Swept Out to Sea Part 25

As I came forward he was rapidly distributing--he and Pedro--the articles which had been packed in the box. He gave half a dozen to each man of the crew. He likewise broke up lengths of slow-matches--that Chinese punk that is usually used when fireworks are set off. And it was fireworks he was giving me--half a dozen good-sized rockets!

"What shall we do with these?" I demanded. "Why, Captain Tugg! you don't mean to illuminate the schooner? Those savages will pin us with their spears if we light up here."

He spoke first to the crew, and they ran at once and crouched under the bulwarks on that side nearest the sh.o.r.e. The canoes were within a hundred yards.

"Quick!" he said to me. "Start the first rocket fuse. Lay it on the rail here, son, and aim it at them canoes. We'll pepper them skunks--now, won't we?"

All along the line of the rail I heard the fuses sputtering. Little sparks of blue and crimson flame shot into view. "Let 'em go!" bawled Adroniam Tugg.

The four canoes came fairly bounding over the water. I never knew that canoes could be paddled so rapidly. They were almost upon the schooner when the first rocket went off with a terrible sputter. It shot like a bird of fire right into the leading canoe, and then another, and another, shot off until the air between the schooner and the canoes seemed filled with shooting flames.

The savages' yells changed monstrously quick. When the rockets began to blow up and sprinkle around b.a.l.l.s of red and blue and green fire, the boats were emptied in a moment or two. Wildly shrieking, the naked savages sprang overboard and swam back toward land, while we along the rail of the Sea Spell sent broadside after broadside of rockets after them.

We saw them splash through the shoal water, gain the land, and disappear beyond the illumination of the fires before all our skyrockets were used up.

"Avast firin'!" roared Captain Tugg, and Pedro, the mate, repeated the order in Spanish. "Now out with a boat, Pedro, and save those canoes.

They'll come in handy for our use."

No matter what the situation might be, the Yankee could not lose sight of the main chance. We gathered in those canoes and then awaited daylight before we made any further move. We found then that the savages had totally disappeared.

"We can warp her off and I doubt if she's damaged at all," declared Captain Tugg. "But I'm too worried about the Professor to begin that now. I'm going to leave Pedro here and we'll take some of the boys and sail up to headquarters and see what's happened there. You can bring your hardware, Mr. Webb. We may have need of it after all, for if they've troubled the Professor, I swanny I'll shoot some of the long-legged rascals!"

What I had read of white men in wild countries had led me to believe that they usually shot the savages first and inquired into their intentions afterward. But Captain Tugg a.s.sured me that in the fifteen years he had been in this country he had never been obliged to more than string a few savages up by their thumbs and ropes-end them!

"They've been ugly at times--not my boys around here, but some of the far, up-country tribes--and I've been obliged to show them things. I'm kind of a wonder-worker, I be. Them scamps that waylaid us last night will scatter the news of that fireworks show throughout ten townships, and don't you forgit it. Jest because Adoniram Tugg can show 'em something new ev'ry time is what's kept his head on his shoulders for fifteen years."

"Goodness! they're not head-hunters?" said I.

"No. But they'd take a white man's head and sell it to tribes farther north that _do_ prize sech trophies. Oh, this ain't no country for tenderfoots, son. There ain't no tract in the back-end of India, or the middle of Africa, that's as barbarous as a good wide streak of South America yet."

And I could believe that later when, after sailing some miles up the inlet, we came to the burned ruins of a collection of huts and sheds.

This was Tugg's headquarters, and his partner, Professor Vose, the man I had come so far to see, was not there.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN WHICH ARE RELATED SEVERAL DISAPPOINTMENTS

The attack on the encampment of the animal trappers had evidently been made several days before. The fire had devastated the place. All the animals in cages had been killed or released. And in the blackened ruins and about the clearing, on the rocks, there lay the bodies of more than a dozen Patagonians. Tugg showed real feeling when he saw these dead men.

"Poor boys!" he muttered, standing leaning on his rifle and gazing upon one fellow who was really a giant. "They was square, jest the same. Ye see, they fought for the Professor and the traps. But them scoundrels was too many for them."

It was a dreadful sight. I do not want to write about it. Nor do I wish to give the particulars of our search of the neighborhood for some trace of the single white man who had been in the vicinity--the man whom Tugg called the Professor, but who was the Man of Mystery to me. We found a place where a huge fire had been built beneath the trees. There was a green liana hanging from a high limb and the end of the liana had been tied around the ankles of a man. The feet shod in American made boots were all of that victim of the savages' cruelty which had not been burned to ashes.

"It's a way they have," whispered Tugg. "They start the poor feller swinging like a pendulum, and every time he swings through the flames he's burned a little more--and a little more----"

I turned sick with the horror of it. There was nothing more to do. Tugg recognized his partner's boots. The savages had made their raid, burned the camp, destroyed all they could, and done their best to wreck the Sea Spell. There must have been one traitor among Tugg's men at the encampment or the savages would not have known of the schooner's approach. At least, I shall always believe so.

But when the balance of his Patagonians came in from the swamp where they had hidden after the attack, the captain seemed to believe all their stories, took them back into his confidence, and at once set to work to repair the damage done by the up-river Indians.

I confess that I was desperately disappointed. And I felt depressed, too, over the death of the mysterious Professor Vose, or Carver, or whatever his name had been. I could not get rid of the thought that perhaps the man had been my father. But I should never know now, I told myself. Whether it were so, or not I need have no doubt regarding my poor father's death. If he had not been drowned off Bolderhead Neck, and had been hidden away in this wilderness so many years, he had gone to his account now.

