"Do you know that man who was beating you?" asked Matt, again, determined if possible to get a little information about Whistler.
"Oui, I know heem!" answered the woman, with a spitting snarl. "One time he work on ze sugar plantation near ze bayou, and he come many time to see Yamousa and have her tell him ze t'ings he do not know. He come now from ze Bahamas and ask about ze iron chest, and where zis Townsend take heem. But Yamousa, she no tell. For why Yamousa no tell, eh? Well, she see zat Whistler haf ze bad heart. Whistler try to beat her, make her tell; zen ze American boys come and drive heem away. How you get here, eh?"
"We came in an air ship," Matt answered.
"Sacre tonnere! I know zat you come—I seen him in ze smoke."
Yamousa had said things which had aroused the intense curiosity of the two boys. Whistler had tried to force her into telling him the whereabouts of an "iron chest." That iron chest had been found in a sea cavern of an uninhabited island among the Bahamas, had been taken aboard Townsend's submarine, and had been in the submarine when Matt and his chums turned the boat over to her owner on the Florida coast. Townsend had taken the chest to New Orleans, and Jurgens and Whistler were eager to recover it.
What the chest contained, no one knew. A man who called himself simply the "Man from Cape Town" had given Townsend a chart and secured his promise to find the chest, carry it to New Orleans, and open it in the presence of a woman whom the Cape Town man claimed was his daughter. These two were then to divide the contents between them.
The fact that Whistler, and presumably Jurgens, as well, still had designs on the chest, was surprising information for Matt and Dick. The three boys were proceeding to New Orleans in the Hawk, in response to a request from Townsend; and it might easily chance that the business which had led Townsend to call Motor Matt and his friends to New Orleans was to cross the evil designs of Jurgens and Whistler.
"Do you know anything about that iron chest, Yamousa?" inquired Matt.
"Not now, but I find heem out," replied the old woman. "By gar, I find out anyt'ing zat ees wanted to be known."
"You say you knew that we were coming?"