“Hallo!” replied Walter, as soon as he found his tongue.
“Get away from here!” shouted Chase. “Get away while you can. That vessel is the smuggler, and Fred Craven is a prisoner on board of her.”
But it was too late for the yacht to retreat. Before Walter could open his mouth she struck the smuggling vessel with a force sufficient to knock all the boy crew off their feet, breaking the latter’s bowsprit short off, and then swung around with her stern in the bushes, where she remained wedged fast, with her sails shaking in the wind.
CHAPTER II.
A SURPRISE.
The last time we saw Henry Chase he was sitting in the mouth of “The Kitchen”—that was the name given to the cave in which he had taken refuge after destroying the pirogue—with his axe in his hand, waiting to see what Coulte and Pierre, who had just disappeared down the gully, were going to do next. He had been holding a parley with his captors, and they, finding that he had fairly turned the tables on them, and that he was not to be frightened into surrendering himself into their hands again, had gone off to talk the matter over and decide upon some plan to capture the boy in his stronghold. Now that their vessel was cut to pieces, they had no means of leaving the island, and consequently they were prisoners there as well as Chase. He had this slight advantage of them, however: when the yacht arrived he would be set at liberty, while they would in all probability be secured and sent off to jail, where they belonged.
“I’ll pay them for interfering with me when I wasn’t troubling them,” chuckled Chase, highly elated over the clever manner in which he had outwitted his captors. “I think I have managed affairs pretty well. Now, if the yacht would only come, I should be all right. It is to Walter’s interest to assist me, if he only knew it; for I can tell him where Fred Craven is. But I can safely leave all that to Wilson. He is a friend worth having, and he will do all he can for me. What’s going on out there, I wonder?”
The sound that had attracted the boy’s attention was a scrambling among the bushes, accompanied by exclamations of anger and long-drawn whistles. The noise came down to him from the narrow crevice which extended to the top of the bluff, and from this Chase knew that Coulte and Pierre were ascending the rocks on the outside, and that they were having rather a difficult time of it. He wondered what they were going to do up there. They could not come down into the cave through the crevice, for it was so narrow that Fred Craven himself would have stuck fast in it. The boy took his stand under the opening and listened. He heard the two men toiling up the almost perpendicular sides, and knew when they reached the summit. Then there was a sound of piling wood, followed by the concussion of flint and steel; and presently a feeble flame, which gradually increased in volume, shot up from the top of the bluff.