"We"ll find a way to let "em know, never fear," struck in Ben in his deep, rumbling voice; "but I reckon you"re hungry and thirsty?"
"Am I? Why, I could eat a horse without sauce or salt, as you used to say."
"Then get in the skiff and come ash.o.r.e. I"ve got a sort of a hut there.
It ain"t much of a place, but I"ve got enough to eat and a good spring of clear water, and I can give you a suit of slops."
"But the schooner?" demanded Harry.
"She"ll be all right, I reckon. She"s lying on a sort of sandy ridge that runs out here. The sea"s gone down so that she won"t do herself any harm, and we can"t do her any good right now. You see, the tide is falling. When it rises we"ll try to get her off and anchor her in a snugger berth."
Harry might have argued the point, but the prospect of food and drink made so strong an appeal to him that he did not stop to waste words.
Five minutes later they were rowing ash.o.r.e, and, while Ben bent to the oars with a will, Harry told him in detail all that happened since they came to Brig Island, and the reason of their presence there. He knew that he was safe in confiding in old Ben.
The relation of his story occupied the entire trip to the sh.o.r.e, and when Ben had beached his skiff he seized Harry by the arm and began hurrying him up the beach toward a small hut, half canvas, half lumber, which stood back under the shelter of a low bluff. The boy was desperately anxious to learn the reason of Ben"s presence on the island, for he knew it could have no ordinary cause. But the weather-beaten old adventurer would not allow the boy to say another word till he had clothed himself and eaten all he could put away of a rabbit stew washed down with strong coffee.
"Now, then," remarked Ben, as soon as Harry had finished, "I suppose you"re a-dyin" to hear what I"m doin" on Barren Island, which is the name of this bit of land?"
"I am, indeed," declared Harry, shoving back the cracker box which had served him as a chair; "the last person in the world I would have expected to see when the _Betsy Jane_ grounded was Ben Stubbs."
Ben chuckled.
"Allers turnin" up, like a bad penny, ain"t I?" he said, shoving some very black tobacco into his old pipe. ""Member ther time I dropped out of the sky in thet dirigible balloon?"
"Well, I should say I did," laughed Harry; "but how you got here is past my comprehension. What became of the tug boat line?"
Ben snapped his fingers.
"All gone, my lad! Gone just like that! I reckon I"m not a good hand at business, or the crooked tricks that answers for that same. Anyhow, to make a long yarn a short one, I went on a friend"s note and he dug out.
That was blow number one. To meet that note I had to mortgage some of my boats, and in some way-blow me if I rightly understand it yet-I got myself in a hole whar" the lawyer fellers bled me till I was mighty near dry. I tried to struggle along, but it wasn"t no go. Then came a strike of tug boat hands and that finished me. I couldn"t stand the long lay off without anything to do, so I sold out for what I could get, and-and here I am."
"I"m mighty sorry to hear that you failed, Ben," said Harry with real sympathy in his tones, "but you haven"t said yet what you are doing here on Barren Island, as you call it."
"I"m a-gettin" to that, lad," said Ben, emitting a cloud of blue smoke; "give me time. As I told you, that feller on whose note I went, skedaddled. You see, I"d trusted him as my own brother, bein" as I knew his father when I was a miner. He-that"s this chap"s father, I mean-was a Frenchman, Raoul Duval was his name, and his son"s name the same. Old man Duval made his pile in Lower Californy and was makin" fer his home in New Orleans when ther steamer he was travelin" on blew up, and he and all his gold dust-a whalin" big lot of it-went to the bottom.
"I never calculated to hear anything more of Duval arter this, but one day this young feller I"ve been tellin" you about shows up in New York and hunts me up. He tells me that he"s old Raoul"s son, and that he"d had a run of hard luck and so on, and wants to go into business, and if, for his father"s sake, I"ll help him out. I asks him how he found me out, and he says that in his father"s letters home I had often been mentioned, and that when he heard of the Stubbs Towing Line he made inquiries and found that I was in all probability the same man.
"As I told you, I let him have the money. It don"t matter just how much, but it was quite a bit. You see, I did it for the old man"s sake. I was sorry afterward. Young Duval wasn"t a chip of the old block at all. He was idle and dissipated. His business went under and he skipped out."
"Did you lend him this money without security of any sort?" asked Harry incredulously.
"In a way, yes. In another way, no. The young chap, when he came to me, had a wild story about knowing where the steamer on which his dad lost his life had sunk. He said that from letters written home before he left Lower Californy, he knew the old man was carrying with him, besides the dust, a fortune in black pearls. Of course, all these went down when the steamer blew up. He had tried, he said, to get a lot of folks interested in a scheme to get at the wreck and recover the dust and the pearls, but they had all laughed at him. He said if I"d give him the money he wanted he"d give me, in return, the plan of the location whar" the steamer went down."
