The Project Gutenberg eBook of Motor Matt in Brazil; or, Under the Amazon, by Stanley R. Matthews.

Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1909, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y.

CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY.

Motor Matt, a lad who is at home with every variety of motor, and whose never-failing nerve serves to carry him through difficulties that would daunt any ordinary young fellow. Because of his daring as a racer with bicycle, motor-cycle and automobile he is known as "Mile-a-minute Matt." Motor-boats, air ships and submarines come naturally in his line, and consequently he lives in an atmosphere of adventure in following up his "hobby."

Dick Ferral, a young sea dog from Canada, with all a sailor's superstitions, but in spite of all that a royal chum, ready to stand by the friend of his choice through thick and thin.

Carl Pretzel, a cheerful and rollicking German boy, stout of frame as well as of heart, who is led by a fortunate accident to link his fortunes with those of Motor Matt.

Ensign Glennie, representing the U. S. Government on board the Grampus during her long trip around South America.

Tolo, a valiant though unscrupulous Japanese patriot anxious to die for his country.

Mr. Brigham, our consul at Para, Brazil, who proves to be the right kind of man for the job.

Clackett,
Speake,
Gaines,
} the crew of the submarine marvel.

CHAPTER I.

"Look at the chart, Dick. Unless I'm off in my reckoning, those blue things in the distance, that look like clouds, are the mountains of Trinidad."

"Right-o, matey! The Gulf of Paria is to the south, and right ahead of us is the Boca Drago, or Dragon's Mouth, the entrance to the Gulf. What's our first port-of-call?"

"But we're two days ahead of time, and he won't be expecting us. Why not put in at Port-of-Spain for a little social call? I was there once, on the old Billy Ruffin, and it's a fine place for getting on your go-ashores and seeing the sights."

"This is a business trip, old chap, and not a sightseeing excursion. Our schedule has been made out for us, and we've got to follow it through. It's a big responsibility we're under, and if anything should happen to the Grampus, there'd——"

At this moment a tremendous shock interrupted Motor Matt. The big steel hulk of the submarine stopped dead, reeled for an instant like a drunken man, and then rebounded sternward against the push of the propeller. Accompanying the weird manœuvre was a fierce thrashing of the waves outside.

Sunk level with the surface of the sea, conning tower awash, the Grampus had been proceeding at a good clip on her southward journey. Motor Matt and Dick Ferral were in the periscope room, Matt with his attention divided between the periscope table, the steering wheel, and the small compass, and Dick on his knees beside a locker on which were a number of admiralty charts.

Dick was thrown sidewise by the shock, and Matt only saved himself a fall by taking a convulsive grip on the spokes of the steering wheel.

"Fore-rudder will not work, sir!" cried Speake through the tube communicating with the engine room.

One admirable thing about the king of the motor boys was that he never got "rattled." Under any and all circumstances he kept his head.

"Stop your motor, Gaines!" he cried instantly through[Pg 2] another of the tubes, then, whirling to still another, he called: "Prepare to empty the ballast, Clackett!"

The ready "Aye, aye, sir!" that came through both tubes proved that those in motor room and tank room were on the alert.

The hum of the engine died slowly, and muffled sounds from the tank room showed that Clackett was calmly attending to his work.

In time of accident no man could leave his post, for the safety of the submarine, and the lives of those within her, might depend upon an instant compliance with orders. Iron-nerved men formed the crew of the Grampus, for each had been selected by Captain Nemo, Jr., with that quality in mind.

Meanwhile Motor Matt had been studying the top of the periscope table carefully.

"So far as I can make out," said he, in a puzzled tone, "there is nothing above."

"The Orinoco brings down a lot of drift, matey," put in Dick, "and we may have struck a log floating between two waves. If our rudder has been damaged——"

He was interrupted by another blow, fully as severe as the first. But this stroke came from the side and not from forward, and hurled the submarine over so far that every loose article slammed to starboard, and it seemed as though the boat must surely turn turtle.

"Start the turbines, Clackett!" roared Matt through the tank-room tube; "empty the ballast tanks!"

"Sorry to report, Matt," came the instant response of Clackett, "that the turbines are disabled an' won't work."

"Then empty the tanks by compressed air!" he cried. "Sharp's the word, Clackett!"

The hiss of air, fighting with the water in the tanks, was heard. At once the boat began to ascend and presently the slap of waves against the outer shell proved that they were on the surface.

"Take the wheel, Dick," called Matt, and leaped up the iron ladder into the conning tower.

The lunettes, or little windows in the tower, were frosted with spindrift, and Matt threw open the hatch and pushed head and shoulders over the top.

The voice of Carl Pretzel, none too steady, floated up to Matt from the periscope room. Carl was not on duty and had probably come up to find out what was going on.

"Why," went on Dick, excitedly, "a cachalot is one of the hardest fighters in the whole whale family. We probably ran into that old blubber-head while he was taking his morning nap, and he's got his mad up. By the figurehead of the Old Harry! See him spout! We're going to have trouble with him, Matt! His head's like India-rubber, and he could poke it through the plates of the Grampus and never hurt himself."

Matt had got his head out of the hatch just in time to snatch a glance at the flukes of a big whale disappearing in the sea.

He signaled half-speed ahead by the engine-room jingler. The elevation of the periscope ball gave Dick a much more extensive view of the surface than it did Matt from the top of the conning tower. The whale had come to the top again, and, while Matt was able to see the geyser-like column of water the creature threw up, Dick could take in the cachalot's immense proportions.

"He's lumpy all over," announced Dick, "and every lump is an old harpoon mark. He's a veteran, mates, and he's coming right at us. He'll stave in the plates, Matt! Dodge him!"

"Tell Speake and Clackett to put a Whitehead in the port torpedo-tube!" called Matt.

"They can't get the tube loaded, Matt," cried Dick, "before the cachalot will be on us."

"We'll have to meet his first charge," answered Matt calmly; "there can't be any dodging."

There came a low thump from forward, followed by a gurgling splash. From that Matt knew that the bow port had been closed and that the water was being blown out of the tube by compressed air. Then a faint rattle told him the breech door was being opened preparatory to loading the torpedo.

By then Matt was able to see the charging whale. He was a tremendous fellow, and he was making straight for the submarine with all the force in his great body. The water flashed away from his shining sides, and a long trail of foam unrolled behind his churning flukes.

"I'll do the steering from here, Dick!" shouted Matt, laying hold of the patent device which enabled one to steer from the tower.

Matt headed the boat so as to meet its strange antagonist bow on. Whale and submarine came together with a terrific impact. For an instant the whale seemed stunned, sheered off a little, and the sharp prow raked his side.

The next instant the Grampus was beyond the whale. Matt, looking behind, could see the huge cachalot leaping clear out of the water, and falling into it again with a splash like some mountain dropping into the sea.

The whale was terribly wounded, and bleeding, but the wound seemed only to have increased his pugnacious disposition.

"Watch the periscope, Dick!" roared Matt. "Can you see him? He's out of sight from here."

"He's sounded, mate," answered Dick, his tense voice proving the strain his nerves were under. "I'm hoping he'll leave us now, and—— Sink me! There he is again! He's coming for us like an express train."

A spouting of reddened water gave Matt the location, and he put the Grampus about, so as to face the danger and bring the cachalot in front of the port torpedo tube.

"Tell them to make ready in the torpedo room!" shouted Matt. "They must fire the Whitehead the moment I give the word."

Dick repeated the order. The torpedo was contrived so as to travel at a certain distance under water. If discharged at too great a distance from the whale it would sink to its normal depth, and so miss the charging monster altogether. Matt, watching the cachalot with sharp eyes, awaited the right moment for letting the Whitehead go.

A gurgling swish, a spluttering cough, and a thud followed. The surface of the sea directly ahead of the[Pg 3] submarine was full of ripples that marked the passing of the deadly infernal machine.

Dick repeated the order to Gaines. Barely was the motion of the propeller reversed when whale and torpedo met. There was a dull roar, and the sea lifted high in a veritable flurry. The Grampus slid backward rapidly, rocking on the troubled waters. Then, the lifted waves having descended, the whale was seen torn cruelly and lying on his back. Already the triangular fins of sharks were in evidence, rushing from every direction upon the prey.

Matt descended to the engine room and found Dick steering with one hand and wiping the perspiration from his face with the other.

"A tight squeak, matey!" Dick muttered. "We're out one torpedo, but you saved the boat."

Speake, meanwhile, had been taking the turbine to pieces. He now appeared in the periscope room with a wooden sieve half full of small fish.

"Mullet for dinner, Matt!" he laughed. "A shoal of fish was bein' chased by the cachalot. The draught-holes of our turbines was open an' the fish run in. No wonder the turbines wouldn't work!"

"Good enough," answered Matt laughing, "if you can call anything good that put our turbines out of commission at a time when we needed them. Have some of them for dinner, Speake." He turned to Dick. "Lay our course for the Port-of-Spain, old chap," he added. "We'll put into the harbor and look the submarine over to see whether her bow has been damaged any. I'll go below and have a look at the fore-rudder. Possibly we can tinker that up temporarily. It would never do to pick up the midshipman with the Grampus at all out of commission."

They were to call at the Port-of-Spain, after all, and Dick Ferral was mightily pleased with the prospect.

CHAPTER II.

The anchor of the steamship Borneo splashed into the yellow waters of the Gulf of Paria, the boat continuing onward until the anchor had taken a grip on the muddy bottom. The Borneo was from Venezuelan ports, and at La Guayra had picked up no less a personage than John Henry Glennie, Ensign, U. S. N.

The steamer carried a queer assortment of passengers, and they were all around Ensign Glennie as he sat well aft on the grating beside the hand-steering gear.

Venezuelans were chattering like magpies; little brown youngsters were rolling over and over around Glennie's feet; a British engineer was talking with a Jew pearl buyer from Margarita Island—the Spanish coming queerly from their alien lips; a German coffee-planter was exchanging small talk with the wife of a Dutch officer who lived in Curaçoa; and there was the usual ragtag and bobtail of English and Brazilians, all of whom gave the youth in the naval uniform more or less curious notice.

But the youth, his suit case on a table at his elbow, seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. Judging merely by appearance, Ensign Glennie's thoughts were far from pleasant. His fingers drummed sharply on the table top, and there was a frown of discontent on his face as his eyes fixed themselves gloomily on the Trinidad hills that lay back of the town of Port-of-Spain. In all conscience, the ensign had enough to trouble him.

Several days previous, he had been detached from the United States cruiser Seminole at La Guayra on special duty. Incidentally, the commander of the Seminole had entrusted him with a packet of important papers to be delivered to Mr. Brigham, the United States consular representative at Para, in the mouth of the Amazon River. In the course of his duty, Ensign Glennie was to call at Para; also the course of his duty demanded that he proceed to Georgetown, British Guiana, and there await the arrival of a certain boat in which he was to take passage around "the Horn."

Ensign Glennie, let it be known, was descended from a line of Massachusetts notables who first came over in the Mayflower. His father was a Boston nabob, and there was a good deal more pride and haughtiness about Glennie than was good for him. No sooner had he been cut loose from the Seminole on detached duty, than he proceeded to hire the services of a body servant—a sphinx-like little Jap by the name of Tolo.

How Tolo came to be in La Guayra at the very time the ensign landed there, and why he should insinuate himself into the particular notice of Glennie and ask for a job, were mysteries not destined to be solved for some time. The prime thing to be taken account of here is that Tolo did present himself, and was hired.

