The Mystery Boys and Captain Kidd's Message

by Van Powell

  CHAPTER IV CAPTAIN’S KIDD’S GHOST

  Seated around the supper table in the plantation house, the chums couldhardly contain their impatience while the colored servant removed thedishes. The abrupt twilight had passed into deep, dark night. A kerosenelamp on the table threw weird shadows on the wall and left uncannymysteries in the dusky corners.

  The table, moved near the window to get the cooler evening breeze duringthe meal, was finally cleared.

  “Do you feel funny?” asked Tom, looking around the room. “Maybe it’s onaccount of that voodoo stuff this morning, but for some reason I feelkinda nervous.”

  “It’s just your mind—your imagination,” laughed Cliff.

  Mr. Gray quietly told Clarence Neale why the boys had decided to act onhis advice, to initiate the young collector into their mystic order.They had half of a cipher, he explained, and there was reason to believethat Sam had the other half. Then, in order to carry on a search, ifthey agreed that it was advisable, the young fellows would require acool, older head to guide them, and perhaps a stout arm to help them. “Ican carry on your work here, Clarence,” Mr. Gray finished hisexplanation. “If you want to try your hand at a different sort ofdigging.”

  “If it’s a choice between potsherds”—he referred to the bits of potterywhich were thus named—“or treasure, count me in for adventure everytime!”

  Using a watch charm of Cliff’s which his father had made from an ancientEgyptian scarab, or sacred beetle, suitably mounted, Nicky gave ClarenceNeale the oath of allegiance, which also served as their motto. ClarenceNeale with his face serious and with a sincere manner, took the vow.

  “I see what it means,” he added. “Seeing All—that you show me—I seenothing that I let others know I see; Knowing All—all of your plans—Iknow nothing, if anybody asks me; Telling All—that is, letting you knoweverything I know—I tell nothing, of our plans or mysteries, to anyoutsider.”

  “That’s it exactly,” Nicky exclaimed. “I knew you would be the rightsort. Now, we will postpone the initiations and secret signs untiltomorrow when we have more time. Now we want to tell you about our map.”

  He drew out his copy and the drawing of Sam’s half which Cliff had madefrom memory. They all bent over them on the table.

  “I am very glad that you have taken me into your councils,” ClarenceNeale declared. “I know something about this section. It is very easy tosee that it is some part of the Florida coral archipelago, what we usedto call Ten Thousand Islands, stretching up along the Gulf coast fromdown toward Cape Sable. I used to fish in those waters.”

  The chums were delighted. Here was a real mate and a fine aide.

  “Just how did this half come into your family’s possession?” asked theyoung man.

  “Well,” Nicky explained, “you see, Captain William Kidd was supposed tobe a mighty pirate and a fearful one. History and story books don’tagree, there. I’ve studied a lot about him because I am pretty much a‘bug’ about him, on account of this map.”

  “Well,” smiled Mr. Neale, “I don’t blame you. I know a bit of the oldfellow’s true history too. He was in the regular trade for quite awhile, and ran from these Islands to New York with his ship, and he wasas honest as any, I guess. That must be the time that he made friendswith the Jamaica governor.”

  “Yes,” Nicky took up the talk. “He traded with the West Indies duringKing William’s War, and it was after that time that the citizens ofAntigua gave him a bark of the same name. And in 1690 he got acommission from the English—what do you guess for?”

  “To despoil and break up pirate bands,” exclaimed Cliff. “You’ve toldus, Nicky—but go ahead. Tell us again. It’s interesting, and especiallyright now.”

  “Why, you could imagine we were in the cabin of a ship, right now,”broke in Tom, “all except the windows. Look at the heavy timbers of theroom, and the oil lamp and—s-sh-h-h! What’s that?”

  They all stared at him. Tom’s eyes had become round with fear. He wasusually of a very level headed type, and not likely to get himselfupset; but the voodoo had preyed upon his imagination and this, with theexcitement of the treasure map’s discovery, had made him more sensitiveto excitement than usual.

  He stared through the open window. They all turned their eyes that way.

  “What is it, Tom?” demanded Nicky in a hoarse whisper.

  “I thought I saw a face—in the shadows—outside the window,” Tom saidshakily.

  Nicky was up and out of the room like a flash. Cliff, losing no time,raced in the other direction. They went scuttling around the house, fromfront and back, meeting under the dining room window.

  “Nobody here—not a sign!” called Cliff reassuringly.

  “Nobody in sight,” Nicky agreed. “Tom, who was it—what did the face looklike?”

  “I don’t know,” quavered Tom. “It looked like—it was white—it was likea—ghost!”

  “Pull yourself together,” said Mr. Gray quietly. “There aren’t anyghosts. Your imagination is keyed up. Perhaps you saw some bird fly pastwith the light on its wings and your excitement made you see the rest.”

