“Sand!” thought the boy.
For one brief instant he could see, through the still open trap door above him, the bright gleam of the stars. The next moment, with an ominous crash, the door fell, blotting out the sky and leaving him in utter darkness. He heard a dull clanking of metal. Evidently his captors were securing the door from the outside. Then came a burst of smothered laughter from above, which made Ned’s blood boil. This was succeeded by absolute silence.
Before long, however, he heard footsteps above him. They rang hollowly, as if on a wooden floor.
“Hum, so I’m in a cellar,” thought Ned, “and I’ll bet the hole out of a doughnut that it’s the cellar of that bungalow I heard those rascals talking about while I lay hidden in the automobile. I wish to goodness I’d stayed there a while longer. I might have been of more help to Mr. Lockyer.”
Some men, and most boys of Ned’s age, finding themselves in pitch darkness, bound hand and foot and without the least idea of where they were save that they were in the hands of bad men, would have given way to despair. But this was not the way with the Dreadnought Boy. For one thing, his navy training had borne fruit in giving him unusual self-reliance, a feeling that one of Uncle Sam’s men must never give up the ship, not even when he feels her reeling and sinking beneath his feet. This feeling in great or less measure is in every heart that beats under a navy uniform, and it’s a mighty good insurance for the country that it is so.
“Well,” thought Ned to himself, “for apparent hopelessness this reminds me of that time we were all in that prison in Costaveza expecting to be shot. But we got out of that and maybe I’ll find a way out of this yet. But I must confess that it looks as if Gradbarr and Co. rather has it on me for the present, at any rate.”
He wiggled a hand, but if he had hoped to find any slack in his ropes he was disappointed. The same test applied to the ropes confining his lower limbs had no other result.
For some time he lay there in the darkness thinking up a dozen schemes to escape, all of which looked good at first, but each proved to be impossible of execution after a moment’s thought had been devoted to them.
“Wow! as Herc would say,” thought Ned. “It begins to look as if I was up against it as never before since our naval career began. I wonder what the other fellows are doing? They may have tried to trace the auto, but even if they succeed in finding it, it won’t do me any good. They’d never guess that those chaps had a motor boat.”
Suddenly he heard voices above him. Evidently the men who had captured them had come out of the house.