“Whatever does it all mean?” asked Prim in her sister’s ear.
“It’s my opinion,” declared Terry, “that every word we’ve heard against that man is true. Someone said he was a smuggler. Now I believe it.”
Joe Arnold was busy directing the blacks as they stowed away the bales in the old mud huts in the camp.
“What kind of smuggled goods would come in bales?” asked Prim. “I can’t imagine what it can be.”
“It might be lots of things, but probably it’s silk. There’s big money in that,” explained Terry.
Terry did not voice all her thoughts. She was thinking that they had very little chance of getting back to their homes with the secret of Joe’s smuggling base known to them. She realized that the situation was far more serious than she imagined. He was not merely attempting to get the flying field away from her father. Joe Arnold was mixed up in a crooked business. He would take desperate means to keep them from getting back to tell where his smuggling hang-out was situated.
Terry started back down the slope, dragging Prim with her. “Come away, I hate that man! I don’t want to know what he’s doing.”
Night was fast approaching and the girls watched with dread the shadows creeping down over the jungle. They put their heavy flying coats on the ground, gathered large banana leaves for pillows and decided to sleep out in the open.
But no sooner had darkness come than weird sounds filled the jungle behind them. Crickets shrilled in the trees. Wild animals howled and slinking forms scurried by at the edge of the forest. Frogs kept up a continual, deafening chorus, and there were shrill cries of night birds. Terry and Prim held each other closely and stared into the darkness toward the jungle, trembling with fear.
“Look at the sky, Prim,” said Terry trying to keep her mind from the strange and terrifying sounds of the tropical night. “You can see millions more stars down here than we can at home.”