AN ADVENTURE—

The boys were walking briskly down a tree-bordered, rather badly lighted street in the residential quarter as this conversation took place. They had been to the home of a friend of Captain Bracebridge with a confidential note. The man to whom they had taken the message had been absent at the theater. As they had a verbal message to deliver, too, and supposed that it, like the note, was confidential, they had not wished to confide it to a servant but had decided to wait. It was, therefore, late when, their errand completed, they started back on a lonely walk through the residential section to the ship.

The good folk of Antwerp go to bed early. No one else was on the street as the boys hurried along. Tree shadows lay across the road in black patches, where there were lights brilliant enough to effect such results.

“Well, I suppose we ought to be glad to have the chance to get abroad at all,” muttered Raynor, continuing the conversation whose record began in the last chapter.

“Yes, indeed, we’re lucky fellows,” said Jack cheerfully.

“Yes, it’s a fine old city and all that,” admitted Raynor rather grudgingly, “and I’ve certainly enjoyed my stay here; but I’d have liked to look about a little more. I wonder if there isn’t some place where they have machinery to show?”

“Gracious! I must say you’re a barbarian. Can’t you see all the machinery you wish in that greasy, fire-spitting old engine room of yours, without wanting a sight of more?”

“Well,” retorted Raynor, “would you trade one of those ‘old masters,’ as they call them, for a dandy set of modern instruments to put in your wireless room at home?”

Jack was fairly stumped. He broke into a laugh.

“That’s not a fair way of putting it,” he said after a minute. “I like monkeying with wireless as much as you do with machinery, but I can enjoy other things.”

“So can I. An ice-cream soda, for instance.”

“I’m with you there,” agreed Jack, “but we’ll have to wait for that.”

“Yes, till we get back to the U.S.A. The stuff they sell you for soda here wouldn’t be offered you by a bankrupt druggist in Skeedunk with bats in his belfry.”

Jack broke into a laugh, which suddenly changed into a quick exclamation of astonishment.

“Hark!” he cried.

“What’s the matter?” breathlessly from Raynor. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“You didn’t? You must be—there it is again.”

This time it was Raynor’s turn to start.

“I heard it all right then,” he exclaimed. “It was——”

“A woman screaming.”

“That’s what. Gracious, what’s the matter?”

“It’s off down that street there,” decided Jack, pointing a little distance ahead where a small street branched off the main thoroughfare and skirted a small, unlighted park. “Come on,” he shouted to Raynor, and was off.

“What are you going to do?” called Raynor.

“Find out what’s the trouble. There’s something serious the matter.”

Suddenly the cries stopped as abruptly as if a hand had been clapped over the mouth of the person uttering them.

“There’s no time to lose,” panted Jack, sprinting.

“I’m with you,” gasped Raynor, running at his companion’s side.

The two lads dashed around the corner. Before them lay a narrow, gloomy street, edged by the dark trees of the little park, which, at that time of night, was, of course, deserted.

At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary appeared. Then they suddenly saw the headlights of an automobile. As suddenly, the lights vanished. They had been switched off by somebody.

“There’s where the trouble is,” cried Jack, and was conscious of a wish that he had some sort of weapon with him. They were rushing into they knew not what danger; but Jack was no quitter. Some woman was in trouble, and that was enough for him.

The same was the case with Raynor. Both lads, typical Americans, lithe-limbed, stout of heart and muscle, and with grit to spare, didn’t give a thought to the danger they might be incurring by their daring dash to the rescue. The mere idea that they were needed urgently was enough.

“Some ruffians are attacking the auto!” came from Jack as they drew closer.

“Yes. Look! There’s a woman in the car. Two of them,” added Raynor.

“They’ve been held up.”

“Looks that way.”

As the two boys neared the car, the whole scene became clear to them. It was a limousine and three men, two on one side and one on the other, were poking revolvers into the windows of the enclosed part. As the boys came up, the chauffeur, who till then had been paralyzed by fear, leaped from his seat and dashed off, taking the low stone wall, surrounding the park, at one bound.

“The great coward! He might have been a big help to us, too,” exclaimed Jack with indignation as he saw this.

“Yes, it’s three to two, and they are armed,” cried Raynor.

The next moment, with a startling yell they attacked two of the men simultaneously. One of them went down with a crash under Jack’s powerful right swing before he could do anything to defend himself, for none of them had noticed the approach of the two American lads.

The fellow’s revolver went spinning over the wall and fell with a ring of metal out of his reach. In the meantime, Raynor was not having such an easy time with the man he had tackled. This fellow was a heavily-built specimen of dock lounger, or worse, with a Belgian cap on his head and a handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face.

As Raynor rushed him, he seized the young engineer in an iron grip and pressed a weapon to his side.

“Fool, to interfere! This is your last moment on earth!” he snarled.

From the interior of the limousine, two women, one elderly and the other young, looked out, paralyzed with alarm. Too frightened to scream, they sat stock still as they saw what was about to happen.