Chapter XII: Johnny's Day Off

Next morning Johnny and old Samatan sailed away toward the smiling face of the rising sun.

"This is a grand dugout you've got!" Johnny enthused.

Smiling, Samatan pulled a line, giving the boat full sail. She tilted sharply. Boy and man settled back against the pull of the sail and sped along before the wind.

Johnny's eyes took in the whole of the trim little craft, and he smiled, contentedly.

It was indeed a great little dugout. Not so small, either. Fully twenty feet long and six feet wide, it had been hewn from a solid mahogany log. The boy tried to estimate the number of days of hard, careful work that would have required, but gave it up.

The inside surface was polished to the last degree, and the seats were braided, cocoanut fibre. On the prow, carved in the most perfect manner, was the wooden image of a seagull.

All unknown to Johnny, Samatan was keeping an eye on him. His keen old mind read the boy's thought like a book. One lover of a sailboat recognizes another, and since his tenth birthday, Johnny had been an ardent sailboat enthusiast. At that age he had rigged up a square sail for a rowboat and had known many happy hours on the water. The fact that he had once capsized and barely escaped drowning, had not in the least dampened his ardor.

"We go coral reef. Catchem turtles for stew," Samatan said at last.

"How do you catch them?" Johnny asked.

"Samatan show you."

After that there was silence.

It became evident that Samatan was an expert with a sail. The breeze picked up and the sea became choppy, but the smiling old man, eyes squinting, lay back at ease. Pulling first at one rope, then another, he held the small craft on her course.

Johnny laughed right out loud when at last the old man took off his soft, loose shoes, gripped the ropes with his toes and began steering with his feet.

Two delightful hours passed. Then the dugout slid up on a sandy shore.

When the boat had been pulled up, Samatan's eyes scanned the sandy beach. Suddenly he went racing away and, with the silence and speed of a great cat, stole up on an unsuspecting turtle, basking in the sand. A quick leap--and the turtle lay on its back, a prisoner.

"Food," said the old man. "Much food from the sea. But," he added quietly, "we take only what we need."

When all the turtles needed had been stowed away in the boat, they went for a walk on the beach. They made a strange picture, this bright-faced American boy and the old, brown native whose face was wrinkled by many tropical suns.

Seldom had Johnny spent a more interesting or exciting morning. They hung a heavy cord over a rocky ledge to snare a sea-crab, turned over a Hawk's-bill turtle, whose shell was worth eight dollars a pound, and chased a monkey up a cocoanut tree.

They had wandered for two hours and were far from the boat when, for no apparent reason, Samatan uttered a low exclamation. Then he faced squarely toward the ridge, which at this place rose some twenty feet above the beach.

"Huh!" he grunted. "We see!"

He dashed away at surprising speed, up the hill. Tripping over vines and blundering into a bramble bush, Johnny followed.

When at last he caught up with the agile old man, Samatan was standing motionless, looking off at the sea. For a full minute, lips parted, eyes staring, they stood there in silence.

For--stealing up on them like an enemy in the night, a terrific storm was racing in from the sea. It took but one word from Samatan's lips to complete the terror of the prospect.

"Hurricane!" he said, gutterally.

"We must run for the boat!" Johnny sprang down from the rock.

"Not go now. Too late!" Samatan did not move. Instead, he stood looking along the ridge, first this way, then that.

"The _Sea Nymph_!" Johnny broke out again. "She will be lost!"

"Not get lost," Samatan said, slowly. "Good crew. Harbor not far." Once again his eyes swept the ridge.

"Come," he said at last. "This way. We go fast." Even as he spoke, a gust of wind sweeping in from the sea, all but threw the boy off his rocky perch.

For ten minutes or more the two of them fought their way along the ridge. At last the native paused. "Here," he said, "is most high. Trees. Must climb these--quick! Waves go all over coral reef!"

"Al--all right." The rising gale blew Johnny's words down his throat. Seizing the low branches of a large tree, he prepared to climb.

"No! That bad tree! No good!" said Samatan. "This one."

Into Johnny's mind at that moment came the words of the professor: "When I am in a strange land I do what a native will do--go where he goes. If he says 'No go'--I stay."

So, without further questioning, the boy began to climb Samatan's tree.

The tree was short and sturdy. Soon they were perched like crows on two limbs close together. And in silence they watched the onrushing storm. The sky was black. It was like night. Scarcely could the boy see his companion. Trembling with excitement, he decided to force his thoughts from the impending hurricane.

"Samatan," he said, "there was something about our steel ball you did not like."

"Yes," came the instant reply. "Professor--he is good man. Very good. But one thing must not do. He must not!"

"He is going to tell me," Johnny thought, with quickening pulse.

But at that moment there came such a roar as would drown the strongest voice, and onto the beach came the rush of a great sea. Something like a tidal wave had struck the narrow reef.

"I must hang on," the boy thought. The next instant he was engulfed in stinging salt water. The sea had swept over the land.

Though Johnny felt that he was being swallowed by the sea, it was in reality only the froth and foam of the monster wave that reached him. One instant he was gasping for breath, the next, he was looking down on a madly whirling world.

The thought that struck him first, with the force of a blow, was--"the tree I meant to climb is gone! Swept away by the sea!"

It was true. The tree, rotten at the roots, had vanished. Samatan had saved his life, and a new sense of respect for the aged native swept over Johnny. With it came the conviction that whatever it was the old native wanted from the professor, it must be right for him to have it. And something seemed to assure Johnny that he would hear the story without asking.

