The Motor Boat Club in Florida: or, Laying the Ghost of Alligator Swamp

The December day being warm, Tremaine, his wife and ward and Dixon were out on the porch. At a little distance away sat Tom Halstead, absorbed in a book that he had brought along. Out on the porch at this moment, bringing a pitcher of lemonade and glasses on a tray, bustled Ham Mockus. For inquiry ashore had brought out the information that Ham bore an excellent reputation; he had, therefore, been brought along as cook and general servant to this brief alligator hunting expedition.

Two or three hundred yards below the house a pier ran some fifty feet out into the lake. At the end of the pier was a high-hulled twenty-foot gasoline launch – a boat capable of carrying fifteen passengers at a pinch. Just now Joe was alone in the little craft, overhauling the engine.

“Why didn’t you help your friend!” asked Mrs. Tremaine, looking over with a friendly smile.

“I offered to,” grimaced Halstead. “But Joe smiled in his dry way and told me he didn’t believe I knew much about motor boats.”

“That must have made you feel quarrelsome,” laughed Ida Silsbee.

“Oh, not exactly,” grinned Captain Tom. “I suppose I do know, in a general way, how a gasoline motor is put together, and how to run one, if I have to. But when it comes to motors I’m certainly not in Joe Dawson’s class. He’s a wonder when it comes to machinery.”

“But Dawson says,” interjected young Dixon, “that, when it comes to handling a boat anywhere and in any sort of weather, your equal is hard to find. You two appear to form a mutual admiration society.”

Though this was said with a laugh, and in a tone at which no offense could reasonably be taken, Tom Halstead nevertheless flushed. He had grown to look for slighting remarks from this young man.

“Oh, if it is a matter of believing that Captain Halstead and his friend are the brightest young men of their kind, I’ll subscribe,” ventured Ida Silsbee, promptly, whereat Dixon frowned as he turned his head away.

Too-oot! toot! toot! sounded shrilly from the end of the pier: Joe was tuning up the little auto whistle on the launch.

“I guess Dawson wants me,” said Tom, rising.

“Guess again,” laughed Mrs. Tremaine, in her languid way.

For, at that moment, Joe cast off from the pier, driving the little launch out into the lake. As Henry Tremaine had ordered this boat built and delivered at Lake Okeechobee lately, and had never seen her in operation, he now rose, and went over to the edge of the porch to watch her movements.

“Dawson certainly knows how to make a boat hum,” observed the owner of the place.

“It would go twice as well if Halstead were aboard,” remarked Oliver Dixon.

“You’ll have to stop teasing our young captain, or he’ll lose you overboard, some dark night when we get back to sailing on the Gulf,” laughed Mrs. Tremaine. Tom fancied there was a slight note of warning in her voice.

“Oh, I wouldn’t string Halstead,” rejoined Dixon, dryly. “I esteem him too highly and take him too seriously for that.”

“Cut it!” uttered Tremaine, in a low voice, as he passed Dixon. That young man started, at such a peremptory command. He glanced over at Ida Silsbee, to see a flash of angry remonstrance in her handsome dark eyes.

“Why does the girl take such an interest in this young booby of a so-called captain?” Dixon asked himself, uncomfortably. Then, stretching slightly and indolently, to hide his discomfiture, the young man vanished inside the house.

Joe, meantime, was circling about on the lake, sounding his whistle once in a while, as though he wished to invite the attention of those on the porch. At last he turned and sped back to the pier.

“She seems to run all right, Joe,” called Halstead, as his chum came up the boardwalk.

“Runs first rate for a little lake boat,” replied Dawson.

“Are you really pleased with the craft?” inquired Henry Tremaine. “I wish you’d tell me candidly, because I ordered her by mail, on the builder’s representations. He claimed she’d make fifteen miles an hour.”

“The boat will do eleven, all right,” nodded Joe. “That’s pretty good as fresh water launches run.”

“Three hours to luncheon,” said Halstead, musingly, looking at his watch. “You spoke of going out this afternoon, Mr. Tremaine. Would you care about going now?”

“No,” said the owner. “I’m going inside soon to write some letters.” Mrs. Tremaine shook her head when Tom glanced at her.

“I’ll go out with you, Captain Halstead,” cried Miss Silsbee, rising. “Almost anything is better than sitting idly here.”

“Do you want to go out again, Joe!” asked Halstead, looking at his chum.

“I would if I were needed, but you can handle the boat all right, old fellow.”

