“I hope I may never find it necessary to practice on you,” was the reply of the other, uttered in a tone of voice that made Harry feel, as he said afterward, as if he had touched the back of a moccasin.
“What are your plans?” continued Scudder, who was evidently an inferior in command to Foyashi and the man spoken of as Captain Bellman, “here you start me off in the dark in a canoe with enough Chapinite to blow half the Everglades sky high and you don’t even tell me where we are taking it.”
“You know as well as I do,” replied the other, “that we are bound for the coast and that we are going to put the last consignment aboard the submarine to-night at the mouth of the Jew-Fish river. What follows to-morrow will be simply the tapping of the furnace taken to-night and we will work that up into Chapinite in the government’s yards at home.”
“Then we are through here,” commented Scudder.
“Practically, yes. We shall meet the cruiser in the South Atlantic next week and then sail for home.”
“The cruiser!” exclaimed Scudder, “ain’t you afraid of the United States government being suspicious?”
“My dear friend,” replied the other, “the wisdom of the Oriental has been left out of your composition. The cruiser, as I call her, has been converted into the likeness of a peaceful passenger ship.”
“Where do you coal her?” demanded Scudder, a certain admiration in his tones.
The boys were unable to catch the reply. Indeed they could not have heard as much of the conversation as they did had not the small creek fortunately run parallel with the larger water-course for some distance. By dint of shoving along the banks with their hands the boys had managed to keep a short distance in the rear of the other canoe. Her speed, however, prohibited their keeping up with her and they were compelled to satisfy themselves with what they had already heard, which, however, was of sufficient importance to cause them to order Quatty to pole back at top speed to the mound-builders’ island.
It was evident from the conversation they had been lucky enough to overhear that the stealers of the formula, headed by Captain Mortimer Bellman, were to leave the ’glades the next day. That the plotters had a submarine and that it lay at the mouth of the Jew-Fish river. Furthermore a cruiser, belonging to the power whose agents the men were, was waiting to pick them up and carry them back to their own country and that Lieutenant Chapin had been subjected to a cruel operation in order to force him to submit to a betrayal of his country.