ssed."

"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 b