Zeb and the professor rushed out of their tents and their shouts added to the confusion. There was a bright moon and by its light Jack saw a small, peculiarly-shaped animal charging about blindly here and there. The next minute he saw, too, that the creature"s head was caught fast in an enameled cooking pot.
It rushed about and uttered the m.u.f.fled squeals that had attracted their attention. Jack raised his rifle and fired. The creature fell dead at the first shot. Zeb and Jack rushed up to it.
"A badger!" exclaimed Zeb, "and he"s got his greedy head stuck fast in that mush cooker."
"And in charging about trying to get it off he"d made a wreck of our pantry!" exclaimed Jack, looking at the tin utensils scattered in every direction about the wooden box in which they were kept.
"It must have been that badger that came sniffing at my toes," said Tom.
"Or maybe it was Indians," laughed Jack, looking slyly at d.i.c.k, who was glad that they couldn"t see how red he turned.
"Indians?" exclaimed the professor guilelessly. "Were there any Indians about?"
"d.i.c.k thought he saw some," explained Jack with a chuckle.
The dead badger was pulled out of the pot into which it stuck its head to lick out the remains of some oatmeal that had adhered to its side, and the boys went back to bed. But they did not sleep much after the uproar into which the camp had been thrown, and were glad when it began to grow light.
Zeb cooked a fine breakfast to which he urged everybody to do justice, as they had a long and possibly a trying day ahead of them. The badger was given decent burial by d.i.c.k.
"Let its fate be a lesson to you," said Jack, at which they all laughed, for d.i.c.k was always on the spot at meal times.
When the morning meal was finished and the things all packed away, the Wondership was inflated and soared into the clear air. Nights and early mornings on the desert are cool, and it was crisp and invigorating in the hours before the sun had risen high. But by noon the heat grew blistering, and they were still soaring above the river without a trace of Rattlesnake Island being visible.
However, that afternoon they sighted a group of islands of which the largest at once attracted their attention. A prominent feature of Rattlesnake Island, as outlined on the map, was a big dead pine, situated like a beacon, at the summit of the peak into which the island rose.
The river at this point broadened out. Great cliffs overhung it. They were made up of strata of brilliant colors. It looked from above as if they had been painted by some t.i.tanic sign painter--nature, the artist.
Jack was the first to call attention to the island which had caught his eye while he scanned the river below them with the binoculars. He at once noticed its formation, long and narrow, with a high, rocky peak rising out from amongst trees and bushes which clothed it almost to the summit.
Then his eye caught a great white pine trunk, standing like a flagpole almost at the apex of the peak.
"Hurrah, boys!" he cried. "I guess that"s the place. Welcome to Rattlesnake Island!"
Tom was steering, "spelling" Jack at the wheel.
"You can see the island?" he demanded.
"Yes, or if it isn"t it, it"s like enough to be its twin brother."
Everybody began to get excited. Zeb took the gla.s.ses and after a careful scrutiny and a reference to the map, declared that the island below them tallied in every way with its description.
"Then down we go," said Jack.
"All right," nodded Tom, who was almost as good an air pilot as his cousin.
The Wondership dropped rapidly. Soon they were immediately above the island, which was now seen to be rocky and precipitous, except at one end where there was a great open place, bare and desolate looking.
On the edges of this cleared spot, which looked swampy and unwholesome, were serried rows of trees, every one of which was dead as if from a blight, and offering with their gaunt, leafless branches a sharp contrast to the green leafiness of the rest of the island.
Jack scanned the place sharply as they dropped down and Tom prepared to land on the edge of the swamp. As they got closer to the ground, he suddenly became aware of something that caused him a sharp shock of surprise.
"Why there"s somebody on the island!" he exclaimed.
"Somebody on the island?" echoed Zeb incredulously.
"Yes, or at least there"s a dwelling place."
The boy pointed to a rude sort of shack built of logs and roofed with boughs, which stood on the edge of the cleared s.p.a.ce.
"Great Methuselah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Zeb. "Can someone have stolen a march on us?"
"I don"t know, but it looks queer, and see, there"s a shovel. Somebody has been digging here."
"But who could it be?" demanded Tom, mystified.
"Gosh! Looks as if we"ve bin euchered after all," grumbled Zeb.
The Wondership came to earth at the edge of the lifeless-looking, bare s.p.a.ce. They clambered out of the machine and stood on what was, undoubtedly, Rattlesnake Island, for every landmark on the map had been verified as they dropped.
They looked about them for a minute and then Zeb drew his revolver out of the holster and began idly twiddling the cylinder.
"I want ter make sure she"s in workin" order," he said with a grim comprehension of the lips, "before we do any investigating."
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
THE ISLAND OF MYSTERY.
There was an air of oppression, hard to explain, about the island. But they all felt it. The boys were inclined to talk in whispers and even d.i.c.k Donovan"s usual lively spirits seemed daunted. There was something about the blistered, barren look of the cleared s.p.a.ce on the edge of which they had landed that gave them all an odd feeling of melancholy.
Zeb was the first to shake this off.
"Our first job," he said, "is to find out who is on the island and what they"ve been doing."
Here and there in the black, swampy-looking bare s.p.a.ce, they could see where holes had been dug, but when they examined the spade, which Jack had seen from the Wondership as they descended, they found that it was rusty and had evidently not been used for a long time.
It was the same in the rude hut which they examined. Some rusty utensils and a few ragged old garments were all that was inside. The dust lay thick on the floor and a large squirrel leaped out of the roof as they entered.
"Well, whoever was on the island has moved on again," declared Zeb.
"Or died," said Jack in a low tone.
"Wa"al, what I say is," observed Zeb, "ther sooner we git at that what-yer-may-call-um stuff and get away agin, the better it"ll be for all of us. There"s suthin" about this island I don"t like."
The others agreed, all except the professor, who, on hands and knees, was examining some rocks with his magnifying gla.s.s.
"Where shall we make camp?" asked d.i.c.k.
"I don"t much fancy this side of the island, somehow," said Jack, "but we could pitch the tents on that little plateau up there and be comfortable and have a good view up and down the river at the same time."
And so it was arranged. Leaving the Wondership on the edge of the clearing, they made camp on the flat ledge of sandy soil interspersed with rocks that Jack had selected. From it they had a good view in both directions. Above them was a small island, and below them the river leaped and roared in a series of big rapids.
Their preparations for camping occupied all the afternoon. It was supper time when they had finished and everything was shipshape and comfortable. In the meantime d.i.c.k had wandered off with the rifle and returned with four good-sized rabbits and three squirrels which Zeb cooked into a savory stew.
They turned in early as they had all worked hard and were tired. Just what time it was that he awakened, Jack did not know. But he thought it was after midnight. Taking his watch he went to the door of the tent to look at it in the moonlight, as he did not wish to arouse the others by striking a light.
The moon flooded the island. Jack looked about him, enjoying the beauty of the scene. The cliffs were great ma.s.ses of black and white and the rushing river gleamed like silver. He glanced toward the black waste, on the edge of which they left the Wondership. The next instant he uttered a startled exclamation. Above the bare patch of dark-colored earth tall white figures were dancing, gleaming in the moonlight.
Jack"s heart gave a bound and he caught his breath for an instant. Then he felt inclined to laugh at his own fears. What he had taken for ghostly figures were columns of vapor writhing and twisting as they steamed upward from the bare end of the island. What caused them, Jack did not know. He noticed, too, that the whole patch of barren land glowed with a strange phosph.o.r.escence like rotted wood.
Fascinated by the spectacle, he stood gazing at it. There was something eerie about the dancing, pirouetting columns of vapor. They looked like a party of ghosts dancing a quadrille. They twisted and contorted and bowed and soared upward and sank again in a kind of rhythm.
"Gracious, this is a spooky sort of place," thought Jack. "I wonder what causes those wavering columns? Maybe some sort of hidden hot springs like the one the professor fell into. I know one thing, I don"t like this island overmuch. As Zeb said, there is something queer about it--something in the air. I don"t know what, but I for one won"t be sorry when we leave it."
He fell to musing about his father waiting so many miles away for news of the discovery that was to rehabilitate his fortunes and place the radio telephone in the list of practical inventions that have created an epoch in the world"s history.
"Poor old dad," he thought "After all, he"s really having the most trying part of this thing. Waiting back there for he doesn"t know what, and with nothing to do but wait. I wonder if we are going to succeed? We will, we must! But, supposing that the map was wrong and that----"
His musing broke off suddenly and he crouched forward watching intently. His eyes were staring wide-open and startled at the Wondership. Its bulk lay blackly against the faint, phosph.o.r.escent glow of the black barren.
Then he felt his scalp tighten and his mouth go dry while his heart seemed to stop for an instant and then pound furiously, shaking his frame.
