"What upper hand?" asked Dave.
"You are my prisoner. Soon the pilot will be here in response to my signal with his launch. I will take you to the island with me. I will hide you. They will not get along so grandly without you. They will delay to search for you, and delay is all I ask. Yes, yes, that is the programme."
Some whistles from craft in the bay echoed out. Schmitt-Schmitt went outside, apparently to see if some answer was coming to his signal.
"I am in it--deep," mused Dave. "Pshaw! I hate to think I shall delay and bother Captain Broadbeam."
Dave found that the ropes securing him were not very tightly arranged. They had been drawn to a loop about his waist and caught with snap and hook behind.
"If I had time I could work loose," he thought. "I have not time, so I suppose I must wait meekly and take what comes to me. Oh, by the way--that's an idea!"
The "idea" in question was suggested by a glance at the bottle and glass on the table. Dave's eyes sparkled. He fumbled under the ropes and brought out wrapped up in a fragment of paper the sample of opium he had discovered the night previous.
Frog-like he began hitching himself across the floor. Dave kept his eye anxiously fixed on the open doorway. He got to the table, reached up, dropped some grains of the drug into the glass there, and nimbly as he could hitched his way back to his former position.
Two minutes later Schmitt-Schmitt reappeared. He went at once to the table, poured out a drink, settled back in his chair, and said complacently:
"My friend will soon be here. Do your friends also know I am here?"