“We’d make him. We’d run over the pirogue and sink her. He’d stop then, wouldn’t he?”
“But we’d waste too much time in following that course,” said Walter. “We’re six miles from home, and it would take two hours to go there and get the Banner under way. By that time it would be pitch dark. It is forty miles to the village, and ten more along the coast to the bayou, so that we would have to run fifty miles while the pirogue was running about one fifth as far. Another thing,” added Walter, looking up at the clouds, “it’s going to be a bad night, and I don’t care to trust my yacht outside in a gale.”
Walter was in earnest when he said this, and it would have been hard work for any one to have made him believe that he was destined to spend, not only the greater portion of that night, but the whole of the succeeding week on the Gulf, while the wind was blowing, the sleet flying, and the waves running as high as his mast-head. But he did it.
“I think the best plan would be,” he continued, “to ride at once for the bayou and cut a tree across it—you know that the stream is very narrow for a long distance above its mouth—so that Coulte can’t sail out with the pirogue. If we can keep him in the swamp until morning, we can get help and capture him. What do you think of that, Wilson?”
“I like your plan the best,” was the reply. “We need not go a step out of our way for an axe, for we can get one at Coulte’s house.”
While the boys were discussing the matter, the clear, ringing blast of a hunting-horn echoed through the woods. Perk sounded his own horn in reply, and presently Eugene and Bab galloped up. Their appearance was most opportune, and saved Walter the trouble of riding in search of them. They were surprised to see Wilson—they were obliged to take two looks at him before they recognised him—and Eugene at first scowled at him, and acted very much as though he would like to settle up some of the little accounts he held against him; but when Walter, after telling him that he had brought news of Featherweight, repeated the story of his adventures, and described the plan they had just decided upon, Eugene changed his mind, and extended a most cordial greeting to Wilson, in which he was joined by Bab.
Of course there were a thousand and one questions to be asked and answered, and during the ride to the bayou the Club kept Wilson talking continually. They compelled him to tell his story over and over again, and each time expressed their astonishment and indignation in no measured terms. They all gave it as their opinion that Featherweight had somehow managed to fall into the hands of the smugglers, and that he was detained by them: but, of course, they could not determine upon any plans for his release until they knew where he was confined, and that could not be ascertained until they had rescued Chase.
In half an hour the boys reached Coulte’s plantation, and after reconnoitering the premises to make sure that none of the family had returned, they dismounted in front of the porch and went into the house to secure the axe, and to look at the room in which Chase and Wilson had been besieged. Everything in and about the apartment—the shattered door, the hole in the floor of the loft, the broken furniture, the empty shelves in the cupboard, and the huge cakes of mud in the fire-place, which Wilson had knocked off while he was coming out of the chimney, bore testimony to the truthfulness of his story. The members of the Club were interested in everything they saw, and would have overwhelmed Wilson with questions, had not Walter reminded them that the longer they lingered, the longer they would be separated from Featherweight. The mention of the secretary’s name brought them to their saddles again; and in a few minutes more they had left the old Frenchman’s house behind them, and were galloping through the woods toward the bayou.