For two days he brushed the ensign's clothes, polished his boots, and performed other services such as fall to the lot of a valet who knows his business. Then, after two days of faithful service, Tolo disappeared; and, about the same time, the packet of important papers likewise vanished.

Glennie led the authorities in a wild hunt through La Guayra, and after that through Caracas, but Tolo was not to be found. What on earth the little Jap wanted with the papers, Glennie could not even guess, but that he had them seemed a certainty.

Returning to La Guayra, Glennie found that the authorities there had discovered that Tolo had taken passage, on the very morning he had turned up missing, on a tramp steamer bound for Trinidad and Port-of-Spain; and the authorities further stated that Tolo had formerly been employed as a waiter in the fonda Ciudad Bolivar, which fronted the esplanade of the capital city of the island.

Ensign Glennie changed his plans forthwith. Instead of proceeding direct to Georgetown he would gain that port by way of Trinidad, stopping long enough in Port-of-Spain to hunt up the enterprising Tolo and secure the papers.

So this was why Glennie happened to be on the Borneo; and it was also the reason he was not so comfortable in his mind as he might otherwise have been.

As a commissioned officer in the United States Navy he had been entrusted with important dispatches. If he did not recover the dispatches, and then proceed with the rest of the duty marked out for him, a black mark would be set against his name that would interfere with his promotion.

Glennie was worried as he had never been before in[Pg 4] his life. His one desire was to serve Uncle Sam with a clean and gallant record. His father, the Boston nabob, expected great things of him, and Glennie, being puffed up—as already stated—with rather high ideas regarding his family, expected them of himself. Therefore the loss of that packet of official papers caught him like a slap in the face. It made him squirm, and he was squirming as he sat by that table on the grating, felt the Borneo reach the end of her scope of cable and come to a stop with her mud-hook hard and fast.

The water was too shoal for a large boat to get very far inshore, and Glennie was among the first to tumble into the launch that soon hove alongside. When he had scrambled off the launch at the landing, he hailed a queer-looking cab and ordered the dusky driver to carry him, as rapidly as possible, to the fonda Ciudad Bolivar.

The ensign did not pay much attention to the scenery as he was jostled along—his mind was too full of other things for that—and presently he went into the wood and stone building that faced the plaza and proceeded to make frantic inquiries regarding a waiter by the name of Tolo.

To all of these eager questions the Venezuelan proprietor of the hotel gave a negative shake of the head.

"There must be some mistake—the Señor Americano has surely been wrongly informed. There has never been such a person as the Japanese employed in the fonda. The waiters were all Venezuelans, and no Japs were ever employed. Perhaps this Tolo had worked in the old hotel that had been burned during the great fire?"

Glennie's trail, faint enough at best, had run into thin air. He was at the end of it, and it had led him nowhere. Going off into one corner of the wineroom, the ensign dropped down at a table in an obscure corner, rested his chin in his hands, and wondered dejectedly what he should do next.

He was not very well acquainted with Orientals, or the brand of guile they used. He had heard of Japs insinuating themselves into fortifications flying the United States flag and making drawings and jotting down memoranda of the guns, stores, and number of men. He had laughed contemptuously at such yarns, although heartily agreeing with the expediency that had suggested such a move on the part of the men from Nippon. Like all others in the sea and land service of the Great Republic, Ensign Glennie knew that it wasn't so much the forts, or the guns, or the ammunition, as it is the unconquerable spirit of the men behind the guns that count.

But where was the tactical advantage to be gained by a Jap in stealing an envelope addressed to a consular agent tucked away in a Brazilian town at the mouth of the Amazon? The only advantage which Glennie could think of was that of pecuniary gain. Tolo had stolen the packet in order to demand money for its return. Glennie had plenty of money, and he began to think he had fallen into a grievous error by running away from La Guayra without giving Tolo a chance to communicate with him.

And yet there was the information developed by the La Guayra police, to the effect that Tolo had sailed for Port-of-Spain. However, this might be as unreliable, as that other supposed discovery, namely, that Tolo was working at the fonda Ciudad Bolivar.

Nevertheless, no matter what theories Glennie might have, now that he was in Port-of-Spain, and could not get out of the town again until the next steamer sailed, it would be well to look around and thus make assurance doubly sure that Tolo was not on the island.

Although Ensign Glennie was not at all sanguine, he immediately left the fonda and conferred with the city officials. A description of Tolo was given, handbills offering a reward for his apprehension were struck off and posted in conspicuous places, and the island telegraph lines and the cables to the mainland were brought into requisition.

Glennie had to work fast and thoroughly. Before many days he must be in Georgetown, ready to go aboard the ship that was to carry him south, and if he did not recover the important packet before he was picked up, then there would be a reprimand, and perhaps a trial for dereliction of duty. He winced at the thought and redoubled his efforts.

But he was "going it blind." The wily Tolo might be a thousand miles away and rapidly increasing the distance between him and his erstwhile employer. Yet, be that as it might, Ensign Glennie could not give over his hopeless labors.

He fought against fate with all the Glennie firmness and resolution. Fate had no business trying to backcap one of the Glennies, anyhow. Family pride swelled up in him as the skies of hope continued to darken. All he did was to cable his governor for a few thousand dollars and then begin scattering it wherever he thought it might do some good.

Three days Ensign Glennie was in Port-of-Spain, then one morning as he came down into the office of the fonda he heard an excited group talking about a mysterious under-water boat that had just bobbed up in the harbor.

That was enough for the ensign. He settled his bill, grabbed up his suit case, and rushed for the landing.

He had hardly got clear of the hotel before a Chinaman, with a copy of one of the handbills, presented himself and asked for John Henry Glennie. The Chinaman was told where the ensign had gone, and he likewise made a bee-line for the waterfront.

Here, at last, was a possible clue—and it was sailing after Glennie with kimono fluttering and pigtail flying.

CHAPTER III.

Events in this world, no matter how seemingly incomprehensible, usually happen for the best.

If the Grampus had not had her fight with the cachalot she would not have put in at Port-of-Spain, and if Ensign Glennie had not lost his dispatches he would not have put in there, either.

The damage to the fore-rudder had been insignificant. Some of the iron bars protecting the rudder had been twisted and bent by the whale's flukes, and Motor Matt had repaired the damage while coming through the Boca Drago into the gulf.

The submarine was riding high in the water a quarter of a mile off shore, the Stars and Stripes fluttering gayly from the little flagstaff forward. A small boat was in the[Pg 5] water and a colored boatman was rowing two lads around the bow of the Grampus. Three men and another boy were forward on the submarine's deck, evidently assisting in an examination of some sort.

"What I'm doing here is my business," said Glennie, stiffening. "I wasn't expecting you for two or three days yet, and expected to be in Georgetown by the time you got there."

Matt stared at the haughty young man in the trim uniform. Dick Ferral, who was in the boat with him, gave a long whistle.

"Then," said Matt coolly, "I guess our reason for being here is our own business. We were expecting to find a midshipman, Glennie, and not——"

"Mister Glennie," struck in the ensign. "I'm a passed midshipman and a commissioned officer."

"Mister Glennie!" he exclaimed, with an accent on the "mister" that was not entirely respectful. "Our brass band has been given shore-leave, so we can't muster the outfit and play you aboard. It's a little bit hard, too, considering our limited number, to dress ship."

A smothered laugh came from the deck of the Grampus. Glennie stared at Ferral, and then at Speake, Gaines, Clackett, and Carl. The latter, grabbing the flag halyards, dipped the ensign.

"Oof ve hat a gannon, Misder Glennie," yelled Carl, "ve vould gif der atmiral's salute."

"Mister King," corrected Matt. "This, Mr. Glennie," proceeded the king of the motor boys with mock gravity, "is my friend, Mr. Dick Ferral. The Dutchman on the boat is another friend—Mr. Carl Pretzel. The hands are Mr. Speake, Mr. Gaines, and Mr. Clackett. This colored gentleman is Mr. Scipio Jones. Now that we are all acquainted, Mr. Glennie, may I ask you if you are coming aboard to stay?"

"I am," was the sharp rejoinder. "Those were my orders from the captain of the Seminole."

Matt caught a rope which Carl threw to him and stepped to the rounded deck of the Grampus.

"The submarine's all right, Dick," said he, "and hasn't a dent in her anywhere. Go ashore and get the gasolene. Have you the hydrometer in your pocket?"

As Dick was rowed away he once more removed his hat ostentatiously in passing the launch. Ensign Glennie disregarded the mocking courtesy and motioned his boatman to place the launch close to the submarine.

"Take my grip, my man," called Glennie to Gaines, standing up and tossing the suit case.

Gaines grabbed the piece of luggage. "Why didn't you whistle, Mr. Glennie?" he asked, dropping the suit case down the open hatch of the conning tower and listening to the smash as it landed at the foot of the iron ladder. "We're well trained and can walk lame, play dead, an' lay down an' roll over at a mere nod."

The ensign ignored Gaines' remarks. Climbing to the rounded deck he faced Motor Matt with considerable dignity.

In spite of the ensign's arrogance there was about him a certain bearing learned only at Annapolis and on the quarterdeck of American warships—a bearing that predisposed the king of the motor boys in his favor.

"We had a fight with a cachalot, Mr. Glennie," said Matt, unbending a little, "and thought best to put in here and look the Grampus over to see if——"

"You were guilty of gross carelessness," interrupted Glennie, "by risking the submarine in such a contest. But possibly you are ignorant of the fact that a bull cachalot has been known to attack and sink a full-rigged ship?"

"Ach, vat a high-toned feller id iss!" grunted Carl disgustedly. "He vill make it aboudt as bleasant on der poat as a case oof measles."

"It was either sink the cachalot or run the risk of being stove in," said Matt. "We'll have to have a little talk, Mr. Glennie, so you had better go below to the periscope room."

"That there uniform makes him top-heavy, Matt," scowled Clackett. "The quicker you pull some o' the red tape off o' him the better it'll be for all of us."

"He's all right, boys," said Matt, "and I'll bet he's a good fellow down at the bottom. He forgets he's not on the Seminole, that's all."

When Matt got down into the periscope room he found Glennie examining one corner of the suit case, which was badly smashed.

"I regret to note, Mr. King," said he, "that there is a serious lack of discipline aboard this boat. Such a thing could never be tolerated in the service. We are to take a long and hazardous journey, and I shall insist on having the men keep their places."

"You are not here to insist on anything, Mr. Glennie," replied Matt, coolly placing himself on one of the low stools that were used as seats. "My own duties, and yours, are pretty clear in my mind. Let's see if I have the situation exactly as you understand it.

"The owner of this boat, Captain Nemo, Jr., is recovering from a sick spell in Belize, and he has sold the Grampus to the United States Government for one hundred thousand dollars, conditional upon the submarine's being taken around the Horn and delivered safely to the commandant at Mare Island Navy Yard, San Francisco. For this long cruise I have been placed in charge of the boat. You are aboard as representative of the government, merely to observe her performance. Have I got it right?"

"Upon my report," said he, "will largely depend the acceptance or rejection of the craft when she reaches Mare Island. Don't overlook that point. A lack of discipline will get us all into trouble, and may result in the loss of the——"

"I will attend to the discipline," said Matt stiffly. "If the boat behaves well, you can find no fault with the way I manage her. I must ask you not to bother me with any remarks as to how the Grampus is to be run. I and my friends are not in the naval service, but we all know the submarine perfectly and understand what is expected of us.

