“Well,” said Frank, as this nondescript figure stood facing them, beads of perspiration streaming down its face, “what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Snooping around and putting bottles of dessicated bugs on our front stoop,” indignantly cried Billy Barnes.
“I didn’t mean no harm, massa, didn’t really mean no harm at all. Me berry good ole man. Bahama nigger I am.”
“Well, what are you doing here, then?” demanded Ben.
“Don’ shoot me, massa, an’ I tell you eberyt’ing,” sputtered the captive, terrified at Ben’s ferocious expression. Put in more intelligible language than the Bahama negro used his story was this:
Suspected unjustly some years before of having killed the captain of a sponging vessel of which he was one of the crew he had fled into the Everglades to avoid lynching. He had fallen into the hands of a tribe of Seminoles, off on an otter hunt, when he was almost famished and had been treated by them with kindness. In fact so well pleased had he been with his surroundings that he had taken a wife from the tribe and was now one of them.
Several days before the outposts had brought news of the approach of the adventurers into the interior and the Seminoles had at once made preparations to turn them back. The Bahaman, whose name, by the way, he confided was “Quatty,” was singled out as being the best spy they could send inasmuch as he could speak English and would understand the conversation of the strangers. He had landed on the island the afternoon before and when he saw that one of the party was a black conceived the idea of working “obeah” on him. He knew that if the darky was a West Indian, which he suspected, he would really interpret the ominous nature of the sign.
“But why are you so anxious to keep us out?” asked Harry, “we mean no harm to you.”
“Wall, dem ign’nant sabages,” grandiloquently stated Quatty, “has obtained de idea dat you is in some way connected wid some white men what came down in the ’glades tree months ago or so.”
The boys started eagerly.