“But if he won’t give it?” demanded Jack. “He didn’t strike me as the kind of man to——”
“Hark!” exclaimed Tom, interrupting him. “What’s that—music?”
Music it was. The strumming of a banjo, played with consummate skill.
Presently, too, a voice struck in. It was nasal and penetrating, offering a sharp contrast to the real skill of the banjo player:
“I sailed away in sixty-four,
In the Nancy brig from the Yankee shore;
We sailed and we sailed in sun and squall;
Fer traders’ gold where the South Seas fall;
Tip away—tip away—where the So-uth Seas fa-all!”
CHAPTER IX.
FAST IN THE TOILS.
An hour or so later the lads were much astonished when Squinty entered the cave and, bending over them, rapidly loosened their bonds. So tightly had they been triced up, however, that it was some time before the stiffness was sufficiently out of their limbs to enable them to move with freedom. While they were “limbering up” their guardians allowed them to emerge from the cave and move and chafe their sore, aching limbs, at liberty. But, although it was pleasant to feel free once more—so far as their manacles went, that is—the boys did not by any means relish the surrounding crowd of Chinamen and rough-looking white men, the latter of whom indulged in some coarse jests at their expense.
At length, however, they were so far relieved from their cramped pains and “pins and needles” that they were able to stand upright and walk about without much difficulty. As soon as their guardians saw this they roughly ordered them to march in front of them toward the tent where they had had their first sight of Bully Banjo.
He was still sitting there as they were escorted up, and was deep in consultation with the tall Chinaman and the scrubby-haired man, whom we know as Zeb Hunt. Apparently the subjects of the consultation had been the boys, for as Death and Squinty marched them up Simon Lake looked up from a stick he had been industriously whittling, and turned to his companions with a quick “hush.”
“Waal,” said he, as the boys came to a halt, “you’ve bin doin’s some putty tall thinkin’, I kalkerlate.”