The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island Part 13

"Where are you, Jack?" he shouted.

"All right!" cried Jack himself, rising just alongside the boat and holding on to the gunwale with one hand.

"I'll finish that demon before he can do any more mischief!" hissed d.i.c.k.

It was Jack falling into the water that had caused the plunge he had heard and not the return of the octopus to its element.

Now, taking quick but careful aim, Percival fired half a dozen shots from the repeating rifle he had seized and with deadly effect.

The revolver shots had wounded the octopus, but not fatally, and he might at any moment plunge into the water and seize Jack.

The heavier caliber weapon did the work.

As Jack climbed into the boat there was a great plunge into the water which caused the light craft to rock again and the spray to fly.

"That settles him!" gasped Percival, and then he dropped his weapon and drew Jack into the boat, where he promptly sank limp and helpless under the thwarts, all his strength having seemingly left him.

"All right, Jack?" asked Percival.

"Yes, but get away," answered Jack feebly.

Percival was not slow to obey the injunction.

Seizing the oars, he quickly backed water and then turned the head of the boat toward the entrance of the cave, whence he shortly saw the light streaming in as he pulled a quick, powerful stroke.

"I'm glad that's over!" he said with a sigh of deep relief as he neared the opening. "No more exploring queer places like this again!"

When he was outside the cave he rested on his oars and said:

"You are all right again, Jack?"

"Yes," said Jack, getting up and seating himself on a thwart, "but I don't want another such an experience. I feel as if all the blood had been drawn out of me by that horrible thing in there."

Out in the bright sunlight, away from the gruesome cave and its dreadful tenant, Jack seemed to recover his spirits quickly, however, and he presently took one of the oars and then another, and said:

"It's all right, d.i.c.k. We are away from the horrible thing and I thank heaven I am still alive to tell of it. Let us go somewhere else."

"Right you are, I will," echoed Percival heartily. "If I had had any idea that there was such a thing in that place you could not have hired me to go into it or to have let you ventured there. I am glad enough that I was around to be of a.s.sistance."

"So am I, d.i.c.k, but suppose we say no more about it. I hate to even think of the horrible object and I only hope that I will not dream of it these nights."

Then the boys rowed swiftly away from the place where they had had such a thrilling encounter and never once looked back at it.

CHAPTER XI

THE VOICES IN THE WOODS

After the boys had gone some little distance from the water cave they pulled at a more easy stroke and began to talk again, their thrilling experience with the devil fish having made them silent for a time.

They did not allude to it again, but talked of other matters, Percival saying as they neared a green, shady wood where the trees grew thick and cast a deep shade on the white sands and showed a more than twilight darkness in their farther recesses, everything being quiet and peaceful within those heavy shadows:

"That's a place where everything seems to be asleep even at midday, Jack.

It looks like the cave of the seven sleepers that we used to read about in mythology."

"It seems quiet enough for a fact," said Jack with a smile, "but it is hot outside and the birds are probably all taking a rest. Probably just before dawn or at sunset you would hear them making noise enough."

"It is a thick wood all right, just the place to get lost in. If the African jungle is any worse than this I don't care to enter it."

"The trouble is you can't see far ahead and then there are briars and brambles and a lot of spiky plants, p.r.i.c.kly pears and Spanish bayonets and cactus to run against and get scratched and cut with. Our own woods are good enough for me, or bad enough, I might say."

"I wonder if we could find anything if we did go in there?" said Percival musingly as they rowed along sh.o.r.e, fascinated by the bright glare of the sands, the dense green of the woods and the dear blue of the skies. "We might have a try at it, Jack."

"Yes, I suppose we might if we did not go too----" And then Jack suddenly paused and a look of alarm came across his face.

A harsh voice from the wood suddenly interrupted him and he glanced here and there to see whence it came.

The words he heard were in Spanish, as far as he could judge, but he could see no one.

Other voices quickly joined the first and the boys rowed out somewhat from sh.o.r.e and looked closely at the woods, expecting to see some one.

"There are people on the island after all, Jack."

"Yes, Spaniards, I think. Sailors, I guess. At any rate they are not using the choicest language from what little I know of the language; Jack. I do not see any one. Do you?"

There were loud and angry voices in the woods, but the boys could see no one and went on slowly, farther out from sh.o.r.e so as to be out of danger in case any one appeared.

"A lot of drunken sailors would not be good company," declared Jack. "I would rather be alone."

"It can't be any one from the yacht, can it?"

"No, I don't think so. We have no Spaniards and Captain Storms brings his men up better than that. Besides, if it were some of our men we would see a boat, and there is nothing."

They still heard the voices at intervals as they rowed on and had no desire to enter the woods as long as the men were there.

"That's a nuisance," said Percival with a half-growl as they rowed on. "I would have liked to go ash.o.r.e there, but of course if there are a lot of swearing Spaniards hanging about it wouldn't do."

"I'd like to know what brought them here," remarked Jack. "We got in by the sheerest good luck and it does not seem possible that another vessel could have done the same. Those things don't happen twice."

"Well, they are here, at all events, and it stops our going ash.o.r.e. I'd like to know if they saw us in the boat?"

"I don't suppose so. They did not show themselves and they would not have made so much noise if they had----"

Just then the voices were heard again and the boys stopped rowing.