“Come on, then, Captain, since you and I are the only ones who are energetic enough to start,” cried Ida, gayly.

“I’ll ring for Ham, and have him tell Mr. Dixon that there’s a seat for him in the boat,” proposed Mrs. Tremaine.

“If you do,” retorted Miss Silsbee, in a low voice, “I’ll stay ashore. Mr. Dixon is very pleasant and attentive, but it’s a pleasure to go some places without him.”

Tom, who was going slowly down the boardwalk, did not hear this. Ida ran nimbly after him.

“Hurry along, Captain,” she cried, “and we won’t have to be bothered with an unnecessary third.”

Skipper Tom glanced at her in some surprise. He knew Dixon to be deeply devoted to this beautiful girl, and had thought that she was interested in Dixon.

“I suppose he sticks too closely to her, though,” thought Halstead. “Any girl likes to have a little time to herself.”

So he helped her gallantly into the launch, started the motor and cast off.

“Hullo, there!” shouted Dixon, running out onto the porch. “Wait! I’ll go with you!”

“Make believe you don’t hear him,” murmured Ida, pouting.

Nothing loath, when backed by such a command, Captain Halstead threw on full speed, sending the launch speeding to the southward. He kept his gaze for some time on the water, seeking for shallows.

“You don’t like Mr. Dixon very well, do you?” inquired Miss Silsbee, abruptly, after a while.

Tom started, looking up to find her gaze intently fixed on his face.

“What makes you think that?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s just a supposition. I know Mr. Dixon must annoy you a good deal with his teasing. So you can’t very well like him.”

“Let us suppose it another way,” Tom smiled back into her eyes. “Perhaps he doesn’t like me, and that’s why he is sometimes – well, perhaps a little bit sarcastic.”

“I don’t see how he can help liking you,” returned Ida Silsbee, frankly.

“Why?”

“Well, you’re all that’s manly, Captain Halstead.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, I mean it,” pursued the girl, earnestly. “And I’m so much older than you that I know you won’t mind my saying it. What I am trying to arrive at is that I don’t want you to get any idea that Mr. Dixon reflects the sentiment of the rest of the party.”

“I haven’t formed that impression, Miss Silsbee. You all have treated me splendidly – even after that miserable affair of the other morning.”

“Oh, Mr. Tremaine is as sorry as possible about that,” cried the girl. “He told me himself that he’d much rather lose the money than have anything happen to wound the feelings of Mr. Dawson or yourself. He says you are two of the staunchest, most splendid young fellows he ever expects to meet. It seems he knew that our danger in the gale, the other night, was far greater than he let Mrs. Tremaine or myself suspect. He tells us you were both cool, and brave, and that such young men couldn’t be anything but splendid and upright. Mr. Tremaine says he’d cheerfully fight any man who tried to throw doubt over either yourself or Mr. Dawson.”

“That’s fine of him,” said Tom, gratefully, then added, moodily: “Just the same, I wish that affair of the missing money could be cleared up some way. It hangs over me, in my own mind.”

“Then suppose you let me carry your burden for you for a while,” proposed Ida Silsbee, looking at him with laughing eyes. “Only, I can’t promise not to be careless. I might drop the burden over the first stone wall.”

After that the pair chatted merrily enough, while Tom ran the boat along mile after mile, under the soft Florida winter sun. The day was warmer than usual even in this far southern spot.

As the launch glided along they passed small islands now and then, for Lake Okeechobee is well supplied with them.

“Oh, see there! Run in at that island – do!” begged Ida. “See that beautiful moss hanging from that tree. It’s different from any other hanging moss I’ve seen. I’d dearly love to dry some of that moss and take it North with me.”

So Tom ran the launch in under slow headway, reached it, and took a hitch of the bow line around the trunk of a small tree that grew at the water’s edge.

“Now, help me down, as gallantly as you can,” appealed Ida Silsbee, standing in the bow of the boat, one hand resting at her skirt.

“You coming ashore?” cried Tom, almost protestingly. “Oh, Miss Silsbee, I am afraid!”

“Of what?”

“Rattlers, or other snakes that may abound on this island.”

“Yet you’re not afraid for yourself.”

“I think I can protect myself.”

“Then why not protect me? Oh, I do want to go ashore.”

Worried, Halstead stepped back into the boat and picked up the stout tiller stick that was meant to be thrust into the rudder post in case the wheel-gear became disabled.

“Keep right behind me, then, please,” begged the young skipper, holding the tiller stick in readiness for any reptilian foe he might espy.

