Suddenly they saw the ensign’s roving gaze fix itself steadily on some point almost above his head. They craned their necks, but saw nothing. The ensign’s head moved again and finally he walked away from them, step by step, still gazing upward. Nelson, for one, was fairly consumed by curiosity and would have remained so several moments longer had not his wandering gaze surprised Lanky Staples in the act of forming the word “wireless” with his lips. Then Nelson understood and peered eagerly into the topmost branches and, after an instant, saw what the officer had seen. Once detected the apparatus was startlingly evident. Twenty paces away from where Nelson stood, a twenty-foot sapling had been lashed to one of the taller trees. Some forty feet away another sapling, not quite so long, had been secured. Between them, invisible to a careless gaze, stretched two fine copper wires, perhaps two feet apart. From above they might have been detected, but from any point seaward they were invisible.
The ensign was stepping softly back toward the little group, a quiet smile on his lean face. “We’ve got them,” he whispered. He bent a thumb over a shoulder. “They’ve dug a hole back there. See that darkest pine, the one with the branches low to the ground? There’s a trap-door there. You stay here until I beckon. I want to make sure that it’s unlocked. When I beckon, come quietly, but keep out of range, for they may start popping.”
The ensign crept slowly off toward the indicated spot and presently they saw him stoop. A second later he straightened again and beckoned.
“Come on,” said Jones softly.
They joined the ensign. Half hidden by the drooping branches of the tree, and raised a bare inch above the sandy floor of the forest, was a square of wood, some eighteen inches across, of matched boards painted gray and sprinkled with sand while still wet. The ensign pointed to a barely defined path that led toward the northern beach and looked accusingly at Jones, and Jones, observing, shook his head sadly and stuck out a dubious lower lip. But there was no opportunity for excuses, had he had any to offer, for the ensign noiselessly raised the trap, revealing a ladder which, at first startled glance, seemed to lead far into the bowels of the earth. At the foot of it was a glow of light. As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the narrow shaft, revetted carefully with planking, they saw that the bottom was after all but a dozen or fourteen feet below them. And, as they looked they heard plainly the crackling of a wireless and the low sound of voices.
Ensign Stowell studied the situation a moment and then he leaned toward Jones and they spoke together softly. Jones passed on the orders. “Lanky, you come next. Then Chatty, then you, Endy. You stay up here, Billy, and watch. If any of them come up the ladder, drop ’em. All right, sir!”
The ensign slipped back the safety catch of his automatic and noiselessly lowered himself into the aperture. Jones, revolver ready, watched anxiously. Rung by rung the ensign descended. When his head had disappeared Jones followed. Those above, listening with painful intentness, heard scarcely a sound from the shaft. Staples scowled impatiently. Then he, too, set foot on the ladder, and at that instant they heard the ensign drop the last six feet and heard his voice cry:
Jones was gone now, Staples was descending rapidly and Nelson was following. The gray daylight disappeared as the latter feverishly searched for the rungs with impatient feet. From below came a dim yellow radiance. He heard the sharp report of a revolver, voices, the thud of Staples’ body as he spurned the last rungs of the ladder. He looked down. Jones was flattened against the wall, but he cried a warning and dropped.
He landed on his feet, collided with Jones and sprawled sideways. Another shot rang out and he was conscious of a blow on his arm under the shoulder and of Jones leaping across him. Then he struggled to his feet. Smoke wreathed and eddied in the dim light of a single lamp that hung from a nail in one corner, and made a haze through which he saw dimly. One of the enemy lay prone on the earth floor with blood trickling from his head. A second, a smoking pistol still in his grasp, stood with his hands above him. A third, surprised at the instrument, the receiver still in place was slewed half-way around on the box that served for chair and with drooping jaw and frightened eyes raised his hands, too, in token of surrender while his furtive glances swept the room for an avenue of escape. But the fourth and last member of the quartet was still unsubdued. It was he who had fired the last shot, and, although his revolver now lay on the ground under trampling feet, he fought fiercely, desperately in the clutch of Jones, uttering all the while the guttural, savage growls of an animal. Back and forth they swayed, lurched against the man on the box, who cringed away from them, stumbled back to the center of the floor again. The ensign and Staples, their revolvers covering the others, watched the struggle for an instant. Then, just as Endicott joined them, Jones thrust a leg behind his adversary and sent him sprawling heavily. He was on him in the instant, astride his chest, pinioning his arms to the floor and the encounter was over. “Take that man’s revolver, Troy,” directed the ensign.