The Mystery Boys and Captain Kidd's Message

by Van Powell

  CHAPTER XX NICKY CHANGES A WORD!

  Cramped and aching in every muscle, the chums struggled uselesslythroughout a long and irksome day. The ropes were tied too securely tobe loosened; they would not stretch.

  It was almost twilight when they heard the returning sweep of oars andthe grate of the boats alongside.

  “Jim, see if those lads are still safe, and let them stretch a bit,”came a voice the chums recognized as that of Mr. Coleson. Jim, thecolored Jamaican, came into the cabin with leisurely slowness and theysaw, from his downcast face, the answer to a question in the minds of atleast two cramped prisoners.

  He was frowning and his whole bearing was dejected. They had found notreasure!

  This was borne out by the faces of the white men when they came in anddropped heavily onto the cushioned side seats. “Look here,” said SenorOrtiga, morosely, fixing Nicky with a cold glare, “are you sure youremembered that message correctly?”

  “I’m sure,” said Nicky, rubbing his arms and legs to get the blood intocirculation again, still seated on the cabin flooring.

  “Well, then,” said Mr. Coleson, “it’s all a myth, or someone has beenahead of us.”

  “Repeat that message,” commanded Ortiga, not convinced.

  Nicky, looking him in the eyes, did so. “‘At the end of the line, in thelowest part of the Dipper,’” he stated.

  “And you say that’s the truth?”

  “It’s the truth——”

  “The whole truth?”

  “Yes—and ‘nothing but the truth!’”

  “Well, we searched the bottom where those lines join, and then we rowedover to the two islands, went over them again, and then searched thebottom between them—that’s the ‘lowest part of the islands,’ too,”stated Mr. Coleson.

  Neither Nicky, Cliff nor Tom cared much. Their bodies were too sore, tootired from staying in one position, too full of aches, to enable them togive much thought to treasure.

  Almost nothing was said as Jim prepared supper, for which the chums werewaiting as eagerly as their weary bodies allowed. A low-voicedconference was held between the white men, but it was not until the mealwas ended, Cliff lifting his cup with cramped arm and hand, Tom feelinghis feet prickle as circulation fed the life fluid to them, Nickyfeeling as though he had been trussed up for years, that Senor Ortigadelivered the result of the conference.

  “We noticed that the tender you came in was marked from the _Senorita_,”he stated to Tom. “We rowed down the inner channel a way, wondering howyou came to be in it!”

  “We found the wreck,” added Mr. Coleson.

  “Again my dear brother failed to get ahead of me!” snapped the Spaniard,glowering. “But that is aside from the point, which is that we arethrough here.”

  “Then you’ll take us back to Jamaica with you?” asked Cliff.

  Ortiga shook his head.

  “You have the tender,” he replied. “We will put some food in it and letyou use it to get to wherever you want to go. Do you suppose we want toget mixed up with the American Government for tying up its youngercitizens? Not we! But we won’t set you adrift or maroon you. We’ll letyou have the tender and some food.”

  It was almost half an hour later that Cliff, Tom and Nicky, seated inthe tender, with a few days’ supply of canned foods in her bottom, sawthe anchor of _El Libertad_ come up, heard the pulsing throb of hersingle, four-cylinder speed motor, and watched her swing in a gracefulcurve into the wide waters of the Gulf and lay a course Southward.

  “There she goes,” said Cliff morosely. “Now we’d better lay to, on someisland for the night, and then start rowing for civilization.”

  “I half wonder if they found the treasure, after all,” said Tom, “andjust acted the way they did to ‘steer us off’ and wait till we getaway.”

  “No,” said Nicky.

  “No?——”

  “No. At least, if they did, I’ll bet the treasure was moved up to a newplace.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Cliff sharply.

  “You see,” said Nicky, “I did tell the truth—the whole thing and nothingelse except the truth. But——”

  He grinned at his chums in the dull light. “I saw your signals, eventhough I would have done what I did without them.”

  If they had suddenly been touched by a “live” electric wire the othertwo could not have jumped more, or assumed more interested and amazedexpressions.

  “Tell us what you mean!” cried Tom.

  “Well,” said Nicky, enjoying their suspense, “I told them exactly whatCaptain Kidd was reported to have said—except for one word that Ichanged. It didn’t change the real meaning, but I had a sort of flash ofsomething inside, whatever it was, and I thought maybe if I changed thatone word I could fool them—lead them on a false scent, and still tellthe truth.”

  “What word was it you changed?” cried Tom, and Cliff echoed the questionin slightly different words but with no less eagerness.

  “Repeat the message!” demanded Nicky. Cliff spoke.

  “‘At the end of the line, in the lowest part of——’”

  “Wait,” commanded Nicky. “What did you say after ‘in’?”

  “The lowest part,” replied Cliff.

  “And what is ‘the lowest part’ of a dipper?”

  Tom saw it first.

  “The bottom!” he almost yelled.

  “That’s it,” nodded Nicky. “The way I remembered it said ‘in the bottomof the dipper.’ So I changed the word to ‘lowest part’ so I could makeit seem that the two islands at the lowest part of the sketch were theones it meant.”

  “Then it was easy to draw the lines,” Tom agreed. “Nicky—I’m ashamed ofmyself for being angry and for not trusting you!” He made the admissionmanfully, and extended his hand. “I ask your pardon!”

  “You ought to!” declared Nicky, but he grinned to take the sting out ofhis words.

  Cliff was not behind Tom by more than a sentence. He, too, told his chumhow sorry he was that he did not trust him. Nicky was glad to grip handswith both and to forget their former distrust.

  “I didn’t pretend to notice because I wanted you both to act as thoughyou were mad at me. It would make them believe I was telling the truth,I thought,” he explained.

  “Let’s row in and see what the real ‘in the bottom of the Dipper’ lookslike,” he added. “I’m nearly wild to see the real treasure spot, even ifwe can’t locate anything there.”

  But Cliff counseled caution.

  “Those fellows aren’t quite out of sight yet,” he declared, “and theymight be watching. If we pretend to row along the same way they aregoing, until it gets dark, they will believe we have given up too.”

  “That’s good sense,” Tom agreed. “When it’s so dark they can’t see us,even if they come back, we can swing in and camp out on some island.Then, if they get soft-hearted and return to pick us up, they won’tsuspect anything.”

  This was agreed to and they rowed along easily for about an hour. Therewas no sign, strain their eyes as they might, that the _Libertad_ wasanywhere else than on the first leg of her journey to Jamaica, so theypulled to the shore of an islet that had a small grove of cocoanut ormangrove trees—it was too dark to know which—and, though their couch wasnot very dry and rather too full of matted roots for comfort, theexpectation of the morning’s find, and their own athletic training,enabled them to make the best of what they had.

  Sunrise found Nicky awake and alert. He shook his comrades.

  “Up—up, daisy, the sun is in the sky!” he cried, “and we—we, daisy, fortreasure we shall try!”

  “That’s good sense but terrible poetry!” laughed Cliff.

  “I don’t care,” Nicky replied, “Tom, cook up some ham, and a rasher ofbacon, and about twenty eggs and some cocoa.”

  “Where do you expect me to get them?” demanded his chum, laughing.

  “Charge them!” Nicky exulted. “Charge
them at the nearest store. Ourcredit ought to be good. By noon we’ll have gold enough to pay theNational Debt!”

  “Hooray!” responded Cliff, “gold—gold—gold!”

  And by eight o’clock they were in the tender.

  “Treasure bound!” Nicky grinned.