CHAPTER XXIV.
A STARTLING MEETING.
The legion of little brown men at once fell in round the two boys, whoseclean cut young figures towered above their squat forms, and after theyhad surrendered their weapons--not without a momentary qualm of regreton Frank's part--the march to the camp began.
Bellman said little as they made their way along the trail, but strodealong with his hands clasped behind his back as though in deep thought.He was a huge man, with a singularly brutal face bronzed by the suns ofa dozen countries over which he had been a wanderer, and a heavydrooping mustache which hid a cruel mouth. His eyes were steely gray andas keen as a hawk's. Such was the man into whose power the Boy Aviatorshad fallen and even they did not realize the extent to which such a manwill go to gain an end--and that he had an end in view his action insparing their lives fully convinced them.
At last they emerged--after passing once more over the luckless wire--onthe settlement under the hill that Frank had noted the night before fromthe boat. There was every evidence of abandonment about it, however,even now, although it had been so recently the scene of activity.
"If you had come to-morrow I should not have had the pleasure ofreceiving you," said Bellman, with a sardonic grin, waving his hand toindicate the preparations for the abandonment of the settlement.
The blast furnace had been almost completely demolished and a gang ofmen, compatriots of the small brown men who formed the boys' escort,were busily engaged in completing the work of destruction with crowbarsand picks. Several of the small houses which Frank had seen from theboat had also vanished and the rest were portable contrivances. Theywere being rapidly taken to pieces and carried up the hill into thewoods, where doubtless they were to be destroyed, for the smoke of a bigfire was beginning to rise from there.
In the side of the hill back of the blast furnace, a great ragged holehad been torn like a small quarry, and a runway from this to theshattered blast-furnace indicated that some earth found in the hillsidewas reduced in the crucible to a condition in which it formed aningredient of Chapinite. The large building was evidently a sort ofbunk-house for the workmen and packing-house for the product thatCaptain Bellman and his men had been making there, for from its widedoor a perpetual stream of dwarfed brown men were carrying packing casescarefully wrapped in straw to a small fleet of canoes that lay mooredalongside a primitive wharf.
All these things the boys' eyes took in as they were led across the bareearth to the barrack-like building; but of the man to search for whomthey had come to the Everglades they could see no sign.
Bellman's first care was for his wounded dogs, after which he orderedhis men to bring the boys into a long, low ceiled room, apparently fromits heat right under the roof of the bunk-house. Straw mats laid allalong the walls also indicated that it was used as a sleeping attic bythe Orientals employed on the island.
There was a small table in the room with a rickety chair by it, andBellman took up a seat at it.
"We need not occupy much time," were his first words, as the boys stoodfacing him, surrounded by their impassive-faced guards. "I and my menare leaving the Everglades forever to-night. We wish to be secureagainst anybody following us. Where is this air-ship of yours and whereare the canoes in which you brought it here?"
"Why do you wish to know?" demanded Frank.
"I naturally wish to make myself secure from pursuit by destroyingthem," was the cool reply, "if you don't wish to tell me I shall findthem."
Frank knew that this last was an empty boast as to search the Evergladesfor their canoes or for their air-ship either would be a work occupyingmuch more time than Bellman could afford to spare.
"Under no circumstances will I give you any such information," saidFrank.
"I admire your pluck but deplore your lack of common sense," rejoinedBellman with a sneer.
"We don't care any more for your admiration than we do for yoursympathy," replied Frank, proudly.
Bellman's dark face flushed angrily.
"This is the way you treat my intended kindness," he thundered, strikingthe table with his clenched fist till its crazy legs wobbled under it.
"Well, I shall try another method. If you had answered me I would havesent some Seminoles here to pick you up, once I was safe at sea, but asit is now I shall leave you here to rot."
Little as Frank believed Bellman's tentative promise that he would sendrelief to them if they afforded him the opportunity to raid their campand destroy their canoes and the _Golden Eagle II_, yet both boysrealized not without dismay that there was a good deal of deadly earnestin the last words he had spoken.
