Cherry Ames Boxed Set 13-16

by Helen Wells

  A group of people had grown about the wounded, although everyone was standing back so as not to interfere with Cherry. They watched her with respect and admiration as she moved from one patient to another.

  While she went about her work, Cherry heard the group of islanders and the crew talking back and forth. She gathered that the Balfourians knew a good many of the crew, for they called the various fishermen by name. The fishermen gave only brief or evasive answers to the probing questions.

  Close by, Cherry heard one of the islanders and one of the crew in an exchange.

  “I think ye said ye had thirty-six aboard, counting the captain,” said the islander. “But I counted less than that brought ashore. What became of the other poor lads. Did they drown?”

  “Probably,” replied the other.

  “Why probably. Don’t ye know?” persisted his questioner.

  “The mate, Mr. Tweed, and some others lowered a boat and rowed for shore,” came the answer. “I don’t think they could make it in the storm, so they probably drowned.”

  “I noticed the mate was missing,” remarked the Balfourian. “Weel, now, he may be alive—he and the others—the same as the rest of ye.” The man paused.

  With his next words, Cherry’s heart began to thump with excitement.

  The Balfourian continued, “Ah, ’twaud be a wondrous thing, this wreck, if every man jack aboard the Heron was saved!”

  “Every man jack aboard the Heron!” thought Cherry. The Heron! These men she was taking care of were members of the crew of the Heron. But some were missing. The mate, Mr. Tweed, and some of the men had lowered a boat and rowed for shore. Had they been drowned or had they reached shore safely? And what had become of Old Jock, who had stowed away?

  How she managed to care for the rest of the Heron’s crew who had slight bruises, scratches and cuts, and sprains, she never knew. But apparently she did her job very well. When Dr. Mac returned that afternoon with a doctor and nurses from St. John’s to relieve them, he was amazed to find all but a few of the men perfectly able to return on the Sandy Fergus to their homes in St. John’s.

  Dr. Mac sent Cherry back to Barclay House, saying that he had already sent Meg home, as well as Nurse Cowan, to get some sleep. He himself was going home and to bed before he dropped in his tracks. The doctor and nurses from St. John’s, who had arrived on the Sandy Fergus in response to his call, were ready to take over for a day or two.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The Silver of the Mine

  THE NEXT MORNING AFTER BREAKFAST, THE FOUR—Cherry and Lloyd, Meg, and Dr. Mackenzie—stood in the bright sun on the brow of the cliff, peering down upon the sparkling waters of the little bay at Rogues’ Cave.

  Dressed in sturdy clothes and equipped with ropes and miners’ safety lamps on lanyards round their necks, and knives in sheaths at their belts, the four could have been taken for a party of spelunkers—cave explorers. Prepared for any emergency, Lloyd had a compass and from his belt hung a geologist’s hammer and pick, and binoculars.

  “The tide isn’t low enough yet to get into Rogues’ Cave without wading,” Lloyd said.

  “Then let’s start with the entrance to the Old Mine,” suggested Dr. Mac.

  In silence they made their way back along the cliffs and set off up the big hill of the abandoned mine. A gentle breeze rippled the grass and flirted the brightly colored scarfs of the girls. In the blue, cloudless sky a naval helicopter from the nearby base hovered offshore, searching for the bodies of the four men missing from the Heron and now believed to be drowned.

  The presence of the whirlybird was ignored by the group as they climbed the hill. None of them wanted to be reminded that the chances were against their finding Old Jock and Tammie or the missing men, either in the mine or the cave. But Cherry had convinced Lloyd and Meg and Dr. Mac that the search was well worth a try. The fact that Ramsay, the gardener, had found the Heron’s lifeboat high, dry, and undamaged on the sand dunes on a beach north of the cliffs was taken as a hopeful sign that the men had reached shore.

  That morning, after a good night’s rest, Cherry, Lloyd, Meg, Dr. Mac (who had come over at Meg’s invitation), and Sir Ian had all been present at breakfast in the Barclay dining room.

