CHAPTER XVI

NIGHT IN SWAMP HOLE

They listened intently. A faint breath of air was stirring and there was a whispering and rustling from the bushes above them, and for a space they heard nothing else. Then the sound of voices came, faintly, from the cabin. Pud placed the handle of his oar in Harmon’s hand.

‘I’m going to get out here,’ he said. ‘You take the boat back around the turn and keep hid. Stay there till I come. The launch will be headed upstream, and if I can get her going I’ll slow down and get you fellows aboard. Anyway, you stay here until I get back.’

‘Wha――what are you going to do?’ asked Tim nervously.

‘I’m going to swim down there and get aboard the launch. Then I’ll let her float away farther downstream. When she’s out of sound of the house I’ll get her going and come back up here for you.’

‘But you’ll have to pass the cabin,’ expostulated Tim, ‘and they’ll hear you coming and shoot at you! Why don’t we let the skiff float on past and wait for you below somewhere? Or why not wait till they’ve gone to sleep?’

‘They might not go to sleep,’ replied Pud in whispers. ‘It might be all right to go on past, but suppose some one came out and saw us? It would be all up then. They’d know we were after the launch and they’d watch it. Or they might get in and chase us and catch us.’

This last possibility silenced Tim effectually. He gave doubting approval to Pud’s plan, and the latter, while Harmon worked the boat slowly toward the turn, disrobed to his underclothes, an operation extremely simple and brief. Finally, with a last whispered injunction to wait right there, no matter what happened, Pud slipped soundlessly into the water.

It was surprisingly chill for a moment, but he stifled a gasp and let the current bear him away. Now and then he worked a foot or a hand, for his progress seemed to him aggravatingly slow. The fact is that he was just a little bit frightened, and when one is frightened the moments have a way of lengthening dreadfully. The skiff disappeared from his sight and the white shape of the launch drew closer. The cabin was hidden from him by the bank, but, as he floated onward, the sound of voices reached him now and then. He kept to the darker water near the margin and, as a result, once became momentarily snarled in a submerged branch. Then the bow of the launch appeared at arm’s length and he let himself along the white side until he could reach up and grasp the gunwale amidship. There he paused and listened, his heart beating hard.

The voices from the cabin came to him louder, but still as no more than hoarse rumblings too faint to identify as those of Cocker and Lank. Slowly and with difficulty, since he sought to make no noise, Pud drew himself from the water and, with an anxious look at the cabin, some fifteen paces distant, squirmed into the launch and dropped, wet and panting, out of sight. Presently he wormed forward, past the bundle of folded cots and tent that still lay against the engine casing, and groped for the line that was holding the launch to a stake driven in the top of the bank. He regretted then that he had not thought to bring his knife. The stake was ten feet from where he lay stretched on the bow planking, while to cast off at the launch meant losing a good thirty feet of manila rope. He tried pulling the launch’s nose closer to the stake, but he gained but a scant two feet before it grounded. There was nothing for it but to pull the rope through the brass-rimmed hole, work it loose at the cleat and go off without it. He raised his head and looked toward the cabin as his hands fumbled with the line, and as he looked a sudden glare of light shot toward him. The door had opened, voices were plainly distinguishable and, against the yellow light, framed in the doorway, were figures.

‘Well, I’ll get going,’ said a voice that Pud recognized as that of the tall Lank. There was a yawn, interrupted by a second voice, one strange to the listener.

‘You tella heem he not to go up da riv’,’ said the voice. ‘It is not safe, you tella heem.’

‘Yeah, I’ll look after that,’ answered Lank. ‘He knows he’s got to work down-river this time. Well――’

Pud, for the moment frozen with fright, now did the first thing that entered his head. He squirmed down, lifted the canvas of the tent and, the frame of a cot digging into his ribs, huddled closely, silently beneath it. His heart was beating a dozen times to the second and he thought regretfully of the safety of the dark water flowing alongside. But it was too late now, for he could hear the steps of Lank close at hand. Then the launch tipped and the man’s feet landed close to Pud’s head. A faint light, probably, Pud thought, from his or Tim’s electric torch, shone for an instant under the edge of the canvas. Then it disappeared and, behind him, Pud heard the wheel turned. Suddenly the engine started, shaking the boards against which the boy was lying, and Lank’s feet brushed the canvas as he passed to the bow. There was a whistled tune, broken by mutterings and the sound of feet scrambling from shore to boat, and the flap of a dropped rope. Then Lank went back to the engine and Pud felt the launch swinging as the current dragged it away from the bank. The propeller revolved, stopped, started again, the clutch grinding harshly in the silence. Then, the boat evidently headed downstream, the voyage began.

Lank, it seemed, was steering from the seat beside the engine, working the rudder with a hand on the wire rope where it passed him, a feat that Pud had once attempted with almost disastrous results. After a minute or two, though, he arose and came scuffling forward, and then it was that Pud’s heart, which had already threatened to cease functioning several times that evening, just plain stopped business! For the edge of the canvas scarcely a foot from his frightened eyes was lifted!

