That conveyed their meaning clearly to the two if to no others.
Tom had told his sister he proposed to fire the hut and then to help her escape with them; she had said it would not do because they would be lost in the jungles.
“Wait!” she said. “Let me think!”
At the time the attention swung from this strange scene, for the Indians saw Mort returning with some apparatus which he set down gingerly on the floor. Every eye was fixed on him. Forgotten was the scene which had been enacted. Only one, a medicine man, kept his shrewd eyes fixed on Margery as though he would try to see beneath her flesh and bone to the working of her brain and mind.
“You had some magic—I thought the Indians said so!” she told Tom.
“Oh!” Suddenly Tom recollected the lighter. The woods Indian had probably brought news of it.
“Yes,” he said, and explained to his sister, very briefly, that he could make what Indians would consider a magic light.
“Splendid,” she said. “When your turn comes—we will win!”
CHAPTER XXV
WHERE WITS COUNT!
“There’s another reason, and a better one, why we daren’t try to fire the hut and escape with Margery,” said Nicky, jogging Tom’s arm. “Look beyond the torchlight. Shade your eyes.”