waving spears and clubs.

"I believe some of your Patagonian giants you have been telling me about have gone on the warpath, Captain," I said.

"Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it," he snarled. "They're as tame as tiger-kittens."

"Just the same I'm going to get my gun and pistol," I declared, and I dove below.

When I came back to the deck two more fires were burning. The sh.o.r.e--which was a low bluff--was illuminated for some hundreds of yards. There was a gang of a hundred or more dancing savages about the fires. I was frightened; those savages were not "gentled" enough to suit me.

The captain and Pedro had evidently come to a decision. The fires revealing the coast as they did showed them where the mistake had been made. Tugg said:

"Can't blame Pedro. That beacon lantern we saw had been shifted. I hope those wretches yonder haven't got the Professor foul. But one thing is sure: They brought that big lantern clear across the inlet and set it up on the west sh.o.r.e. No wonder we ran aground. It was a pretty trick, I do allow."

"And these are the natives you told me were perfectly harmless?"

"Not my boys," said Tugg. "There are wild tribes about, as I told you.

This bilin' of trouble-makers are from up country. I'm dreadful afraid they've attacked the camp first and put the Professor and my boys out of the way. They must have been on the lookout for the Sea Spell. Had sentinels posted along sh.o.r.e. They want to loot her."

"And it looks to me as though they'd do it," I observed. "I never shot at a man, Captain; but I am going to begin shooting if those dancing dervishes start to come off to us in those big canoes I see there."

"Don't begin to shoot too quick, Mr. Webb," said the Yankee skipper. "I reckon we'll be able to handle them all right."

"But your crew isn't armed."

"You bet they ain't. And me with more than two thousand in gold aboard?" he snorted. "By the e-tar-nal snakes! I guess they ain't armed.

I wouldn't trust 'em with firearms."

I began to feel pretty bad. I knew they were a murderous looking lot of fellows; but I didn't suppose that Tugg traveled in such peril all the time. I was learning a whole lot for a boy of my age. To be adventuring about the world "on the loose" as old Tom Anderly called it, had seemed a mighty fine thing. But just at that moment, with the schooner shaking on the shoal, the fires flaring on the beach, and the savages dancing and yelling at us, I would have given a good deal to have been where I could call a policeman!

But Adoniram Tugg showed no particular fear. I was the only person who had a weapon on deck. The Yankee skipper did not even go down for his own gun that hung over his stateroom door. Instead, he turned to Pedro and gave a quick command.

The mate and two of the sailors dashed for the forward hatch and had it off in a minute. Tugg turned to me again, drawling just the same as usual:

"Keep a thing seven year, they say, and it's bound to come handy, no matter what it is. I bought a miscellaneous lot o' truck out o' a seaside store thar in Buenos Ayres because there was a right good chronometer went with the lot. Ah! that's the box, Pedro. Rip it open--but have a care. Don't bring fire near it--hey! you there with the cigaroot! Throw it away. You want to blow yourself to everylastin'

bliss?"

"They're manning those canoes, Captain!" I shouted, for my attention was pretty closely fixed upon the savages.

"Let 'em come!" he grunted. "We'll fix 'em, Mr. Webb; we'll fix 'em."

There were four large canoes. I heard Tugg whispering to himself about them as he watched the half-naked paddlers urging them toward the schooner:

"Ugly mugs. From up river. Come three or four hundred miles in them canoes, mebbe. Wisht I knew what has happened the Professor. They sartainly have cleaned our headquarters, or they wouldn't have displaced that beacon lantern." Then he turned to urge Pedro. "Got that mess o'

stuff out o' the box? That's it. Now, Mr. Webb, never mind them guns o'

yourn. Put 'em down and bear a hand here."

He was the skipper and I obeyed; but I hated to give up the rifle. It looked to me as though we were in for a hand-to-hand fight with the savages--and they really were giants. I had read of these Patagonians; but I had never more than half believed the stories they told about them. I could realize now that any fifty of them one might see in a crowd together would average--as the books said--six feet, four inches in height.