Both air aces sensed rather than saw the swift, tigerish movement of the big Jap leaping forward. A brown foot caught their tray of food and sent it skimming across the floor to crash up against the wall in back of them and shower uneaten food all over the place. Then the Jap backed up, virtually foaming at the mouth, and glared at them out of eyes that held all the devilish hate in the world.
"Fools, swine, pigs, dogs of dogs!" he screamed furiously. "I will teach you to sing a different tune. I will teach you many things before you die!"
The Jap nodded his head violently, spat at them, and spun around to hurl a strange tongue at the two brown men still cringing on the floor over by the wall. Dawson tried to catch just one of the words that the big Jap flung off his lips, but he failed utterly. The Jap spoke a language, or at least a dialect, that he had never in his life heard before.
The two brown men heard it, and understood it, however. Their prominent-boned faces still alive with fear, they got quickly to their feet, and went over to Dawson and Freddy Farmer, flung them flat on their faces and bound their wrists behind their backs once more. This time, though, they did not attach the end of the ropes to those about the ankles. And Dawson held his breath in fear that they would realize it and promptly do so. But they didn't. They straightened up, and then at a snarling sound from the big Jap ducked quickly out of the room like a couple of terrified brown rabbits.
The big Jap himself started to leave; then he hesitated on the threshold and turned his huge close-shaven head to glare back at them.
"Consider well what I have spoken, dog of dogs!" he boomed. "And prepare to die ten thousand times ten thousand times."
And with that he went out the doorway and yanked the door shut with a crash that made the whole room vibrate like a violin string.
"Cute little guy, isn't it!" Dawson presently broke the quivering silence. "Too bad his folks didn't drown him at birth!"
"Too bad for us, too," Freddy Farmer said soberly. "Frankly, I don't like the looks of things, Dave. I mean ... well, it's all so blastedly mixed up, if you get what I mean?"
"Yeah," Dawson grunted. "But we're still alive, so that's something."