DAVE FEARLESS AND THE CAVE OF MYSTERY.
Roy Rockwood.
CHAPTER I
SPLENDID FORTUNE
"It"s gone! It"s gone!"
"What is gone, Dave?"
"The treasure, Bob."
"But it was on board--in the boxes."
"No--those boxes are filled with old iron and lead. We have been tricked, robbed! After all our trouble, hardship, and peril, I fear that the golden reward we counted on so grandly has slipped from our grasp."
It was on the deck of the _Swallow_, moored in the harbor of a far-away Pacific Ocean tropical island, that Dave Fearless spoke. He had just rushed up from the cabin in a great state of excitement.
Below loud, anxious, and angry voices sounded. As one after another of the officers and sailors appeared on the deck, all of them looked pale and perturbed.
What might be called a terrific, an overwhelming discovery had just been made by Captain Paul Broadbeam and by Dave"s father, Amos Fearless, the veteran ocean diver.
For two weeks, after a hard battle with the sea and its monsters, after fighting savages and piratical enemies, the beautiful steamer, the _Swallow_, had plowed through sun-tipped waves, favored by gentle breezes, homeward-bound.
Every heart on board had been light and happy. Labeled and sealed on the sandy floor of the ballast room, lay four boxes believed to contain over half a million dollars in gold coin.
Legally this vast treasure belonged to Amos and Dave Fearless, father and son. To those who had aided and protected them, however, from Doctor Barrell, on board the _Swallow_ to make deep-sea soundings and secure specimens of rare marine monsters for the United States Government, down to Bob Vilett, Dave"s chosen chum and the ambitious young a.s.sistant engineer of the vessel, every soul on board knew that when they reached San Francisco, the generous ocean diver and his son would make a most liberal division of the splendid fortune they had fished up in mid-ocean.
As said, the serenity of these fond hopes was now rudely blasted. Dave, rushing up on deck quite pale and agitated, had made the announcement that brought Bob to his feet with a shock.
They were two st.u.r.dy boys. The flavor of the briny deep was manifest in their bronzed faces, their attire, their clear bright eyes, and sinewy muscles. They had known hardship and peril such as make men resolute and brave. Although Dave was deeply distressed, determination rather than despair was indicated in the way in which he took the bad, bad news now being conveyed with lightning speed, mostly with depressing effect, all through the ship.
Bob Vilett steadied himself against a capstan and stared in silence at his chum. Dave"s hand grasped the bow rail with an iron grip, as if thereby seeking to relieve his tense feelings. His eyes were directed away from Bob, away from the ship, fixedly, almost sternly, scanning the ocean stretch that spread almost inimitably towards the west. It seemed as if mentally he was going back over the long course they had just pursued, never dreaming that they were carrying a ballast of worthless old junk instead of the royal fortune on which they had fondly counted.
"Well, all I"ve got to say," observed Bob at length, with a great sigh, "is that it"s pretty tough."
"I fancy," responded Dave, in a set, thoughtful way, "it"s a case of three times and out. We fished it up--one. We"ve lost it--two. We must find it again--three. That"s all."
"You"re dreaming!" vociferated Bob. "Say, Dave Fearless, you"re a genius and a worker, but if you mean that there is the least hope in the world in going back over a course of over a thousand miles hunting up men with a two weeks" start of us--desperate men, too--scouring a trackless ocean for fellows who have to hide, and know how to do it, why, it"s--bosh!"
"Bob Vilett," said Dave, with set lip and unflinching eye, "we are only boys, but we have tried to act like men, and Captain Broadbeam respects us for it. We have his confidence. He is old, not much of a thinker, but brave as a lion and ready for any honest, logical suggestion.
Here"s a dilemma, a big one. You and I--young, quick, ardent--we must think for him. We have been robbed. We must catch the thieves. We must recover that treasure. Where"s the best and surest, and the quickest way to do it? Put on your thinking-cap, Bob, and try and do some of the hardest brain work of your life."
"Hold on--where are you going?" demanded Bob, as his chum went away over into a remote corner of the bow and sat down on an isolated water barrel.
But Dave only waved his hand peremptorily, almost irritably, at Bob.
His chum knew that it would be useless to renew the conversation just now. He had seen Dave in just such a mood on other occasions--it was when affairs were going wrong and needed straightening out.
"All right," murmured Bob resignedly, moving over to where some glum-faced sailors were discussing the disappointment of the hour in a group. "It won"t hurt any of us to have Dave Fearless do some of that tall thinking of his. Oh, dear! All that money gone. And after all we went through to get it!"
Meanwhile Dave Fearless sat posed like a statue. His gaze was fixed beyond the little inlet where the _Swallow_ was moored, straight across the unbroken ocean stretch. His thoughts just then, however, were not fixed on the west, but rather on the east. A vivid panorama of his stirring adventures of the past few months seemed spread out to his mental eye. They went back to the start of what the present moment seemed to be the finish.
