Night came and still they were in their uncomfortably hard position, and growing very hungry indeed.
“If he means to starve us, why I’m going to make a break as soon as it gets pitchy dark,” Nicky whispered.
But as soon as it got pitchy dark there came a peculiar call from the dock where Indians were supposed to arrive, and the young adventurers soon found themselves the center of a small group of the Indians, one about their own age, but not at all approachable. With the green-glassed ship’s lantern to show them, their captor made an explanation in his guttural dialect and then left the younger member of the party on watch while, with the others, began transferring the cases from the further end of the trail to the dock, and thence, the chums inferred, to canoes.
Cliff tried to establish conversation with their young guard.
“No-chit-pay-lon-es-chay!” he said. They did not comprehend that he ordered them to lie down and sleep, and kept eagerly arguing that they were hungry, pointing to their open mouths, in the dim light, and rubbing their stomachs.
“So-toke-kee-aw-mun-chee!” he said, holding out his hand, palm up. He meant, “Give me money,” but they had none and so the negotiations were suspended.
Finally, when, as Nicky declared, their backbones were shaking hands with their stomachs, a new voice was heard on the trail.
Preceded by their earlier captor, bearing the lantern, whose queer light he threw full in the chums’ faces, there came a squatty, burly, ape-like white man, with a jutting jaw, sharp, mean eyes, but with a quirk of a smile at one side of his twisted mouth.
“Ho!” he said, in a deep rumble, “thought you cleared out this morning. Saw the craft up anchor!”
He made a gesture that sent the Indian away; the lantern, set down as he left, gave the scene a weird green light.
“Well, my lads,” began the man, “how’d you come to stay here, when the sloop sailed?”
Nicky told him about their colored man and his terror of the ghostly boat the night before.
“Ho-ho-ho!” laughed their new acquaintance. “Scared him, did it? We aimed to scare the whole passel of you—we went to enough trouble.”
“Why did you want to scare us?” demanded Nicky eagerly.
The other did not answer. He seemed to be deep in thought.