Dave stepped back.

“What’s the matter?” he whispered. “What do you see?”

“Ssh!” hissed Tom. “Look through the clearin’ there to the right!”

“I can’t see nothin’,” began Dave. “Yes I do; it’s a man!”

“Nick into the scrub here!” commanded Tom. “Quick! Lie down.”

The two lads crouched in the tangled growth.

“Ouch!” exclaimed Dave, as a lawyer vine caught him. “Me ear is tore off!”

“Shut up you howlin’ idiot,” murmured Tom, angrily. “You’ll get us found out afore you’re done.”

“What is it?” queried Dave, carefully hitching his lacerated ear from the persistent grip of the lawyer.

“How do I know?” queried Tom sotto voce. “I ain’t a clairvoyant; it might be a opposition pirate for all I know.”

“Tom,” asked Dave, after a pause, “do you think there is any pirates now—real pirates, I mean?”

[44]

“Of course,” replied Tom, “and if there ain’t there ought to be. We’re going to be pirates, anyhow!”

“But,” persisted Dave, “didn’t pirates used to get hung?”

“Sometimes,” returned the other boy, “when they wuz ketched; but they mostly got killed after they’d had an all right rippin’ round an’ plunderin’ an’ buryin’ great piles of sovereigns an’ bars of gold in caves on desert islands. Any pirate that thought anything of ’imself as a pirate would go down into the powder magazine when he found it was all up an’ fire ’is pistol into the powder, an’ blow ’imself up with ’is pirate crew.”

“Was the first mute blowed up too?” asked Dave, anxiously.

“Of course!” replied Tom, “if he wasn’t killed on the fore-’atch furst.”

“What’s the fore-’atch?”

“Why, the front part of the ship, Dave Gibson; you don’t know anything. I say, what is that cove doin’?”

“He’s buryin’ something,” replied Dave.

“Buryin’ somethin’!” murmured Tom, raising himself on his elbows to get a better view. “By gosh it must be treasure out of a plundered ship. It is too, a whole barrel of it! No, he ain’t buryin’ it; he’s just throwin’ bushes an’ leaves over it. By gosh!” he continued, breathlessly, “we’ve struck it rich.”

“How?” asked Dave. “How have we struck it?”

“Never mind,” replied Tom; “you leave that to me. You’ve got no more sense nor a coot!”

The man’s movements were certainly mysterious.[45] He had apparently selected the island for the concealment of something; that the cask which he was covering with leaves and branches contained doubloons Tom Pagdin was hardly justified in concluding in the circumstances.

After he had made his plant the stranger looked round the vicinity carefully, as if taking a mental note of the position, and went away noiselessly towards the upper end of the island.

The boys kept quiet for fully half an hour; then enjoining Dave to stay where he was, Tom crept out stealthily and followed in the direction the stranger had taken. Dave lay flattened out among the dry leaves and waited. His mate re-appeared at the edge of the clearing and beckoned him across.

“Who was it?” he asked, in a suppressed voice. “What’s in the cask?”

Tom was on his knees before the barrel smelling it.

“It’s whisky!” he said, disgustedly. “I thought it was gold out of a captured galleon!”

“Whisky!” ejaculated Dave.

“Yes; somebody’s runnin’ a still round here, an’ this is the plantin’ place. I bet ’arf-a-crown somebody else will come along to-night and take it off!”

“Where’ll they take it?”

“Down the river, I suppose, to some public house. If we put ’em away to the pleece they’d be fined a hundred quid, an’ their still took an’ broke up. We’d get a reward, too!”

“Why don’t we, then?”

“Because,” said Tom, emphatically, “we ain’t informers,[46] we’re pirates! If a poor cove is makin’ a drop of grog out of his maize on the quiet, let ’im. It ain’t no business of ours. Besides, we’d be putting ourselves away. An’, besides, if we did a thing like that we wouldn’t get no credit for it neither. They’re all in the same boat about here.”

“What’s became of the cove that hid it?” asked Dave.

“I followed his trail, all right,” replied Tom. “I never knowed about this track, either. They ain’t bin usin’ the island for a plant long, I reckon. The cove went off in a boat quiet. There’s a regular pathway wore where they been rollin’ in the casks; but it don’t take long to make a road like that.”

“He might come back?” said Dave.

“Not to-day, he won’t,” observed Tom Pagdin, sagaciously. “He just brings the stuff acrost ’ere an’ leaves it. Somebody else knows where to come, and they take it away at night. It’s a moral they don’t come in the daytime.”

“I’m as hungry as old Nick,” remarked Dave, rubbing his stomach.

“So’m I,” said Tom; “I’m as hungry as ole Nick’s mother. Let’s go an’ get a feed.”

They went back, and carried their swags in under the fig tree, and Tom, after due consideration, pronounced it safe to light a small fire to boil the billy, providing they didn’t use brushwood, because brushwood makes too much smoke, and providing, also, that they put the fire out as soon as the water was boiled.

So Dave gathered the wood, and Tom went down[47] and filled the billy, and they made tea and brought out some cold corned meat and bread, which Dave had abstracted from the paternal safe, the paternal safe being a flour-bag split at one end and fastened up with a strip of greenhide to exclude flies, with a piece of bark in the bottom to stand the plates on.

It seemed to both youths that it was the sweetest meal they had ever had in all their lives, and after it was through they lay on the ground feeling good and brave, and Tom unfolded a plan of campaign.