I was sorry I had come down here in the Sea Spell; but being here I had to somewhat wait upon Captain Tugg's pleasure before I could get away.

We warped the Sea Spell off the shoal and found her uninjured. She had scarcely started a plank. Then the animal trapper set us all to work rebuilding his camp, animal cages, and stockade. We were three solid months repairing the damage done by the savages; but then Tugg had a camp that would be impregnable to the wild men from up the river.

I had expressed to him at once my wish to return to the coast where I could get a chance to work my way north in some vessel. But it was three months before he could spare me a canoe crew to take me as far as Punta Arenas, on the Straits. From that point I would be able to board some vessel bound into the Atlantic, and if I could get back to Buenos Ayres I would be all right.

I had wasted nearly six months in following a will-o'-the-wisp. I might have been at home long ago, had I not come down here on the schooner.

More than a year had pa.s.sed since that September evening when my cousin, Paul Downes, and I had had our fateful quarrel on my bonnie sloop, the Wavecrest, as she beat slowly into the inlet at Bolderhead. I had roved far afield since that time, had seen strange lands, and strange peoples, and had endured hardship and hard work which--after all was said and done--hadn't belonged to me.

Clint Webb need not be knocking about the world, looking for a chance to work his way home before the mast. As the canoe Tugg had lent me sailed south through the inlet, with Pedro and two gigantic Patagonians for crew, I milled these thoughts over in my mind, and determined that, once at home, I'd stick there. Not that I was tired of the sea, or afraid of work aboard ship; but I was deeply worried regarding my mother and what might be happening to her so far away.

Nothing but the desire to set eyes on the man that looked like me and talked like me had brought me 'way down here in Patagonia; I had never told Captain Tugg my real reason for shipping on the Sea Spell, not even when I bade him good-bye. The old fellow had seemed really sorry to have me go.

"If you git tired of civilization and want to come down this way again, son," he told me, "you'll be as welcome as can be. Just come here, walk in, hang up your hat, and you'll find a job right at hand. I got a big order for ant-eaters, jaguar, tiger-cats, and the like, on hand and I'll likely be here for a couple of years--off and on. Goin' to be mighty lonesome, too, without the Professor," he added, shaking his head, sorrowfully.

Tugg was a money-lover; but I know that he didn't hold the loss of his animals and outfit as anything to be compared to the miserable end of his partner. I liked him for _that_.

I can't say that I enjoyed that canoe trip to the Straits. We had a queer three-cornered sail that was rigged in some native way, and as the wind was free we traveled the hundred or so miles to the mouth of the inlet in good time. But I did not sleep much; Pedro and the giants might easily knock me on the head, take my few dollars and my gun and other traps, and drop me overboard. I couldn't believe that they were to be trusted.

But nothing really happened until we were within a mile or so of the mouth of the long lagoon. I could see a bit of the strait and over the rocky headland appeared a banner of smoke. It was from the stack of a steamship bound east. I pointed it out to the mate of the Sea Spell and told him how anxious I was to reach that very craft. I had money enough left of my wages to pay my fare to Buenos Ayres at least--perhaps to Bahia; and surely the steamship would stop somewhere along the east coast.

Pedro jabbered to the Patagonians, and the wind having fallen light they got out the paddles and set to work. I showed them each a silver dollar and they went at it like college athletes. Such paddling I never saw before, and it seemed to me we shot out of the inlet about as fast as though we were ironed to a bull whale!

But we were too late. The steamship had a long sea-mile on us and she wasn't stopping for a canoe. We should have to trim our sail again and make for the West and Punta Arenas. As we swung the canoe's head around, however, I caught sight of a big ship, with a wonderful lot of canvas set, pa.s.sing the steamship and heading our way. She sailed the straits like a huge bird, her white canvas bellying from the deck to the extreme points of her wand-like topmasts. She was a pretty sight.

I began to stare back at her more and more as she came up, hand over hand. I saw that she was a bark; then I saw that her crowsnest was occupied by a lookout. Only one manner of craft would have a man in the crowsnest on a clear day like this. She was a whaler.

I had no gla.s.s; but I fixed my gaze upon her black bows as they rose and fell as she came through the waves. My heart had begun to beat with excitement. There were the huge white letters as she paid off a bit and I could see part of her run and broadside. I couldn't be mistaken, and suddenly I broke out with a loud cheer, for I could read the two painted lines:

SCARBORO New Bedford

CHAPTER XXIX

IN WHICH I AM NOT THE ONLY PERSON SURPRISED

I yelled to Pedro and then sprang up, tied a handkerchief to an oar and waved it frantically. As the old bark swung down toward us I saw several figures spring into the lower rigging, and by and by their hands waved to me. I spoke again to the mate of the Sea Spell and he said he could bring the canoe in close to the bark if they would throw me a rope. I knew they had identified me, and I was glad to see Ben Gibson standing on the rail and yelling to me.

I gave each of the Patagonians a dollar and Pedro two, shook hands with them all, slung my rifle over my shoulder, hooked one arm through my dunnage-bag (which was fortunately waterproof) and stood ready to seize the rope which was flung me. The Patagonians brought the canoe right up to the looming side of the old bark, and as she dipped deep in the sea, I sprang up and "walked up" her side, clinging to the rope with both hands. So they got me inboard with merely a dash of salt.w.a.ter to season my venture.

The canoe wore off sharply and I turned to wave good-bye to Pedro and the paddlers. Then a bunch of the old Scarboro's fo'castle hands were about me. Tom Anderly pushed through the group and grabbed my hand.