The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

sank back again, pale and weak. Awkwardly Val forced him back against his pillows.
    “It’s all right,” he assured him again.
    But in answer the swamper shook his head violently, “It ain’t all right in the swamp.”
    In a flash Val caught his meaning. Swampers lived on house-boats for the most part, and the boats will outride all but unusual floods. But Jeems’ cabin was built on land, land none too stable even in dry weather. The swamp boy touched Val’s hand.
    “It ain’t safe. Two of them piles is rotted. If the watah gits that far, they’ll go.”
    “You mean the piles holding up your cabin platform?” Val asked.
    He nodded. For a second Val caught a glimpse of forlorn loneliness beneath the sullen mask Jeems habitually wore.
    “But there’s nothing you can do now—”
    “It ain’t the cabin. Ah gotta git the chest—”
    “The one in the cabin?”
    His black eyes were fixed upon Val’s, and then they swerved and rested upon the wall behind the young Ralestone.
    “Ah gotta git the chest,” he repeated simply.
    And Val knew that he would. He would get out of bed and go into the swamp after that treasure of his. Which left only one thing for Val to do.
    “I’ll get the chest, Jeems. Let me have your key to the cabin. I’ll take the outboard motor and be back before I’m missed.”
    “Yo’ don’t know the swamp—”
    “I know how to find the cabin. Where’s the key?”
    “In theah,” he pointed to the highboy.
    Val’s fingers closed about the bit of metal.
    “Mistuh,” Jeems straightened, “Ah won’t forgit this.”
    Val glanced toward the downpour without.
    “Neither will I, in all probability,” he said dryly as he went out.
    It had been on just such a night as this that the missing Ralestone had gone out into the gloom. But he was coming back again, Val reminded himself hurriedly. Of course he was. With a shake he pulled on his trench-coat and slipped out the front door unseen.
    CHAPTER XIV
    Pirate Ways Are Hidden Ways
    The rain, fine and needle-like, stung Val’s face. There were ominous pools of water gathering in the garden depressions. Even the small stream which bisected their land had grown from a shallow trickle into a thick, mud-streaked roll crowned with foam.
    But the bayou was the worst. It had put off its everyday sleepiness with a roar. A chicken coop wallowed by as the boy struggled with the knot of the painter which held the outboard. And after the coop traveled a dead tree, its topmost branches bringing up against the plantation landing with a crack. Val waited for it to whirl on before he got on board his craft.
    The adventure was more serious than he had thought. It might not be a case of merely going downstream and into the swamp to the cabin; it might be a case of fighting the rising water in grim battle. Why he did not turn back to the house then and there he never knew. What would have happened if he had? he sometimes speculated afterward. If Ricky had not come into the garden to hunt him? If together they had not—
    While Val went with the current, his voyage was ease itself. But when he strove to cut across and so reach the mouth of the hidden swamp-stream, he narrowly escaped upsetting. As it was, he fended off some dark blot bobbing through the water, his palm meeting it with a force that jarred his bones.
    But he did make the mouth of the swamp-stream. Switching on the strong search-light in the bow, he headed on. And because he was moving now against the current, it seemed that he lost two feet for every one that he advanced.
    The muddy water was whipped into foam where it tore around shrub and willow. There were no longer any confining banks, only a waste of water glittering through the dark foliage. The drear habitat of the vultures was being swept bare by the scouring of the incoming streams, but its moldy stench still arose stronger than ever, as if some foulness were being stirred up from its ancient bed.
    It was only by chance that Val found the drying rack which marked the boundary of Jeems’ property. Here the land was higher than the flood, which had not yet spread inland. He tied the boat to a willow and splashed ashore. In the lower portions of the path his feet sank into patches of wet. Something which might have been—and probably was—a snake oozed away from the beam of his pocket torch.
    The clearing was much as it had been, save that the door of the chicken-run stood ajar and its feathered population was gone. But under