CHAPTER VII.

INTO THE EVERGLADES.

We rowed till daylight and then hauled the boat out of the water and hid her in the bushes. We slept the greater part of the day and made a splendid supper of fish that we caught in the stream and cooked over a fire that we built in a hollow a long way back from the river, where there was little risk that the smoke would be seen by the pirates, should they attempt to follow us.

That night we slept under the boat, covering ourselves with the sail, and in the morning, as we were now sure that the pirates were not in chase of us, we started by daylight to find the lake of which Bill had spoken.

We were four days on the river without meeting with any adventures. We rowed by day, slept by night, and lived on broiled fish. Tom’s arm healed up so that he could do his share of the work, and we were as happy as if we had been on a pleasure cruise.

Old Bill seemed a little uneasy at first and we found out that it was on account of his clothes. He had become so used to wearing nothing but a few rags twisted around his waist, that clothes made him feel uncomfortable. So he said that if we didn’t object he would put on his rags again and keep his clothes to wear when we should reach a settlement. Of course Tom and I did not care, so the old man made himself comfortable once more.

We found that he knew all about the woods—a thing hardly to be looked for in a sailor; but from some hints that he dropped I felt sure that at some time he had been marooned in a place where there was a great forest, and as he would not speak of it, he had probably done something to deserve marooning which he considered disgraceful. However that may be he could tell the points of the compass by studying the bark and branches of trees and could make his way swiftly and silently through thick brush that I could not have passed through without making almost as much noise as an elephant. He knew precisely where to look for fish, and when we went ashore he would look carefully for signs of some sort and would then tell us that there were no savages about. Once however he told us that ten or twelve Indians had crossed the river two days before. How he knew this I have no idea, but I am sure he was right.

On the fifth day we came to a lake so large that in some places we could not see the opposite shore. The lake was shallow, and though there was not much breeze, there was a sea that constantly broke, and that would have made us very wet had we not kept the boat’s head to it. On the beach, near the entrance to the river up which we had come, we saw four great alligators lying asleep, huge ugly beasts, smelling strongly of musk, and, doubtless, ready to drown us had they awakened and found us within their reach.

The breeze was blowing from the west, and we had to sail down or up the lake—whichever way may be called down or up—toward the south. But near the shore the sea was breaking, and we could not present the side of the boat to it without getting a great deal of water into her, so we rowed out into deeper water before we hoisted sail.

We ran down the lake under full sail, which was rather more than the boat should have carried in such a breeze. Bill stood at the steering oar, and Tom and I sat up to windward, and got our backs well wet with the spray. We sailed very fast, keeping about a quarter of a mile from the shore, except in places where the shallowness of the water compelled us to keep further out.

“Young masters,” said the old man, “do you want to be rich—very rich: richer than Blackbeard ever was?”

“If we could be rich honestly,” said I, “of course we should like it. Who wouldn’t?”

“Then, unless the Injuns find us, we’ll be worth thousands of guineas before the sun goes down to-night.”

“We look like it, don’t we?” said Tom. “Are the guineas in your pocket, Bill, or are they lying on the shore waiting for us to stop and pick them up?”

“They’re ashore, not far from here, young master; and they’ve been waiting many a long year for you and Master Jack and me.”

I wondered if the old man was crazy, but presently he explained what he meant.

“About seven years ago I came here with a captain who knew just where a big chest full of gold was buried. I don’t know who buried it or how the captain knew about it, but he wasn’t the man who buried it.

“As I was telling you, there’s another river to the south’ard of us that is an outlet of this lake. The captain and me and three men pulled up this river and come to where the chest was buried. He had the bearin’s of it on a piece of paper, and I remember them as if it was yesterday. You start from a big tree, with a cross cut on it, and measure twenty-one paces towards a clump of three trees, steerin’ for the middle one of the three. Then you dig, and right there under your feet is the chest.”

“But how can it be there now if you found it seven years ago?” asked I.

“Because, you see, we weren’t allowed to take it away. We had just marked the spot, and was goin’ to dig when a lot of Injuns opened fire on us. We couldn’t see but one or two of them, for they kept hid behind the trees, but there must have been twenty or thirty of them. They killed the captain and two of the men, and wounded another one before we could get ready to fight them. The wounded man and me made a rush for the boat and shoved off. There was a good breeze blowin’, just as there is now, and we made sail in her and stood up the lake. We didn’t dare to come back, but luckily we found Blackbeard’s river, and got down to the open sea again. The man that was with me died while we were on the river, and when I was picked up by a coaster I never said nothing about the treasure, and let the coaster’s crew believe I’d been shipwrecked. There ain’t a livin’ soul that knows about that chest except us, and if we’ve any luck we’ll have it aboard this boat to-night.”

This story did not seem very improbable, for pirates often buried their treasure in out-of-the-way places. There could be no doubt that the treasure of which Bill spoke had been buried by pirates, and of course they had come by it through robbery and murder, but unless we could find the real owners of it, which seemed impossible, I could see no good reason why we should not keep it if we could find it. For my part I believed Bill’s story, and already looked on myself as rich; but Tom said that he didn’t believe that any chest had ever been buried near the lake, and that if it had the Indians had found it long ago.

We reached the end of the lake after a long sail, and entered a sort of river or long narrow bay flanked by low islands, with smaller channels opening between them.

“This is what sailors calls the Everglades,” said Bill. “There’s hundreds of miles of islands and channels here, clean down to the lower end of Florida. And there’s wild beasts and snakes and Injuns and fever. I always expected to come back here for that chest, but I don’t like the place, and I hope I’ll never have to see it again.”

