Dropping the rope, Matt rushed at the struggling pair, seized Bunce by the shoulders, and hauled him out of the mix-up.
A revolver had fallen from the sailor's pocket. Matt sprang to secure it, and then faced Bunce, who was on his knees and staring about him dazedly.
"Noble friend!" cried the mandarin, carefully extricating his head from the frame of one of the motor cycles, "you have again preserved the wretched Tsan Ti! The evil personage yonder would presently have caught me!"
Bunce, having finally decided that the situation was one that boded him no good, started to get up and remove himself from the scene.
"I don't believe you'd better leave us just yet, Bunce," called Matt, waving the revolver. "Stay right where you are. This is a complication which you can help the mandarin explain."
"By the seven holy spritsails!" muttered Bunce, falling back in his original position and looking at Matt and then at the farmer. "How, in the name o' Davy Jones," he cried, his gaze returning to Matt, "do you happen to be cruisin' in these waters?"
"Never mind that, for the present. What I want to know is, where have you and the mandarin come from? And why were you chasing him?"
"I have escaped, highly appreciated friend whose kindness is much reciprocated," babbled the mandarin, coming blithely to Matt's side and carefully knocking the dust out of his little black cap. "I have made a never-to-be-forgotten escape from the hands of evil-minded enemies. It was your friend from the cattle districts who helped me."
So far, all that Matt had heard and seen had merely bogged him the more deeply in a mire of misunderstanding. At the mandarin's mention of McGlory, his speculations went off at a wild tangent.
"Did Grattan and Bunce capture the other car?" he demanded. "Where did you find Joe and Martin? Where are they now? What's happened to them?"