Johnny Thompson was no weakling. He was a football player and a lightweight boxer of no mean ability. He had lived clean and taken good care of the physical side of his being as every boy should. When the unseen person seized him so suddenly from behind he was down but not out by any manner of means. With a deft twist he freed himself from the grasp of his unknown adversary, and, leaping to his feet, struck out with his right and left with the best of results. His clenched fists landed with dull thwacks. There followed the sound of a heavy body staggering backward into the brush.
Having no desire to do bodily injury to anyone, the boy turned and would have dashed swiftly away had not a dark arm reached out to entwine itself about his neck. This startling embrace was followed by a blow on the head, which left him all but senseless and without further power of resistance.
Sinking to the ground he awaited the end. To his great surprise, he discovered that the end of this particular adventure had already come. He was left there alone in the dark.
Night, jungle night, dark, damp and silent lay all about him. Still but half conscious of what went on about him, not daring to move, he lay there quite motionless.
A moment passed, another and yet another.
“There is no—no one about,” he told himself at last.
At that, there sounded off in the distance the boom of a native drum; one stroke, that was all, then again jungle silence hung over all.
“They are a long way off. I must get—get back to camp,” he told himself as in a dream. “Dorn and old Pompee will go out hunting for me.”
He tried to rise. In this he failed. His head whirled. He sank back and must have lost consciousness for when next his benumbed brain registered a thought, the light of a torch was shining in his eyes and a face was before him. A strange and very curious pair of eyes were looking into his own.
The man was incredibly short and broad. He seemed to have scarcely any legs at all. His face was thin, his nose sharp and very crooked. But his eyes! Johnny thought he had never looked into a keener pair of eyes. To Johnny’s great surprise, he found that his bruised head had been quite deftly bandaged. There was a pungent odor of drugs about him.