Taking advantage of the cover afforded by bushes and rocky projections, this individual had gradually crawled nearer and nearer, until he was now as close to the fallen truncheon as Torpeon himself. He anticipated Torpeon’s movement by the fraction of a second, and seizing the weapon, he rose to his feet, and presented it at the prince’s breast.
“Han’s up, now, or I’ll blow de guts out of yer!” he cried out. “I hol’s de winnin’ ace, and de boss an’ me, we scoops de pot. Han’s up!”
Torpeon stared in amazement. His new antagonist, grotesque, one-legged and dwarfish, appeared to have sprouted out of the ground. He was supernatural: and he had him covered with a steady hand. The odds were too great.
“Drop that thing, Jim!” called out Jack. “We don’t need any machinery to tackle this hound: what he wants is a kick!”
So saying, and incensed at the prince’s attempted treachery, Jack stepped forward with a foot prepared, as on the gridiron of former days, for execution. But Torpeon’s red chariot still hung close at hand at the end of its long thread. He made a spring for it, caught it by the rim, and swung himself aboard. Immediately the cord began to diminish its length, carrying the chariot up with it at a prodigious speed; in a few minutes it had become a mere dot in the sky, ascending toward the red spider which the prince had called his kingdom of Tor, and which, as Jack, with cleared faculties, now recognized, was one of the ten moons which accompany the great Saturnian world on its endless journey.
“Well, he’s gone home, and I think he’ll stay there for the present,” said Jack, with justifiable satisfaction. “If he’d been properly brought up, though, he’d have made a good center rush on the team.”
“Dat guy is no good for nottin’, believe me, boss,” said Jim. “He ain’t got de right sperrit: he’s not a game sport! Dis here gun of his is a bum model: I makes a bluff wid it, but I ain’t on to her workin’s. I wisht I’d busted him wid her, anyhow!”
“Better as it is,” Jack said. “So you landed here safe and sound! Have you any notion whereabouts we are, or which way we should go to find Miss Miriam?”
“Yer kin search me, boss. Say, is dat big white t’ing up dere all right? I’d not like to be roun’ when it’s her day fur droppin’ down!”
“That is Saturn’s ring, Jim,” replied Jack wearing his new-found wisdom lightly. “It’s perfectly safe: I could have shown it to you through uncle’s telescope any time.”