Led by Mrs. Chillingworth, holding the lamp high above her head, they bore him to a small room upstairs. But it was some time before they could do more than watch him anxiously and await the time for him to speak.
In the meantime, after supper, as he had promised, Sam Hartley told how he came to run across the unfortunate fellow.
“As you know,” he began, after he had lighted his pipe, and they all sat about in interested attitudes in the big, comfortable living room; “as you know, when I left here this afternoon, it was for a definite purpose—to discover if possible how Bully Banjo and his men managed to get inland from the sea without crossing any trails. Well, I found out that at the same time as I found this fellow.
“It was this way: I had an idea in my mind as to how those rascals were getting into the canyon. Well, I found out that soon enough. As I expected, they were using a tunnel made by the river under the range, between the canyon and the sea. It was the simplest thing in the world for them to land their Mongolians right on the beach and then march ’em through that hole. In some places I guess they must have had to wade up to their knees, though.”
“Oh, then you didn’t go through it?” inquired Jack.
“No indeed,” was the rejoinder. “I wasn’t going to take a chance like that. I just got close enough to see the big opening—mostly screened by brush it was—the tracks in the sand along the side of the river told me the rest. But all that isn’t telling you about that poor fellow upstairs.”
Sam Hartley paused here, looked very grave, and shoved the tobacco down in his pipe bowl. Then he resumed:
“We’ve all read of pirates and stringing up by the thumbs, and things like that, but I never thought I’d live to see the victim of such practices. But that—or something very like it—is what had been done to our red-faced friend. As I emerged from the vicinity of the tunnel I heard a groan a little way up the canyon. I followed the sound up and soon came to where they had strung that chap up in a tree by his wrists. There he was, dangling about in the hot sun, suspended by his two wrists and nothing else. His feet were a foot or more off the ground.”
His hearers uttered horrified exclamations. Then Jack asked:
“But how did they come to tie him there, and why?”