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Their clothes were stout hunting boots, khaki trousers and Norfolk jackets of the same material and flannel shirts with campaign hats. Each carried a change of underwear and socks in his toilet bag which also held two towels, toothbrush, cake of soap and brush and comb.
For transportation into the Everglades the boys soon managed with little difficulty to secure canoes and a lighter draught cruiser, similar to a Barnegat duck-boat. The flotilla was to be taken down the coast by an auxiliary sloop also chartered at Miami.
On the appointed day the boys were at the railroad station of the Florida East Coast railroad to meet the arrivals from New York, and warm were the greetings as Billy Barnes and Stubbs stepped from the private car which had been attached for them when they left the north. The car was sidetracked at Miami and the train kept on its way to Key West along the wonderful chain of cement bridges constructed over the numberless keys that run out from the leg of Florida. The boys and Ben were busily engaged getting the various bales and crates in some sort of order for transfer to the trucks by which they were to be taken to the flotilla of canoes when they were startled at being hailed by a voice that sounded familiar.
The boys hastened to the door of one end of the car and were amazed to see standing on the steps, looking rather embarrassed and doubtful, Lathrop Beasley. He wore a well cut suit of white serge and a straw hat with a light blue ribbon. In addition he sported snowy canvas shoes, topped off with light purple socks and a pale pink tie. Altogether he looked as if he had just stepped from a clothing ad. Even in their astonishment at seeing him there the boys could not help laughing at the contrast they presented to him.
In their rough working garb, and all begrimed with dust as they were from handling the kit in the car, two more unpresentable youths from a sartorial standpoint, could not well be imagined. The three boys gazed at each other in silence for a few seconds and then Lathrop said rather shamefacedly:
Hello, fellows.
Well, Lathrop, what on earth are you doing here? naturally demanded Frank.
I guess I came on a wild impulse, began Lathrop, and then stopped.
Well? questioned Harry.
When I heard of your trip, from hanging around the aerodrome after you left oh, it wasnt Ben Stubbs or Barnes that told me, they were close as clams, he hurried on, but when old Schultz told me that you were going to cross the Everglades I thought that maybe youd need an extra hand so I got permission from my folks and here I am.
If you want to say the word Ill go back, he concluded rather lamely but with a longing look in his face that told of his eager desire to be allowed to join the expedition.
Well, you certainly have an impetuous way of doing things, commented Frank. Did you come on this train?
Yes, replied the boy. Ive just been up to the hotel and engaged rooms and tidied up a bit and then hurried right down here.
Frank and Harry exchanged glances of amusement, the cause of which Lathrop was at a loss to fathom.
Well, began Frank, after a brief whispered conversation with his brother, you are here now and I suppose youll have to stay. We can find some work I dare say for you to do and there are a lot of ways you can be useful.
Ill start right in at anything you tell me, began the boy eagerly. Its mighty good of you
Not much you wont. Not in that fancy rig, burst out Harry, if you are coming with us youd better go up to the village store and get an outfit as much like ours as possible and forget you ever patronized a tailor.
Lathrop gladly agreed and hurried off to get himself a working outfit. As he hastened down the tracks, Frank turned to Harry with a grin.
Well, we have gone and done it now, he said. But we really have use for another hand, and I think that we can make something out of Lathrop, besides we owe him a debt of gratitude for helping us out at White Plains. If it hadnt been for him we might have lost the Golden Eagle II and all our work.
Thats so, assented Harry. I guess he will work out all right. But those fancy duds he had on
And the boy burst out laughing at the recollection.
By sundown most of the duffle in the car had been transferred to trucks and carted down to the wharf, where the boys, with considerable pride, exhibited to Ben Stubbs, Billy, and the newly overalled Lathrop, the light draught thirty-foot sloop, with an auxiliary five-horse engine, the four canoes and the light draught sneak-box, they had secured for their transportation round the Cape and into the Thousand Island Archipelago. The canoes were of the Ontario type, fitted with narrow decks round the edges and canvas covered. The sneak-box was of the spoon-bowed variety familiar to duckers in Barnegat Bay. It drew only a few inches of water and afforded a lot of space in its sixteen feet of length for the stowage of the heavier baggage. It rejoiced in the name of Squeegee.
Ben Stubbs was delighted with the fleet as he called it, and declared that the sloop was a witch. After a dinner at the quiet boarding house at which the boys had been stopping the adventurers that night finished the stowage of their impedimenta aboard the sloop and piled the canoes on the top of the canvas enclosed summer cabin. The sneak-box was towed astern.
The owner of the sloop, a coal-black negro called Pork Chops the boys could never discover that he had any other name was to take them round the cape as far as the Thousand Island Archipelago where they were to be left. From there on their course would lie up the Shark River into the heart of the little known Everglades.
Of course the wharf loungers were full of curiosity as the work of transferring the boys belongings and outfit to the sloop proceeded, but Frank and Harry had allowed it to become widely circulated that they were a hunting party bound for some of the keys to the east of Cape Sable, and Pork Chops also was of this belief, so that the boys were pretty sure that none but the members of their own immediate party knew of the real goal of their journey.
By midnight everything was in readiness and the tide served for start. With her big mainsail flapping lazily in the breath of wind that was stirring Pork Chops sloop, which held the poetic name of Carrier Dove dropped down Biscayne Bay with her kicker going and dawn found her well on her journey south with a spanking breeze out of the northeast to fill her canvas. As she skimmed along over the sparkling blue of the tropical waters in whose crystalline depths hosts of fish of all kinds could be easily seen and on the surface of which floated great masses of yellow gulf weed, the boys rejoiced that their momentous expedition had started so auspiciously. As for Lathrop he acted like a boy out of his head with joy at his unexpected good fortune. Ben Stubbs and the inky Pork Chops relieved each other at the wheel, and Frank and Harry, at the table in the stuffy little cabin, worked at plans and lists trying to devise ways of still further cutting down their outfit without impairing its usefulness. Billy Barnes, with a knowing air, scrutinized the sails and from time to time admonished Ben Stubbs to keep her up a bit, to which suggestion Ben with an air of ineffable contempt replied:
I never knowed they taught navigation on a newspaper but its a good school for nerve.
CHAPTER VII
A NIGHT ATTACK
Most of that day they dropped leisurely down Hawk Channel and at night anchored off a small key covered with a luxuriant tropical growth and topped by the feathery crowns of a group of stately royal palms. It was early afternoon when they let go the anchor and the boys lost no time in getting into the Squeegee and rowing ashore. They carried with them the Carrier Doves water keg which held ten gallons and which had been discovered by them to be half empty the first time they went forward for a drink. What water there was in it was so stale as to be almost undrinkable. Pork Chops was summarily sent for and arraigned on the quarter deck.