“We can’t stay here no longer than to-day,” he explained. “One thing, it’s too close to home, an’ another thing, we can’t make a camp, because these fellars that has the still would be sure to see it. We got to get right down the river to-night after those other coves come back with out boat. We got to get right down far as we can before daylight. There’s lots of islands in the river where we can make a headquarters camp, an’ if we don’t get an island we kin get in the bush on the mainland. There’s all sorts o’ bays an’ creeks an’ lagoons, an’ we’ll explore ’em all. We’ll go digging for buried treasure, an’ lookin’ fer gold, an’ we’ll have an all-right time. But, first of all, we got to organise things. You got to organise things if you want to make this piratin’ game pay.”

“How are we goin’ to do it?” queried Dave, who was developing a strong taste for pirating.

“Well,” said Tom, “I’ll look after the tucker. I’ll fossick for the grub an’ you’ll cook it.

“You got to learn to bake damper,” continued Tom, “and to bile fowls an’ fry eggs. That’s about the most[48] of the cookin’ there’s goin’ to be, for a while, anyway. I reckon if we get an island we’ll borry a couple of settin’ hens an’ two or three clutches of eggs, an’ raise chickens of our own.”

Meanwhile they went and turned over logs to get black crickets for bait. Then with the crickets in an empty tin, with a perforated lid, which formed part of Tom’s kit, they tried their luck for perch, and were rewarded.

As Dave was only a green hand, Tom showed him how to cook the perch by digging a hole and filling it with hot ashes, covering them in whole and unsealed. When the fish were cooked they “peeled” them, and took the insides out, and they went well. The pigeon had been duly plucked and roasted on a very small fire, because it was not safe to light a big fire on account of the smoke; and the two boys ate their meal with an additional relish—a relish which is known only to the true hunter, and they lay down and slept.

Dusk came down quickly, and our two juvenile adventurers awoke in the warm stillness of evening wondering where they were.

“By gosh!” exclaimed Tom Pagdin, sitting up, “it’s comin’ night an’ it smells like a storm.”

“We’ve slept too long,” remarked Dave, anxiously examining the small patch of red-looking sky visible through the trees. “We oughter set our watches.”

“It don’t matter for this time,” returned Tom, “because we ain’t likely to get too much sleep to-night. We got a lot of adventures to go through. I reckon our real adventures is only just beginnin’.”

[49]

“I’m as hungry as old Nick,” remarked Dave.

“So am I,” replied Tom. “We’ll have a feed of cold meat an’ bread an’ go.”

They refilled themselves, and then, before it was quite dark, rolled up their bundles and took them across to the edge of the island.

“Now,” said Tom, “we got to swim across and go back and plant in the scrub an’ watch for them fellars that are going to borry our boat to-night.”

The water was dark and felt colder. Both boys shivered at the brink. They had taken off their clothes and tied them carefully on their shoulders to keep dry; but when they got over the river their clothes were more or less wet, and they shivered again getting into them. Just as they were dressed the first flash of lightning lit the sky, bringing out the ice palaces and snow battlements in vivid detail.

“Hist!” exclaimed Tom. “Count!”

“One, two, three,”—he went up to sixty.

Then a low muffled sound of thunder and the leaves of the trees rustled at a passing breath of wind.

“It’s a long way off yet,” said the elder lad, “an’ it mightn’t come this way either. I ain’t frightened of thunder, are you?”

“No,” replied Dave, “thunder can’t do you no harm unless there’s lookin’ glasses about, but it’s gettin’ awful dark.”

“Come on,” cried Tom, “we’ll go up an’ hide in the lantana. We won’t get wet there, even if it does rain.”

By the time they reached the creek where the boat was moored it was pitch dark, excepting now and then[50] when a great flash of lightning lit up the whole jungle in weird bluish light, and made everything visible for a short second, even to the water shadows of overhanging trees.

Tom and Dave crept in under the thicket and hid waiting.

It seemed hours and hours.

The lightning flashes became more frequent and wicked; the thunder grew louder.

“They won’t come to-night, I don’t think,” whispered Tom in Dave’s ear. “We’ll wait a while longer an’ then cut across to old Dobie’s barn an’ shelter till the storm goes over.”

But even as he spoke, in the lull between two thunder growls, they heard a low whistle, followed by the noise of someone forcing a way through the scrub.

A voice, which sounded hollow and unearthly in the dense gloom, called out:

“This way; keep to your right a bit.”

“God-dam!” came the response, followed by some choice curses in French.

“Keep to your right,” repeated the first voice. “The boat’s just about here.”

“Ze devil,” replied the other voice, “I am torn wis my clothes! Oui and wis also ze arm an’ ze leg!”

“You’re all right now,” said the first man speaking from the water side. “Hold on till it lightens again. I can’t see the log, it’s that dark.”

The foreigner stumbled down alongside his companion, copiously swearing.

It seemed to the two boys that the sound of that[51] unknown tongue added a further mysterious terror to the drama which was enacting.

Tom was clutching Dave feverishly by the arm, and Dave was trying hard not to breathe. A great flash of lightning suddenly lit up the whole scene, and they saw the faces of both men distinctly. Then before the thunder came they heard one announce to the other that the boat was all right.

Tom and Dave, listening and watching from their cover, heard the sound of feet on the thwarts, heard the shipping of oars in the rowlocks, and the murmur of voices dying out in the stream as the paddles dipped further and further away in the night.

“They’ve gone!” said Tom, in a hollow whisper.

“My leg’s asleep,” remarked Dave, sitting up and rubbing it.

“So’s both mine,” observed Tom, following suit. “I’ve got cramps all over me.”

“What are we going to do now?” asked Dave. “The storm’s comin’!”

“Can’t be helped,” exclaimed Tom. “When you’re out piratin’ you’ve got to put up with storms. Pirates ain’t supposed to take any notice of ’em. We’ll wait till them two fellars come back, storm or no storm.”