“It’s all right,” Nicky stated. “We won’t hold it against you. But you didn’t say what happened to your sloop.”
“They put two sailors into her and sailed her away down the coast,” Sam replied. “To tell somebody something about bringing up some cases or something like that. I couldn’t hear much. They talked about lots of things—Indians and sharks and—oh, lots!”
“But why don’t we row to the Libertad?” demanded Nicky.
As he spoke the reason became apparent. Jim, in the boat, handed up onto the deck to the white men the last bars of gold.
“Come aboard,” was presumably his order; the chums and Sam were too far away to hear. They did see sudden flashes, hear a subdued commotion, hear splashes in the water. Guns were being fired, and people were shouting.
Almost immediately, before the shots died down, in fact, they heard the roar of El Libertad’s motor, saw her swing to her anchor, and, as it lifted from the coral, turned in a wide sweep, while shots flashed their spurts of flame through the darkness from her stern.
Then she swung onto a Northerly course and disappeared swiftly beyond an island at the Northern side of the channel.
“They’ve shot those men who took our gold,” Nicky declared. “Sam, and Cliff, row there, quick! We ought to try to pick them up—maybe they’re badly hurt.” Sam and Tom dipped their oars with a will.
Cliff having donned his clothes, of course, before he took the oars as they rowed out from the treasure islet, took the tender’s light tiller from the floor where it lay while they navigated the shoal water, shipped it and its attached rudder, and steered so that the rowers could put more force into their strokes and thus cover the water more quickly.
They soon reached the spot, and saw several figures struggling with a third.