  Sir Ian, who had not been told that Old Jock and Tammie were missing, was in the best of spirits. He had no sooner sat down at the table, then he announced, “I am expecting James Broderick this morning. Just after the telephone line was repaired earlier, Mr. Broderick called and left word with Higgins that he was flying over from St. John’s. Mr. Broderick had an appointment to see me the day of the storm, but caudna make it, of course.”

  “Mr. Broderick is flying over this morning!” Lloyd said, startled. “Could I ask what he’s coming for?”

  “Ye caud,” answered his uncle. “But since it’s a matter strictly between him and me, there’s na need to tell ye, nephew.”

  There was a glint in Sir Ian’s eye as though he were exhilarated over the coming meeting. Cherry had never seen the mine owner look stronger or better than he did that morning. His face was wonderfully alive and he held himself proudly.

  “Why, he reminds me of descriptions I’ve read in old stories of knights just about to go into battle,” Cherry thought. “It is as though the prospect of the battle stimulated them and made them reel full of confidence.”

  Sir Ian had eaten his breakfast, without making any further comment. Then he had gone off to the library “to do some paperwork,” he said. He was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

  After he had left, Cherry had shown Lloyd, Meg, and Dr. Mac, Old Sir Ian’s secret journal and the leather pouch containing the torn page and the silver. Then she had told of the night in the tower room and Tammie’s disappearance.

  Her suggestion that they search the Old Mine and Rogues’ Cave for Old Jock and Tammie, and at the same time solve the mystery of the silver, had been received with enthusiasm by her three listeners.

  “I think it’s about time we found out what this whole thing is about,” Lloyd had declared at once.

  As they pushed their way to the top of the hill now, each of them was torn between hope one moment and despair the next of what they might or might not find in the underground tunnels.

  They reached the summit.

  Meg and the doctor pushed ahead through the bushes and began to examine the big rock that Cherry had found so interesting on the day Little Joe Tweed had vanished as if by magic.

  “Do look, Lloyd,” Meg said, “this is the oddest sort of rock. I don’t remember ever having seen it here before, not even when we came up here as children.”

  “Yes, it has a very peculiar texture,” Dr. Mac said. “Like pumice.”

  Lloyd looked at it for the first time. “It is pumice,” he replied at once.

  “That’s the rock I was telling all of you about,” Cherry said. “Only it has sunk much deeper into the ground since I saw it last—probably washed down by the heavy rain.” Turning to Lloyd, she asked, “Did you say it was pumice?” Suddenly she remembered a rock she had held in her hand when she and Tammie were in the tower. It had been feather light.

  “Why, that’s where the entrance to the mine used to be!” exclaimed Meg. “Someone has taken away the old boards that used to cover it and set a rock over it.”

  Lloyd caught Cherry’s eye and they exchanged a significant glance. They both knew the nature of that rock.

  With a wink at Cherry, Lloyd announced, “Stand back, everybody, while I give a remarkable demonstration of weight lifting.” Suiting his action to his words, he grasped the mass of grayish-colored rock and rolled it aside with little effort.

  “Ah, a Hercules!” cried Dr. Mac, laughing.

  “As you see,” explained Lloyd in a carnival hawker’s nasal twang, “it’s light as foam, for that is precisely what it is—foam spewed up by a volcano and hardened into rock. It’s not native to the island. Somebody brought it here from a faraway volcanic region.”

  The three
applauded Lloyd.

  “Well, there’s the mouth of the mine shaft,” he said, pointing at their feet.

  They all looked down into the cavity that had been covered by the rock. The opening was just large enough for a man to enter.

  They tied rope about their waists mountain-climber fashion—Lloyd, Cherry, Meg, Dr. Mac—in that order. Then Lloyd eased himself down into the hole, the bottom of which was perhaps six feet below the surface of the ground.

  “Okay,” he told them in a moment. “There’s a ladder leading down, a little way ahead. It’s new from the looks of it. Someone built it recently. Definitely, this shaft is being used.”

  “Switch on your lamps up there,” he ordered. “Come on, Cherry. Meg, you and Doc follow.”

  Cherry slid down into the cavity. Lloyd was already descending the ladder, a few feet in front of her. With her heart thumping in her throat, she slowly, rung by rung, went down to the top level of the mine where Lloyd stood on the dirt floor of the tunnel.

