Perhaps the two terrified boys swooned, perhaps they were literally frightened out of their wits. Neither could ever be sure, but whichever it was, everything was a blank from the moment when they felt the hands of the savage figures grasp them until they found themselves surrounded on every side by a ring of half-naked men and women in the full glare of a huge fire under immense trees.

But they were unharmed, not even bound, and as they realized this their courage in a measure returned and they glanced about, still terribly frightened, shaking as if with ague, and marveling that they were still alive.

Then for the first time they realized that their captors were not Indians. They were hideously daubed with paint to be sure, they were nearly nude, but they were not bedecked with feathers and their black skins and wooly heads left no doubt as to their identity. They were negroes, mostly coal black, but a few were brown or even yellow and the dazed, scared boys looked upon them with uncomprehending amazement. To them, negroes were civilized, harmless, good-natured people and why these blacks should be acting in this savage manner was past all understanding.

And still more puzzling was the fact that they were talking together in a strange, unintelligible jargon. To the boys’ minds, all colored people spoke English—either with the broad soft accent of the American negro or the slurring, drawling dialect of the West Indians, and yet here were blacks chattering shrilly in some totally different tongue.

The boys felt as if they had been bereft of their senses, as if, by some magic, they had been transported to the middle of darkest Africa and they wondered vaguely if their fears and worries had driven them mad and the whole thing was a hallucination.

But at this moment four more blacks arrived and to the boys’ further amazement deposited their radio sets upon the smooth, hard-beaten earth beside them. These were real; they seemed somehow to link the boys with the outside world, with civilization, and at sight of them the boys knew they were not dreaming, were not mad.

And the little cases with their black fiber panels and shining nickel-plated knobs and connections had a strange effect upon the circle of negroes also. With low murmurs and sharp ejaculations they drew a step farther from the boys and looked furtively at the instruments, while the men who had brought them from the boat leaped nimbly away the instant they had set them down as if afraid the harmless things might bite them.

“Gosh!” murmured Tom, finding his voice at last. “They’re afraid of us!”

“I believe they are,” responded Frank, who, finding that the savage-looking crowd seemed of no mind to harm them, had regained confidence.

Scarcely knowing why he did so, Tom reached forward, connected the batteries and turned the rheostat. The result was astounding. As the tiny filament in the bulb glowed at his touch an awed “Wahii!” arose from the negroes, and with one accord they retreated several yards.

“Say, we’ve got ’em going!” exclaimed Tom jubilantly. “They’re as much afraid of us as we are of them. It all gets me, Frank. I wonder——”

What Tom wondered Frank never knew, for at this moment the surrounding blacks uttered a weird wailing cry and flung themselves upon the ground.

“Gee!” ejaculated Frank, “look there.”

Over the prostrated blacks, approaching through a lane between their bodies, came an amazing, fantastic, awful figure. Naked, save for a loin cloth, painted to resemble a skeleton, with great horns bound to his head and with a cow’s tail dragging behind him, he came prancing and leaping towards the fire and the boys, shaking a rattle in one hand and waving a horse-tail in the other.

Speechless with wonder, the boys gazed at him. They realized that he was the leader of the crowd, a chief probably, and in his fantastic garb they recognized a faint resemblance to pictures they had seen of wild African tribesmen, but that such a being should be here—here in an island in the West Indies and only a few miles from railways, cities, great sugar mills, wireless stations and even their own submarine, seemed incredible, monstrous, absolutely unbelievable—as dream-like and amazing as the savage-looking figures who had captured them.

But they had little time to think. Suddenly the tom-tom burst forth in thunderous sounds, deep, sonorous, blood-curdling, savage, wild, and to the deafening “turn—turn, turn, turn—turn—turn, turn, turn,” the huge horned figure pranced and danced about the two boys, chanting a wailing song, keeping time to his steps with his gourd-rattle and shaking and waving his horse-tail.

Nearer and nearer he circled, stooping low, leaping high, working himself into a frenzy; twisting, swaying, contorting, while, fascinated, almost hypnotized, the two boys watched speechless and rooted to the spot. Then, so abruptly that the boys jumped, the drum ceased, the dancing figure halted as if arrested in mid-air, with one foot still raised, and then, with a wild yell, he darted towards the boys.