He heard Lank grunt with the effort of bending, and he gave himself up for lost. But in the next instant something heavy and bulky was forced against his chest, prodded further with a kick of the man’s foot, the canvas flap fell again and Pud’s heart, with a painful thump, decided to beat again!

After a moment of revulsion that left him faint, Pud gathered sufficient courage to ease his hands forward and feel inquiringly of the object reposing under his chin. It was a bundle about a foot square tied with stout twine. Pud’s curiosity ended, but not his concern. Presently, perhaps, Lank would come after the bundle, and if he did what was to prevent him from throwing back the canvas and exposing the doubled-up form of one Pud Pringle? Or he might in fumbling around in the darkness get hold of a bare foot; and Pud felt that in such an event Lank would be sufficiently curious to see what was attached to the foot! Pud stared venomously if unseeingly at the bundle. The only thing that occurred to him was to thrust it farther away until a portion of it showed beyond the canvas. So, perhaps, Lank would see it and not go fumbling around too much. Pud was glad to get it away from the immediate vicinity of his nose, for it had a strong and not too pleasant odor, an odor that aroused in Pud dim memories connected with unpleasant events. For want of a better occupation, and perhaps to keep his thoughts from apprehensive speculation as to the outcome of this adventure, Pud strove to connect that odor with the memories it evoked, and while the launch chugged steadily on down the stream, and Lank whistled plaintively and not unmelodiously from near by, he frowningly bent his mind to its task. And suddenly――Eureka!――he had it!

Memory lifted a curtain and Pud saw himself, with Tim close by, in the job-print room at the back of the _Courant_ office in Millville. It was extremely hot and the sun made golden squares on the old green shades that were pulled partly down at the open windows. Before him, and before Tim, was a pile of printed circulars, and between them were long white boxes into which they pushed envelopes containing the circulars that, with the aid of wooden rulers, they had first thrice folded. This was the price they had had to pay for the trip in the _Kismet_. The circulars, recently from the press, still smudged if you touched the print with your hand, and from them, nauseatingly strong in the hot room, came the odor of printer’s ink! And it was printer’s ink that Pud smelled now.

Again he felt of the package, lifted an end of it experimentally, and decided that here, too, were circulars, and, so deciding, lost further interest. Just so long as he didn’t have to fold the pesky things and thrust them into obdurate envelopes they meant nothing in his life. Nothing, at least, unless, searching for them, Lank found a fifteen-year-old boy, clad only in a cotton union-suit, instead!

Perhaps ten minutes had passed, perhaps twenty, when Pud realized that the launch was running more slowly. A light flickered past above the bank and faint sounds reached him; a dog barked far off, another answered from startlingly close; a rooster crowed in a tentative, half-hearted way; a man’s voice shouted from nearby; the discordant strains of a concertina grew louder. More lights peeked under the edge of the canvas, the launch’s engine stopped abruptly, the sound of laughter took its place amongst the medley of noise and there was a slight bump and a rasping sound as the launch sidled up to a landing. Pud’s heart began to do double-time again, he pushed the bundle farther into the open and made himself smaller than ever.

Lank was stepping ashore with the bow line now, and now he jumped back again, close to Pud’s place of concealment. Pud waited in an agony of suspense. The man didn’t pass on, nor did he fumble along the edge of the canvas. Finally, or so Pud’s straining ears told him, there was a sound that might have been ‘Humph!’ and the feet moved on past Pud’s head. Then the launch tilted a bit, steps sounded on a plank and Pud knew that he was once more alone!

He lay still several long moments and then, pushing the bundle softly out of his way, he slowly thrust his head forth and peered about him. There was enough light from the stars and from the cabins that clustered closely along both sides of the stream to show him that, save for himself, the launch was empty. He scrambled out from under the dusty folds of the tent and looked cautiously over the edge of the boat. It was a strange scene that met his eyes.

The launch was fast to a small landing that jutted a few feet beyond the bank. Straight back from it stood a building from whose wide-open doorway streamed the yellow light of several lamps hanging from the ceiling of the room into which Pud stared. The place was evidently both a store and a residence, for through a second door the end of a bed was visible, while along one side of the front room ran a counter at which a half-dozen men were lounging. Behind it shelves held a small amount of groceries: Pud could see the colored labels on cans and boxes. Much loud talk and laughter came from the little store. It might be, Pud reflected, that more things than groceries passed across that counter. He thought he could distinguish the tall, broad-shouldered Lank among the customers, but he was not certain.