"The cruise we are to make is one that no submarine ever made before. It is full of dangers, and unforeseen difficulties are going to bob up and will have to be dealt with. The Grampus is equal to the work, and in due time she will be delivered to the commandant at Mare Island, but I want, and will insist on having, a perfectly free hand. A friendly footing is what I desire among all on board, more than anything else."

"Just a minute, Mr. King," said Glennie, pursing up his lips. "I understood that I was to be here in an advisory capacity. From your talk I take it that you consider yourself the whole works, and that I am to play the rôle of an innocent bystander."

"Then," cried Glennie, "if you get us into serious difficulties, I am to say nothing, but bear the brunt of your mistakes along with the rest of the men?"

"A graduate of Annapolis is equipped with all the knowledge he can possibly need in his work."

"Theoretical knowledge," qualified Matt. "Have you ever had any practical experience on a submarine?"

"Then, if I get into difficulties, I don't think you could give any advice that would help us out."

Matt nodded toward a bulkhead door leading to a steel room abaft the periscope chamber.

"Then, inasmuch as I am a passenger, I will proceed to eliminate myself and keep out of your way."

Without taking Matt's hand he picked up his suit case and started. At the door he paused while a hail came down from the hatch.

"Dere iss a Chink feller alongsite, und he say dot he vant to see Misder Glennie."

"Vell, he say dot he tell you somet'ing aboudt a feller mit der name oof Dolo, und——"

A shout of joy escaped Glennie, and he dropped his suit case and jumped for the ladder.

"Very good," said Glennie, smothering his impatience and dropping down on the locker.

CHAPTER IV.

The Chinaman came scuffling down the ladder in his wooden sandals. He wore an old slouch hat pulled low over his ears, and when he stepped from the last rung to the floor of the periscope room, he shoved his hands into the wide sleeves of his blue silk blouse and stood looking around him in gaping amazement.

"Allee same," answered the Celestial. "You makee that, huh?" he added, pulling the crumpled handbill from one of his sleeves and holding it in front of the ensign's eyes. "You givee fitty dol if China boy tell where you findee Japanese man?"

"I don't pay in advance. Savvy the pidgin? Tell me where Tolo is, then, if I find him, you get the money."

"My wanchee fitty dol first. Me tellee, you no givee. My savvy pidgin allee light?"

"You're an insolent scoundrel!" cried Glennie hotly. "I'm an officer and a gentleman, and if I say I'll give you fifty dollars, I'll do it."

"Melican men plenty slick," said he, with a gentle grin, "but China boy plenty slick, too."

"How you likee hire China boy?" he cried. "My cookee glub, blushee clo's, makee plenty fine man. Workee fo' twenty dol. Tolo him no stay in Tlinidad; him makee sail fo' Pala."

That was the port to which the important papers were consigned. If Tolo had gone there with them, it may have been for the purpose of treating with the consular agent direct.

"All same," pursued the Chinaman. "You makee hire China boy, takee him by Pala, pay twenty dol fo' wages, then givee fitty dol when you findee Tolo. Huh?"

"My savvy Tolo. Makee work on landing when he takee boat fo' Pala. Him makee come on one boat flom Ven'zuel', makee go chop-chop on other boat fo' Pala. Ah Sin makee chin with Tolo. Him say where he go in Pala."

Glennie grabbed at this straw of hope like a drowning man. Ah Sin's information might not be dependable, but it was the only clue that had come Glennie's way, and he decided to make the most of it.

"There's your twenty dol," said he, throwing a gold piece to the Chinaman. "You're hired. Make yourself scarce out there while I talk with the skipper of this boat."

He nodded toward a door in the forward bulkhead, and Ah Sin, after grabbing the coin out of the air and biting it to make sure it was genuine, faded from the room.

"You don't understand the situation, Mr. King," returned Glennie, "and I shall have to explain to you."

It was hard for the ensign's pride to be compelled to confess the loss of the packet. But, if he had Matt's help—which,[Pg 7] in the circumstances, was necessary—it followed that he would have to let Matt know the details connected with the missing dispatches.

"The Chink may be fooling you, Mr. Glennie," he said, after the ensign had finished.

"Possibly," was the answer; "but I can't afford to pass up his information. The submarine was to call at Para, anyway, and we might just as well carry the Chinaman that far. You must realize what it means for me to recover those papers. Suppose I had to report that they were lost, and could not be found? Good heavens!" and Glennie drew a shaking hand across his forehead.

"You're in duty bound to do that! If I had to report the loss of the papers because you refused to give me your aid, it wouldn't sound very well, eh?"

"No, certainly not! I want you to keep quiet about it—in the event that the dispatches are recovered. If they're not found, then—then—well, everything will have to come out."

"They must have been, or they would have been sent by mail and not entrusted to me."

"But he pulled out of La Guayra. If he had wanted money he would have hidden himself away in that place and opened negotiations with you."

"The Chink says Tolo has gone to Para. That may mean that he is intending to open negotiations with Brigham. Great Scott! We've got to get away from here in short order. Can't you start for Brazil at once?"

"Well, I'm willing to start just as soon as Dick gets back with the gasolene. We'll get along, after that, until we reach Rio, unless there's some extra cruising in the Amazon."

Glennie half extended his hand, but Matt did not seem to see it. Now that the ensign wanted aid in his time of trouble, he appeared anxious to get on the friendly footing which Matt had mentioned a little while before. But Matt, once rebuffed, wasn't going halfway to meet him on that ground.

"It seems to me, Mr. Glennie," said he, "that there is something more behind this than just a desire, on the Jap's part, to sell his dispatches to the highest bidder. The Japs are wily little fellows, and as brave as they are wily."

"Nothing; only the theft strikes me as queer, that's all. If the papers were so important, I should think you ought to have kept them in your possession every minute."

"I did," protested Glennie, a gleam of resentment rising in his eyes over the implied rebuke. "They were under my pillow, and Tolo, who came and went in my room just as he pleased, must have taken them while I was asleep."

"Speake has been doing the cooking for us," remarked Matt; "but if we've got to have the Chinaman along we'll make him earn his pay and take the cooking off Speake's hands."

"I'm more than willing to have you consider Ah Sin one of the crew. He'll probably be useful to me in Para, and not until we get there."

"There are not many Japs in La Guayra, are there?" queried Matt, with a sudden thought.

"Then it's a little queer he should be there at the same time you were. There was a Japanese war vessel in Belize a day before we left the harbor, and I understood she had called at Venezuelan ports. Do you think Tolo could have deserted from her?"

"But the authorities told you he had been a waiter in a hotel in Port-of-Spain?"

"That was wrong, for the proprietor of the fonda didn't know anything about Tolo."

"Then it's a cinch the Jap wasn't telling you a straight story. It's my impression he hired out to you just to get the packet of papers."

"Bosh!" scoffed Glennie. "You're giving him credit for more cunning than he deserves. Take it from me, he just saw how careful I was of those papers and made up his mind, on the spur of the moment, that he could make a few dollars by stealing them and selling them back to me, or else to Brigham at Para."

The king of the motor boys was somewhat worried, for, if there was a plot, it was possible it was not aimed at Ensign Glennie alone, but perhaps at the Grampus as well. This suspicion was only vaguely formed in Matt's mind, but it was one of those strange, inexplicable "hunches" which sometimes came to him and which events occasionally proved to be warranted by results.

It must have been generally known in Belize that the Grampus had been sold to the United States Government for a large sum, conditional upon her safe delivery at Mare Island; and perhaps it was equally well known, on the Seminole, at least, and maybe in La Guayra, that Ensign Glennie was to accompany the submarine on her passage around the Horn. All this knowledge, of course, could have been picked up, and perhaps used by unscrupulous persons. But what could such unscrupulous persons be hoping to gain by any crooked work?

Matt's thoughts were carrying him far afield. Not only that, but they were bumping him into a stone wall. Giving over his useless speculations, he once more turned to the ensign.

"As I said before, Mr. Glennie," he remarked, "this cruise of ours is not going to be a picnic. A whole lot depends on its success, and every man on board must be——"

At that moment he was interrupted by a sudden roar from below—a detonation that shook the steel fabric of the submarine in every part. The peculiar smell of[Pg 8] burned gasolene rolled into the periscope room through the open bulkhead door.

A tramp of heavy feet on the deck proved that those outside the shell had heard the noise and were rushing toward the conning-tower hatch.

Matt, without pausing an instant, darted through the door and dropped down the hatch leading to the tank room and the motor room.

CHAPTER V.

Motor Matt considered himself personally responsible for the safety of the Grampus. The boat had been placed in his charge by Captain Nemo, Jr., her owner, and the captain's faith in the king of the motor boys was unlimited. Matt was to take the submarine to Mare Island Navy Yard and collect one hundred thousand dollars for her from the government. Those were his instructions, and the captain not only expected them to be carried out to the letter, but he also expected to pay Motor Matt well for doing it.

All this responsibility, it may be, had got on Matt's nerves a little, so that he was apt to shy at imaginary dangers. But this fact in no wise interfered with his coolness and courage.

The whole under part of the submarine's hull was filled with smoke—a smoke that had the acrid smell of burned gas. On hands and knees, Matt groped his way through the haze, pulled a switch, and set an electric ventilator fan at work. The fan soon cleared the ship, and the first figure Matt saw was that of the gasping Chinaman. He was on his knees in the tank room. In front of him lay a twisted and broken gasolene tank—a small reserve reservoir sometimes used to help out the larger tank when the fuel in it was running low. This auxiliary tank had not been used for a month, but had hung empty from a rack in the tank room.

"Your Chinaman tried to light a cigarette," answered the young motorist, quick to reason out the cause of what had happened. "He was under an auxiliary gasolene reservoir, and the match set it off."

"Thunder, Matt!" exclaimed Gaines, who had dropped down below after Glennie, "there hasn't been any gasolene in that tank for a month."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Glennie. "Vapor wouldn't stay in that tank for a month. It would escape and find its way out."

"Gasolene vapor is heavier than air," said Matt; "and it would remain indefinitely at the bottom of the reservoir. A little of it probably leaked through the bottom of the feed pipe, so that the match set it off. Luckily for the Chink there wasn't very much of it."

"Gee, klismus!" babbled Ah Sin. "Me tly smokee, something go boom! No likee devil-boat!"

"Don't strike any more matches," went on Matt sternly. "You're going with us to Para, and you're going to do the cooking. Take him in hand, Speake," he added to Speake, who had dropped down behind Gaines, "and show him how we do that part of our work on the Grampus. Keep an eye on him, and see that he doesn't blow up the boat."

"Never did like a bloomin' chink, nohow," grumbled Speake. "If he gits too blame' troublesome, I'll break his scrawny neck. Come on here, yaller mug!"

Speake made off forward, toward the torpedo room, and Ah Sin meekly followed. Just then a thump on the deck, and a loud hail, announced that Dick had arrived with the gasolene.

"Rig the hose, Gaines," called Matt. "Clackett, get the pump on deck. We've got to get the fuel into the tank in short order and then slant away for the Amazon and Para."

While Gaines and Clackett busied themselves, Matt and Glennie went up to the periscope room. Carl was just climbing the ladder to help Dick. Glennie, without further talk, picked up his suit case and went on to the room that had been set apart for his use.

