The Radio Detectives in the Jungle

by A. Hyatt Verrill

The steel-walled, narrow alleyway was dimly lighted by screened electric bulbs and reaching the door to the room, Tom turned the knob, swung it open, and stepped into the black interior. With groping fingers he reached for the switch beside the door and pressed the button. At his touch the place was flooded with brilliant light and dazed by the sudden glare Tom involuntarily turned his face and blinked. The next instant the steel ceiling seemed to crash down upon his head, his knees sagged limply, the light danced and spun about and he felt himself sinking into a bottomless black pit.

Slowly consciousness came back to him. First, as a dull, throbbing ache, then as a stabbing pain in his head and with the pain came the dim memory of the blinding light, the blow and oblivion. What had happened? What had fallen from above to strike him? Why was it so dark? Why did he feel suffocating? Had the lights gone out? Was he still pinned under the object which had hit him?

Perhaps, he thought, there had been an accident, a collision. Perhaps, even now, the destroyer was sinking. He strove to turn his head, to rise, and then, for the first time, he suddenly realized that his head was enveloped in the heavy choking folds of a blanket, that his arms were pinioned behind his back and with the discovery came the terrifying knowledge that he had been struck by some one; stunned, gagged, and bound by some enemy.

But, by whom? Who upon the destroyer could have done this? Who had been hiding in the room and for what reason?

Choking for breath, still dazed from the blow on his head, frightened and sick, feeling as if every breath under the smothering cloth must be his last, Tom nevertheless thought of the others. The vessel and his friends must be in danger; there must be mutiny afoot, and he groaned to think that he could not warn the others; could not even cry out. Then, suddenly he forgot all, forgot his aching dizzy head, his gasping, choking lungs, his terror and his plight, for through the folds of the blanket the sounds of a human voice came dimly to him. And, as Tom’s straining ears caught the words, he could scarcely believe he was not in a delirium. Terror froze the blood in his veins.

“Everything correct,” came faintly through the cloth. “We’ll fix the gear so she’ll go on the rocks in the Bocas. Yes, all out of it but this and I’ll fix this in a minute more. Oh, yes. Pretty near caught. Fool boy bobbed up unexpectedly. Knocked him out. Oh, no, toss him overboard presently. No, no trace.”

Then silence--and Tom, knowing his end was near, that in a few short moments he would be cast, bound, gagged and helpless into the black water, prayed for unconsciousness, prayed for oblivion that would end his sufferings. But the very terror of his fate kept his mind active and his senses alive, while each short, gasping breath he drew sent surges of awful, crashing pain through his temples and he felt as though his eyes were bulging from the sockets.

Then he felt himself roughly seized and being carried away bodily. He knew that in another instant he would find himself falling, would feel the cold waters close over him. Summoning all his fast ebbing strength, he uttered a piercing scream and once more lost consciousness.

Muffled by the blanket about his head, Tom’s last despairing cry could not have been heard ten feet away; but it was enough. Less than ten feet off, Sam the Bahaman was at that instant approaching the room, passing through the alleyway. At the boy’s smothered cry, he leaped to the door, flung it open and with a savage yell sprang at the figure about to throw the apparently lifeless boy through the open gun port.

So swift and silent had been Sam’s response to Tom’s cry that the negro’s yell was the first warning Tom’s captor had of the Bahaman’s approach. Startled, taken utterly by surprise, he dropped the boy’s body, whipped out a revolver and whirled about. But Sam, with head lowered, had hurled himself like a catapult across the room. Before the other could even aim his weapon, the negro’s head struck him squarely in the stomach with the force of a battering ram. With a gasping, awful gurgle the man doubled up and shot through the open gun port into the sea. Sam, carried forward by his own momentum, grasped the gun carriage and saved himself in the nick of time from plunging into the water after the writhing body of his victim.