The Bungalow Boys on the Great Lakes by John Henry Goldfrap - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXV.
 WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?—CONCLUSION.

"Well, that explains why the stairway wasn't guarded, all right," commented Sandy, as they continued their way.

They had reached the bottom, and were about to strike off across the flat beach, when a figure suddenly emerged from the door of the lighthouse.

At the same time, as bad luck would have it, a flash of lightning from the nearing storm revealed the lads' figures clearly. But it did more than that, it showed Sandy that the man approaching them was followed by two or three others.

The fellow gave a shout as he saw the boys, and started for them. They dodged, and were about to make off, when another man blocked their path.

"Inside the light-house!" gasped Sandy. "It's empty, I think!"

"Good!" exclaimed Jack. "If we can get in there and bolt the door, we are safe against a siege."

The two lads doubled like hares and darted into the open door of the light-house. As they slammed it to, and slid the bolts, they could hear a yell of rage from without.

As Sandy had surmised, the place was empty. For the time, at any rate, they were safe. Moreover, there was food on the table, and this was a welcome sight to them.

"Queer, isn't it?" asked Sandy, with his mouth full, "that after taking all that trouble to escape, we should come back into the light-house after all."

"It certainly is," agreed Jack, likewise eating hastily. "Hark!"

"Open that door at once, you young varmints!"

"I'll break every bone in your bodies when I get hold of you," roared Walstein.

"Let 'em rave," grinned Sandy; "that door will withstand a siege."

"If it's anything like that one upstairs, it will," laughed Jack.

The lad felt a strange exhilaration. The feeling was born of the sense of his wits and his chum's being pitted against those of the ruffians outside. So far, the lads had won out unmistakably.

Walstein began to shout and bellow and pound on the door, using all sorts of bad language.

"Don't swear," shouted Sandy. "It won't do you any good. We're in here, and here we'll stay."

"Oh, you will, will you?" struck in another voice. It was that of Barkentin. "We'll see about that."

He gave a peculiar whistle. It rang shrill and clear through the night. The two dogs, on watch in the upper part of the tower, heard it. One of them gave an answering bark.

"After 'em, Rex! Sic 'em, Cæsar!" came Barkentin's voice.

A deep baying howl of peculiar savagery followed.

The two lads paled. Here was a peril they had quite forgotten. The two dogs, as they well knew, were ferocious to a degree.

Sandy looked about him. The most dangerous weapon in sight was a blunt dinner knife. The baying of the dogs grew louder. The pattering of their feet could be heard on the inner stairs of the light-house.

"Shut the door!" cried Jack, thinking they could cut off the stairs in this way.

"There isn't one," cried Sandy.

"Seize 'em, boys! Tear 'em, boys!" came Barkentin's voice from without.

The next instant the dogs burst into the room with savage, gleaming eyes, bristling hackles and mouths gaping redly.

Some big game hunter has said that there is no more dangerous creature in existence than a ferocious dog, whether rendered so by training or disposition.

The two that rushed on the boys were Great Danes, crossed with some fiercer breed, powerful as panthers, and even more to be dreaded.

Sandy snatched up the nearest thing to him—a dinner-plate. He hurled it with full force at the first dog, as it leaped straight for his throat. Jack raised a chair and fought desperately with his antagonist. Outside came Barkentin's raucous voice:

"Tear 'em, boys! Seize 'em, boys!"

The dogs hesitated for only an instant, as the boys met their attack. Then, speedily rallying, they rushed on them once more, with fangs bared and dripping, and sharp, white teeth exposed.

But the brief interval had given Sandy's sharp eyes time to observe something. In one corner of the room was what appeared to be a trap-door. Calling to Jack, he made for it, and raised it by an iron ring affixed to its upper side. It swung back, and the two boys flung themselves through it and slammed it behind them, just as the teeth of the foremost of the dogs almost closed on Jack Dacre.

The place in which they now found themselves was pitchy dark. But Sandy had some matches in his pocket. He kindled one, and the light showed them that they were in an underground tunnel of some sort.

They set off down it at a good speed, not knowing where it would lead them, but with a wild desire to leave those two dogs as far behind as possible. As they sped along, they could hear the creatures searching and whining at the trap-door.

The two lads had progressed for some distance—with alarming results to Sandy's matches—when they came to a door which barred their further progress. It was fitted with a bolt, and after an instant's hesitation, they drew it.

