"I wonder where that valiant band of whites is, anyway?" muttered
Dave. "I haven't heard a sound of them."
"You may hear their battle yell any minute," Dick whispered.
"Be careful not to talk loudly enough to give them any clue."
For two or three minutes more Dick led the way. Of a sudden he halted—-right up against a huge surprise. For the boys had suddenly broken into a little circular clearing, not much more than thirty feet in diameter. Near the center of this clearing, under a flimsy shelter he had made of poles and branches, crouched Amos Garwood. He was at work over a low bench built of a board across two boxes. So intent was Garwood on what he was doing that he appeared not to have heard the approach of the boys.
Dick Prescott stood looking on, one hand raised as a signal for the silence of those behind him. But both Dave and Tom had caught sight of the stranger at about the same instant.
"If any who know me have hinted that my brain is not strong enough," muttered Garwood, whose back was turned to the startled Grammar School boys, "there is bound to be a great awakening when my wonderful invention is perfected. Then the world will bow down to me, for I shall be its master."
"Crazy as a porous plaster!" muttered Tom Reade under his breath.
"It will be a new, a strange sensation," continued Garwood, speaking just loud enough to be heard by the onlookers. "A great sensation, too, to be master of the world when, during these present dark days, I am compelled to run and hide for fear envious scientists will succeed in capturing me and locking me up."
"I wonder what he thinks he's doing there?" pondered Dick curiously.
"To think that a few grains of this wonderful substance would pulverize a regiment!" continued Garwood, in an inventor's ecstasy. "An ounce of this wonderful material enough to blow up an army corps. A single pound sufficient to bring the nations of the world to my feet in awed homage. And I can make a hundred pounds a day of it! Oh, that I could reach other worlds, to make them feel my mastery!"
"If his stuff is as good as he thinks it is, I certainly hope he won't shoot off any of it accidentally," thought Prescott, with an odd little shiver.