“Perhaps Tom can tell us, when he comes to,” suggested Commander Disbrow. “Ah, he’s all right, he’ll be out of his faint in a moment.”
Presently Tom’s eyes opened and he looked about, a wild, uncomprehending expression on his face. Then, realizing that he really was among his friends, that his father was bending over him and that he had not been thrown into the sea, he smiled and closing his eyes, took a long deep breath.
When again he looked up, he was fully conscious and to his father’s anxious queries declared he felt all right except weak and that his head ached. Then, for the first time, the others discovered the great bruised lump upon his head and as it was being bandaged Tom told his amazing story.
“The scoundrel!” cried Mr. Pauling. “I can’t understand it. Whom was he talking to in the room?”
“In the room!” fairly shouted Rawlins. “Don’t you see it all, Mr. Pauling? He was talking to those blamed ‘reds.’ The whole thing’s a frame up. They weren’t shipwrecked at all. The Devonshire never was held up. It was all a trick and I said I had a hunch it was at the time. They just got aboard us to give them a chance to wreck the destroyer and get away. He put the radio sets out of commission and left the boys’ set ’til the last so he could call to his friends.”
Before Rawlins had uttered a dozen words, the Commander had slipped from the room and before the diver had ended he had given low-toned orders and commands.
“By Jove, I guess you’re right!” exclaimed Mr. Pauling. “But still, we got that cable from Trinidad this morning. The Devonshire must be there.”
Rawlins snorted. “Cable nothing!” he replied. “That was a fake--sent by the same bunch to head us for Trinidad. Didn’t Tom hear him say they’d fix our gear to put us on the rocks in the Bocas? Why, by gravy, they may be hanging around within sight of us now! There never was a Devonshire. They just dropped off from the sub in our course and pretended to be adrift. I’ll bet the old sub wasn’t fifty yards away when we took ’em aboard.”
“And we thought they’d fallen into our trap!” ejaculated Mr. Henderson. “And we were the ones who were caught.”
“A miss is as good as a mile,” Rawlins reminded him. “And we’re not caught yet. We’ll fool ’em still and land ’em if I have to follow them to Kingdom Come. Say, we’d better get the rest of that bunch rounded up before they do anything or get wise to Robinson being bumped off.”