As they did so, and the door swung open, a startling thing happened. A man rushed out like a thunderbolt and sprung straight for Sandy.

"Take that, you rascal!" he cried.

"Hoots mon, what ails ye!" yelled the Scotch lad, for the flicker of the match had enabled him to see that the man was gaunt, cadaverous, and apparently the victim of ill-treatment. They had little to fear from him.

"Great Scott!" exclaimed the man. "I know that voice. Isn't that a lad named Sandy MacTavish?"

"It is. But who the dickens are you? Here, wait till I get another match." So saying, the lad kindled another lucifer.

As its light fell on the features of the man who had sprung out on them, both lads gave an exclamation of dumfounded amazement:

"Sam Hartley!"

"Yes, it's me, all right!" rejoined the detective, with scant regard for grammar. "But what in the world brings Sandy MacTavish and Jack Dacre here?"

"The same agency which brought you, I guess," exclaimed Jack; "a band of rascals. But tell us what this place is, and how they ever entrapped you in it."

The Secret Service man who had aided the boys in the valley against the counterfeiters and again helped them when in peril from Chinese smugglers in the Great Northwest, soon told his story.

He had been sent out by the Department of Justice to round up the gang of miscreants that had been decoying vessels to their fate by false lights. As usual, he worked alone, and, disguised as a fisherman, collected much evidence against them. But in some way they came to suspect him, and one night they raided the hut in which he had taken up his abode, and made him prisoner. Ever since then they had kept him a captive, trying, without success, to get him to reveal how much evidence he had gathered.

"But why didn't the government search for you?" asked Jack.

"Why, they know I always work alone, and sometimes don't communicate with Washington for months. I suppose, in time, they'd have organized a hunt for me, but by that time, I guess, there wouldn't have been much of me left to find." He held up a skinny arm.

"I tell you, the board and lodging at this place is something fierce," he said, with an attempt to turn his misery into a joke, in his old cheerful fashion.

"Hark!" exclaimed Jack suddenly.

There was good reason for his exclamation. Even at the depth at which they were located, they could hear the sounds of firing, as the furious volleys, of which we know, were leveled at the submarine.

"Something's going on up above," decided Sam Hartley. "Wonder what can be up?"

"Maybe those rascals are quarreling among themselves," said Jack.

"Let's go back and enter the light-house through the trap-door," suggested Sandy.

But Sam Hartley shook his head.

"I know a better way than that," he said. "You notice that this cell, in which I have been confined, is merely a section of the tunnel closed in?"

The boys nodded.

"You opened the door by which my jailers brought me food when you slid that outside bolt," he said; "but at this other end there's a kind of a bulkhead. I succeeded in working it somewhat loose, but my failing strength would not permit my proceeding with the job. But through cracks in it I've smelled fresh air. I'm sure it opens out of doors. What do you say if we try to force it by our united efforts?"

The bulkhead referred to by Sam Hartley was an affair of boards and what seemed to be driftwood, held together by iron braces. As he had said, it was in a shaky condition.

Together they all three set to work on it, and after half an hour's work Sandy cried:

"Hooray! One more shove, and down she comes!"

The shove was given, and with a will. As the Scotch lad had prophesied, the partition fell with a crash, amid a cloud of dust. As it fell, a strong whiff of fresh air blew in their faces.

"It's as I thought," declared Sam Hartley, "this tunnel opens on the lake shore."

"Did that rascally gang dig it?" wondered Sandy.

"No," rejoined the detective, "I guess it's of Indian origin. There are drawings on the wall. In one case that I worked up, I had to study such things, so that I recognize them. I guess Indians dug this tunnel, and then the gang, when they found it, speedily took advantage of the fact that it was here to make a secret 'getaway' place."

As we know, from what old Sam on board the submarine had said, such was the case.

"Well, let's get to the air and find out what's going forward," said Jack impatiently.

The others were nothing loath. But they found their way barred by a strange assortment of encumbrances in the passage-way. Bales, barrels, boxes, kegs, all these cluttered it up, almost to its roof. It was hard work effecting a passage among them.

"Boys, do you realize what we've stumbled on?" said Sam Hartley, as they worked at the task of displacing them.

