Read Ebook: Tutankhamen and the Discovery of His Tomb by the Late Earl of Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter by Smith Grafton Elliot

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 501 lines and 33512 words, and 11 pages

"You see," Vic's father continued, "she is left alone here so much, while I am away sponging and fishing, that I had to teach her to take care of herself. But I don't want her to be playing her pranks on you just because you live in a city and ain't used to girls who are good sailors and good rifle-shots."

Vic looked very meek while her father was talking, but Will saw that she was ready to laugh at any minute. When he went into the house to change his clothes he was almost ready to admit that his trip to the Keys was a dismal failure. That a crack football-player, an expert bicycler, a leader in all the sports in a big school in the greatest city in the country, should be outdone in everything by a little country girl who looked as meek as a lamb, and be the butt of her jokes, was enough to make him feel uncomfortable. Two days after Will's gallant rescue of his cousin from no danger at all, he and Vic were left alone. Their fathers had sailed for Cuba in the schooner, with eighty men and hundreds of cases of ammunition. If all went well, they would be back from Cuba the following night. But if all did not go well? The cousins knew that any slight mishap might bring trouble into both families, and they were unusually quiet.

At nine o'clock in the morning Will went out on the piazza, and the white appearance of the water surprised him. So did the wind, coming in a steady sweep from the northward, cooling the air, and churning the Florida Strait into foam. Vic soon joined him, looking anxiously from water to sky and sky to water, and shook her head.

An hour later he found her pacing the piazza, looking very much troubled. The wind had increased, and the water was wild and furious.

"It is a norther," she said, "and a bad one. I don't see why it had to come to-day."

"It is a fair wind to carry them to Cuba," Will suggested.

"It is just the wind to drive them on the rocks and wreck them," Vic retorted. "They will certainly try to land to-night, and they have only one little boat. That would be nothing among all those men."

She took two or three more turns up and down, and then stopped.

"I am going to cross the straits in my sharpie, Will," she said. "If anything happens to them the sharpie may be of great assistance. It is the best little sea-boat I know of."

"To cross to Cuba, you mean?" Will asked, without showing any great surprise.

"Yes," she answered. "It is only eighty miles, and I can make it before dark. I have made longer voyages than that."

"It will be a nice little sail," Will laughed. "If you happen to meet a Spanish cruiser, you might capture her and bring her home."

He was on his guard for another practical joke, and did not intend to be caught. But Vic walked up to him and seized his arm with a very earnest grip.

"Don't think I am trying to play another trick on you, Will," she said, "for I am not. You don't know what danger this storm puts both our fathers in. I may be able to help them, and I am going to try."

Her earnest manner left no doubt that she meant what she said, and Will became serious.

"I don't know whether a small boat can live in that sea," he said, "but if you start for Cuba, I am going with you."

Vic was not prepared for such an answer as this; but she had known Will only for a few days. Any of his schoolmates could have told her that where there was real danger to be faced he would be at the front. She protested against his going, for she knew the peril of such a trip in so small a boat; but Will was firm as a rock, and even while she urged him to stay behind he waded out to the sharpie and began to make it ready.

"If your father is in danger," he said, "so is mine. You know I am going if you go, so what's the use of talking?"

That eighty-mile sail across the Florida Strait in a raging storm is one of the things that Will cannot be induced to talk much about. It is a sort of nightmare to him. There was not only the physical danger, which was serious enough, but there was the chance that their fathers might land safely, and then blame them severely for undertaking such a voyage.

Vic had put a jug of water and a box of biscuits under the stern seat, and she took the tiller as a matter of course. Will was kept busy baling out the water, which came over the sides in a fury of spray. But Vic knew that that spray was all in their favor. The force of the wind was so great that it kept the sea down by sweeping off the crests of waves, though it made an appalling smother of foam.

If a boy can sit with his heart in his throat for nearly nine hours at a stretch, Will Hall did it that day. In a few hours the spray made crusts of salt upon both their faces, and in the furious gale talking was almost impossible. But through it all Vic kept the little sharpie headed due south, for she knew that the schooner would try to land just to the eastward of Cardenas.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, with the mountains of Cuba looming up bold before them, they passed a broken mast floating on the water, weighted with torn and knotted rigging. They could not go near enough to make sure whether it was part of the schooner or not. But it looked serious.

Two hours later they were in behind the reefs, and then the doubt was settled. All around them, in the comparatively smooth water, floated wreckage from some vessel that had gone to pieces, and the fragments of white-painted planks told the melancholy story.