For a second he had seen something that had almost startled him into a cry. A dark figure was creeping round the Wondership, crouched like an ape as it examined the craft.
The boy had hardly caught a glimpse of it before it vanished, gliding swiftly like an animal into the brush. Jack rubbed his eyes.
"Am I seeing things?" he asked himself, "but no, I"m positive, as sure as I stand here, that that was a human figure sneaking about down there. Who could it have been?"
Jack did not sleep much more that night. The thought that they were not alone on the island was a disquieting one.
CHAPTER x.x.xII.
THROUGH THE WOODS.
The next morning Jack watched his opportunity, and under the pretext of hunting, left camp after breakfast and made his way to the side of the Wondership. He wanted to examine the vicinity for footmarks. But he found none, which was not surprising, for the ground on which the craft had been brought to rest was hard and firm, and not likely to take on any impressions.
In the bright, sunny glow it was hard for the boy to believe that he had actually seen the mysterious figure in the moonlight. But although he tried to a.s.sure himself that he had been the victim of an illusion, and that he had mistaken the shadow of a waving tree branch for a man, Jack knew that he was not laboring under a mistake. He was certain he had seen rightly; but he decided, for the present, to say nothing to his companions about the events of the night.
Having failed to find any tracks round the Wondership, he started off through the trees on his hunt. He was traversing a small glade when, in a clump of flowering bushes, he heard a sudden scuffling noise.
Startled, he stopped. The sound came again and this time it was accompanied by a shrill scream as of some creature in pain. Jack parted the bushes and made his way through them. On the other side he came across a rabbit. The little creature was struggling violently and squealing with the peculiarly human screech that rabbits have when in pain.
The boy saw that it had been caught in some way and could not get away. Greatly mystified, he dropped to his knees beside it and the next instant solved the puzzle.
The rabbit was caught in a trap ingeniously made from pliable willow twigs and set in a "rabbit run." For a minute the full significance of his discovery did not dawn upon Jack. Then it came like a bolt from the blue.
Somebody on the island, other than themselves, had set that trap! Perhaps it was the strange, half-ape-like man he had seen by the Wondership the night before. The boy looked round him in the silent wood as if he half expected to see somebody watching him.
He was not afraid, but he felt that creepy feeling that accompanies the mysterious. Suddenly he recollected that he had left his rifle behind when he plunged into the bushes.
He remembered this when the desire came to him to put the rabbit out of its misery. It had been caught by the hind leg and had wrenched it out of joint in its frantic struggles to get free. Jack made his way back to where he had left his rifle. But when he got back to the trap ready to end the poor creature"s life, the rabbit was not there!
The trap was empty!
Then he looked about him. The ground was covered with blood and fur as if the rabbit had been torn to pieces.
"Some animal," was his first thought. Then, on examining the trap, he found that the thong which had ensnared the rabbit had not been broken or torn loose as would have been the case had some wild creature pounced on the rabbit and dragged it off.
It had been untied!
Jack had just made this discovery when he noticed something fluttering from a thornbush. He was sure it had not been there before, for he had noted the surroundings of the trap carefully. He examined the object that had caught his attention. It was a bit of canvas, seemingly torn from a garment made of that material.
"There is somebody else on the island!" gasped Jack, looking round with white cheeks.
He clutched his rifle firmly. Looking about him he half expected to see some wild face peering at him out of parted bushes. But nothing of the sort happened. Feeling very uncomfortable, Jack came away from the place and made his way back to camp.
This time he made up his mind to confide in Zeb. The prospector was as mystified as Jack over the events of the night and the incident of the rabbit trap. But he was unable to throw any light on the affair.
"It might be an Indian," he said, "or----"
"It might be the man that built that hut and left the shovel sticking in that barren place down yonder," said Jack.
"In that case, wouldn"t he be livin" in ther hut instead of snoopin" round the island?" asked Zeb.
This view seemed to be incontrovertible. At noon the professor, who had been scouting over the island looking for specimens which might give him some clue as to the mineral deposits they had come in search of, arrived in camp breathless and indignant.
"A joke"s a joke," he said to the boys, "but this is going too far."
"What"s the matter, professor?" asked d.i.c.k.
"Yes, what"s happened?" asked Tom, who saw that the man of science was really angry, and for some reason blamed them for whatever had irritated him.
"As if you didn"t know," declared the professor. "I set my bag of specimens down on a rock while I went to investigate a peculiar-looking formation."