A half hour later they found themselves seated upon a mossy bank beneath low-growing palms. The night was soon to end. Then would come morning. What of that morning? Who could answer?
As Johnny sat there listening for some sound that might spell danger, trying at times to peer into the darkness, his mind was filled with many strange thoughts. At times he found himself wondering about the secret Curlie Carson had hidden away in his laboratory up there in the Citadel.
“He’s something like my old pal, Panther Eye,” he told himself. “Always working something out, springing some surprise; always mysterious. Wonder where old Pant is now.”
He thought of the ‘Rope of Gold’. “Guess we’ll never find it,” he told himself gloomily. “Never can tell, though. One thing’s sure—never will find it by chasing jeweled monkeys and getting caught out all times night and day on boats and islands with a pair of girls.”
He couldn’t be sure he regretted his latest experience. Doris was a regular sport. He liked her. Hadn’t made the least fuss when she found herself marooned on a strange island. “Be a great joke if she and this native girl really followed up that jeweled monkey and found the black queen’s treasure and we never as much as had a look at the ‘Rope of Gold’. Things come out that way sometimes.”
He thought of the natives who tried to kidnap him. “Something strange about that,” he thought. They had not laid a hand on him from first to last. He wondered what would have happened if he had really resisted. As it was he had walked out on them and they were quite powerless to stop him. He wished now that he had seen the thing through.
“That’s the way with life,” he whispered to the darkness. “We have a feeling that life is short, that we must hurry here, hurry there, get out of this and into that; that we really haven’t time to see things through. And the joke of it all is life is very, very long and we’ve time for almost everything, plenty of time if only we think so.”
In the meantime Dorn, with old Pompee at his side at the camp by the Citadel, watched and waited for Johnny’s return. At times he wondered if Doris and Nieta had found their way safely home.
“Of course they did,” he said aloud once.
“Did what?” Pompee asked.