"And did he?"
"Yes; but since he acted as he did I guess there"s no more truth in his yarn than there was in anything else he told me. Anyhow, I"ve never bothered my head about the matter since."
"Have you got the plan?"
"Sure enough," Ben fumbled in his pocket, "here it is; it"s a roughly drawn thing, as you see, but I reckon if the ship was really there it would be an easy matter to locate her bones."
Harry nodded. He was looking over the map with deep attention. It was, as Ben had said, a crudely drawn affair, and purported to have been sketched by one of the survivors of the wreck, who, of course, did not know that in the returning miner"s cabin there was so much wealth.
"How did young Duval get hold of this?" he asked at last.
"He said that by chance he met a man who was the lone survivor of the disaster. This feller didn"t know who Duval was, and began talking to him about the wreck. Duval, recollecting that his father had carried a sum that amounted to more than $75,000, was naturally interested. He asked the man if he could draw him a sketch of the scene where the steamer sank. The feller said he could, and that thar sketch is what he drawed. At least that"s Duval"s story, and I"m frank to tell you I don"t believe a word of it."
"But still you haven"t told me what you are doing on this island," said Harry after an interval.
"That"s so, too, lad. I got so interested in tellin" my troubles I clean forgot about Barren Island. Well, it"s this way. Arter the crash I felt ashamed to show my face. Oh, all the creditors were paid up-every last one of "em. But I felt like I was an old failure, and good fer nuthin", so I remembered all of a sudden about this island that I"d been stranded on a good many years ago. I made inquiries and found that I could live here rent free as long as I liked, with none to interfere, and so I came here. It"s quiet and might be lonesome to some folks, but it suits me well enough, and I was calculatin" to spend the rest of my days here, till you came along. But I feel different now."
"How"s that?" asked Harry, not knowing well just what to say to the old man who took his business failure so much to heart.
"Why, I was watching you studyin" that map. I could see by yer face that you put some stock in Duval"s yarn. Ain"t that so?"
Harry could not but confess that it was. The old man"s story, and the map, had aroused in him the strong desire for adventure that both Boy Aviators possessed to a marked degree. Of course, from what Ben had said, Duval did not appear to be a person on whom much reliance could be placed, but then, again, there was the map, and it at least, even if crude, appeared to have been a genuine effort to mark the spot where the wreck lay. It showed a bayou marked "Black Bayou," running back from the main stream of the Mississippi. A black dot some distance up this bayou was lettered "Belle of New Orleans," presumably the name of the steamer on which Duval met his end.
The boy was still pondering over the map when, from seaward, there came a sound that made both Harry Chester and Ben Stubbs spring to their feet.
"It"s a gun!" shouted the old man, as the booming echoes died away; "may be a ship in distress."
"Hardly, in this weather," rejoined Harry, in a perplexed tone.
But Ben Stubbs had darted from the shanty and was running for the beached skiff. A minute later Harry was close on his heels, and presently they were pulling around the point, about to run into the surprise of their lives.
CHAPTER VII.-A PUZZLING PROBLEM.
It is now time that we returned to the island where we left Pudge Perkins patrolling the beach, and Frank Chester and Billy Barnes wrapped in slumber. Frank had set the alarm clock for midnight, when it had been arranged that he and Billy were to turn out on patrol, and its insistent clamor had only just commenced when he sprang out of his bunk broad awake and prepared to go on duty. Billy stretched and yawned a bit before he, too, tumbled out.
"Gee whillakers!" he exclaimed, as he got into his clothes, "it seems to me that we are making a lot of fuss over nothing, Frank. I don"t believe those fellows will come near the island to-night."
"Perhaps not; but it"s our duty to be on guard. If anything happened to Dr. Perkins" invention now it would be almost impossible to repair it in time for the tests he wants to make."
Talking thus the two lads got into their clothes, drank some coffee, which Frank had prepared while they were dressing, and then set out into the night. They made for the cove from which Harry had started his eventful swim.
"Best wait here till they come round," said Frank, and he and Billy found places in the sand and made themselves as comfortable as possible till they should hear the footsteps of one of the young sentries. They had not long to wait. Hardly fifteen minutes had elapsed before Frank"s sharp ears caught the sound of some one approaching. A minute later Pudge joined them. His first words were not calculated to make the newcomers feel at ease.
"Where"s Harry?" he demanded.
"Don"t you know?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Frank with considerable surprise.
"No. I"ve been making my patrol regularly, and the last three times I"ve been round I haven"t met him."
Frank"s face could only be dimly seen in the darkness, but all his alarm was plain enough in his next words.