“But how?” persisted Tom.
“Let me remind you, Tom, that we are all eagerly waiting for you to tell us some things that are distinctly more interesting to us than the condition and prospects of a swamp spring can be when we’ve enough water for our present and immediate future need. Go on with your story.”
“Oh, the story is finished,” Tom replied, “but you want to hear about the contents of the hovel. They consist in part of little kegs—three or five gallon kegs, I should think—of Santa Cruz Rum. At least that’s what I made out the letters branded on them to mean. These kegs are lying on the ground in rows that impressed me as far more orderly than the scoundrels themselves ever think of being. I should say there are fifteen or twenty of the kegs in that hovel.
“The rest of the stuff consists of cigars in boxes, and the boxes are carefully tied together in parcels—thirty boxes to the parcel. That’s the way we all saw them carry them up from their boats.”
“Where on earth can they have got all that rum and all those cigars, anyhow? And what do they bring them away down here in the woods for, I wonder?” speculated Dick. “What’s your guess, Tom?”
“Pirates,” answered Tom; “and those things are their plunder.”
“Curious sort of pirates,” said Cal, scoffingly. “Unlike any pirates I ever heard of. Why, Tom, did you ever hear of pirates contenting themselves with taking the rum and cigars they found on the ships they overhauled? You’ve got to guess two or three times more if you’re going to guess right.”
“Well, what do you think they are?” asked Tom, a trifle disappointed to find his theory bowled over so easily.
“Smugglers,” answered Cal. “And I don’t just think it either—I know.”
“But, Cal,” interrupted Larry, “smugglers must bring their goods from foreign ports, and we all know enough about boats to know that those flat-bottomed tubs of theirs wouldn’t live five minutes in a little blow on blue water.”