“Let us go—if they don’t—we’ve got him——”
“Sort of tight corner,” Nicky said to himself, and with all the cunning at his command he kept his face impassive to the chance sight of a passing sailor while, under him, cramped as they were, he tugged fiercely at the hurriedly made knots, his jaws aching from the wedge of soiled linen crushed between his teeth, his body bent toward one end—liberation!
CHAPTER XXVIII
TWO IN THE TOILS
Early in the morning Tom, on board the cutter with Mr. Sommerlee, his engineer and two of the patrol, decided that a brisk bit of exercise would be just about the finest appetizer he could desire.
There had been no signs at all of any excitement, although Tom had taken his turn with the others at watch while the cutter lay anchored a stone’s throw beyond the mouth of the Shark River.
While Lieutenant Sommerlee got the dry-alcohol stove lit up for their hot cocoa and fried eggs, Tom saw no harm in a brisk swim to the mouth of the river and back. Accordingly, while the sun was giving Nicky his first view of the ’Glades, Tom lowered himself from the cutter’s stern, not caring to risk a dive in the poor light, and struck out gaily for shore, wondering, as he swam, how Nicky’s party was getting along, back there beyond the heavy growth that fringed the inner channels.
Crawling out on a root, Tom slapped the early morning chill of the water out of his body, and rested before returning to the cutter.
He wondered, as he lolled on the roots, whether El Libertad was actually hiding in the river or not. He half wished that he had asked Mr. Sommerlee for permission to swim up the river a ways; it might help them to discover the truth; they had no small boat and would not wish to risk having the cutter discovered before the landing party had its position and gave a signal.
“I think I’ll swim up the river a few strokes,” Tom decided. “Nicky swam a ways in Crocodile Creek and we discovered the liquor stores; it won’t hurt me to do a hundred yards and back.”
Accordingly he slipped down into the limpid stream, and against a slight current that did not tire him at all, he pulled his lithe, muscular young body along steadily. But when he lifted his head to glance ahead he saw nothing; nothing, that is, but water and low-clustered tree roots on the banks, tall grass, and leaves meeting in a heavy tangle along the banks and, far beyond him, meeting overhead. The Libertad was too close in, behind a tangle of weed and grass, to be visible from his low point of vantage in the water.