“We’ll still have to use patience,” smiled Mr. Lawrence, turning to Tom. “This is going to be a watching game for some time yet.”
By now the gang that had been bringing cases down from the outbuilding all filed out onto the pier. The sounds of brisk but regular loading followed. An hour of this work, monotonous for the hidden watchers, followed, and then another hour. Neither Tom Halstead nor Mr. Lawrence, from their hiding place, could see the cargo piles on the pier very distinctly.
“Halstead,” inquired the inspector, “do you suppose you can safely wriggle nearer, and see how far the loading has gone?”
“I know I can,” Tom answered. “I’ll go slowly about it, and make never a sound, or show myself.”
After a few minutes, in fact, Tom got within seven or eight feet of the pier. He had crawled over the ground, and now lay flat with his head behind the roots of a tree.
From where he lay he could make out Don Emilio Alvarez standing talking with Captain Jonas French. The latter, with a swollen nose and a powder-burned cheek, was telling the gentleman from Honduras all about Prentiss’s remarkable achievement.
“Oh, say, but that was grand of old Jed!” breathed Tom, his sides shaking with suppressed laughter. “If Jed doesn’t get a Carnegie medal I’ll have my opinion of some folks!”
Don Emilio tossed away a half-burned cigar. The butt fell close by the tree roots that helped conceal the head of the young motor boat skipper. Perhaps the little brown man started slightly from something that the glowing tobacco showed him. At all events, he spoke in a whisper to Jonas French. The next instant both leaped down from the shore end of the pier, rushing at the tree.
Tom Halstead sprang up, prepared to sprint for it, but hardly had he started when he felt himself gripped savagely by French. One instant more, and Tom Halstead found himself being borne, despite his yells and furious, fighting struggles, out along the pier.
“All aboard and cast off!” yelled Jonas French, as he sped on over the boards. The last case of the cargo had just gone over the tug’s rail, and now two men sprang to cast off bow and stern hawsers. The engine room bell jangled just as French and Alvarez, with their strenuous prisoner, sprang aboard.