The face of the man we know as Nego grew as yellow as parchment. There was little doubt from the expressions of the moonshiners’ faces that they were quite capable of carrying out their threat. In fact a murmur of approval greeted the cold-blooded proposal. One man—a little short fellow with a tangle of black whiskers that reached to his waist—even pointed to a custard apple-tree that grew at the edge of the clearing and remarked casually:
“He’d look uncommon well decorating that thar tree I’m thinking.”
After the boys had made insistent demands to be given the details of Nego’s capture they were finally informed that a group of the moonshiners, who had been off wild-hog hunting, had been much surprised to see the motor-boat manœuvring off the point on the far side of which the boys had beached the canoes. They stealthily watched the two men who were in the craft from the screen provided by the mangroves. One of them—the man they had captured,—continually scanned the shore with a pair of field-glasses.
“They must have known we had left the sloop and come in pursuit of us,” exclaimed Frank and Harry in one breath as the narrator reached this point of his story.
After rounding the point it appeared that the watchers, who had been sneaking along through the undergrowth, saw Nego order the boat’s head pointed for the shore and when she was fairly close in, get into a small dinghy that towed astern and come ashore at the spot where the canoes were lying. He carried a small axe and was about to raise it and destroy the craft when the crackers, with a startling yell, burst out of the woods and made him a captive. The other man must have seen his comrade’s plight, for he instantly headed the motor-boat about and giving her full speed vanished round the projection on the coast of the island.
The boys’ faces paled as a common thought flashed across their minds. “What if the two men had visited the sloop and scuttled her or destroyed the Golden Eagle II?”
Harry was the first to voice their fears. Frank’s answer, however, gave the adventurers a gleam of hope.
“That occurred to me, Harry,” he replied, “but, on thinking it over, I think it is more likely that they planned to destroy the canoes before attacking the Carrier Dove, as with the small craft stove in they would be able to work without fear of our paddling back and surprising them.”
They agreed that this was a reasonable theory and turned their attention to the captive who stood defiantly with folded arms and a sneering expression on his dark face. He looked very different from the well-dressed man who had first attracted their attention in the dining-room at the Hotel Willard, but he was unmistakably the same despite the fact that now his chin was covered with a heavy stubble and he wore rough clothes and a dark blue flannel shirt.
“Who are you?” demanded Frank finally.