With this object in view he moved as stealthily as possible through the jungle, up the hill, toward the fire, shining dimly in the rain. Much to his surprise he found no guards posted about the camp. When fifty yards away, concealed from any possible view of those about the fire by a mass of creepers, he saw that the inhabitants of the camp were hustling about in the work of building a good-sized shelter of the huge leaves which grew about. The reclining forms in the shelter he had first seen were now only partly in sight.
"They are tryin' to keep the prisoners dry, anyway," the boy thought.
The shelter last spoken of was at the right of the fire, and Jimmie circled off so as to reach it from the rear, his purpose being to learn if the persons lying there were really the men who had been carried away from the island where Captain Godwin had his headquarters.
Presently he came upon a group of four people, standing, somewhat protected from the storm, under a great tree. He drew as close as he dared, even risking discovery, and listened. He could hear voices above the wailing of the wind and the patter of the rain, but could not understand what was being said. The conversation was being carried on in a tongue with which he was unfamiliar.
"Three of them are Chinks," he mused, when, in moving about, the men came between his line of vision and the slow flame of the fire. "They wear their shirts outside their trousers and have their hair done up like the Chinese in Pell street!"
Directly the fourth man of the party, who seemed to be an American, or, at least, an Englishman, asked:
"And the treaty? Will they sign?"
The others nodded and chattered away in their own tongue.
"When will they be here?" he then asked.
More chattering followed, and then the four hastened to the shelter which was being constructed. Jimmie gathered from the two questions he had heard that the island had been chosen as a meeting place, and that the shelter was being built for the accommodation of those expected.