"Leave them there to rot."
Involuntarily both boys shuddered.
Bellman's malevolent eye saw this and interpreted it at once as a signof weakening.
"Ah," he said viciously, "I touched you there, eh?"
"I don't know what you mean by that," said Frank, "but if you intend toconvey that we are afraid of you, we are not."
"Or of any cad that has been kicked out of the United States' Navy, andhas turned against his country," added Harry.
"You young whelp," shouted Bellman, beside himself at the sneer, "youhave tried to checkmate me at every turn, but you'll find out I am morethan your match."
"You come here to find Lieutenant Chapin, the dog who was instrumentalin my disgrace. Well, I'll introduce you to him."
He gave a sharp order in the same tongue his followers used and the nextminute the boys were seized. With a good, left-hand punch to the jawFrank knocked one of the amazed little brown men half across the roomand the next minute Harry had served another the same way. But it was nogood. The opposing force was too many for them and ignominiouslyhandcuffed they were at length led down several steep flights of stairsinto what they knew, by its musty smell, must be an underground chamber.
The darkness of the place was made visible, so to speak, by a smokyoil-torch, like those used in the stoke-hold of a steamer, that hung inone corner. It was miserably damp and several subterranean streams fedby the mountain above trickled across the floor. In one corner the boysnoticed, as their eyes grew accustomed to the light, was a curiouscontrivance formed of two long bars of heavy wood with holes pierced inthem at regular intervals.
Two heavy posts stood at each end of this contrivance, to which wereattached heavy padlocks and hasps. With a quick thrill of horror theboys realized that they faced that instrument of confinement of blue-lawdays--the stocks.
After another sharp order from Bellman their captors carried them to theappliance and raising the heavy upper block of wood thrust the boys'legs into the semicircular openings cut in the lower section for thatpurpose. Similar holes were cut in the upper bar and when it was loweredand padlocked down the unfortunate person confined there could in no wayrelease himself till somebody unlocked the padlocks.
"Now," said Bellman, when this work was completed to his satisfaction,and the boys were securely fastened in their prison, "I am going tointroduce you to the man you have been looking for. Serang," he ordered,turning to the little brown man with the red stripe on his arm, "SahibChapin bring."
The man nodded obediently and left the fetid chamber. The boys wonderedthat he did not take any companion with him, but when he returned,leading a stumbling, helpless figure, they understood that even a smallman of his caliber was able now to handle the once strapping LieutenantChapin. For that in the figure before them, for all his unshaven cheeksand blinking eyes, like those of a bat, they had the man they had comeall the way in search of, his uniform, now bagging in unsightly fashionabout his shrunken form left them no room to doubt. The miserablescarecrow figure that gazed apologetically about it, was the inventor ofChapinite, and once the most popular man in the United States Navy.
The boys' cheeks burned with indignation at the sight, and if they mighthave had any weak inclination to save their lives by yielding toBellman's demand that they reveal the whereabouts of the _Go
lden EagleII_, the sight of the miserable wreck before them would at once havedecided them. They would stick by the unfortunate officer come whatmight and if possible, avenge the indignities he had suffered.
"Put him in alongside them, serang," ordered Bellman, as Chapin gazedabout in a dazed manner, evidently realizing little of what wastranspiring and in a few minutes Lieutenant Chapin, Frank Chester andhis brother Harry, were trussed up in a row absolutely helpless. It wasa bitter thought that here they were within hand's reach of the man theyhad come so far and endured so much to succor, and now they were ashelpless to aid him as he seemed to be to care for himself.
"I wish you a pleasant afternoon," said Bellman, as, signing to theserang, he and his myrmidons left the subterranean chamber.
As soon as their footsteps had died out Frank determined to make aneffort to arouse the dormant faculties of Lieutenant Chapin.
"Lieutenant," he said, "we are your friends. Can you understand us?"