"Vat iss a shink anyvay," went on Carl, "but some monkies mit der tails in der wrong blace?"

Clackett came with the pump and passed it to Dick, who was in the boat with the barrel of gasolene. The pump was rigged, the end of the hose clamped on, and Clackett and Dick got busy pouring the fuel through the hose and into the big tank below.

While they worked, Clackett explained to Dick that they were to make a quick departure for the Amazon. Dick was disappointed, for he had hoped for a night's shore-leave in Port-of-Spain, where he had some friends. When he learned that business of Glennie's had all to do with their short stay in port, Dick was inclined to be resentful.

The ensign had not made much of a hit with Ferral—nor with any of the rest of the submarine's complement, for that matter. Dick, however, did no more than grumble. If Motor Matt thought it necessary to pull out for the Amazon in such short order, then there was nothing more to be said. Matt knew what he was about.

Dick alone, of all the submarine's crew, had been the only one to set foot on shore. As soon as the gasolene was transferred, and the boatman paid for his services, the anchor was taken in and the Grampus laid her course for the Serpent's Mouth and began her long voyage toward the Amazon. Dick took the wheel. Matt, studying the charts, gave him the course. Glennie came out of his room and watched the two lads while they were at work.

Everything was going well, and the rhythmical hum of the motor echoed through the boat from the engine room. Glennie walked over and took a look at the periscope. In the mirror were reflected the slowly receding[Pg 9] shore line and the distant mountains that arose behind the town.

"He knows so much, matey," said Dick to Matt, "why not let him figure that out for himself?"

"Because," Matt answered, shaking his head at Dick, "we can make better speed when we're riding light. Once out of the Gulf of Paria, though, the sea will probably be so rough we'll have to submerge."

The ensign continued to ask questions and Matt continued to answer them until Speake announced dinner. The meal was served to the crew at their different stations, Ah Sin carrying the plates and the steaming cups of coffee.

After the meal Matt went up on deck with Glennie, and Dick did the steering from the top of the conning tower. The Gulf of Paria was a great watery plain, over which the waters of the Orinoco spread themselves before mingling with the sea.

The ensign, feeling that he was disliked, drew back into his shell and bore himself with a chilly reserve. Along toward three o'clock Matt relieved Dick and sent him below to sleep. Directly after supper Dick would have to relieve Gaines and stand his trick at the motor, and it was necessary for him to get a little rest. Carl would also have to relieve Clackett, and, in order to be fit for his duties, the Dutch boy had turned in immediately after dinner. He was sleeping on the floor of the periscope room, and Dick curled up on the locker.

The afternoon saw the Grampus well across the gulf, and by five o'clock she changed her course to south by east, leaving the densely wooded hills of Trinidad far behind with the coast of Venezuela in plain view to starboard.

Ah Sin, having been duly instructed as to his duties, prepared the supper on the electric stove, and served it. Speake relieved Matt at the steering gear, and when Dick went below to take Gaines' place at the motor, Matt sprawled out on the locker to catch his own forty winks. A stiff sea was running, and the Grampus was submerged to a depth that merely left the periscope ball clear of the combers.

As the darkness deepened, Speake had Carl put the turbines at work, throwing out sufficient water ballast to lift the conning-tower lunettes clear of the waves. The electric projector was then turned on, and a ray of light shot through the forward lunette and marked the submarine's path through the tumbling sea.

For some hours everything went well. Then abruptly the motor began to sputter and misfire, lessening the speed of the boat and throwing her—now that she was riding higher and with the top of the conning tower awash—more at the mercy of the waves.

Loose furniture began to slam around the periscope room. Matt was thrown from the locker, and sat up, wondering what had gone wrong with the motor.

"I'm a Feejee if I know," Dick answered. "You'd better come down, old ship, and take a look."

Matt was soon at his chum's side. His keenly trained ear was usually able to locate any ordinary trouble, but this time he was puzzled. The ignition was all right, and the supply pipe from the tank was clear. Nevertheless the motor sputtered and jabbered with a wheezy but unsuccessful attempt to do its full duty. The platinum, in the blade or spring of the commutator, will, in rare cases, get loose and cause misfiring, but that was not the cause of the present trouble. Another rare cause, resulting in similar symptoms, lay in the loosening of the carbon pole in the cell of a battery. But, just now, the batteries were not at fault.

Finally, as a last resort, Matt examined the gasolene that was being fed into the carburetor. A few drops in the palm of his hand aroused his suspicions. The next moment the hydrometer test was made and water was found in the gasolene.

"How did it get there?" demanded Dick. "The gasolene has worked well enough all afternoon and so far during the night."

"Well, connect up the carburetor with the storage reservoir. If there is a little water in the carburetor, it will soon work out. After that, empty this tank, strain the gasolene through chamoiskin, and then give the tank a compressed-air treatment. I'll send Clackett to help you."

"But how, in the name of sin, did water get in that tank?" cried the perplexed Dick.

As Matt turned to crawl away, he picked up a six-inch ebony cylinder, about the size of a lead-pencil, from near the tank. It was a chopstick!

"Nothing," said Matt, but he was doing some tall thinking as he stepped into the torpedo room, aroused Clackett, and sent him aft to lend Dick a hand.

CHAPTER VI.

Gaines and Ah Sin were also sleeping in the torpedo room. As soon as Clackett had left, Matt bent down over the Chinaman and shook him roughly. The Celestial started up and stared blankly into the stern face of the young motorist.

"Is this yours?" inquired Matt, producing the chopstick and studying the Chinaman's face attentively as he did so.

The brim of the old slouch hat—which the yellow man had kept on while sleeping—shaded his eyes, so that Matt's view was not as good as he would have liked to have it. So far as Matt could discover, not a shadow of guilt crossed Ah Sin's face. Thrusting one hand into the breast of his blouse he drew out the mate to the chopstick Matt was holding, a grateful grin split his countenance, and he caught the piece of ebony out of Matt's hand.

Without a word he left the torpedo room, climbed to the deck above, and gained the periscope chamber. Matt pounded on the door of Glennie's quarters, and the ensign quickly opened the door.

"Take this Chinaman in there with you, Mr. Glennie," said Matt, "and watch him."

"I don't know that he's been doing anything. I just want him watched, that's all, and you can do it better than any one else."

Glennie stared for a moment, then jerked the Chinaman inside and closed the door.

As Matt turned away, he was conscious of the steady song of the cylinders. Again the motor had taken up its cycle properly—proof that the gasolene secured by Dick in Port-of-Spain was of the right sort.

"That's too much for me, Matt, unless he did it by mistake, same as he exploded the gas in that reserve tank."

"I don't know how the water got in the tank, Speake, and it may have been accident quite as much as design."

Speake left Matt to his lonely vigil. The gleam of the little searchlight, reaching out ahead of the submarine, flung an odd picture on the periscope mirror. The edges of the mirror were shrouded in darkness, out of which jumped the smooth, oily billows. The waves flashed like gold in the pencil of light.

Matt, holding the Grampus to her course, looked into the periscope absently. He was thinking of the motor's recent trouble, and of the chopstick lying by the gasolene tank, turning both over in his mind and wondering aimlessly.

Suddenly he lifted his head. An odd note was mixing itself with the croon of the motor and the whir of the ventilator fans. The noise was not caused by anything aboard the submarine, of that Matt was positive. It was like the thrashing of a large propeller, growing rapidly in volume as Matt listened.

Under water sounds are carried far. The noise Matt heard was caught by the submerged hulk of the Grampus and reëchoed as by a sounding-board.

As the pace slackened, Matt's eyes again sought the periscope mirror. Abruptly, out of the gloom that walled in the glow of the searchlight, rushed a steamer, its blotted outline crossing directly the submarine's course. There were lights along the steamer's rail, but it was plain her lookouts were asleep or they would have seen the Grampus' searchlight.

At the same time Matt put the wheel over, hoping to make a turn and get the Grampus on a parallel course with the steamer.

But there was not room, nor time, enough for the turn. Unless the motor stayed the Grampus she was bound to crash into the other vessel.

Dick, however, got the propeller to turning the other way just at the critical moment. The speed of the submarine slackened in answer to the reverse pull, and the stern of the steamer swung by into the gloom with a margin of scarce a dozen feet, leaving the Grampus bobbing in her troubled wake.

"All right now, Dick," called Matt in a voice that shook somewhat. "Drive her ahead."

Dick gave a long whistle, and went on with his work. "A miss is as good as a hundred fathoms, old ship," he answered lightly.

The ringing orders and quick work with the engine had aroused none of the sleepers. Carl could be heard babbling excitedly in the tank room, but otherwise the ship's complement was quiet.

It was with a distinct feeling of relief that Matt caught the first gleam of day as it was reflected by the periscope. As the morning advanced and brightened, he raised a black smudge, as of steamer smoke, on the port quarter. The smoke was bearing along in the direction the submarine was going, and Matt wondered if that was the steamer they had barely missed running into during the night.

Gaines relieved Dick, Clackett took Carl's place, and Speake came after Ah Sin and ordered him below to get breakfast. When the Chinaman was fairly at work, Speake returned to the engine room and took the wheel. Glennie showed himself when breakfast was ready, and he, Matt, Dick, Carl, and Speake ate their breakfast in the periscope room.

"We must be off British Guiana," remarked Glennie, stirring the condensed milk and sugar into his coffee. "Will you put in at Georgetown, Mr. King?"

"We won't have to do that, now that we've picked you up at Port-of-Spain," replied Matt. "We've got to make quick time to the Amazon."

"Iss dot shdeamer der vone ve come pooty near running indo lasdt night?" queried Carl, taking a look into the periscope.

Ah Sin, who happened to be in the room, took a look at the periscope for himself.

"Did we come near having a collision last night?" queried Glennie, looking up quickly.

"We made a lucky miss of it," remarked the ensign, when Matt had finished. "I've no desire to go to the bottom in a steel sarcophagus like the Grampus. Strange I slept through it all, but I was tired, and I suppose I slept rather sounder than usual. That chink," he added, putting down his cup, "is a poor coffee-maker. Or is it the coffee itself that tastes so rank?"

"It's poor stuff," spoke up Speake, "an' I was jest goin' to say something about the taste. The chink did better yesterday than he's doin' this mornin'."

"Id purns ven id goes town, like id vas a dorch-light[Pg 11] brocession," observed Carl luminously. "I don'd like dot, but I vas hungry, so I trink him. Whoosh!"

"It's certainly hot and bitter," said Matt, and put down his cup after two or three swallows.

"That steamer is gettin' closer to us, Matt," announced Speake, fumbling with the wheel and looking at the periscope.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," muttered Speake, "but my nerves are all in a quiver. She's small, that steamer; one funnel, black, with a red band. I don't jest recollect what line—that—is."

"Py shiminy grickets!" said Carl, "I feel sick py der shdomach, und eferyt'ing iss virling und virling."

"And I," murmured Glennie, setting aside his plate and empty cup. "I—I believe I'll lie down."

He got up from the stool on which he was sitting, and floundered to the top of the locker. Pushing a hand around to his hip pocket, he drew out a revolver that interfered with his comfort, dropped it on the floor, and fell back limply.

Dick tried to get to his feet, but his limbs gave out, and he fell sprawling upon Carl. At the same moment Carl straightened out with a gasp, and Speake let go of the wheel and pitched forward to his knees. There he swayed unsteadily for an instant, trying to speak, but the effort was beyond him, and he slowly crumpled downward.

