"Where's your friend?"
"Up in the woods. We take this path here, and we find him."
The Italian took Jack Benson lightly by one arm, piloting the boy until he had turned him into the path. Then the foreigner stepped in advance, saying:
"We reach my friend, in minute."
Thus they proceeded for perhaps five hundred feet into the woods. Presently a small light, looking as though it might be the glowing end of a cigar, appeared ahead.
"Ah, here is my friend," announced the guide. "Giacomo, here is the young captain."
"Hush! Not too loud," came the soft warning from the man behind the cigar.
As Benson came up this second man held out a hand, which the submarine boy unsuspiciously took, at the same time looking over this second man. He appeared, like the first, to be a laborer at the Melville yard.
"I hear you have some interesting word for me," began Benson. "I—oh, great Scott! How dare you?"
For, dropping his cigar from between his teeth, this second Italian, while still holding the boy's hand, gave his wrist a wrenching twist that forced Captain Jack over to the ground.