With a startled cry they cowered away. Surely, they thought, he was about to seize them, to kill them. But the next instant the man stooped, and grasping the shining copper resonance coil whirled it about, facing the ring of negroes and waving the coil about his head, while, upon the copper wire, the firelight gleamed and scintillated as though living flames were darting from it.

And then a marvelous, a miraculous thing happened. As the gigantic negro slowly swung the coil, a great hush fell upon the others and clear and distinct in the silence a voice seemed to issue from the black box upon the ground.

“Tom! Frank!” came the words.

At the sounds, pandemonium broke loose. With a wild, terrified scream the horned man flung down the coil and with a tremendous bound burst through the circle of onlookers who, screaming and yelling, turned and fled in every direction. In a breath, the boys were alone. Alone by the fire and their instruments while, crouching behind trees, flat on the ground, wailing like lost souls, the negroes watched from a distance with wildly rolling eyes and terror-stricken faces.

But the boys at the time gave little heed to this. At the sound of their names from the receiver they had been galvanized to life and action. Their friends were near, they were calling them! They were saved! Leaping to the coil, Frank grabbed it up and moved it slowly, until again to Tom’s anxious ears came the sound of a human voice. “It’s Bancroft!” came the words. “We’re near! We can hear a drum and are making for a fire. Where are you? Can you see the fire or hear the noise?”

“Can we?” muttered Tom, his sense of humor coming to him even in his excitement. “I’ll say we can, as Rawlins says.”

Then, scarcely daring to hope that he could send his voice through space by the coil, he adjusted the sending instruments and called into the transmitter.

“We hear!” he cried. “Come quick! We don’t know where we are, but we’re here by the fire—we’re prisoners—a lot of savages have us!”

Breathlessly Tom listened. Had they heard? Would the resonance coil—that marvelous instrument which had worked the miracle—act as a sending antenna? Tom wondered why they had never tried it, why they had been so stupid, why it had never occurred to them. Had Bancroft heard? Would they come? All this flashed through his mind with the speed of light. And then came another thought. Of course they’d come. Even if they had not heard they would come. Bancroft had said they were making for the fire. They would be there anyway and as Tom realized this a tremendous load lifted from his mind. Whether or not their coil had served to send the waves speeding through the ether, they were sure of being rescued. But the next instant a still greater joy thrilled him. Again from the receiver came Bancroft’s voice. “Hold fast!” it said, “we’re coming! We hear you!” Even Frank had heard.

The boys’ tensed strained nerves gave way. The coil dropped from Frank’s hand, he staggered to Tom’s side and, throwing their arms around each other, the two burst into wild hysterical laughter. Suddenly they were aware of some one speaking near them. In their wild delight, the terrific reaction, they had forgotten their captors, had forgotten the weird dancer whose act had saved them. But at the low moaning voice close to them they came back to earth with a start and wheeled about. Within a few paces, his head bobbing up and down against the ground, flat on his stomach, was the giant negro, and from his lips, muffled by their contact with the earth, came the pleading wail which had roused the boys.

“What on earth does he want?” asked Tom, who could make nothing of the words.

“I don’t know, but he’s scared to death like all the others,” replied Frank, “and I don’t wonder. That voice from the phones was enough to scare any savage. I think he’s begging forgiveness or something.”

“Gosh! I wish he understood English,” said Tom, and then, in a louder voice, “Here, get up!” he ordered. “Can you speak English?”

Slowly and hesitatingly the man raised his wooly head and with wildly rolling eyes gazed fearfully at the boys. His lips moved, his tongue strove to form words, but no sound came from him. So abject, so thoroughly terror-stricken was his appearance that the boys really pitied him, but now, at last, he had found his voice again.

“Messieu’s!” he pleaded. “Messieu’s! Moi pas save. Moi ami, Beke. Ah! Ai! Beke no un’stan’. Moi spik Eenglees liddle. Moi mo’ sorry! Moi fren’ yes! Moi no mek harm Messieu’s! Ai, Ai! Moi mek dance, moi people mek fo’ Voodoo! No mek fo’ harm Beke! Pa’donez Moi, Messieu’s!”

“Gosh, I can’t get it!” exclaimed Tom. “He’s asking us to forgive him and wants to be friends, but what he means by ‘Beke’ and ‘Voodoo’ and those other words I don’t know. But I’m willing to be friends.” Then, addressing the still groveling negro, “All right!” he said. “Get up. You’re forgiven. We’ll be friends. But stop bumping your head on the ground and take off those horns. You give me the shivers.”

Whether the devil-dancer understood more than half of Tom’s words is doubtful, but he grasped the meaning and with unutterable relief upon his black face he grinned and tearing off his fantastic headdress cast it into the flames and rose slowly to his feet.

As he did so, his watching companions also rose and edged cautiously from their hiding places, but still keeping a respectful distance and eyeing the black radio sets with furtive, frightened glances. Very evidently, to their minds, these white boys were powerful Obeah men, they possessed magic of a sort not to be despised or molested, and with the primitive man’s simple reasoning they felt that to propitiate such powerful witch doctors was the only way to insure their own safety. Although, to the boys, they had appeared savages yet, had Tom and Frank happened upon them at any other time, they would have found nothing at all savage about them. Indeed, they would never have had reason to think them other than happy-go-lucky, good-natured colored folk, harmless and as civilized as any of the West Indian peasantry, for they were merely French West Indian negroes, and aside from the fact that they spoke only their native Creole patois were indistinguishable from others of their race. But like the majority of the French negroes they were at heart firm believers in Voodoo and Obeah and when worked into a fanatical frenzy at one of these African serpent-worshiping orgies they became temporarily transformed to fiendish savages, reverting to all the wild customs and ways of their ancestors and drawing the line only at actual cannibalism.

But of all this the boys knew nothing. They did not dream that such people or such customs existed, and they could not fathom the reasons or understand what to them were the mysterious and almost incredible sights they had witnessed.

And of a far more important matter the boys were equally ignorant. Had they but known, they would have thanked their lucky stars that they had stumbled upon the Voodoo dancers and, had they been able to understand and speak Creole and thus been able to converse with the negroes, they would have made a discovery which, would have amazed them even more than the savage dance and the remarkable results brought about by their radio instruments.

But being unable to carry on any but the most limited conversation, the boys sat there by the fire waiting for the sound of the expected boat and surrounded by the colored folk who now had discarded their paint and fantastic garb and were clothed in calico and dungaree. Even the chief, or rather the Obeah man, was now so altered in appearance that the boys could scarcely believe he was the same being who had pranced and danced with waving horse-tail and rattlebox before them and when, timidly and half apologetically, he brought them a tray loaded with fruit and crisp fried fish with tiny rolls of bread wrapped in banana leaves, they decided that it must all have been some sort of a masquerade and that their imaginations had filled them with unwarranted and ridiculous fears.

They were terribly hungry and never had food been more welcome; both boys ate ravenously.

“He’s a good old skate after all!” declared Tom, nodding towards the big negro who sat near. “I guess they were just trying to scare us.”

“Well, they succeeded all right,” replied Frank. “Say, I thought we were going to be roasted and eaten when they grabbed us.”

“Yes, but our radio scared them a lot worse,” said Tom. “Gosh! that was wonderful, the way the old boy grabbed up the coil and those words came in just right. I’ll bet Dad’s worried though. We ought to call them and tell them we’re all right.”

“Golly, that’s so!” agreed Frank. “I’d forgotten we hadn’t.”

Still munching a mouthful of food, Frank rose to pick up the coil, but at that instant several of the negroes jumped up, their voices rose in excited tones and they turned wondering faces toward the waterside. At the same instant the boys distinctly heard the splash of oars.

“They’re here!” yelled Tom, and with one accord the two rushed towards the landing place.

Before they had reached it a boat shot from the shadows, its keel grated on the beach and Mr. Pauling and Rawlins leaped out, each with a rifle in his hands, while behind them, armed and ready for battle, came Sam, Bancroft, the quartermaster and Smernoff.

But as the shouting, laughing boys dashed toward them, free and unharmed, the gun dropped from Mr. Pauling’s hand and clattered on the pebbles and the next instant he was clasping the boys in an embrace like a bear’s.

Behind the boys, gathered in little knots and chattering excitedly like a flock of parrots, the surprised negroes had gathered at the edge of the forest and as Rawlins stared at them and then at the boys a puzzled expression was on his face.

