"Dan is funny," she said. "First he disbelieves everything, but once he is convinced, he swallows all he is told."
"Oh, come now, Ray," exclaimed her brother. "You should be the first to admit that Old Santa Claus—I mean the Mahatma—is the real thing. Why, without him we would have been killed by the savages and you would not have been rescued."
Dan went on to explain the Hindu's power to send his thoughts through space and to control animals by his mysterious gift.
"Seeing is believing!" laughed Ray. "When I actually see all that, I'll believe it."
But Professor Oakwood was inclined to take the Mahatma seriously. "I am anxious to talk to this wise man from the East," he said. "There is nothing I should like better than to learn more about his occult power."
"You will have the chance today," said Dick. "He is waiting for us at the camp."
"That's where you're wrong," said Dan. "Some mysterious power tells me that he is on his way here."
He gravely closed his eyes, placed one hand on his forehead and raising the other one spread his fingers rapidly and closed them again. "Hocus-pocus! Abracadabra! Now-you-see-it. Now-you-don't! Here comes the Mahatma now!"
Ray saw a suspicious twitch at the corner of her brother's mouth and cried, "Dan Carter, you're spoofing us!"
Dick looked hastily in the direction of the jungle trail by which they had come and saw figures moving through the trees.