But at that moment, to talk at all was impossible. The shrieking of the wind, the cracking of branches, the roar of thunder and the mad tumult of the sea, were completely deafening. Johnny wondered how long it would last? Would greater waves come? Would he and Samatan at last be swept into the sea? To all these questions he found no answer.

In an effort to forget the terror of the situation he made himself think once more of the great steel ball and his adventures beneath the sea....

In the meantime his companions on the _Sea Nymph_ were witnessing a feat such as even the gray-haired captain never had seen equaled. Watching the storm, yet fearing for the safety of Johnny and Samatan and hoping against hope that they might return, they on the yacht had delayed lifting anchor.

When at last they headed toward the narrow entrance of a natural harbor, the wind tore their sails to ribbons, while waves, mountain-high, swept them toward a rocky wall.

In despair, the captain trusted the fate of his ship to the native crew. Nor did he trust in vain. With a few yards of sail at their command the natives, in the midst of dashing spray, clung to spar and masthead, turning the graceful craft this way and that. Then--at precisely the right instant--they seemed to lift her from the sea and send her shooting through a channel so narrow it seemed the paint would be scraped from her two sides at once. They sent her gliding smoothly to safety, in a harbor as calm as a millpond.

"Bravo!" shouted the captain.

"Glorious!" the professor cried. "Never saw such sailing! Those men deserve all praise!"

Six long hours the storm roared on, and for six endless hours Johnny clung to his tree. Though the sea, like some menacing monster, appeared to thrust out long, white arms to grasp him, he remained safely with Samatan, in the tree top. At last, sweeping high overhead, the storm-clouds raced away--to leave a kindly, golden moon looking down on the boy and the old man.

"Come," said Samatan, climbing gingerly down from his perch. "We go back."

"Back to what?" Johnny's lips framed the words he dared not speak.

Their trail back over the moonlit beach was strange beyond belief. They climbed over a huge old palm tree, lying on the ground, stumbled on a giant, loggerhead turtle, killed in the storm, and slipped on jellyfish left high on the ridge.

As they rounded a bend in the beach, a large object loomed before them, white and ghostly in the night.

"Boat," said Samatan.

"Lifeboat," the boy amended as they came closer.

Examining it closely he read the words: "S. S. Vulture". Bashed in at the prow, the boat lay empty, upside down. What was its story? Had the Vulture been wrecked? Had part of her crew put to sea in this boat, only to perish?

With a shudder, Johnny pushed on behind his tireless guide.

"Our boat must be gone," he ventured at last.

Samatan made no reply.

More fallen palms, tangled sea moss, jellyfish, a dead crocodile, a mile of sand, and then--Johnny rubbed his eyes. He opened them to look again.

"Our boat!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," Samatan said.

It was true. The boat was safe. Piled with seaweed and half-buried in sand, it remained where they had left it.

A brief examination redoubled the boy's admiration for the aged native. The dugout had been chained to a stout, palm stump. Even the sail was lashed beneath the seat. Samatan had taken all these precautions before there was any sign of a storm. Wise old Samatan!

In awed silence Johnny helped to clear the sand and seaweed away.

"Now we go," said Samatan, preparing to launch the boat.

If Johnny had admired Samatan's sailing before, his admiration was doubled now. Up--up--up they glided, until they seemed ready to touch the stars, then down--down, far into the trough of a wave.

"Samatan." Johnny spoke without thinking. "Why do you hate our steel ball?"

"Hate? Ball?" Samatan struggled for the right word. "Good man, professor. But must not steal natives' gold!"

"Gold?" Johnny ejaculated. "I don't understand."

The tale the old man told, then, out there on the racing sea, was fantastic indeed. Yet Johnny doubted never a word of it....

The islands now belonging to Samatan's native people once had been a French colony. The French had made slaves of the natives, and had brought in many more slaves. Then the slaves revolted and drove all the Frenchmen from the islands.

"After that--_our_ land!" Samatan declared proudly. "Long time republic. Long time everybody happy. Then," his voice dropped, "how you say it--came bad man. Very hard man. Very cruel. Make people work too hard. Want gold. All gold. By and by want kill that man, my people.

"This bad man see strange men come--many men." Samatan continued. "They put gold in chest--much gold--and dump in sea.

"Now," Samatan sighed, "bad man dead. Gold lost. Never find that gold, my people. Belong my people--that gold! Find gold--my people pay debts. Very happy. But now," he frowned, "Professor, he hunt gold with steel ball. Wanna keep that gold, you think, that professor?"

"Oh, no! No!" Johnny laughed. "The professor is not looking for treasure! Only strange fishes, all sorts of odd creatures that live beneath the sea."

"Not wanna find gold?" The old man was plainly puzzled.

"Oh, sure--I s'pose he'd _like_ to find it," Johnny laughed. "And--we'll really try to--now that we know about it. But if we _do_ find it, you may be sure it will all be for your people--to the last doubloon!"

"Good boy, Johnny." The old man smiled broadly. "Good man, Professor. All good. Everybody!"

"I see a light," said Johnny. "That must be Kennedy's place."

"Right, Kennedy." said Samatan. "By and by we come that place."

"That," said Johnny, "will be swell!" Then his brow wrinkled. Where, he wondered, was the _Sea Nymph_? Did it make harbor safely? He sighed as he reflected that soon he would know the answer--for better or worse!