“And when he found out that Mort might be in Porto Bello, he deserted us,” stated Cliff. “The mean, contemptible——”
“Names won’t help,” Bill suggested. “What we want is——”
“Action!” cried Nicky, leaping to his feet, upsetting his camp chair.
“Action is the word!” Bill conceded. “Henry Morgan got here while you folks on the cruiser came up-river to rescue us. Now he’s been here, probably convinced Mort that they could do more together than alone—and——”
“Went to the San Blas Indians!” cried Tom. “We’ve got to hurry and get there, too, before he can locate my sister.”
“Wait,” suggested Mr. Gray. “How do we know that he and Mort Beecher have not gone back to Mexico to secure the hidden money?”
“Even so, we’d not care about that; we must get to the San Blas islands,” Tom cried. “We must find out about Margery.”
To that they agreed, and with Jack as a passenger, the cruiser wasted no time in clearing the port and turning her nose toward the archipelago.
CHAPTER XVII
A COLD RECEPTION
The San Blas Indians live on islands of the archipelago which guards the coast close to the line between Columbia and Panama. Most of the islands are quite small and are occupied, in some cases, by no more than three families; in others by more, and on the largest of the islands there is a city, close-packed huts crowding each other with very little free space. On this island, really the capital, the Indians live in goodly numbers, getting their food and doing much of their work by going to the mainland shore in canoes.