“Say, what’s the big idea?” he demanded, as the boys capered and danced about, talking and laughing. “You said you were the prisoners of savages and here you are free as birds and no sign of a savage. Just a bunch of ordinary niggers. It gets me!”

“But we thought they were savages,” Tom tried to explain. “And we were prisoners.”

Then in hurried, disjointed sentences the two boys related the gist of their story while the others listened in amazement.

“Hello!” cried Rawlins. “Is this the old Bally-hoo coming?”

As Rawlins spoke, the big negro was approaching and with a rather sickly grin on his face he spoke to the new arrivals in his odd jargon of Creole and broken English.

“Yep, I guess so!” grinned Rawlins. “Here you, Sam. You’ve lived in the French Islands. Can you understand this bird?”

Sam, still suspicious and with the memory of Voodoo and devil dancers’ tom-toms in his mind, stepped forward.

“Yas, sir, Chief,” he replied, “Ah can talk Creole, Chief.”

“Well, get busy and spiel then,” Rawlins ordered him. “Ask him what he says first and then we’ll give him the third degree for a time.”

Rapidly Sam spoke to the other in Martinique patois and at the sounds of his native tongue the other’s face brightened.

“He says he’s sorry,” Sam informed the waiting men and boys. “He says he’s a mos’ good friend an’ tha’ young gentlemen were safe from molestation, Chief. He says he an’ his people were makin’ to have a spree, Chief, an’ thought as how the young gentlemen were enemies, at the first, Sir. He mos’ humbly arsks yo’ pardon an’ forgiveness, Chief.”

“All right,” said Rawlins. “He’s forgiven. Ask him if we can stop here for the night and if he has anything to eat. I’m famished and I’ll bet the others are. It’s nearly morning.”

In reply to Sam’s queries the negro, who Sam now informed them was named Jules, assured them that everything was at their disposal and with quick orders in patois he sent a number of the women scurrying off to prepare food. Leading the way, he guided the party to a cluster of neat, wattled huts in a small clearing and told them to make themselves at home.

Then, the first excitement of their meeting over, the boys began to give an intelligible and sane account of their adventures.

As they told of the submarine and their spying on the men Mr. Pauling uttered a sharp exclamation and Rawlins made his characteristic comment.

“I’ll say you had nerve!” he cried. “Too bad they saw you though. Now they know we’re here.”

“Not necessarily,” declared Mr. Pauling. “They may have seen that the boat contained merely two boys and they may have thought them natives or from some vessel. They probably know where the destroyer is and they imagine our submarine is lying at the bottom of the Caribbean. In that case they would hardly connect Tom and Frank with members of the Service. Unless they have heard our calls tonight I doubt if the boys’ presence alarmed them.”

“That may be so,” admitted Rawlins, “and by the same token if they heard us to-night it wouldn’t scare ’em. They’d think ’twas some of the boys’ friends searching for ’em, same as ’twas. We didn’t say anything that would give them a hint and radio’s too common nowadays to mean much—as long as it’s not under-sea stuff. By glory! Perhaps we can get ’em yet. Can you find that place again, boys?”

“I don’t see how we can,” replied Tom. “We were too scared to notice where we went and we haven’t any idea where we drifted with the tide while we slept.”

“That’s dead rotten luck,” commented Rawlins. “But by the Great Horn Spoon we can find ’em if they’re here! This swamp’s not so everlastingly big and a sub can’t hide in a mud puddle. I’ll bet my hat to a hole in a doughnut we find ’em!”

“But who do you suppose that man on the bank was?” asked Tom. “He didn’t look like a ‘red’ or a Russian or a crook. He looked like a real gentleman.”

Mr. Pauling hesitated a moment. “Boys,” he said, lowering his voice, “that was the man that of all men we want. That was the head, the brains, the power of the whole vast organization. The man who has schemed to overturn nations and carry a rave of fire and blood around the world! He is the arch fiend, the greatest criminal, the most coldly cruel and unscrupulous being alive! He is the incarnation of Satan himself!”

The boys’ eyes were round with wonder. “Gosh!” exclaimed Tom. “Gosh!”

“Jehoshaphat!” cried Frank.