  “Come in, boys,” called Clarence Neale, “I am sure there was no occasionfor fright.”

  The two searchers returned.

  “Brace up, Tom,” said Cliff, not unkindly. “Nobody was running away andnobody was in sight. You don’t want us to think that you really believein ghosts!”

  “No,” said Tom, sheepishly, “I don’t. I said it looked like one.”

  “Well,” laughed Mr. Neale, “we have ‘sort of interrupted’ Captain Kidd,haven’t we?”

  “Maybe it was his ghost!” grinned Nicky. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Mr. Neale and Cliff’s father gave warning shakes of their heads andNicky apologized for joking at Tom’s expense.

  “The poor old fellow wasn’t so bad—there’s no reason for his ghost towalk, even if there was such a chance,” Mr. Neale said. “You know hesailed off in the _Adventure Galley_ to execute his commission, butpirates were few and far between, and he sailed around the Cape of GoodHope. You know, that real and terrible pirate, Thomas Tew, was one ofthose he was sent to capture or to punish—but he never found him. Hiscrew became mutinous because there was so little to do and it was duringa fight that Kidd struck his gunner, William Moore, and killed him. Itwas really for that act that the man was captured when he finallyreturned to America, and he was sent eventually to England to be triedfor the killing of Moore, rather than for piracy, although he did do alittle ‘pirating’ on his voyages.”

  “It was while he was in prison,” Nicky took up the story, “he sent forone of my ancestors, a New York merchant, and told him about thetreasure. He said—it’s all preserved in writing in my family—he saidthat while cruising in the Gulf, during his trading and before he gothis commission from England as a privateersman, he was blown by a heavywind quite near what we call the Florida Keys. When the weather calmedthere was a signal flying from a coral rock and the Captain took offonto his ship several castaways from a wreck. They told him they hadbeen on a Spanish treasure ship, transporting gold and silver bars fromthe Spanish settlements in Central America when the hurricane wreckedtheir ship. Captain Kidd said he had looked for the treasure but therewas no sign of any, and so he thought they were telling falsehoods.”

  “Then why did he draw a map—if that was what the map was about!” Cliffinterrupted.

  “The man he had saved—one of the survivors—gave him the map when he wasinjured by a sabre wound and was dying. He said the men had managed toswim ashore to some of the smaller Keys when the ship ran onto someneedle-like coral and began to break up. But they got a couple of boatsoverside too, and when it was calmer, and the ship was breaking apartand falling away into the water, they got many chests of the treasureinto the boats and rowed along into the keys and hid the chests on anisland that was in the map.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Neale. “Probab
ly, by that time, some of the othermembers of the crew had gone back and found the chests.”

  “Maybe,” Nicky said. “You see, when the ancestor was given the map, hetook a passage on a ship to come and find the Jamaica governor, but hisship was besieged by pirates and he was taken by them—and it was yearsbefore he got off their ship and back to civilization—that’s a story byitself, but I can’t stop to tell it to you now. Anyhow, he got back, buthe had no more taste for the sea and when he died he passed on his mapand the story, but nobody else ever tried until my uncle got the paper.He made a trip down here and found out just what Sam told us—that thegovernor’s paper had been stolen. So, of course, he gave it up.”

  “Now, what do you propose to do?” asked Clarence Neale.

  “Mr. Gray thinks we ought to talk to Sam and offer to share with himfairly for the use of his part of the map. He’s on his way here, orought to be. I left word with Ma’am Sib to tell him to come.”

  “Perhaps he hasn’t returned to get the message,” Mr. Gray said.

  “Or,” said Nicky, unable to resist a little malicious prod at Tom’sfears, “or maybe the ghost got him!”

  Before Tom could make a reply they heard the patter of swift feet racingalong the path to the house; a voice cried out, shrill and excited,“Help—masters—help! De ghost——!”

  With a common impulse they all leaped to their feet. In their excitementnot one of them stopped to catch up the map. They moved closer together,Tom clutching Nicky’s arm and staring wide-eyed at the door.

  Into their midst scampered the ten-year-old colored boy of the morningexperience. His face was ashy colored under his dusky skin, and his eyesrolled wildly.

  “Masters—masters!” he panted. “Save me—” He lifted a finger, and pointedit shakingly toward the doorway. They all stared in that direction, andeven Cliff felt the hair prickling on his head.

  “There—there! It’s chased me—it’s coming—” the boy gasped.

  Clarence Neale leaped past the frightened child, and on a sudden impulseNicky, feeling a strange hunch, swung part way around toward the table.He meant to reach for the map, forgotten in the instant of excitement.

  In his turn he gave a gasping cry.

  Their map was gone!