The darkness of the place was made visible, so to speak, by a smoky oil-torch, like those used in the stoke-hold of a steamer, that hung in one corner. It was miserably damp and several subterranean streams fed by the mountain above trickled across the floor. In one corner the boys noticed, as their eyes grew accustomed to the light, was a curious contrivance formed of two long bars of heavy wood with holes pierced in them at regular intervals.
Two heavy posts stood at each end of this contrivance, to which were attached heavy padlocks and hasps. With a quick thrill of horror the boys realized that they faced that instrument of confinement of blue-law days—the stocks.
After another sharp order from Bellman their captors carried them to the appliance and raising the heavy upper block of wood thrust the boys’ legs into the semicircular openings cut in the lower section for that purpose. Similar holes were cut in the upper bar and when it was lowered and padlocked down the unfortunate person confined there could in no way release himself till somebody unlocked the padlocks.
“Now,” said Bellman, when this work was completed to his satisfaction, and the boys were securely fastened in their prison, “I am going to introduce you to the man you have been looking for. Serang,” he ordered, turning to the little brown man with the red stripe on his arm, “Sahib Chapin bring.”
The man nodded obediently and left the fetid chamber. The boys wondered that he did not take any companion with him, but when he returned, leading a stumbling, helpless figure, they understood that even a small man of his caliber was able now to handle the once strapping Lieutenant Chapin. For that in the figure before them, for all his unshaven cheeks and blinking eyes, like those of a bat, they had the man they had come all the way in search of, his uniform, now bagging in unsightly fashion about his shrunken form left them no room to doubt. The miserable scarecrow figure that gazed apologetically about it, was the inventor of Chapinite, and once the most popular man in the United States Navy.
The boys’ cheeks burned with indignation at the sight, and if they might have had any weak inclination to save their lives by yielding to Bellman’s demand that they reveal the whereabouts of the Golden Eagle II, the sight of the miserable wreck before them would at once have decided them. They would stick by the unfortunate officer come what might and if possible, avenge the indignities he had suffered.
“Put him in alongside them, serang,” ordered Bellman, as Chapin gazed about in a dazed manner, evidently realizing little of what was transpiring and in a few minutes Lieutenant Chapin, Frank Chester and his brother Harry, were trussed up in a row absolutely helpless. It was a bitter thought that here they were within hand’s reach of the man they had come so far and endured so much to succor, and now they were as helpless to aid him as he seemed to be to care for himself.
“I wish you a pleasant afternoon,” said Bellman, as, signing to the serang, he and his myrmidons left the subterranean chamber.
As soon as their footsteps had died out Frank determined to make an effort to arouse the dormant faculties of Lieutenant Chapin.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “we are your friends. Can you understand us?”