“But how did they trace us to Miami?” puzzled Harry.
“Easy enough,” replied Billy, “I’ve done it dozens of times—traced people I mean. I guess they just looked up the baggage man and found where our stuff was checked to.”
“Of course I ought to have guessed that,” exclaimed Frank. “It’s really too mortifying,” he concluded in a vexed tone.
“Consarn ’em,” muttered Ben, embracing his rifle longingly, “I’d like to get ’em quartered off this sight. I’d drop a precious bad pair of birds in a couple of shots.”
“No use thinking of that now,” rejoined Frank, briskly shaking off his annoyance over what couldn’t be helped, “the thing to do at present is to finish our night’s sleep and set a watch. We don’t want those fellows coming back and blowing the boat up.”
It was agreed that Ben Stubbs was to sit up and take the watch, and that hardy veteran himself had no small share in influencing the verdict. He felt that he as the oldest of the party and the more experienced should have the responsibility in case real trouble was to come. The boys were not long, even after the exciting interruption to their slumbers, in sinking to sleep again on the transoms in the summer cabin of the Carrier Dove. As for Ben he sat up on the after deck with his rifle between his knees till the moon went down and the stars began to wane. And all the time he never took his eyes off the shore where the dying camp-fire still spread a reddish glow against the blackness of the thick jungle tangle.
He might have been watching an hour when he gave a sudden start.
“Well that’s queer too,” he remarked to himself, as he fixed his eyes with stern intensity on the little glow of light thrown out by the embers. A dark figure had cautiously crossed the illumination, standing silhouetted for a moment against it. Suddenly a loud “hoo-hoo” like the hoot of an owl sounded from the shore. The same moment in the old adventurer’s reckless heart was borne a resolve which bore fruit when at dawn, as the rim of a glorious sun poked itself over the sparkling blue expanse of waters, and showed them vacant, he drew in the Squeegee’s painter and slipped lightly into her. He sculled ashore and approaching the camp crouched almost on his hands and knees. He examined the ground closely for a few minutes, as if in keen search of something. After a few minutes of this concentrated scrutiny he suddenly straightened up and strode off unhesitatingly into the jungle. But as he parted the creepers before him he gripped his rifle in the crotch of his arm with his finger on the trigger. He was not going to be taken by surprise.
The green mystery of the forest had not long closed on Ben’s stalwart form when the boys awoke as the sunlight streamed through the canvas-curtains of the Carrier’s Dove’s “main saloon”. Rubbing their eyes sleepily they hastened out on deck. For a few seconds the glory of the tropic dawn engrossed their attention to the exclusion of all else. Then with a cry of alarm Lathrop shouted:
“The Squeegee’s gone!”