The tree in question was some distance inland on the island, past a rise in the ground. Tom, eternally vigilant, piloted Miss Silsbee slowly along, scanning every inch of the ground near them. At last they reached the tree. After inspecting all the ground near by, Halstead climbed the tree, detaching and throwing down a quantity of the pretty moss, which the girl laughingly gathered in her arms. Then the young skipper descended.

“I wonder if my guardian intends to do his alligator hunting anywhere around here?” asked the girl.

“Oh, no; the alligators seldom venture into this lake,” Tom replied. “We have to go the length of the lake, I understand, and then penetrate for some distance into the Everglades. There are no alligators here.”

Just at that moment they came to the rise in the ground, then passed on to descend to the boat.

“No alligators here – ” Tom began again, but paused, paling and staring aghast.

For out of the water and up onto the beach crawled two monstrous twelve-foot alligators. They halted on the land just before the boat, opening and snapping their great jaws.

“Ugh! That’s a fine sight to run upon when a fellow hasn’t any firearms,” grated Halstead, hoarsely. He felt the gooseflesh starting all over him.

CHAPTER VII

DODGING THE OLDEST INHABITANTS OF THE EVERGLADES

JUST in the instant that he halted young Halstead thrust out his left arm, sweeping Ida Silsbee behind him.

“Don’t treat me as though you believed me a coward,” she remonstrated, speaking in a low voice.

“You’ll make me less of a coward if you don’t expose yourself needlessly to danger,” Tom retorted, in an equally low voice.

Though the alligator is a cumbersome looking animal on land, both knew from their reading that this four-legged reptile will sometimes show unlooked-for speed on its short legs.

Both alligators were now fully on land, their scaled bodies glistening in the soft sunlight. One had opened its great jaws as though to yawn, and the other at once followed the example.

Both stood within half a dozen feet of the launch’s bow, which meant that a sudden dash for the boat was out of the question.

“With this stick in my hand I feel like an amateur fireman trying to put out the San Francisco fire with a watering-pot,” Halstead whispered, dryly.

Ida Silsbee laughed low and nervously.

“Do alligators climb trees?” she asked.

“I never heard of one that could do it.”

“Then, at the worst, we might climb a tree. I – I suppose you could help me.”

“I’d sooner be in that launch, with the engine started, than up any tree on the island,” the boy answered.

“What would you do, if you were alone?” the girl asked.

“I don’t know. I might take to the water, swim to the stern of the launch, climb in and try to shove off.”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

“And leave you alone, Miss Silsbee, even for a few moments?”

“I could run across the island if those ugly-looking beasts started in my direction. You could pick me up at some other point of the shore.”

“Have you forgotten the snakes?” demanded Tom.

“Ugh! Don’t make me more afraid.”

“I don’t want to, Miss Silsbee. But neither do I want to see you forget any of the risks of our position.”

One of the big alligators, after eyeing them for some moments, started up the rise of ground toward them. From the slowness of its movements it looked as though the huge thing was bent mainly on securing a good point at which to sun itself, but Halstead and the girl retreated slowly.

“See,” whispered Halstead, “the other ’gator is moving a bit east along the shore. Let’s run down to the west shore. There we may be in a position to reach the launch bye and bye.”

As they stole along cautiously, in the direction Tom had indicated, each had to be careful in picking footing on the soft, springy ground, else it was impossible to tell when they might step upon a hidden rattler. Yet they gained the shore, at last, Tom in the lead. Here they halted, a hundred feet from the launch. By this time the first alligator had halted near the crest of the rise. Turning slowly, the beast was eyeing the fugitives blinkingly. The second alligator was now some thirty feet from the further side of the launch, though still quite close to the water.

“I wonder – ” began Tom, hesitatingly.

“What?”

“Whether I could sprint along the shore like a streak, push the launch off, jump in, and then have time to start the engine and get down here for you?”

“Would you do that if you were here all alone?”

“In a second!”

“Then do it anyway,” begged Ida Silsbee. “I’m not brave, but I can take a fighting chance and follow orders.”

“I’m thinking of the risk, if – ” began Halstead again, musingly and in a low voice.

“If what?”

“Well, what if the ’gator, seeing me coming, should turn and charge me, just miss me, and keep coming right on for you?”

“I’d run into the water, Mr. Halstead, for you to pick me up.”

“Good heavens! In the water that ’gator could go a hundred feet, almost, to your one!”

“Then I’d dash along the shore as fast as I could, until you could run the boat down and pick me up.”

