“All right, sir,” said Nicky in proper nautical deference. “Then, when we get into place at the inside end of the Shark, shall we signal?”
“No,” replied the lieutenant. “But if you see that there is no boat in the Shark River at all, send up a rocket, wait a minute and then send up a second. Watch for the same signal in reply; if you do not get it, repeat with your other two rockets. If the boat is there, make no signal unless the men are escaping. In that case, send up three rockets in quick succession, as fast as you can.”
“How shall we be able to set them up?” asked Mr. Neale.
“You will find clumps of tall saw-grass almost everywhere; it is from four to eight or nine feet high, and you must be careful not to let its sharp edges gash you, but it is strong enough to support a rocket in an upright position while you set and light it.”
Hasty repetition by each member of the party of plans in which they must participate, the arranging of signals from the cutter, and of others from the Senorita, completed the arrangements.
Cliff, with Jim, Sam and the boatswain, Jack, busily getting the recovered arsenal into good shape again, saw the cutter disappear into the gloom.
The run up the channel into the Harney River was without event, and since Lieutenant Sommerlee had cruised in those waters, making a chart for the U. S. Geodetic Survey, he knew the safest way, and finally, with tense, thrilling nerves, Nicky dropped into the light dory with Mr. Neale and a sailor called Brownie because his last name was Brown and he was a short, fat, jolly little man. With whispered directions from the cutter’s commander, they pushed off and with Mr. Neale at the oars and Nicky in the stem, Brownie being at the bow to give the course up the rapidly narrowing stream, they slipped into a darkness that seemed to close down about them like a curtain.
By following the lieutenant’s directions they made steady progress as far as their boat dared go in the dark, feeling-out the channel with the tip of their flashlight under water so they could see the coral bottom of the river. Finally they stopped, tied to a heavy root and got such sleep as they could, curled up on their hard seats.
At about four-thirty, before dawn cut through the heavy tangle of trees, intertwined overhead, Brownie awoke his companions and they ate their hardtack, and picked the bones of a chicken from the cutter’s recent purchases, cooked the night before on the Senorita; this they washed down with cocoa from tin cups, cocoa hot out of a thermos bottle.
The hot liquid helped to drive away the night chill, and Nicky declared that he felt fit for anything.