A horrible sensation of helplessness was growing upon Matt, and with it there dawned on his mind a hazy suspicion of villainous work. He struggled upright and staggered to the wheel.

Still there was no answer. At just that moment, when Matt was positively sure that all on the ship were caught in the awful spell, Ah Sin shambled through the door.

With all his failing strength Matt flung himself on the Chinaman. Before Ah Sin could dodge out of the way Matt's arms went round him and his slouch hat was jerked off.

With the hat came the long queue, leaving Ah Sin's closely cropped head in plain sight.

He made a superhuman effort to get off the locker, but the last particle of strength left him in a flash, and he rolled backward.

CHAPTER VII.

Matt had neither the time nor the strength to manifest any surprise over the startling revelation made by Glennie. Not only that, but his brain was in such a condition it was well-nigh incapable of surprise.

In that critical moment when he felt a terrifying helplessness surely but steadily creeping over him, he centred every effort on the attempt to make Ah Sin a prisoner.

Swiftly as a lightning flash the idea struck through Matt's brain that the Chinaman had all to do with the baffling situation aboard the Grampus. If Matt could drag him down and secure him he felt that, at a later moment, the treacherous Celestial might be dealt with as his evil deeds justified.

But the work the king of the motor boys had mapped out for himself exceeded his powers. There was none to come to his aid. Below, in the tank room and motor room, was a silence undisturbed by human voice or movement, and there, in the periscope chamber, the only noise to be heard was the deep breathing of Matt's unconscious friends and the rattling sounds of the scuffle going forward between the young motorist and Ah Sin.

The slouch hat and the false queue were kicked into one corner. Ah Sin's long, lean fingers were gripping Matt's throat. There was no look of hate, or anger, or even of determination in the Chinaman's face; the expression was blank and saturnine, as though he was merely a tool, operated by wires like a puppet and carrying out the will of some one in high authority.

Suddenly, putting forth all his strength, Ah Sin lifted Matt by the throat and threw him bodily across Speake and against the edge of the locker. Matt tried to rise, but found it impossible.

The awful weakness held him in thrall and was fastening gyves upon his wrists. Soon he would be utterly helpless, like those lying around him, and what would Ah Sin then do to the Grampus?

A spasm of alarm and apprehension rushed through the young motorist. Was this to be the end of the submarine's voyage? Was the sale of the boat to the government destined never to be consummated?

Vaguely Matt thought of Captain Nemo, Jr., lying sick in that house in Belize, of his unswerving confidence in the king of the motor boys, and of his tremendous disappointment if anything happened to the submarine during her daring cruise.

All this brought every ounce of Matt's failing strength back to him. He shoved his hand along the side of the locker and twined his fingers about the grip of the revolver dropped by Glennie, then, with a despairing effort, he lifted himself on one elbow and again directed his gaze at the Chinaman.

Ah Sin had not been idle. He was holding something in his hand—a round object from which hung a long, black string. The Chinaman was lighting a match and touching the flame to the end of the string.

Matt could not see very distinctly, for everything in the periscope chamber, even the chamber itself, was reeling about him in fantastic lines.

The glow at the end of the black string sputtered and hissed. Stepping over to one corner, Ah Sin placed the round object on the floor with exceeding care, pulling out the string so that it lay in a straight line, the burning end pointed toward the centre of the room.

For a moment Ah Sin knelt and stared. His face was still inscrutable, his eyes showing nothing more than a mild interest in his fiendish work.

Ah Sin was seeking to blow up the submarine, annihilating not only the boat, but those aboard as well.

On Matt alone depended the salvation of the Grampus and her crew. And he was almost helpless in the grip of the baneful spell that had fallen over every one on board, with the exception of the Chinaman!

Matt lifted the revolver unsteadily. A report rang out, sending wild echoes clattering through the steel hull.

The bullet missed the kneeling Chinaman, struck clanging against the curved iron plates, glanced against the bulkhead above the locker, and dropped flattened and harmless at the side of Glennie.

Owing to Matt's unsteady hand the Chinaman had escaped the bit of lead, but he was startled and frightened. Leaping up he whirled and peered at Matt. The latter still clutched the revolver, but his hand swayed back and forth as he leveled it.

Ah Sin made a quick jump toward Matt, evidently with the intention of disarming him; but there was something in the lad's wide, straining eyes that caused him to change his mind. Swerving aside he rushed at the ladder, mounted swiftly, and disappeared through the hatch.

With a fierce effort Matt concentrated his wandering wits upon the bomb. Someway, somehow, he must reach the infernal machine and extinguish the fuse.

Dropping the revolver, he rolled over and over, a lurch of the boat, running erratically with no guiding hand at either wheel or motor, helping him to reach the foot of the periscope table.

With the utmost difficulty he caught the legs of the rigidly secured table and pulled himself to his knees. The cup, from which he had taken only a few swallows of coffee, stood on the floor just below the end of the table, and not more than a foot from the burning fuse. By a miracle the cup had not been overturned.

For him to reach the fuse in his weakened condition was impossible; but, if he could regain his feet and kick the cup over the coffee that remained in it might quench the fire of the fuse.

Three times he endeavored to draw himself erect by means of the table, but succeeded only in dropping backward as though pushed by a heavy, resistless hand. But the fourth time he managed to remain upright, trembling with the strain he had put upon himself.

It seemed a trifling thing to overset the coffee-cup, but Motor Matt had never planned a harder task.

There are but few things in this life, however, that will not yield to pluck and determination, and fortune favored Matt in his grave fight.

The Grampus pitched forward, rising aft and making a steep incline of the floor. Matt's feet slipped, and he lost his hold on the table. As he came heavily down he shot against a stool, which was overturned and upset the cup. The liquid in the cup had slopped over the sides, and with the overturning a miniature wave of brown rolled along the inclined floor.

There followed a hiss as it engulfed the tiny blaze at the end of the fuse, and then a little spiral of smoke eddied upward.

This much Matt saw, and a fierce exultation ran through him. The bomb was harmless—but where was Ah Sin? Would he not come back, discover what Matt had accomplished, and again set a match to the fuse?

He had taken only a few swallows of the coffee, and to this, and to his superior powers of endurance, was due the fact that he had kept his senses and a remnant of his strength long enough to accomplish what he had.

But now a wave of darkness rolled over him. As unconscious of what was taking place around him as he was helpless to prevent further disaster, his head fell back and he lay as one dead among his silent and motionless companions.

CHAPTER VIII.

As Matt was the last one to lose his senses, so he was the first to recover. And here again his superior endurance must have scored in his favor.

Always in the pink of physical condition, and striving constantly to keep himself so, his powers of recuperation were quick to react and reassert themselves.

He sat up, dazed and bewildered, and was some moments in picking up the chain of events where it had been dropped.

By degrees he lived over the events that immediately preceded his lapse into unconsciousness, and thoughts of the treacherous Ah Sin brought him staggering to his feet.

The Grampus was yawing and tumbling about in the waves, completely at the mercy of wind and currents. Seizing the wheel, Matt brought the submarine to her course and lashed the wheel with his twisted handkerchief.

Pausing by the foot of the ladder he looked up into the conning tower. The hatch was open.

What had become of the Chinaman he asked himself. Had he, confident that the boat would be blown up, gained the deck and thrown himself into the sea? Matt had heard of fanatics of that sort—carrying out orders given by a higher power and then immolating themselves on the altar of what they supposed to be their duty.

The Japs were noted for self-sacrifices of that kind, and Ah Sin was not a Chinaman, but a little yellow man from the land of the mikado.

Resolved to discover what had become of the supposed Chinaman at all hazards, Matt climbed laboriously up the ladder. The cool, salt air, pouring down the hatch, served still further to revive him and bring back his strength.

At last, when he braced himself in the opening and was able to cast a sweeping glance over the waves, the sight unrolled before him brought a startled exclamation to his lips.

A cable's length from the submarine was a dory manned by smartly uniformed yellow sailors. Hove to, half a dozen fathoms beyond the dory, was the steamer with the black funnel and the red band, her port rail lined with figures that were evidently watching the Grampus. Between the dory and the submarine was a swimming figure, which Matt had little difficulty in recognizing as being that of Tolo, otherwise Ah Sin.

Tolo was swimming and looking behind, and the eyes of those in the dory were on the Grampus, the men at the oars turning their heads to look over their shoulders.

It seemed plain that they were expecting an explosion, and that they were hurrying to get Tolo out of the way of it.

Matt's blood ran cold as he thought of the heinous plot that had so nearly been carried out by the disguised Japanese. Policy was back of the murderous plan, but was it a policy dictated by a powerful nation, or merely by a set of misguided men, acting on their own accord?

The young motorist had no time to debate this point. A shout of consternation greeted his appearance at the conning-tower hatch. The officer in the dory spoke to his men, and all turned their faces the other way and bent their backs to the oars.

It flashed over Matt, in a twinkling, that the crew from the steamer were still of the opinion that they could destroy the submarine, and that they were hastening to get aboard the craft in order to carry out their nefarious designs.

Without losing a moment, Matt drew back into the tower and closed and barred the hatch. Lurching down the ladder he called desperately to his companions. Speake and Dick were sitting up, staring blankly at each other. When Matt appeared they fixed their bewildered eyes on him.

"Wake up!" cried Matt, springing to Dick and shaking him vigorously. "Get your wits together, Dick, and be quick about it."

"Never mind that now," went on Matt hurriedly. "Enemies are upon us! That steamer you saw in the periscope, Speake, is hove to a little way from us, and our motor is slowed until we have scarcely steerage-way. A boat is coming toward the Grampus, and we shall be boarded before you can say Jack Robinson. We've got to make a dive for safety. Rouse yourselves, both of you! To the motor, Dick! Speake, attend to the tanks—fill them for a twenty-foot submersion. You——"

Something struck against the side of the submarine, and a jar followed as of some one springing to the deck.

Speake and Dick got unsteadily to their feet. Matt's ominous words alarmed them, and did more than anything else to clear the fog from their minds. Making their way stumblingly through the door they lowered themselves down the hatch.

Several more ringing thumps on the deck proved to Matt that others had come aboard. Presently there was a banging on the hatch cover.

"Open!" cried a muffled voice with a queer foreign intonation. "Open so that we can talk!"

"Who are you?" roared Matt, his voice sounding like thunder in the confined space.

"Young Samurai, patriots of Nippon, Sons of the Rising Sun, Independent Protectors of the Kingdom. Open!"

Matt forced his way up the ladder again. Slant eyes were pressed against the lunettes and met his.

Already, however, water was entering the ballast tanks and the Grampus was beginning to settle.

"Our flag is the Stars and Stripes," yelled Matt, shaking his fist at the eyes on the other side of the thick glass, "and you dare not lay a hand on us! If your mikado knew what you were about——"

The fact that the submarine was diving came suddenly home to those on the deck. Already the waves were creaming over the curved plates, drawn into a flurry by the suction as the boat went down.

The eyes disappeared from the lunettes, and the Japanese scrambled for their boat. Another moment and the conning tower was submerged and Matt could hear the waters gurgling over the hatch cover.

Sliding down to the periscope room he looked into the periscope. Some of the sailors were in the water, and others, in the boat, were desperately busy getting them aboard. For a moment only Matt was able to use the periscope, and then the waters closed about the ball, the valves protecting the ball from an inrush of water closed, and the Grampus was more than fifteen feet down.