Dave"s home was at Quanatack, along the coast of Long Island Sound.
There for many years his father had been an expert master diver, and Dave himself, reared beside the sea and loving it, had done service as a lighthouse a.s.sistant.
In the first volume of the present series, ent.i.tled "The Rival Ocean Divers," it was told how they one day learned that they were direct heirs of the Washington family, who twenty years previous had acquired a fortune of nearly a million dollars in China. This, all in gold coin, had been shipped in the _Happy Hour_ for San Francisco. A storm overtook the vessel, which sunk in two miles of water in mid-ocean with the treasure aboard.
Amos Fearless secured a chart showing the exact location of the wreck.
Unfortunately two distant relatives, a miserly trickster named Lem Hankers and his worthless son, Bart, learned of the sunken treasure, too. They proceeded to San Francisco and were joined by a rascally partner named Pete Rackley. The trio chartered from a wrecking company the _Raven_, Captain Nesik in command, and engaged a professional diver named Cal Vixen.
The Fearlesses, learning of this, hastened their plans. An old friend of the diver, Captain Broadbeam, was just then starting out with the _Swallow_, to convey a well-known scientist from Washington to mid-ocean. The _Swallow_ was equipped with the finest diving bells and apparatus for capturing and preserving rare monsters of the deep.
Broadbeam agreed to incidentally a.s.sist Amos Fearless in the search for the sunken treasure.
The rival divers located this at about the same time. Thrilling experiences followed, terrific battles with submarine monsters, hair-breadth perils on the ocean bed. The Hankers and their diver after several efforts gave up the quest. Dave and his father stuck at it until one day they located the hull of the _Happy Hour_. Bag after bag of gold they stored in their Costell diving bell, until all the treasure was conveyed safely to the hold of the _Swallow_. Then they set sail for home.
Pete Rackley had managed to secrete himself aboard. He disabled the machinery of the _Swallow_. This was the starting-point of a new series of adventures as related in our second volume, "The Cruise of the Treasure Ship."
It now became plot and warfare on the part of the disgruntled Hankers and their friends. The result was that one dark and foggy night the schemers succeeded in stealing aboard of the _Swallow_. Captain Broadbeam, Bob Vilett, Doctor Barrell, and the Fearlesses were put ash.o.r.e on a lonely island, and the _Raven_ steamed away with the captured convoy.
A sixth person was also marooned. This was one Pat Stoodles, a whimsical Irishman, who had been previously rescued by the _Swallow_ from this same island, where for several years he had been the king of its savage inhabitants.
"The Cruise of the Treasure Ship" has told graphically of the many adventures of the marooned. Stoodles rea.s.sumed his kingship temporarily and helped his friends out of many a sore dilemma. A cyclone and an earthquake drove all hands to a neighboring island. Finally Dave and Bob discovered the _Swallow_, somewhat dismantled, lying off the coast of the island. They boarded her to find Mr. Drake, the boatswain, Mike Conners, the cook, and Ben Adams, the engineer, handcuffed in the cabin.
These men had refused to navigate the _Swallow_ for Captain Nesik. They told how the cyclone had parted the two vessels and the _Swallow_ had been driven to her present isolated moorings. They told also of the four boxes into which they had seen the Hankers place the sunken treasure.
For a second time, believing their enemies and the _Raven_ lost in the storm, the Fearless party started homeward. Incidentally they had enabled a worthy young fellow named Henry Dale to earn a large sum by towing with them a lost derelict ship. This they had turned over to an ocean liner they met. Then, the _Swallow_ needing some repairs, they had headed for Minotaur Island, their present port of moorage.
This island had originally belonged to the government of Chili. Just now, however, it was claimed by Peru, and was also in a certain state of rebellion. The governor was a miserly and tricky individual, and had demanded a large sum from Captain Broadbeam before he would let him moor the _Swallow_.
He sent out as pilot a wretched, drunken fellow, who ran the _Swallow_ into an obscure creek where she struck some obstacle, tearing a hole in her hull.
Thus disabled, Captain Broadbeam found it necessary to shift the various articles in the hold. The four sealed boxes were removed, and Amos Fearless naturally suggested that they take a look at their golden fortune.
Ten minutes later the startling discovery was made which has been recorded in the opening lines of the present chapter--
The great Washington fortune was not, as had all along been supposed, aboard of the _Swallow_.
CHAPTER II
FOUL PLAY
Captain Paul Broadbeam came up on deck, his face red as a peony, his brow dark as a thundercloud.
He was manifestly irritated. In his great foghorn ba.s.s voice he gave out a dozen quick orders. His evident intention was to break up the little groups discussing the happening of the hour.