After despatching huge quantities of fried bacon and coffee, cooked on the battered sea stove the Carrier Dove’s cabin boasted, and which Pork Chops proudly referred to as “de galley,” the adventurers up anchored and with their little engine chugging merrily away stood on toward the south. The canoes in a long tandem-like line were towed astern, as there was every prospect of smooth water for the rest of the day.
As the Carrier Dove bore past the southern end of the island a canoe shot round the point. In it were two figures. One was the moonshiner who had been so anxious to despatch the unfortunate Nego, the other was a younger man whom the boys recollected to have seen in the camp the day before. They waved and shouted something that the boys could not catch but, as they evidently had some important object in paddling out, the young commander ordered the engine stopped and the Carrier Dove lay to, rising and falling on the long swells over which the canoe rode as gracefully as a sea-bird.
A few moments later the canoe ran alongside and the elder of the two men addressing Frank said:
“Wall, the bodies of them two came ashore this morning and on the one you wouldn’t let us string up we found this.”
He fumbled in his homespun shirt a minute and then produced a tiny carved figure of green jade. It was the image of a squatting Buddha and evidently of great antiquity.
“Was this all you found?” said Frank, examining the quaint figure with interest.
“Sure,” replied the other unblushingly, “ain’t it worth something to you ’uns for we ’uns to hev fetched it to you?”
Frank knew that the man lied when he said that the little jade god had been the only thing found on the dead man but he did not deem it worth while to contradict. He had little doubt that the dead man’s watch and diamond rings were at that moment in the possession of the individual who had addressed him, or some other of the moonshiners. He, however, took the hint conveyed in the man’s last words and handed him over a bill. The fellow took it without a word and shoved off.
“You ’uns may get out of the ’glades alive but I don’t believe it,” were his parting words.
“He’s got what you might call a nice sweet disposition that feller,” remarked Ben, as the canoe was rapidly paddled away and the adventurers got under way once more, “he’d make a good shipmate, he would, with that sunny nature of hisn.”