Pud had no doubt about this place being Swamp Hole, and seen as he was viewing it, with the board and slab cabins and little shanty-boats dotting the banks of the creek, the light of candle or lamp falling from doorway or window, with a tall and somber pine pointing up to the starlit sky here and there like a black sentinel, it seemed indeed to deserve its evil reputation. Farther down the stream a fire was burning redly in front of a cabin and dark forms passed about it, throwing huge and grotesque shadows athwart the glare. At short intervals along each bank small wharves jutted over the black water and punts and skiffs were numerous. Unseen to Pud, two men discussed the launch from the black shadows of the farther bank.

‘’Tain’t nary boat I ever seen. Stranger in here, ’tis, Bud.’

‘Right nice-lookin’, too. Who you reckon run it in here? You see any one get off’n it?’

The concertina began a new tune and a woman’s voice, shrill and wailing, joined it. Some one in a near-by cabin beat protestingly on a tin pan. A thin, bent-shouldered, bearded man came along the path that followed the bank, paused a few yards distant to inspect the launch, and then went on toward the store, straight along the lane of mellow light that shone from doorway to wharf. ‘Where’d that there power-boat come from?’ he drawled as he reached the threshold. ‘I seen a boat mighty like that yesterday up on――’ The rest was lost to Pud.

The time for action had come. Already the stern of the launch was turning slowly out into the stream. Pud clambered up and loosed the line and scuttled back to the shadows of the boat. It seemed an age before the current stirred the launch, but at last it began to slip silently away from the tiny landing. Peering over the edge, Pud could see the top of the bank move slowly past him. The launch was floating almost broadside to the stream, but gradually it straightened out, its bow pointing down the creek. Too late, Pud reflected that he might almost as easily have taken to the water again and pushed the launch upstream until out of sight and then started the engine, in which case he would have got back to Tim and Harmon quickly enough. Now he would have to keep on down the creek, trusting to luck to find his way into Two-Pond Run.

But all that was for the future. Just now, crouching at the bow, listening with loudly beating heart for sounds that would announce that Lank had discovered his loss, Pud was concerned only with the present. Already the sluggish current had borne him a good fifty yards and the sounds from the store came to him subdued by distance. Other sounds took their place; low voices from doorsills, snatches of wavering song, a man’s voice raised in maudlin anger, the querulous wailing of a baby. He was nearing the outdoor fire now and the ruddy light was blotching the still water ahead. That the launch would pass unseen was too much to hope for, and he debated whether to remain concealed or to show himself at the bow. The question was settled for him.

‘Hey, Pap, look yander! A big boat!’ It was the shrill voice of a small boy.

‘Power-boat, ’tis,’ grunted the father. ‘Where’d it come from, you reckon, Cal?’

‘I d’know, Pap. Ain’t ary soul in it, be there?’

‘Don’t look like. Must have slipped its line, eh?’

‘Want I should fetch it?’

‘Naw, what for? Let them as owns it come arter it.’ The speaker chuckled maliciously. ‘They’ll be along soon enough, I reckon.’

The launch floated silently by and into the welcome darkness beyond the fire’s radiance. The sound of oars ahead brought Pud’s eyes above the bow. A small punt was creeping upstream, the man who was rowing unaware of the other craft. Pud turned the wheel quickly to avoid a collision, and the faint squeak of the ropes brought the rower’s head around sharply. A volley of oaths broke the silence as the two boats scraped past. Then from back up the creek came a loud shout.

‘Hey! Some one grab that launch! Launch adrift down-creek!’

‘Here she be! I’ll fetch her!’ The man in the punt, already a length astern, spun his small craft about and dug his oars. Pud stood up desperately.

‘You keep away!’ he called threateningly. ‘This is my boat!’

‘Hallo!’ The man in the punt evinced surprise and for a moment stopped rowing. Then, ‘Reckon you’re stealin’ her,’ he grunted. ‘Better come along back with her.’ The punt bumped into the stern of the launch and, armed with an oar, the occupant began to scramble aboard.

‘I’m not stealing her!’ protested Pud. ‘You keep off!’

He started back toward the stern. His foot found something that turned beneath it, almost upsetting him. Stooping, his hand closed on the boat-hook, no longer trailing astern but back in its former rôle of general nuisance. But it was no nuisance just now, for, holding it before him, Pud charged toward the enemy. The man, a squat form in the darkness, was steadying himself preparatory to jumping down from the stern planking. Perhaps if he had not been burdened with the oar he might have recovered his balance sooner, but as it was he was in no position to stand the thrust of Pud’s weapon. There was a grunt, a loud splash, the rattle of the falling oar against the punt and, for an instant, silence. Then the man’s head came up and, between puffings and gurgles, he pursued the vanishing launch with venomous oaths. A minute later Pud heard him scrambling over the side of the punt. A final raking fire of profanity followed, and then oars creaked against thole-pins again, the creaking diminishing momentarily, and Pud knew that he had won the action. Breathing hard, but exultant, he dropped the boat-hook and sprang to the engine. Up the stream the shouting continued, drawing nearer each second.