“And if there are it is no business of mine,” returned the commander of the cutter.
“It isn’t!” exclaimed Walter in great amazement. “Then I’d like to know just how far a revenue officer’s business extends. Haven’t you authority to search any vessel you suspect?”
“Certainly I have; but I don’t suspect this schooner. And, even if I did, I would not search her now, because she is outward bound. If she has contraband articles on board, the Cuban revenue officers may look to it, for I will not. All I have to do is to prevent, as far as lies in my power, articles from being smuggled _into_ the United States; I don’t care a snap what goes _out_.”
“But you ought to care. There is a boy on board that schooner, held as a prisoner.”
“Because he knows something about the smugglers, and they are afraid to allow him his liberty.”
“Every word of that is false,” cried the master of the Stella, who seemed to be almost beside himself with fury. “It is a villainous attempt to injure me and my vessel.”
“Keep your temper, captain,” said the commander of the cutter. “I want to see if this young man knows what he is talking about. Where are those two smugglers who brought that boy over here in a canoe?”
“I don’t know, sir. We have searched the island and can find no trace of them.”
“That is a pretty good sign that they are not here. Where is the boat they came in?”
“I don’t know that either. It is also missing.”
“Where is the boy they brought with them?”
“When the Banner rounded the point he was standing in the mouth of that cave,” replied Walter, pointing to the Kitchen, “and shouted to us to get away from here while we could—that this schooner is a smuggler and that Fred Craven is a prisoner on board of her.”
“He certainly has,” replied Walter, “for we saw him and heard him too.”
“Did anybody else? Did you, Mr. Bell? Or you, Captain Conway? Or any of your men?”
The persons appealed to answered with a most decided negative. They had seen no boy in the cave, heard no voice, and knew nothing about a prisoner or a pirogue. There was one thing they did know, however, and that was that no dugout that was ever built could traverse forty miles of the Gulf in such a sea as that which was running last night.