“You are leaving here to-night in canoes for the coast?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the reply, “we leave here never no more to come back.”
“If I give you that Buddha will you unlock these stocks and these handcuffs before you go?” he asked.
The man thought a minute.
“If you don’t I will make the Buddha curse you,” pursued Frank. This seemed to decide the yellow man.
“All litee,” he said, “before I go I lettee you out but no let Bellman know; he kill me.”
“We won’t let him know,” said Frank with emphasis, “but how do we know that you will keep your word?”
“If I don’t then Buddha curse me and I die,” said the man simply as he left the dungeon. The boys felt that they had secured a pledge of freedom by the merest chance that was better than all the promises that could be made from now till Doomsday.
CHAPTER XXV.
QUATTY AS A SCOUT.
Acting on Billy’s suggestion Lathrop did not, as we know, wireless any news of the disappearance of Ben Stubbs to the Boy Aviators. He in fact agreed, after some pondering of the situation, with the reporter’s opinion that it was needless to worry them when they already had their hands full. The night after Ben Stubbs’ mysterious vanishment was passed in no very agreeable way by the young dwellers at Camp Walrus and as for Pork Chops his wails when he learned of it rang to heaven and back again.