“We’d better be getting out of this, anyway,” Jack put in, “for those chaps are sure to come back and bring a gang with them. Suppose we go back to the cottage and see what has been doing there?”
“I thought you came from the cottage here,” Ned said.
“No,” was the reply. “We left the road leading from Gatun at the point where you two left it last night.”
“I’ll bet you saw my signs in twigs,” Jimmie said.
“We sure did,” was the reply, “and we found your signs in stone out there on the stone pavement, and Jack bunted one of the guards in the head with the third rock.”
“But I don’t understand this,” Ned said. “Where have you boys been this morning?”
“This morning,” declared Frank. “It is most night now.”
“I’ll tell you,” grinned Jack, “they went and got taken prisoners by a martinet of a fellow and a dwarf, and I had to go and get them out. Say! But you wait a second, and I’ll produce my modest assistant.”
He stepped to the edge of the jungle and whistled shrilly, and the next moment a slender boy of perhaps fifteen stood by his side, gazing at the group, now on the pavement of what had at one time been the court of the temple, with something of fear in his dark eyes. He was dressed in clothes which were much too large for him, and his manner indicated that he was not at ease in the company of the well-dressed Boy Scouts.
“This is Gastong,” Jack explained. “He’s capable of doing a running stunt that would make an express train look like it was hitched to the scenery. Gastong,” he added, turning the boy around so that he faced the others, “this is the company of bold, bad men you’ve enlisted in. What patrol did you say you belonged to?”