"I guess it's the stuff the gang removed from vessels they had wrecked," surmised Sandy.

"Correct," said Sam. "Look at the different names upon them. They are all of craft that I have read about as being mysteriously missing."

"Well, if you've got a path clear, let's get out," said Sandy dryly. "I've burned my last match."

They groped their way forward down the passage. Inwardly each was wondering why the gang did not pursue them. Had they but known it, each member of that precious organization was busied in getting aboard the tug, as it had been surmised by the rascals that the submarine would speedily bring the authorities to the island.

"Look! The stars!" cried Jack, as at last they emerged from the old Indian tunnel upon a sandy beach.

The storm had cleared off like magic, and the canopy of night sparkled with a thousand points of light.

"Hullo, what's that?" cried Sam suddenly.

Something black, and looking not unlike a whale, had suddenly emerged from the surface of the waters.

"A whale!" cried Sandy.

"Rubbish! What would a whale be doing in the Great Lakes?" scoffed Jack.

"I don't care; it is one."

"Look," cried Sam suddenly, "there's a light coming from it. It's—it's—by all that's wonderful, it's a submarine!"

The rays of the searchlight enveloped the figures on the beach. Suddenly the conning tower hatch shot open and Tom's figure emerged.

"Jack! Jack!" he hailed.

"It's Tom!" went up an incredulous shout.

Sam Hartley's amazement was no less than that of the boys. The submarine's boat was sent ashore for them, and before long they were all talking at once in the cabin of the good craft Huron. What slappings of the back, hand-shakings and mad antics ensued, I leave you to imagine.

Till dawn they hovered about the island, and then, as they found that the rascally band had really escaped, they set out for Brownhaven. But a short part of the distance had been covered, however, before some spars and a hull that looked familiar were espied. It was the Sea Ranger. She proved to have on board Mr. Chisholm Dacre and Mr. MacTavish. The gentlemen happened to be in Buffalo on business when Tom's message was relayed to them. In a special train they had made all speed for Brownhaven, where they had found the Sea Ranger repaired ahead of the expected time. With a hastily picked crew, they had set out at once for Castle Rock Island.

"Well, you boys display a faculty for getting in and out of trouble far in excess of any I have ever seen," laughed Mr. Dacre, after they had formed Obadiah Ironsides' acquaintance and made a full survey of the marvels of the submarine.

"Well, so long as they do get out of it, that's the main thing," said Mr. MacTavish. "Such experiences make real men of them, eh, Mr. Ironsides?"

"I think so," said the inventor.

The talk then drifted to the finding of the hidden spoils of the wreckers.

In due time, Mr. MacTavish, as owner of the island, turned these stolen treasures over to the government, and later he was awarded his share, which was given over, however, to old Sam, as a partial recognition of his services. Both Mr. Dacre and Mr. MacTavish wished to reward Mr. Ironsides, but the only recognition of his assistance in rescuing the lads that the inventor would take was a letter of introduction from Mr. MacTavish to an influential naval official at Washington. It may be said here that this letter was the ultimate means of his securing a lucrative contract to build submarines for Uncle Sam's navy. You have all heard of the Ironsides type of diving torpedo boat—the best and most efficient made.

Walstein, Dampier and Co. were eagerly sought, both by the government and by private detectives engaged by Mr. Dacre and Mr. MacTavish. But no trace of them was found, except a wrecked and abandoned tug on a wild part of the Canadian shore. The ruffians escaped into the wilderness unpunished.

As for Castle Rock Island, it has been turned into a delightful spot. The old tower once more beams forth its friendly rays at night, and nearby a neat bungalow has been built. The rest of the island has been turned into a big game preserve, where the Bungalow Boys delight to hunt. The island is a favorite haunt with them and their boy friends—and some older ones—and, sitting on the veranda of their pleasant island dwelling, they never tire of conversing about the stirring days they spent "On the Great Lakes."

We should like to relate in detail something of their happy days on the island, but we must leave our young friends for a time. The object of this present narrative has been fulfilled. Our boys have been brought safely through dire perils and adventures.

Those who care to follow still further their travels may meet them in new surroundings and novel experiences in a forthcoming volume dealing with life in Alaska.

That land is full of interest and offers abundant opportunity for adventure, and therefore we can assure our readers that they will participate in an exciting tour if they choose to join "The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon."

THE END.