A great crowd of natives ashore had witnessed the escape of the steamer from the war-ship and these lined the banks of the river shouting joyfully as the “Negros” steamed quietly to the bamboo pier in front of the village.
As soon as the dock had been reached, the girl dismissed the guards and the Americans once more gathered about the breakfast table.
A few moments later Colonel Martinez, his face wreathed in smiles, left the bridge and joined them.
“You are to be given the freedom of the town,” he said as he took a cup of coffee from the servant’s hands and sipped it gratefully, “but I warn you if you attempt to escape you will be shot, and even if you escaped, without guides you would be lost in the jungle and be killed by ladrones.”
Phil bowed his head in sign of submission. They were certainly prisoners, without hope of rescue.
“To-morrow morning,” Colonel Martinez added, “we shall leave the village and march inland. I have already sent to notify our leader that I have successfully arrived. I think for your own good it would be wiser for you to remain on board here until we start. I do not trust the temper of the people. Americans are not just now in favor.” He finished with an amused smile on his face.
After their captors had left them, the three terribly disappointed men sat bemoaning their fate.
“We might just as well make the best of it,” Sydney philosophically assured the others. “There certainly isn’t any way to escape that I can see. After all, we’ve been in just as tight places and have come out of them; we don’t make matters any better by crying over spilled milk.”
“If that girl hadn’t betrayed us,” Phil moaned, “we would have been on board the ‘Albany’ this minute.”
“Mr. Perry,” O’Neil broke in apologetically, “it ain’t like you to be unfair to anybody, most of all a woman. These are her own people—Colonel Martinez must be a friend of hers, or otherwise we wouldn’t have been living to see the ‘Albany.’ If she had only been an ordinary native girl, these ladrones wouldn’t have stopped and bowed and scraped and then given us the freedom of the after deck of the ship. No, sir, she’s a person of consequence. She saved our lives and then afterward she saved the lives of Colonel Martinez and his band of cutthroats, for if they had fallen into the hands of the crew of the ‘Albany’ they would have all been shot or swung at her yard-arm. Seizing this merchant ship and killing her captain is piracy.”