Hark, what is that they are shouting upstairs?
“Frank! Frank! Harry, where are you?”
A second’s listening convinced the boys they were not dreaming. Whoever was upstairs was shouting their names. They set up redoubled shouts and shortly after they heard hands fumbling at the lock of the prison door. A few seconds later the lock having refused to yield, the door came flying inward, burst from its hinges by a tree-trunk cut and used as a battering ram by Lathrop and Billy.
The scene after the boys were reunited and Lieutenant Chapin had been introduced may be imagined. There surely was never a more joyful reunion nor in more strange surroundings.
Billy described how after their flight from the mound-builders’ island they had decided, after careful reconnoitering, that the island was deserted. How this had come about of course they did not know, and were at first in despair as they concluded that the boys and the lieutenant must have been taken to the coast and carried off to slavery in the Far East. At the actual baseness of Captain Bellman’s mind they had not guessed till they found the prisoners.
They had agreed, however, to land and explore the island in the hope that they might find some clue to their comrades, and with that intention had descended to the large open space where the reducing operations had been carried on. In course of time they had arrived at the door of the big bunk-house and here had made a startling discovery.
Stretched across the door of the place was a dead body.
“And what do you think, Frank?” exclaimed Lathrop, “on examining it in one hand we found tightly clutched a key and—here’s the extraordinary part—in one of the pockets of the loose blouse he wore we discovered a little green Buddha exactly like the one the moonshiner sold you.”
“Poor serang,” sighed Frank, “he did then try to keep his word.”
His words demanded an explanation and the boy rapidly told the rescuers of the dead man’s oath to release them.