After that, Sam explained, his conscience bothered him, but he decided that the boys must be all right, and so held on his course toward Jamaica. But during the late afternoon clouds gathered, wind came up, rain squalls blew over and his work was cut out for him.
“I judged it was a ‘judgment’ on me from On High,” Sam declared. “I had more’n I could do, handling the sails to get them down, and all I could do I couldn’t get them reefed quick enough——”
“And you lost your boat?” broke in Nicky.
“No, sar,” Sam replied. “Wait—let me tell you. I had to run before the wind and when daylight came and the wind dropped I was so wore out with a sight at the tiller that I just fell down and slept. I let the Treasure Belle drift.”
When he had awakened, he went on, he did not know where he was, but from the direction in which the wind had blown, he guessed that he must be well into the Gulf of Mexico. He trimmed his sails and with the old, heavy-duty engine for a kicker, he set a course Eastward. It brought him, in time, within sight of what he discovered to be the lower end of the Ten Thousand Island archipelago, almost opposite to the wrecked Senorita.
“I saw somebody making a signal with a flag, and the flag at the masthead was upside down—a sign of distress,” Sam pursued his story, “I ran close in and found out that the Senorita was a wreck.”
“We were on it when it happened—but we told you. Go on,” said Tom. Sam finished quickly.
“There was a colored cook, a Spaniard, a man named Tew, and some sailors and the engineer,” Sam concluded. “They offered me money to take them aboard the Treasure Belle. I did, but instead of going back around Cape Sable, they took me and tied me up and threw me in the little cabin. They talked about capturing a boat or something and the first thing I knew, they had passed the Libertad, here, and went on beyond during the night. That was at night—last night. They hauled the Treasure Belle out of sight between two islands, a little North of here. There they laid quiet all today. One man swam off from my sloop and came back and they all talked. Towards evening they started the engine, came down, hauled alongside and got on board the Libertad. They had untied me and told me to swim onto one of the islands and stay—or starve, for all they cared. Then they held guns on me until I swam to the Key. They said if I warned anybody I saw, they’d pepper me full of lead. So I hid, and when I saw two white men and a Negro rowing towards Libertad, I didn’t dare to say anything. But nothing happened to them, and when I saw your boat I guessed it was safe to hail, because the men on the Libertad must be hiding and couldn’t hurt me. And so I found you.”
“And I’m glad of it,” said Tom.
“I’m right sorry sars, for what I done, and I’ll try to make it up to you,” Sam said.