To his amazement a light of brighter intelligence shone in the captiveofficer's face and he answered with what was absolute briskness comparedto his former listless manner:
"Of course I can; but who are you?"
Rapidly Frank sketched out to him the events that had brought them thereand all they had hoped to accomplish. Then in a saddened voice he hadrelated the failure of their hopes and aspirations.
The lieutenant thanked them warmly for their loyalty, but urged them tosave their lives if possible by acceding to Bellman's demands. Forhimself, he said, he expected no better fate than to be left there todie.
"My life has been a living death at any rate," he said, "since I came tothis terrible place. Yours are the first kindly faces I have seen. Ihave lived as if in a dream." He pressed his hand to his forehead. "Itseems that I must do what they told me. I have even, as you know, aidedin the betrayal of my government by aiding these men in preparing myinvention. For the last two days, though, my mind has been gettingclearer. I have realized what is going on about me. I can judge thingsin their true proportions."
"But--pardon me for the question--" said Frank, "but when you----"
"I know," interrupted the lieutenant, "you are going to say that when Icame in here, I seemed stupefied. I was acting a part. I did not wantBellman to think that I had recovered my senses. I cannot understand itmyself. Until yesterday everything was like a dream, now I can thinkonce more like a rational man."
Frank detailed to him the conversation that they had overheard in theboat the night before and the boast that Foyashi had made that he hadplaced the captive under his control.
"Ah, that is it," exclaimed the lieutenant eagerly, "since Foyashi hasgone I have felt this new life of my brain, but hark--there's somebodycoming."
His ears, sharpened by his long captivity, were keener than the boys'for it was not till the serang with the red band on his arm entered theplace that they heard any indication of the arrival of the newcomer. Hecame straight up to the boys and informed them that it was the order ofhis master that he should search them. His manner was not insolent orrough, it was simply the manner of the lay figure who does as he is toldand asked no questions. Indignant but helpless Harry submitted to thesearch. He begged the man to let him keep his mother's picture which hecarried in a case in his inside pocket, but the man refused with amechanical shake of the head.
"No, my orders. Tuan he say take everything," he muttered.
Then came Frank's turn. As with Harry one by one his most treasuredpossessions were stripped from him by the immobile faced, yellow man.But suddenly something happened that had been entirely unlooked for.Frank had entirely forgotten the squatting Buddha, which he had placedin his pocket the day the moonshiner had sold it to him, and had notgiven it a thought since.
Now, however, the serang's searching hand found it in the boy's pocketand the effect on him was electrical.
He fell on his knees reverentially before the absurd looking piece ofjade and beat his head on the damp floor and then gazed at Frank in awe.
"How came you by this, master?" he asked.
Frank saw that the possession of the thing had made a strong effect onthe man and that to deceive him as to the fact in the case, might have abeneficial bearing on their position, so he simply shook his head and asHarry would have said, "looked wise."
"Him great Buddha of Lhasa," moaned the serang, bobbing up and downbefore it. "You great man. Me worship you if you give him me for keep."
"Why don't you steal it from us; we can't prevent you?" Harry could nothelp saying.
"No can steal. If steal heap curse all time. Plenty soon die," was theresponse, "but if give then great blessing--plenty blessing all time."
A sudden idea struck Frank.
"You are leaving here to-night in canoes for the coast?" he asked.
"Yes," was the reply, "we leave here never no more to come back."
"If I give you that Buddha will you unlock these stocks and thesehandcuffs before you go?" he asked.
The man thought a minute.
"If you don't I will make the Buddha curse you," pursued Frank. Thisseemed to decide the yellow man.
"All litee," he said, "before I go I lettee you out but no let Bellmanknow; he kill me."
"We won't let him know," said Frank with emphasis, "but how do we knowthat you will keep your word?"
"If I don't then Buddha curse me and I die," said the man simply as heleft the dungeon. The boys felt that they had secured a pledge offreedom by the merest chance that was better than all the promises thatcould be made from now till Doomsday.