We sailed on for a mile or two further, the wind hauling further aft all the time, and then Bill took in the sail, and we got out the oars, Bill having muffled them with rags so that they should make no noise in the rowlocks. Having used up his rags in this way he was obliged to put on his shirt and trousers, which pleased me, for he looked like such a frightful savage when half-naked.

He told us to talk only in a whisper, and to keep near the left shore so that the trees would partly hide us. He pulled the stroke-oar this time, for he had to steer the boat himself, as Tom did not know the channel, and while he rowed he kept a sharp lookout all about us. He had both the guns lying in the bottom of the boat where he could lay his hand on them, but I think he put them there mainly to keep them out of our reach, so that we could not fire them incautiously, for he never wanted to fight with Indians or pirates if he could escape without fighting.

By four o’clock we reached an island where we stopped rowing, and Bill steered the boat into a little cove so completely surrounded with bushes that a savage might have stood within a yard of the boat without seeing it. Then we went ashore and searched for Bill’s landmarks.

The big tree was there, and Bill showed me something that might have been a cross cut in the bark, though it was now hardly visible because of the growth of the bark. Then he showed me three trees standing close together about fifty yards from the tree with a cross. Between these two landmarks the island was quite clear of trees and large bushes, so that it was easy to measure off twenty-one paces.

“Now,” said Bill, after we had made the measurement, “right under us lies our fortin’. We’ll share and share alike, young masters, won’t we?”

“Certainly we will,” I replied.

“Better give Bill a good half of the lot,” said Tom. “That is, if there is any money there, which I will believe when I see it. It’s more Bill’s than ours, by rights.”

“No, no,” said the old man. “You took me out of the cave and I took you here. So share and share alike’s the right thing. But don’t let’s waste any more time, but let’s dig this minute.”

“All right,” said Tom, “but what are you going to dig with?”

We had not thought of this before, but we had absolutely nothing to dig with except a hatchet; so we saw that before we could do anything we must cut some sharp sticks to use as spades. It was not easy to find any sticks which we could use for this purpose, since we did not want to cut down and trim a whole tree to make one stick.

We wandered some distance from the boat while we were searching for our sticks, and at last we saw, lying in a heap on the ground, just the sticks we wanted. But Bill was not at all pleased to see them.

“Don’t touch ’em,” he whispered to me. “They belong to the Injuns, and there must be a village close to us. If they catch sight of us they’ll scalp us, sure.”

In fact there was a narrow path leading from the pile of sticks into the forest, and Bill proposed that we should follow it and see if there were any Indians in the neighborhood.

“You see,” said he, “the path hasn’t been used lately, for the new grass is growing in it. That means either that the Injuns don’t come this way very often, or else they used to have a village here last winter and have gone somewhere else this summer. Any way, the best thing for us to do is to find out just how things are before we go to diggin’ and get fired on as I was the other time.”

We followed the path as silently as we could. We dropped on all-fours when the bushes were so low that our heads would show above them; we walked on tiptoe the rest of the way. After walking nearly half a mile we came to a large open place where there was every sign that there had once been an Indian village, but which was now entirely deserted. Naturally we were greatly relieved, and ventured to talk in our natural voices, being still careful, however, not to make any unnecessary noise.

“They’re gone, that’s certain,” exclaimed Bill, “and now, perhaps, we can dig without being interfered with. We’ll go back, now, and get our sticks and go to work.”

We sharpened three good-sized sticks, and when we had reached the place where the treasure was buried Bill once more paced off twenty-one paces and we began to dig.

It was slow work, for while we could break up the earth with the sticks, we had to stop every little while and scoop the loose dirt up in our hands. As we could not be quite sure that Bill’s paces were the same length as those of the man who buried the treasures, we dug a long hole—say six feet long by eighteen inches wide—so as to allow for any reasonable difference in measurement. By and by my stick broke off so many times that it was useless, and both Tom and Bill’s sticks were worn so dull that they needed to be sharpened. By this time we had made our hole not more than a foot deep and were beginning to get very tired.

“How deep must we dig, Bill?” said I.

“I can’t rightly say. As a general rule, when a man buries a chest in the sand he buries it about six feet deep, and I suppose this chest lies about that deep.”

“Then we must sharpen up our sticks before we work any more,” said Tom. “And, come to think of it, we left the hatchet by the wood-pile, and I’ll go back and get it.” “You won’t go alone,” said I. “We must not run the risk of being separated.”

So we all walked back to the pile of sticks, and I selected a new one, and we sharpened all three with the hatchet that Tom had carelessly left on the grass.

“We’ll get on faster if we make something like a real spade,” said Bill. “I don’t believe there’s any Injuns about here, and if there are we’ve got to take the risk of their hearin’ us. I’m goin’ to chop down that there young tree yonder and make a spade while you take a rest.”

Tom and I sat down on the grass and watched the old man at his work. He chopped away as if he had forgotten all about the Indians, and made noise enough to have been heard half a mile away.

In the course of half an hour Bill had finished his spade.

“Now,” said he, “you may think I’ve wasted time with this, but you’ll find we’ll get the chest out sooner than we would if we’d kept at work with nothing but sticks.”

Bill put his spade on his shoulder and Tom and I rose up ready to follow him. Tom had just stooped to pick up the hatchet, which Bill had left for him to carry, when six savages armed with guns stepped suddenly out from behind the bushes. Two of them seized Bill’s arms; the rest stood quietly by looking at Tom and me and ready to shoot us down if we made the least attempt to escape.