The motor was speeded up and the Grampus hustled onward below the surface. While Matt unlashed the wheel and brought the boat more directly into her course, a loud boom and a splash were heard.

"Let 'em shoot," laughed Dick. "A heap of good it will do them to drop shot into the sea."

"Coming along full and by, forty knots. He's sitting up and beginning to take notice."

"He jest asked me to tell him where he was," replied Speake, "so I guess he'll soon be able to take hold."

"That's about the way I stack up, Mr. King," said Glennie, turning over on his side so he could face Matt. "Where are we?"

"Yes; but I wasn't out of my head so long. I was the last to go and the first to come to."

Glennie sat up on the locker, as he put the question, and began rubbing his head.

"I didn't drink so much of that bitter coffee as the rest of you did," replied Matt.

"That's right," muttered Glennie; "I was forgetting about the coffee. It was drugged—it must have been."

"Yah, so helup me!" growled Carl. "Der shink vas oop to some funny pitzness, und he has peen efer since he come apoardt der poat. Shinks iss pad meticine, anyvays. Ve ought to haf droon him oferpoard on cheneral brinciples."

"The last I saw of him," said Matt, "he was in the water swimming toward a small boat."

"In the water?" he echoed. "Do you mean to say you allowed the scoundrel to get away, Mr. King? And all the time you knew just how much his presence meant to me!"

"Your head must still be troubled with that dope the supposed Chinaman put in the coffee," said he calmly. "It was lucky that I was able to do what I did, and, as for the Chinaman getting away, I could no more help that than any of the rest of you. But it was a lucky thing for us that he did get away, I can tell you that."

"Vat pitzness you got finding some fault mit Motor Matt?" snapped Carl, making a truculent move in Glennie's direction. "You vas a bassencher—don'd forged dot—und Matt vas der skipper. Ve ought to call him Gaptain, only he von't allow id; but, all der same, he iss der gaptain oof der poat, und you vill keep some shdillness mit yourseluf oder I vill pat you on der pack mit mein fist. Yah, so, Misder Glennie!"

"That will do, Carl," said Matt. "Draw back into your shell now, and keep some stillness yourself. I can handle my own end with Mr. Glennie."

Carl flung off to the other side of the room, tramping heavily to show his impatience and disgust.

"I presume," said the ensign reflectively, "that you did the best you could, Mr. King, so I have no fault to find with you. But you understand that Ah Sin was my only hope for locating those important papers in Para."

Matt stared, wondering if Glennie had forgotten the discovery he had made just before he had lapsed into unconsciousness.

"I had a mighty queer dream about that Chinaman," pursued Glennie. "I thought you had a fight with him, Matt, and that, during the scuffle, his old slouch hat came off, and the queue along with it. And I was under the impression that Ah Sin wasn't a Chinaman at all, but Tolo, that rascally Jap."

"That wasn't a dream, Mr. Glennie," answered Matt, "but is literally what took place."

He had picked up the slouch hat and the attached queue and placed them on his head.

"Great Moses!" muttered Glennie, reeling back against the wall. "How I've been fooled! And I never recognized the scoundrel in his chink make-up! Well, I guess I deserve all the bad luck that's coming my way. I've been a dunderhead ever since the Seminole dropped me in La Guayra."

"Whoosh!" exclaimed Carl, disgustedly, pulling off the hat and pigtail and throwing them into the locker. "I don'd like der shmell oof der t'ings," and he dropped the locker lid and turned away. "Vat's dis, hey?" he inquired, picking up the bomb.

CHAPTER IX.

"That," said Matt, "is a bomb. While I lay on the floor, all but helpless, the disguised Jap set fire to the fuse and planted the bomb in the corner."

Glennie stared aghast. Carl mumbled to himself, and very carefully returned the bomb to the place where he had found it.

"He vas a plackguard!" growled Carl, backing away from the bomb and shaking his fist at it. "Der sgoundrel vould haf plowed us py some smidereens. I don'd like Chaps any more as I do shinks."

"You must be mistaken!" gasped Glennie. "Either that, or else Tolo is a madman! Why, the explosion of that bomb would have wrecked the submarine and killed us all."

"It would have been barbarous!" he went on, worked up by the enormity of the crime that had been planned. "As an act of war, it would have been savage enough, in all conscience, but here we are at peace with all the world, and under the protection of Old Glory!"

"I can't help that, Glennie," said Matt grimly. "We've got to take the facts as we find them. I managed to get hands on the revolver you dropped, and had strength enough to fire one shot. The bullet missed its mark, and Tolo jumped up and started for me. But I guess the revolver scared him off, for he whirled around before he got very close and darted up the conning-tower ladder."

"Well, the coffee that had got me into trouble got us all out of it. I fell, knocked over a stool, the stool knocked over the cup, and the coffee was spilled out and flowed over the burning fuse."

"Modor Matt's luck," chuckled Carl. "I vould radder be mit Matt, und haf a biece oof his luck, dan any blace vat I know. Ven he has some goot fordunes, he has to pass dem aroundt to der fellers vat iss mit him—vich means me, for I vas alvays aroundt."

Matt, attending to his steering and keeping an eye on the periscope, told how he had lost consciousness for a few moments, had revived, lashed the wheel, and climbed to the hatch. The rest, including how he, Dick, and Speake had made a dive for safety, came rapidly and in the fewest possible words.

"From all of which it appears," remarked Glennie quietly, when the recital was done, "that we owe our lives to Motor Matt. But I can't understand this Tolo business. Why was he playing the part of a chink?"

"That seems plain," went on Matt, wondering a little at the ensign's failure to see the game that had been attempted. "As I figure it, Mr. Glennie, there is a Japanese secret society consisting of a number of misguided young men who call themselves Sons of the Rising Sun. Their government does not sanction their acts, and presumably knows nothing about them. These Independent Protectors of the Kingdom have heard of this wonderful submarine ship invented by Captain Nemo, Jr., and they are well fitted to understand its possibilities in time of war."

"I'm coming to that. Tolo, I take it, is a member of the Young Samurai Society. No doubt the society has had spies in Central and South America. These spies reported that the Grampus had been sold to the United States Government, conditional upon her making a safe passage around the Horn and up the western coast to Mare Island. I don't suppose that the Sons of the Rising Sun were at all pleased with this information. They are enthusiasts, and probably don't care a rap for their own lives, or for the lives of any other people, so long as they can do a good stroke of work for Nippon."

"Probably, too," continued Matt, "it was known that the Seminole had dropped you at La Guayra, and that you were to accompany the submarine on her long cruise. Tolo was commissioned to watch you, get aboard the submarine if possible, make sketches, and then destroy her."

"But do you consider what a crime that amounts to? That it is virtually an act of war and might embroil two countries?"

"It is an act of piracy, Mr. Glennie. The steamer from which the Japs came was not flying the Japanese flag, nor any other flag, so far as I could see. They're working on their own hook."

"Of course; but the Sons of the Rising Sun have the bit in their own teeth and are going their own pace. I'll bet something handsome they'd sacrifice their steamer and their own lives, into the bargain, if they could be sure of destroying the Grampus. The Japs are fanatics on the subject of patriotism—everybody knows that. But to go on with Tolo. He hired out to you, found a chance to steal your dispatches, and thought advisable to take them. Probably he thought they contained information of value to the Young Samurai. After that he disguised himself as a Chinaman—not a difficult task for a Jap—and called on us in the harbor at Port-of-Spain. He was cunning enough to hand you that yarn about knowing Tolo, and to hang out regarding the fifty dollars so that he could get you to take him down the coast to the Amazon. On the way, Tolo was snooping around and learning all he could about the boat. The blowing up of the gasolene tank was probably an accident, but mixing water with our fuel was done with a purpose."

"To delay us, and make it possible for the steamer to come near. This morning Tolo must have heard how we had narrowly escaped running the steamer down during the night, and I am sure he knew the steamer was hanging around our course just before he went down to get breakfast. He had come aboard the Grampus equipped with his bomb and his drugs, and it's a wonder his scoundrelly plans did not carry. Of course," Matt added, after a long silence, "I am only putting two and two together, and making a guess. The guess may be close to the truth, or wide of it, but that's the way I size up the facts that have come to us."

"You haf hit der nail righdt on der headt, py chiminy!" declared Carl. "Der Sons oof der Rising Sun vas afder us, aber dey vill findt dot ve don'd vas ashleep. Ve're a leedle punch oof badriots ourseluf, you bed you, und an American feller has got id ofer der Chap like anyding."

"I am sure you have made a good guess, Mr. King," said Glennie, "and the way you have argued the thing out is mighty convincing. It shows us what we're up against during this cruise, and I'm wondering why the captain of the Seminole didn't tip me off."

"It's likely he didn't know anything about these Sons of the Rising Sun," replied Matt. "We've only been able to get a line on them by facing considerable danger, and taking a lot of hard knocks."

"Ven dose leedle fellers whipped Rooshia," put in Carl, "dey got puffed oop like I can't tell. Dere iss some chips on deir shoulters all der time now, und they ought to be knocked off."

"Don't make a common mistake, Mr. Pretzel," cautioned Glennie. "The Japanese Government has always been a good friend of the United States, and——"

"Der handt vat dey holdt oudt to us iss der gladt handt," interrupted Carl, "und der odder vat dey haf pehind deir pack iss toupled oop und ready to shtrike! Yah, so helup me!"

"There are hotheads in Japan just as there are in our own country," proceeded Glennie; "but both governments are on friendly terms and will always be so. The mikado's government doesn't know what these Sons of the Rising Sun are doing, so what happens is just a little private war between them and us, with the Grampus as the bone of contention."

"Vell," and Carl wagged his head decidedly, "ve got our teet' on der pone und dey can't shake us loose."

"Mr. Pretzel is a jingo," said Glennie. "But what am I to do about those dispatches?"

"We'll go right on to the Amazon and Para. When we get there, Mr. Glennie, I'd advise you to make a clean breast of everything to Mr. Brigham. Perhaps he can help you get hold of the papers in some way."

"I see what will happen to me," he muttered, "but I guess I can face the music, all right. I'm sorry for the governor, though, when the news gets to Boston."

At this moment Speake came in and began clearing up the scattered tin dishes that had been used in serving the morning meal. He reported Gaines and Clackett as feeling all right, and actively engaged in their duties.

Matt ordered the ballast tanks emptied so as to bring the submarine within a dozen feet of the surface. At this depth the periscope ball cleared the waves, the automatic valves opened, and those in the periscope room were able to take a look at the surface of the sea. The steamer was nowhere in sight—there was not even a smudge of smoke on the horizon.

The Grampus was lifted further until the conning tower was clear of the waves. Speake took the wheel, Matt studied the chart and gave him the course and then turned in for a little sleep. Dick and Carl likewise sought a little rest; and while the king of the motor boys and his chums slept, the submarine plowed onward toward Brazil at a swift pace.

CHAPTER X.

Three days and nights of uneventful traveling brought the Grampus to Santa Rosa Bay directly in the great mouth of the Amazon. Para River, to the south, is not generally considered as an arm of the river, although unquestionably it forms a part of the vast delta.

The mouth of the Amazon Matt knew to be two hundred miles wide, and full twenty-seven fathoms deep. It is full of islands, and a bar, running seaward from one of these islands, caused the Grampus an unforeseen delay.