  The others joined them and they began exploring the tunnel by the light of their lamps. The tunnel extended to the right and the left, but only for a short distance in each direction. Water dripped from the roof, forming little pools. The earthen floor was muddy and marked with many footprints.

  “Men have been going and coming through here regularly,” remarked Lloyd. “Those are men’s footprints, as you can readily see, and that’s the only thing they can possibly mean. Men enter the shaft by rolling away the rock. When Little Joe Tweed disappeared that day, Cherry, he must have done just that. They came down the ladder, which was made probably to replace an old, rotted one, and they go …” He played his flashlight about.

  Another ladder in front of them led downward. “Here’s where they go,” Lloyd said, and began at once to lower himself on it.

  They all descended two more ladders before they came to the place where the central shaft of the Old Mine ended and there was no further means of descent. As before, the tunnel extended to the right and to the left. But this time, there was another tunnel cutting in at an angle and sloping gently in a southeasterly direction, so Lloyd told them upon consulting his compass.

  “I guess it’s a case of counting eeny, meeny, miney, mo, or isn’t it, Engineer Barclay?” asked Meg.

  “It is not, Miss Barclay,” returned Lloyd. “That tunnel running in a southeasterly direction goes toward Rogues’ Cave. Notice the footprints. And notice all the shoring is new wood. Notice that the tunnel itself has been recently dug. And let me remind you that Cherry told us that Old Jock wanted to find out what was being smuggled out through Rogues’ Cave.”

  “Lloyd, did the men—whoever they are—dig this tunnel so they could get to the cave?” Cherry asked.

  “Exactly,” replied Lloyd. “You see, there was never a tunnel that ran to the cave from this mine. There was just the shaft which you see goes straight down from the top of the hill. Then there were tunnels running to the north and south from this shaft, as you saw when we descended.”

  With Lloyd in the lead, the four walked down the sloping tunnel, the glimmer of their lamps guiding them in the darkness.

  The journey down the tunnel seemed endless to Cherry. But Lloyd said they had gone perhaps only a quarter of a mile when they came upon a wall of stone that had been broken through to form a low, jagged doorway.

  Lloyd bent his head and was on the point of entering the passage beyond when he drew back quickly.

  “There’s a light down there a little way and I heard people talking,” he said in a whisper filled with suppressed excitement.

  Cherry felt her spine tingle. She was so anxious to find out what was beyond the doorway that it was all she could do to restrain her impulse to rush past Lloyd. Meg and Dr. Mackenzie started to whisper questions.

  “Sssh,” Lloyd warned them. “Don’t talk. Follow me without making a sound.”

  One by one, they went through the doorway. They saw immediately the glow of a light and moved toward it very, very slowly. Then, just beyond a turning, on their left was a sort of large alcove off the tunnel. From the alcove came the sound of men’s voices talking in a dull, quiet way.

  “Put out your lights,” Lloyd said to Cherry and the other two.

  Then, in the dark, very cautiously, keeping close to the wall of the tunnel, they crept up to the entrance and peered into the alcove.

  The place had been blasted out of the rock and was quite large, though it seemed smaller than it was, for piled up like cordwood about the floor, were sackfuls of what was unmistakably rocks. Among the heaps, four men sat on the floor about a wooden box, playing cards by the light of a miner’s lamp.

  “That man on the right is Little Joe Tweed,” Cherry quickly whispered in Lloyd’s ear.

  “Yes, I see him,” Lloyd whispered back.

  “The sea will be calm enough tonight,” Little Joe was saying, “to bring our boat into Rogues’ Cave. I want to get this silver out of here by tonight. I’ve worked out a place to have it crushed and the silver extracted and no questions asked. We’ll block up the tunnel before we leave, so no one will get wise to the fact we’ve discovered a silver mine worth a fortune. Then we’ll turn up in St. John’s with a horrible tale of suffering—of being lost at sea, riding out the storm, and finally reaching shore.”

  For several moments Cherry had the eerie feeling that someone was looking at them.

  Now, letting her glance rove about the room, she gave a joyful little gasp upon encountering two eyes staring at her out of what she had mistaken for a sack of rocks in the shadowy corner. Sitting on the floor with his back against the wall of the alcove, trussed up with rope and gagged, was Old Jock Cameron. She nodded to him to let him know that she had seen him.

