Mystery of the Ambush in India

Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
By ANDY ADAMS
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
(c) BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC. 1962
Contents
I A Mysterious Message
It was sunset along the Calcutta waterfront. The reflection of the vivid tropical sky turned the murky water of the Hooghly River into a rippling rainbow. The river was alive with a variety of craft, including native sailboats, side-wheel steamers that plied up and down the Hooghly between Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal, eighty miles south, as well as sturdy tugs, launches, and lighters that served the ocean-going ships moored in midstream along the strand.
Biff Brewster was standing at the bow of a big freighter, the 10,000-ton Northern Star , which only that afternoon had cast anchor in the Port of Calcutta. Biff was a blond-haired youth of sixteen, with broad, square shoulders and blue-gray eyes that were as keen and expressive as his strong, well-formed features. With Biff were two other boys, his companions in previous adventures.
One was Kamuka, a Brazilian boy of Biff's own size and age. They had met at the headwaters of the Amazon, where Biff had accompanied his father, Thomas Brewster, in an adventurous search for a fabulous gold mine. Kamuka, who had spent most of his life on jungle rivers, was keenly interested in the scenes he now was viewing along the Hooghly.
The other boy was slightly younger and smaller of build, but quite as wiry and athletic as his two companions. He was Likake Mahenili, a Hawaiian youth known as Li to his friends. Li, a skilled diver, had helped Biff crack the riddle of a vanished sloop when they had teamed in a thrilling sea hunt off the Hawaiian shores.
Now, all three were newly arrived in India, the land of mystery. But there was no mystery as to why and how they happened to be together. That was due to a simple turn of events.