Feeling positive that the mysterious steamer had reached the Amazon ahead of them, or that she was perhaps watching along the coast; most of the latter part of the submarine's journey toward the Para had been made under water. The boat was submerged when she reached the Amazon, and the run across Santa Rosa Bay was by periscope alone.

Matt saw the little rocky island, whitened with seabirds, and supposed he was giving it a wide berth. He did not suspect the presence of the bar, and the chart, most unaccountably, did not show it.

The first news of trouble was contained in an announcement by Gaines, from the motor room.

This was alarming information. With the propeller useless, the submarine would drift helplessly in the current unless stoutly anchored.

Quickly as possible the ballast tanks were emptied and the boat brought to the surface. Matt, turning the wheel over to Speake, rushed into the conning tower, threw open the hatch and made a survey of the situation.

There were no boats of any kind in the vicinity of the Grampus, and consequently no hope of being towed into safe quarters while repairs were being made. Matt, when he broke out of the hatch, was confidently expecting to find the submarine being whirled out to sea by the swift current, but, to his surprise, the boat was setting in toward a small cove of the island. He got out on the deck for the purpose of making further observations. Dick and Glennie followed him.

"What do you make out, matey?" queried Dick. "From the looks of things, we're floating upstream."

"We're in a back-set of the current," Matt answered, studying the river in the neighborhood of the island. "That uplift of rocks parts the stream, sends the current around the upper part at sharp angles, and below, where we are, the current sucks back inshore."

"That would be fine—but we haven't got it. The next best thing is to shift all the weight forward and throw the propeller out of water. We can do that if our forward anchor can find holding ground on the bottom of the cove."

"Send Clackett to the torpedo room, and tell him to let go the forward anchor as soon as I give the word. Carl might go down and help. When I give the word, I want the anchor dropped at once!"

Speake could be heard talking through the tank-room tube. Matt, standing by the tower, watched sharply while the submarine drifted closer and closer to the rocks. The cove did not measure more than fifty feet across at its mouth, and was semi-circular in shape, and not more than fifty feet wide, measuring from a line drawn between the rocky headlands at the entrance. The shore was buttressed by high bowlders.

The current was bearing the submarine into the cove midway between the headlands—the line of drift being straight toward the farthest point inland.

"We ought to have ten feet," answered Matt. "Sharp with it, Dick," he added anxiously. "We must get as close inshore as we can."

"Sixteen and a half," muttered Glennie; "shoaling rapidly. You'd better get that mud-hook down, Mr. King."

"Two and a half!" announced Dick, then: "Two and a quarter!" and finally: "Mark twain!"

Matt was not as close to the shore as he wanted to be, but twelve feet was as little water as he dared keep under the Grampus.

Speake promptly repeated the order, and only a very short scope of cable was run out.

The nose of the submarine was brought up short and the stern moved around into the cove as though on a pivot.

Matt had already discovered that. The anchor afforded[Pg 17] sufficient resistance to keep the bow of the boat toward the entrance of the cove, but they were sliding stern-first farther into the shoaling waters.

"Three fathoms," murmured Glennie, "and within two jumps of shore! The rocks must lie steep-to. The current's responsible for that."

The pull of the anchor continued to draw the boat around so that she was drifting broadside on.

"Deep four!" reported Dick, and began coiling up the line. The submarine was rubbing against the rocks, and there was no room to cast.

"Good luck," said Matt gleefully, "even if it does come out of a damaged propeller. We can pass a couple of cables ashore and tie up to the rocks. On deck, Speake!" he called through the hatch. "There's some old hose and canvas in the storeroom, and you, and Clackett, and Gaines had better bring it up. Fetch a couple of cables at the same time."

Matt leaped to a shelf notched out of one of the rocks, climbed to the top of the bowlder, and picked out the stones most convenient for mooring. When the cables were brought up and bent to their stanchions, the spare ends were passed ashore. While he was making them fast, Clackett, Gaines, Speake, and Carl were festooning the old hose over the submarine's side and padding the plates with canvas blankets as fenders against the jagged rocks.

"Now," called Matt, talking from the top of a bowlder and looking down on the deck of the Grampus, "the next thing is to weight the forward part of the boat so that the propeller will be thrown up clear of the water. Move everything possible from aft. If the anchor has taken hold, a little pulling on the chain may help. If this don't fill the bill, then we'll pile rocks on the bow and force it under that way. Now, then, get busy, all hands."

Speake, Carl, Gaines, and Clackett went below. Matt began tossing loose stones to Dick, and he built them up forward of the flagstaff, passing ropes around the pile in order to hold it to the deck when the boat began to cant forward.

By degrees the bow went deeper and deeper, and the stern rose. At last, after some two hours of trying work, the propeller was brought into view. The blades were fairly buried in a mass of ropy seaweed.

"It won't be necessary to ship a new propeller, after all," said he. "Traveling under the Amazon is hard on the screw. That bar was covered with seaweed, and the propeller twisted itself up in it. Pass a rope aft and secure it to the periscope guys. You can hang to the rope, Dick, slip over the stern, and cut away the grass."

"Easy enough," answered Dick, dropping on the deck to pull off his shoes and stockings, and roll up his trousers. "We'll clear away that propeller in a brace of shakes."

"While you're at it," said Matt, "I'll mosey off around the island and see what it looks like. I'll not be gone long."

He dropped from the top of the bowlder, and vanished. Glennie looked after him as though he would have liked an invitation to accompany him, and stretch his legs on hard earth, but he did not follow. Instead, he picked up a coil of rope, and began securing an end to one of the wire periscope guys.

"I'll attend to that, Mr. Glennie," said Dick, still with an undue emphasis on the "mister." "You're an innocent bystander, you know, and are here to look on."

Glennie dropped the rope, flushed, and drew back. Matt had not asked him to go on the exploring expedition, and now Dick refused to have him render even trifling aid.

"You told us where we stood when you first came off to us from the Port-of-Spain landing," returned Dick. "I don't see that you've got any kick coming because we took you at your word."

Glennie started to say something, but closed his mouth suddenly, and left the words unspoken. Perhaps he was beginning to see where he was at fault.

While he stood by the conning tower, watching Dick move aft with the rope in his hands, a sharp cry came suddenly from among the rocks.

It was Matt's voice; although faint, it was unmistakable, and each word was strangely clear-cut and distinct.

The next moment he dropped the rope and started to spring ashore. But Glennie was already on the rocks.

"You heard what he said!" shouted Glennie. "Clear the propeller and sink the boat! I'll help King if he needs help—but your duty is clear."

The ensign whirled about and jumped from the bowlder. As he disappeared, Dick saw his revolver glistening in his hand.

CHAPTER XI.

From what Matt could see of the island as the Grampus drifted into the cove, and from the further observations which he made while standing on the rocks and[Pg 18] helping Dick, he knew that it could not be very extensive. Probably it would have covered an acre of ground, if measured in a square, but its surface was vastly greater than that, inasmuch as it consisted of barren hills and valleys.

Matt's intention, when he left the submarine, was to climb to the highest point and take a look around. He was still worrying about the mysterious steamer, and the no less mysterious Japs. From what he had heard and read of the Japanese, he understood that dogged persistency was a national trait. If the Sons of the Rising Sun had made up their minds to destroy the submarine, it would take more than one rebuff to discourage them. That they were still on the trail of the Grampus Matt had not the least doubt, and if they should happen to sight the boat in the cove, and make an attack while the propeller was being cleared, they would stand a fair show of success.

In looking for the steamer Matt did not intend to confine his gaze to seaward, but to give fully as much attention upstream as below.

He had already selected the hill he was going to climb, and picked out the narrow valley that would lead him to its base.

A little scrambling over rough ground brought him to the valley. Projecting rocks, weather-stained and wind-worn, rose to right and left. Flocks of gulls arose out of them, alarmed by his approach, and winged away across the river.

The valley was not over twenty feet wide, and angled back and forth sharply on its way to the hill. Matt stepped off at a brisk gait, for he would have to be quick if he finished what he had in mind by the time Dick and the rest had cleared the propeller and got the boat once more in trim.

Matt was not expecting any trouble on the island, and, as usual, it was the unexpected that happened.

The flapping of the birds' wings made a noise that drowned the crunch of his footsteps in the gravel. This, it may be, accounted for the surprise that met him as he rounded a sharp turn, for his approach was not heard, and he came suddenly face to face with a creeping savage. The native was nude, save for a short kirtle that hung from his waist, and he was carrying an ugly-looking spear.

It seemed clear that the fellow was creeping up on the boat. His surprise was as great as Matt's, and for a brief space both stood staring at each other. Then, as Matt's gaze wandered farther on along the valley, he saw four other natives, all of whom had been on their hands and knees and had leaped erect the moment the young motorist presented himself.

Then it was that Matt lifted his voice and shouted the warning heard by Dick and Glennie. Matt did not finish what he was saying, for a suggestive movement of the native's spear hand made it necessary for him to take quick action to protect himself.

Like lightning the king of the motor boys leaped forward, and his fist shot out straight from the shoulder. A grunt was jolted from the lips of the stricken native, and he staggered backward. This caused the hand holding the spear to rise quickly, and the spear point caught in Matt's leather jacket, which was unbuttoned and flying open.

The native fell backward, keeping a convulsive grip on the spear, and dragging Matt down with him. In a twinkling the other four savages had surrounded Matt and were menacing him with their spears.

The spear points were of steel, ground to a sharp point. They had a greenish, corroded look, which suggested that they had been poisoned. Judging this to be the case, Matt put forth every effort to avoid being pricked or scratched by the flourished weapons.

Seizing the handle of the spear held by the man who had fallen, Matt wrenched it away and swept it around his head in a circle. The other four savages leaped back to the edge of the circle and continued their hostile demonstrations. The fellow on the ground, who evidently possessed a large amount of courage, reached up abruptly and caught hold of the spear.

With exultant shouts, the other four began to close in. Hampered in using the spear, Matt found it necessary to change his tactics. Releasing the weapon, he laid hold of the native to whom it belonged, grabbed him about the waist, and flung him heavily against the foremost of his companions.

The men were all of short stature, although heavily muscled and of great strength. The human missile launched by Matt overset the first of the four advancing Indians, and this man, in his turn, tumbled backward and knocked down another. The remaining two were between Matt and the end of the valley it would be necessary for him to traverse in order to regain the boat.

Flourishing his fists and shouting an angry command for them to clear his path, he leaped directly at them. One of them launched his spear. Matt ducked downward, and the weapon whipped over his head, just grazing his cap.

This unarmed native was the one Matt speedily made up his mind to pass. But again the unexpected happened. As Matt dashed forward a stone gave way under his foot. He sought vainly to recover his balance, and plunged headlong and rolled over and over.

Before he could get up all the natives were upon him. It looked, just at that moment, as though nothing could save him. Yet he did not give up. Rising to his knees, he caught the ankles of one of his foes and jerked his feet out from under him.

A fierce order in an unknown tongue was given, and four figures sprang with murderous celerity to obey it. At that juncture—a critical juncture for Motor Matt—the sharp, incisive note of a revolver rang out. One of the savages, with a cry of pain, stepped backward, dropped his spear, and clasped his right wrist with his left hand.

There followed another shot, accompanied by a sound of running feet in the shingle and the loud voice of Glennie:

"Get away from there, you scoundrels! I'll give you a taste of more metal if you don't clear out."

The second bullet had done no harm, but the natives, not knowing how many men were following Glennie, whirled and made off, one of them picking up the fallen spear as he went.