  Then, clutching Lloyd’s arm so he would not move and make a noise, she said in barely audible tones, “Look closely, Lloyd, you’ll see Mr. Cameron. You have a knife. If you can get close enough or he can wriggle this way, you can cut him loose.”

  Lloyd answered by squeezing her hand. Leaning over he said, “Untie the rope around your waist. Tell Meg and Dr. Mac to do the same.”

  When they were all freed from one another, Lloyd said softly, “Now, here’s my plan of action, everybody. Cherry, you and Meg stand against the wall and don’t make a sound. Doc, get out your knife. Meg, let me have your knife. As soon as I’ve cut Old Jock free, I’ll whistle just once softly. That’s your cue, Doc, to come out fighting. We’ll rush Little Joe and his men. None of them seems to be armed. I can’t see anything that looks like a gun, can you, Doc?”

  Dr. Mac peered at the men a moment. “No.” He took his knife out of the sheath. “Well, I’m all set.”

  “Now, you, Cherry and Meg,” said Lloyd. “You get out of here as fast as you can when Dr. Mac and I rush those men in there. We’re not going to use our knives, but we are going to try to frighten them enough so they won’t give us any trouble. But the Doc and I don’t want you girls in this. So get out fast.”

  “Do we go back the way we came?” asked Meg.

  “No, follow the new tunnel,” said Lloyd. “It has to lead out through the cave. The smuggling is out through the cave, remember? Just be sure, by playing your lights over the tunnel walls and the wood that it is the newly dug tunnel. It probably leads right into one of the tunnels in the cave that you know, Meg. Everybody all set?” Lloyd asked.

  The three said they were.

  “Hang on to these,” Lloyd told Cherry, giving her his binoculars and geologist’s hammer and pick. With that, he dropped to the floor of the tunnel and started crawling toward Old Jock in the alcove. The light was dim and the place was full of shadows.

  As the three waited, they heard Little Joe and the others still talking.

  “Have you figured out yet what to do with old man Cameron, Little Joe?” asked one.

  “The storm caused a lot of accidents—some of them fatal,” suggested Little Joe.

  This was greeted with general laughter.

  A
whining voice complained, “Sure, Little Joe, that takes care of the old man, but what about the kid? That night in the storm when we ran after the old man and caught him, we shouldn’t have bothered taking the kid. Besides, the kid got away, anyway—a regular eel.”

  “Never mind the kid.” Little Joe brushed the matter aside. “He probably drowned. You told me yourself you saw him disappear just before you reached the cave. Rogues’ Cave was filled with water way up over the ledge, you said.”

  “Yes, but you can’t be sure he fell in,” the voice whined.

  “Forget it,” snapped Little Joe.

  “Tammie! Oh, my goodness!” Cherry murmured despairingly. “Poor little Tammie, drowned in Rogues’ Cave.”

  Then it struck her that perhaps he had not drowned at all. Tammie had disappeared just before he had reached the cave, the man had said.

  Cherry focused her attention on Lloyd, crawling as slowly as a snail toward Old Jock. He had only a little way to go. Even as Cherry watched, Lloyd was reaching out with his knife to cut the rope that bound Old Jock’s ankles. Now, Lloyd had pulled himself alongside Old Jock and was cutting the rope that bound his hands behind him. He handed the knife to Old Jock and took Meg’s knife in his hand. Old Jock ripped the gag off his mouth. It had all been done so slowly and quietly that it was like watching a silent film in slow motion.

  With a start, Cherry heard a short whistle. It was Lloyd’s cue to Dr. Mac. And the doctor sprang from his place against the wall, and darted into the alcove to take his place beside Lloyd and Old Jock.

  Little Joe and his three men got up so quickly they knocked over the box on which they were playing cards. Then altogether they started toward Lloyd, Dr. Mac, and Old Jock, who held their knives menacingly in their hands.

  Meg grabbed Cherry’s arm as the men rushed toward each other and started to grapple. “We must go. Lloyd said we mustn’t stay here,” she said.