"We must lie alongshore till dark," Will declared, "and then make a search, for they may be in hiding. I still have hopes that they may have escaped from the schooner. Then the next thing will be to escape from the Spaniards, and there we can help them with the sharpie."

Somehow it was Will who was in command now of the relief expedition. On the water Vic was confident of herself; but when the danger was from the Spanish coast-guard, she looked naturally to Will for directions.

About eight o'clock the darkness came rapidly and they started inland to search for tidings, leaving the sharpie hidden among the bushes on the shore of a little inlet. It was a desolate part of the coast, and so far they had not seen a living person. Will picked up a stout piece of driftwood for a club.

"If there is a house anywhere in the neighborhood, we must find it," he said. "The people will know whether any one was saved from the wreck. They will most likely be Cubans, and therefore friends. Keep your eyes and ears open, Vic, for we must dodge the Spaniards."

Hardly anything could have been more hopeless than such a search made by a boy and girl who knew nothing of the country, nothing of the language, but groped their way in pitch darkness through a dense forest. But they were Americans, and both knew that the sharpie might mean escape from death for their fathers, if their fathers were not already drowned. Presently they discovered a path and followed it, tripping over roots and rocks, stumbling, scratching their faces with thorns.

"Oh, Will!" Vic exclaimed, after a collision with a sharp cactus. "I can't go any further. I don't know what to do!" And she began to cry.

"Don't think of yourself at all, Vic," Will urged. "I can take care of you. Maybe your father is hiding in these very woods, and our boat may save him. We can't go back and desert them. We must push on and find somebody, even if it is a Spanish soldier. Hist!"

The prospect of finding a Spanish soldier was nearer than he thought, for the words were hardly out of his mouth before they heard the sound of men tramping through the bushes.

As they stood and listened the sounds grew nearer--sounds of many feet, and words of command in Spanish.

"Come away from the path!" Will whispered, and seizing Vic's arm, he drew her into the underbrush, and on hands and knees they crawled away from the danger.

In a moment more the soldiers passed; thousands of them, they thought, by the sound, but in reality something less than a hundred. When Will and his cousin resumed their feet they could not find the path. To add to their troubles, they were lost in the Cuban forest.

How long they struggled through the sharp bushes they did not know till afterward; but when they stopped it was because a stone wall stood in their way--the stone wall of a small cabin. Will felt his way along the wall till he found the door, but it was shut and locked. He rapped, but there was no response.

"I am afraid it is deserted," he said; "but maybe we can get in to wait for daylight."

Again he rapped at the door, and softly called: "Hello! Let us in! We are Americans and friends."

Suddenly the door opened, and a familiar voice answered. "Will Hall, how do you come to be here?"

"What's that?" said another voice inside; and Will and Vic needed no further telling that their fathers were found.

In another minute they were inside the dark cabin, and the door was barred.

"Where is your boat?" both the men asked, almost in the same breath.

"Down by the shore," Will answered, "hidden in the bushes."

"Then you have pulled us out of a tough scrape," said Vic's father. "Twice we have narrowly escaped capture, and we expected to be taken before daylight."

After the wreck of the schooner they and all the men had reached shore safely, and the men had gone on into the mountains. But the small boat was stove, and the two Americans were in a trap. They had found the cabin, and hidden there from the Spanish guard.

Vic leaned heavily upon her father when they started for the boat; and before they reached the shore he and Will were carrying her, for her strength was gone.

"No wonder she is used up," said Will, as the boat beat out to the eastward, tacking tediously toward the American coast; "no wonder, after all she has been through. But how she kept up till we found you! She is the bravest girl in Florida, Uncle David. Our coming after you was all her doing."

Whatever the others said about Will's share in the rescue, it was enough to warrant him in saying, as he does when the boys begin to talk about the Cuban war: "Yes, I've had a little hand in that thing myself. So has my Cousin Vic."

HOW MAGIC IS MADE.

BY HENRY HATTON.

Two water-bottles, or carafes, the kind with large round bottoms and wide necks, are used. Concealed in his right hand this man has a red silk handkerchief folded into small compass. One of the carafes he proceeds to wrap in a large handkerchief, holding it mouth downward for this purpose, and it is while so wrapping it that he pops the concealed handkerchief into the mouth of the bottle, which he stands, covered, on the table. So much for getting the handkerchief in.

Running up his right sleeve is a fine strong cord; this goes across his back and out of the left arm hole of his vest, and ends in a loop which reaches nearly to his waist. At the end of the cord by the right hand is a piece of fine black sewing-silk, which is fastened into the eye of a strong, short needle, and this needle is bent into the form of a double-jointed hook, as shown in Fig. 1. In this shape it will not catch in the sleeve.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet