“Oh lawsy! lawsy! I knowed no good ’ud come uv meddling wif dat ole dead teef’s money.”
“Be quiet,” ordered Tubby, sternly. With every nerve on the alert he watched Hunt peer over the cliff-face. The next moment their enemy retreated with a chuckle of laughter.
“They’re all sealed up good and tight,” he said. “We’ll let them stay in there a day or two and then we’ll blast the rock away.”
“Gee, that fat kid will be thinner when he gets out,” Tubby heard Freeman Hunt say as his father rejoined the group.
“Ho! ho!” thought the lad, “‘that fat kid’ as you call him is on the outside, Master Hunt. And it’s a good thing he is, for the outside is where help will have to come from.”
The watchers concealed in the brush below saw a new figure join the group on the cliff summit, a man with a great, bushy, black beard and shifty black eyes.
“Mah goodness!” exclaimed Jumbo; “dat am de pussonage who peeked frough dem bushes las’ night. I thought I knowed him. Dat’s Black Bart, the sun-shiner.”
The party at the cliff summit turned and vanished. Apparently they had a camp up there from which they had observed every movement of the Boy Scout party. It was plain enough now, since Jumbo’s recognition, how they came to be there. Black Bart must have overheard the major discussing the plan the night before. By making a forced march by night the rascals had arrived ahead of the rightful searchers for the old buccaneer’s hoard.
“We’d better get back toward the boats before they take a notion to investigate,” said Tubby. “I don’t fancy sticking around here much longer.”
“Nor I,” said Hiram; “come on.”