“The Marine King of Manowa. He was coming to see about the revolution. And I found him.”
“We’ll have you out of there in two shakes,” said the King. “Just sit tight.
“Now where’s that pole? Oh yes, here it is. Guess you’re lucky. Going to be a peach of a storm. Less than an hour. Now young lady, out on the end and down we go. Up goes the stone. No. She slipped. Let’s heave her up again. Now! Down we go. There you are. Crawl out. Double quick time. Trench duty with no frills. Hurray! Here she is laden with treasure and safe as a buck private in the guard house.”
It was with the greatest difficulty that Dot restrained herself from hugging the King as she tumbled off the pile of rocks. She did grip his arm hard and tell him how very, very thankful she was that there was at least one king left in the world.
“And now,” said the King in very blunt language, “we’ve got to beat it and that all-fired fast!”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BATTLING GIANT
Having completed his detour, Johnny at last entered the cave by the secret door. He found the confusion within the cave almost as great as that without. Bronze natives were darting here and there. Some were shouting, some chanting weird witch songs and some dancing about as if mere action suited the occasion.
The little doctor was nowhere to be seen. Among them all there was one calm figure—Curlie Carson. And he of all things! Johnny stood and stared in blank astonishment. Curlie sat cross-legged on the floor blowing on a tin whistle, or rather several tin whistles, one at a time. On his knees rested a telephone instrument. Each time he blew a whistle he inclined his head toward the receiver of this instrument. His eyes, for the most part, were fixed on the broad back of the grotesque, gigantic mechanical figure who, for the moment at least, blocked the threatening horde of blacks.
“A telephone instrument!” Johnny said to himself, as his astonishment grew by leaps and bounds. “There is not a wire strung within twenty miles.”
He thought of a radio sending set. But no. That was impossible. There had not been time for installing one. “Besides,” he assured himself, “one does not send a radio S. O. S. by means of tin whistles. It’s a mad place,” he told himself. “This cave is full of mad people and Curlie has gone mad with the rest of them.”