“They are in the rocks yonder, boys. Surround them!” he ordered in a sharp, harsh voice. “They shall pay dearly for each of my beauties they have killed.”
One of the little brown men, who wore a red band about his arm and seemed to be a leader among them, shouted some sharp orders to his fellow countrymen and they spread about the rocks in a circle. The first impulse of the boys had been to run for it but they realized, even as the thought entered their minds, that it would be useless in their exhausted condition to try to make their escape. Each of their opponents was armed and while they also carried weapons, still they could only have stood off an attack for a few minutes.
With a shout the little brown men rushed at the Boy Aviators as they stood side by side, but they hesitated and fell back as Frank and his brother aimed their revolvers.
“I do not want to take human life,” cried Frank, “but the first one of you that lays a hand on us I’ll shoot him.”
“Very fine talk,” sneered the big white man, striding up, “but there are twelve of us here.”
“Yes,” replied Frank, undaunted, and tapping the magazine of his revolver, “and there are twice twelve here and they all come out at once.”
The big man paused a minute and bit his lip. For a minute he seemed about to give orders to his followers to fire on the boys and shoot them down where they stood. He evidently thought better of his intention later, however, for he said, with a change of voice from his original harsh, rasping tone.
“There are several things I want to talk to you about, Frank Chester—you see I know you and your brother Harry—will you give up your weapons and agree to accompany me to my camp if on my part I give my word not to harm you?”
Frank realized in that instant that the man who faced him was Captain Mortimer Bellman, the renegade American officer, and he also weighed and recognized the value of a pledge from such a man; but they were in position where there was nothing to be gained by fighting and in which much benefit might accrue to them from temporizing—so:
“Yes,” he said, “we will go with you.”