“I’m going to try it,” decided Halstead, coolly. “It seems to promise the greatest safety for you.”

“But yourself?”

“Oh, confound me! I’m a boy.”

“You’re a man, Tom Halstead, and a splendid one at that!”

“I shall get my head turned, at this rate,” replied Tom, smiling dryly. “I’d better run at once.”

Grasping Ida Silsbee’s right hand, he thrust the tiller stick into it.

“Hold onto this. Don’t drop the stick, no matter what happens,” he directed. “Use it against ’gators – or snakes.”

Then, without loss of an instant’s time, he turned and sprinted desperately. A hundred feet is a short distance when one is traveling as though on air.

Seeing the boy coming, the alligator wheeled clumsily about. By this time, however, Tom Halstead’s hands rested against the bow of the boat. At the start of the run he had opened his sailor’s clasp knife. At one stout slash the boy cut the line holding the boat. Then he shoved off with his hands, and made a flying vault into the boat. Nor did he lose a second, as the boat drifted out from the shore, in starting the motor.

After the first moment’s hesitation the big ’gator started for the boat, as if scenting an enemy that might be vanquished. Seeing the high bow of the launch slip away, the ’gator kept on, lumberingly, toward Miss Silsbee.

Chug! chug! chug! sounded the motor’s exhaust, firing like pistol shots. The clumsy beast stopped an instant, as though wondering what new style of attack this could be on man’s part. Then, finding that no harm came, the big saurian reptile eyed Ida Silsbee’s fluttering skirts, and kept on lumbering toward her.

“Stay where you are!” called Tom Halstead, in a cool, low voice. It was typical of him that, the greater the danger, the more intense his coolness. His right hand on the wheel, the other ready to shift the motor control, he darted in to where Miss Silsbee stood bravely eyeing the oncoming alligator.

As the bow grated, Tom Halstead sprang up.

“Your hand!” he cried. “Like lightning!”

As she sprang, then half-stumbled, the alligator’s head was hardly more than twenty feet away. With a quick out-shoot of its breath the big creature hastened forward.

Tom half lifted, half dragged Ida into the boat, at the same time taking the tiller stick from her. Almost at the instant when her heels cleared the gunwale a huge pair of jaws loomed up close beside the bow.

Not really pausing to think what he did, Halstead let out a yell that would have done credit to one of the Seminole aborigines of the Everglades. In the same flashing instant he rammed the tiller stick far down into the mouth of the alligator.

His left hand caught the reverse gear. The propeller churned and the launch glided out, stern foremost, into deeper water, while the alligator, bringing its jaws down with a crunching snap on the bar of wood, went through some absurd antics in trying to expel the tiller stick from its mouth. Then Tom Halstead laughed.

“Not such bad sport, eh, Miss Silsbee?”

He had backed far enough out, now, to turn on the speed ahead and swing around, heading north.

Though she trembled a bit from excitement, Ida Silsbee leaned forward, catching the boy’s disengaged right hand and holding it in friendly pressure for a moment.

“Tom Halstead, it’s more than a pleasure to know one like you!”

The young captain laughed quietly as he thanked her.

“I reckon we’ll have some appetite for lunch, now, Miss Silsbee. Yet I almost feel that I owe you an apology.”

“For what, pray?”

“For not having been clever enough to find some way of killing that lumbering beast and presenting you with its hide. What a novel suitcase it would have made for you.”

Ida Silsbee laughed merrily. There was so much clear grit in her make-up that she had now recovered her composure fully.

“You’re not easily pleased, are you?” she challenged, whimsically.

“Well, we’ll have to admit we made a bungle of the affair all around,” teased Tom. “For you see, after all we left the moss behind on the island.”

“Oh, that moss!” cried the girl, pouting. “I’m glad I did drop it, for I shall always hate that particular species of moss whenever I think of the fate it so nearly brought upon us.”

The launch was now slipping over the water at its full speed, so it was not long ere these young travelers came in sight of the Tremaine winter bungalow once more.

Henry Tremaine and his wife were alone on the porch as the boat’s whistle sounded just before the landing was made.

Oliver Dixon had stolen away by himself, consuming himself with rage over the fact that Ida should have chosen to slip away without inviting him. Dixon came outside, however, as the young people came up the boardwalk together.

“Oh, Mrs. Tremaine, you have missed such a stirring time,” hailed Miss Silsbee, gayly.

Tom Halstead laughed, quietly. Hearing their arrival, Joe also came out. Miss Silsbee, of course, had to describe their adventure, in which Tom Halstead’s share lost nothing by her telling.

