“Where was this yere communication found?” demanded Ben.
Frank explained where and when the squaw had told him the moonshiner discovered the bottle. Ben knitted his brows for a minute and then spoke with decision.
“They took him into the ’glades up one of the west-shore rivers,” he exclaimed at length. “The tides on this coast would never have drifted the bottle round there. It must have come down the river, maybe from the interior of the ’glades themselves, or maybe he threw it overboard from the Mist when she was wrecked.”
At this moment there came a startling interruption. About a dozen of the wild-looking moonshiners appeared, dragging into the clearing a rumpled heap of humanity whom the boys at once recognized as the man they had caught eavesdropping in Washington, and who had, as they believed, followed them to Miami after failing to destroy the Golden Eagle at White Plains.
The captive—who is known to our readers from his signing of the message from Washington to Florida as Nego—recognized in a flash that he was face to face with the Boy Aviators.
For a fragment of time the group stood as though carved from stone.
CHAPTER X.
THE CAPTIVE’S WARNING.
The captive was the first to break the picture. With a violent wrench he freed himself of the arms of his captors, while the boys gazed in dumb amazement at the unexpected encounter.
“What’s this here buccaneer bein’ a’ doing of now?” demanded Ben, after a few seconds.
“We ’uns caught him trying to scuttle you ’uns canoes,” explained one of the crackers, “and we calculate to have him decorating a tree-bough by sundown on our own account. We don’t like live strangers round here.”