The Boy Aviators on Secret Service

in which crouched timid-looking women and children. The place was enclosed by a solid wall of trees and closely growing vines. Great gray beards of Spanish moss wa

-knots. This fire was being fed by a youth who might have been the brother of one of the men who stopped them in the forest. A cover, evidently fashioned from some kind of wood, covered the iron pot and from this lid a pipe of metal led to a crude trough. From the end of the pipe was constan

," was the impudent reply that made Harry hanker-as he whispered

ering what sort of a place and into what sort of company they could have fallen, a figure came st

mer was B

loud shouts of delight and seemed embarrassed when Fra

l sort of craft, but-but the fact is that these folks around this yere camp are old shipmates of mine in

up the clouds of mystery that Ben Stubbs' sud

e these people?"

get here?" ch

Bart be?" was Bil

ith a pipe on the top of it o

me," cried Ben, getting back a little of his easy-goi

s the amaz

now, shipmates, so don't be afeard; but th

miling at the idea of good-natured Ben's

ad seen from the Carrier Dove a man snooping around our fi

oys n

ngle before we were su

of my friends hereabout. I had reason to know they were in this part of the country, for after th

the government?

hipmate Lathrop calls a 'funny pot' is a whisky still and these folks you see around us

estions. Their amazement

pped a 'revenue' at one time or another. Poor devils, if you'd ever

shiner, Ben?" asked L

h a wink that

you'll be near it," he replied. "I used to keep

cret mountain stills where it is made. The coincidence of Ben meeting his old friends on the island was after all not so remarkable as it seemed. Since the government has run most of the moonshiners out of the Tennessee and North Caro

ad excited his desire to own it. The mystery of the motor-boat that kidnapped poor Pork Chops, however, was in no wise cleared up, and as the boys and Ben sat down to a meal of yellow corn pone, broiled wild hog, pompano, fried plantain and a sort of orange preserve, to which they did ample justice, the subject occupied most

ners seemed even disposed to be friendly, in an offish sort of way, after Ben's endorsement of the boys. One of them approached them with a pan

dent relish although the portion he had poured out had been intended to suffice the entire quartette of boys. "Black Bart," too, had a little fallen off in the estimation of the moon

ed to be regarded as some sort of a costly ornament. This was partly explained by the fact that the wife of the owner of the hut was an Indian woman and was the person who had ornamented the bottle for "big

atisfactory replies. At length, however, after Frank had given her a bri

islands) long time go." S

ound Cape Sabl

understand,

him-he float,

a message from some poor fellow who is cast awa

s looked

gation he found that her husband, who was absent from the camp, had been delivering a consignment of moonshine to a camp of Seminoles in the wildest part of the 'glades and had found the b

sly small amount, while she in her turn thought the young Hot-ka-tee (white man) must be

even he scarcely knew, but the bottle and its hidden message had appealed strongly to the boy's nature,-in which there was a st

out before Frank could read the few faintly pencilled lines tha

t exposure had obliterated. The next legible words we

p-n, U

gaps puzzled him and he did not pay much attention to the general significance of the sc

written by the missi

ubt of it. Reconstru

es. They stole the secret of Chapi

y he explained his find. The sensation it created may be imagined. Here was the first definite news

re communication f

m the moonshiner discovered the bottle. Ben knitted

his coast would never have drifted the bottle round there. It must have come down the river, maybe from t

the clearing a rumpled heap of humanity whom the boys at once recognized as the man they had caught eavesdropping in Was

f the message from Washington to Florida as Nego-recognize

the group stood as th