“I hope you’ll take a sufficient warning from this, child,” said Mr. Tremaine, presently. “Never venture onto any of the islands, or in any of these woods hereabouts, unless beaters go ahead of you to rouse up and despatch whatever snakes there may be lurking under the bushes.”

“Beaters?” inquired the girl.

“Yes; any of the negroes, like Ham, for instance. They don’t mind snakes. They hunt them for sport.”

Ham Mockus made his presence in the background noted.

“Men of your color don’t mind hunting snakes, do you, Ham?” asked the host.

“No, sah. Ah reckons not much, sah.”

“In fact, none of the natives here stand much in dread of reptiles,” continued Tremaine. “They’re used to hunting them, and seem to develop a special instinct for knowing where the snakes are. Young Randolph and Ham, I venture to believe, would go through a twenty-acre field, finding and killing all the snakes there happened to be there.”

“This talk is becoming rather annoying, my dear,” shivered Mrs. Tremaine.

“I beg your pardon, then,” responded her husband, quickly. “We’ll consider something more cheerful.”

“Dat’s w’ut Ah gwine come to tell yo’ ’bout,” declared Ham, gravely. “Ladies an’ gemmen, luncheon’s done served. Yassuh!”

CHAPTER VIII

A CRACK SHOT AT THE GAME

WHILE the party were thus engaged in discussing the luncheon, the young Randolph referred to, Jefferson being his Christian name, was busy in another room of the bungalow, cleaning alligator rifles.

Jeff was the sixteen-year-old son of Officer Randolph. Despite his youth, this young man, who was tall, slim, wiry and strong, had already led several successful alligator hunts in the Everglades. He had been engaged, on his father’s recommendation, for this expedition. Officer Randolph, in the meantime, had consented to make his headquarters aboard the “Restless,” which fact permitted both Tom and Joe to get their first taste of alligator sport.

Throughout the luncheon, Oliver Dixon, though he had succeeded in obtaining the chair next to Ida Silsbee’s, remained for the most part silent and distrait, a prey to hatred of the young motor boat captain.

“If a few more things like this adventure happen,” Dixon told himself, “I shall be pretty certain to find Ida slipping away from me altogether. It seems absurd to think of a full-grown young woman like her falling in love with a mere boy. Bah! That really can’t happen, of course. Yet it isn’t wholly unlikely that she’ll become so much interested in Tom Halstead’s kind that my sort of man won’t appeal to her. I must be watchful and keep myself properly in the foreground.”

If young Dixon felt himself much devoted to Ida Silsbee, even he knew that he was much more attracted by the fact that, as money went, Ida Silsbee was a rather important heiress.

One of Dixon’s basic faults was that he hated useful work. He would much rather live on a rich wife’s money.

By the time that the meal was over the fortune-hunter had come to one important conclusion.

“If I want to stand well with Ida,” he told himself, “then I must conceal my feelings well enough to keep on seemingly good terms with this young Halstead cub. I’ve got to treat the boy pleasantly, and make him like me. Otherwise, a girl who places her friendships as impulsively as Ida Silsbee does is likely to conceive an actual dislike for me. That would be a fearful obstacle to my plans!”

So, as all rose from the table at Mrs. Tremaine’s signal, Dixon inquired, pleasantly:

“Going back down the lake for a chance at that pair of ’gators this afternoon, Halstead?”

“I don’t know,” Tom answered. “I’m wholly at Mr. Tremaine’s disposal.”

“Jove! I don’t know that it would be such a bad plan,” mused Henry Tremaine. “What do you say, my dear?”

“Would it be necessary for any of us to leave the boat?” asked Mrs. Tremaine, cautiously.

“Not at all necessary.”

“Is there any danger of the horrid things trying to climb into the boat?”

“I never heard of a ’gator trying to do such a thing.”

“Or would an alligator be at all likely to swim under the boat, then rise, overturning us?”

“I think I can promise you that no self-respecting alligator would think of doing such a thing,” laughed Mr. Tremaine.

“Then I’m ready enough to vote for going,” agreed Mrs. Tremaine.

“Halstead – Dawson – you know what that means,” warned the owner of the place.

“How soon will you start, sir?” inquired Tom.

“We ought to be ready within twenty minutes.”

“Then Joe and I will have the boat ready, sir. Anything we can carry down to the launch?”

“No; we’ll take only rifles and ammunition, which will be all we’ll want. Ham, you’ll watch the house while we’re gone.”