"No," was the answer as Matt regained his feet; "we'll make tracks back to the Grampus, and thank our lucky stars that we got out of this as well as we did. There may be a lot more of the Indians hiding among the rocks, and I've a notion that their spear points are poisoned. We'll not give them a chance to dig their spears into us, if we can help it."

Watching behind cautiously, Matt and Glennie immediately set out on their return to the boat.

"I didn't think there was a human being anywhere near the island, apart from ourselves," said Matt. "When those rascals came face to face with me the surprise was mutual—and far from pleasant, so far as I was concerned. Did you hear me yell?"

"That's what brought me ashore," said Glennie. "Ferral was bound to come; but I told him he had better carry out orders regarding the ship and let me go. This six-shooter carried the day."

"Bosh!" he exclaimed. "You'd have done the same for me, if our positions had been reversed."

By that time they were at the place where it was necessary for them to leave the valley and pick their way through the scattered bowlders to the shore of the cove. While they were climbing the rocks, Carl suddenly thrust his head out from behind one of them.

"Hoop-a-la!" he cried joyfully. "Id vas Matt, himseluf! My olt bard, Modor Matt, alife und kicking like alvays! Matt, der sighdt oof you makes me so habby as I can'd dell!"

"Same here, old ship!" chimed in the voice of Dick, as he showed himself beside Carl.

"You're a nice pair, I must say!" cried Matt. "The last order I gave instructed you to clear the propeller and sink the Grampus."

"The propeller is cleared, matey," said Dick; "but you wouldn't catch Carl and me going to the bottom of the cove in the Grampus until we had found out what became of you. We heard a couple of shots, and nothing could keep us from coming ashore, after that. Who did you mix up with?"

"Five savages. I don't know whether they live on the island, or whether they came from the river bank. Anyhow, I came front to front with them, and they were creeping in the direction of the boat."

"Den dey knowed der poat vas in der cove!" said Carl, casting a cautious look behind, in the direction of the valley. "Vas dere more as fife, Matt?"

"I don't know. Five are all I saw. We'd better get away from here as soon as we can, though, and get up the river to Para."

A moment later the boys reached the shore of the cove and found Speake unloosening the cables.

"She's as fit as a fiddle! Clackett is putting the stuff below back where it belongs, and we just dumped that load o' rock off the bow."

Matt, Dick, Carl, and Glennie dropped on the submarine's deck. In short order the cables were hauled aboard, coiled, and stowed, and Speake leaped from the rocks and was caught and steadied by Matt as he came down.

Matt got into the tower and signaled the engine room. The motor got busy, and the cheerful splash of the propeller was heard. Slowly the Grampus picked her way out of the cove, those on her deck watching the receding rocks for some sign of the savages. But they saw none.

CHAPTER XII.

In order to reach the arm of the river that led to Para the Grampus had to pass through a little strait known as South Channel, then on by Tucuria and around Cape Magoari. Dick, Carl, and Glennie remained on deck, Dick using a pair of binoculars, and Matt attending to the steering from the top of the tower. They were traversing the tortuous channels without the chart to guide them, and most unexpectedly they found that what they supposed to be South Channel had emptied them out into the river close to the island where Matt had had his recent exciting experience.

"Well, wouldn't that put a kink in your hawser?" cried Dick. "Here we are back at our old stamping-grounds once more, after racing around for an hour and getting nowhere."

"Und dere iss der leedle cove!" cried Carl. "Vat a funny pitzness—gedding losdt on der Amazon."

"This is new country to me," observed Glennie; "but I looked at the chart early this morning, marked the location of South Channel, and could have sworn we started into it when we left this island."

"Come below, you fellows," called Matt disgustedly. "You can take the wheel, Dick, and steer by the periscope while I overhaul the charts. There's no sense wasting time and gasolene like this."

"We're mixed up, Gaines," Matt called through the motor-room tube, "and a pilot who knows the coast would be mighty handy about now. Quarter speed while we study the maps. Dick," Matt added, "run circles off the island while we get our bearings."

Matt opened the locker and dug up the chart. Laying it on one of the stools, he examined it, with Carl and Glennie looking over his shoulder.

"Here's where we are now," said Matt, sticking a pin in the chart, "and there's the entrance to South Channel just below Mixiana Island."

"The passage we got into by mistake," remarked Glennie, "was that crooked little passage that runs into Mixiana Island, bends around in the shape of a big 'O,' and then lets us out again at the same place we went in."

"Easy, yes; but I ought to have been sure. We should have had the chart on deck with us, but I thought I had the thing firmly fixed in my mind."

"I'm beginning to think so myself. Head south by east, Dick," Matt went on to his chum. "You'll know the passage we took when you see it. Skip that, and head into the one west of it."

"If you wanted to," suggested Glennie, "you could pass to the north of Mixiana Island and get to Cape Magoari by going around it. It looks to me as though that would be our shortest course."

"Well, if we went to the north of Mixiana Island we would be in the open bay, and that pesky Jap steamer may be standing off and on, hoping to get sight of us. In order to avoid that, we should have to run submerged, which would mean no more than half-speed, the best we could do. By going through South Channel we won't need to fear the steamer, and can run on the surface, and put every ounce of our motor's power into moving ahead."

"Correct," said Glennie. "I find that there are a good many things about running a submarine that I have yet to learn."

Dick gave a grunt as he bent over the periscope table. His face was hidden by the periscope hood, so the disgusted expression which he wore could not be seen.

Dick Ferral did not easily forgive a slight. From the first, Glennie had struck him "on the wrong side," and it would take time before Dick got over his dislike.

Carl, in this respect, was like Dick. Neither of the boys could ever forget the lordly air assumed by the ensign when he hove to alongside the submarine in the launch. The "mister" which Glennie had imposed upon them still rankled in their bosoms.

Up to that moment off Port-of-Spain there had been no "misters" on the Grampus. The formality demanded by Glennie had been a strain on the friendly relations of the crew—and perhaps on the crew's temper as well.

Glennie heard Dick's grunt, even though he could not see the disgusted expression on his face, and he whirled and stared sharply at Dick's back.

"Tiscipline iss going to der togs on dis ship," mourned Carl in mock dejection. "Oof ve don'd haf more tiscipline dere iss going to be some drouples, ain'd it? Fairst t'ing you know I vill haf to be calling my olt bard Misder Matt, und my odder olt bard Misder Tick, und den oof somepody ton't call me misder I bet you I preak his head."

"That's all right, Mr. King," spoke up the ensign. "I started that, and they're within their rights, I suppose, when they rub it in. All I can say is that I didn't understand your method of running this boat. Now, in the navy, we have to have discipline; we have to have our gun crews, our watches, and all that; and we have to insist on a certain amount of respect from subordinates. The admirals require it from the captains, the captains from the commanders, the commanders from the lieutenants, and so on down through the various ranks of commissioned officers. Even a passed midshipman," and he smiled a bit grimly, "has the pattern always before him, and he is taught to exact his due from all the non-coms. But, as I say, I didn't understand how matters were when I boarded the Grampus. I—I am sorry I took the stand I did."

Just how much it cost Glennie to make that apology probably none of the boys, not even Matt, could realize. But he made it right manfully, and Matt stepped toward him and put out his hand.

"Say no more, old fellow," he cried heartily. "We all[Pg 21] of us get out of our course a little, now and then. Before we get through with this cruise the lot of us are going to understand each other a whole lot better. Carl——"

Matt turned with the intention of making his Dutch chum take the hand he released, but Carl had faded mysteriously out of the periscope room. Whether he expected what was coming, or not, and dodged away to avoid meeting the issue, Matt could only guess.

"Here we are," cried Dick, "just taking the entrance to South Channel. And it's the right channel, too, old ship, because we slammed right past that other one where we go in and come out the same place."

Glennie could not fail to note how both Carl and Dick had avoided Matt's attempt to put him on more friendly footing with them. There was a noticeable constraint in his manner, but he did not allow it to interfere with his stating the desire he had in his head.

"When I came aboard," he went on, "I believed I was merely the representative of the United States Government, that I was to look on, keep hands off, and write up my own log. But I can see very plainly where I can be of service to you, Matt; and I can also see where, by helping you, I can get a much better insight into the capabilities of the Grampus. I should like to have you let me do my part in running the boat. If you want me for quartermaster, I can spell you, or Mr. Ferral; with a little instruction, I could also run the motor, or do the work in the tank room. If it would be any help, I might even learn to cook the meals. All I want is to be useful—and to learn the Grampus from top to bottom, inside and out, as well as you know her."

Dick gave another grunt; but this time it was more subdued. The idea of any one learning the Grampus as well as the king of the motor boys knew her! In order to do that, a fellow would have to be born with a working knowledge of explosive engines in his head—just as Matt had been.

"Thank you for that, Glennie!" said Matt. "You can get busy right now, if you want to."

"Go up on deck and keep a sharp lookout while we're passing through the channel. We must be vigilant, even when we can see no reason for it. Wily enemies are after us, and eternal watchfulness is the price of success, fully as much as it is of liberty."

"He's too top-heavy, Matt," scowled Dick, pulling his head away from the periscope.

"He's a good fellow at heart, Dick," averred Matt. "We're all going to like him a whole lot when we know him better."

"If he takes hold on this boat he'll make a monkey's fist of everything. I don't like the cut of his jib, nor the soft-sawdering way he overhauls his jaw-tackle now that he sees his first bluff didn't go. If——"

There was a muffled shout and a bounding of feet on the deck. A wide grin parted Dick's face.

Dick ducked back into the periscope hood. But the periscope did not show the deck of the Grampus, nor the waters immediately adjacent, being constructed for reflecting objects at longer range.

Matt hurried up into the tower. The moment he was able to look over the hatch he was thrilled by what he saw.

A dugout canoe was alongside the steel hull—and it had evidently brought three natives from the neighboring shore. They were exactly the same kind of savages Matt had encountered on the island—perhaps, even, they had formed part of the same crowd.

One of the savages had gained the deck forward. Glennie had caught his spear, and the two were struggling for possession of the weapon. A second native was climbing up the rounded deck with the apparent intention of attacking Glennie in the rear. The third of the trio kept to the canoe, paddling, and keeping it alongside.

So intent were all three of the Indians on the struggle which Glennie was carrying on that they did not notice Matt. Swiftly the young motorist got out of the conning tower.

CHAPTER XIII.

Matt's shout acquainted the savages with the fact that there were two whites to be dealt with instead of one. The scoundrel in the canoe dropped his paddle and picked up a spear. The dugout dropped a little behind, but the savage brought the ungainly craft nearly to the conning tower with two sweeps of the paddle. The next moment he let his spear fly, and there came a blood-curdling whoop from the tower hatch.

Carl, as usual, happened to be in the way of trouble. He had flung through the periscope room and chased after Matt up the ladder. Matt avoided the spear by dropping to his knees. It passed over his head, snapped Carl's cap off his shock of tow-colored hair, and carried it on for a dozen feet, dropping out of sight with it beneath the water.

"Vat a vay iss dot!" bellowed Carl. "Tick, handt me oop a gun, or a gannon, or somet'ing. Matt, look oudt a leedle! Ach, himmelblitzen!"

Carl forgot the loss of his cap, forgot even that he had asked Dick for a weapon, and scrambled to get out of the tower and go to his chum's aid.

The savage who had been climbing up the rounded deck had made a spring for Glennie's back. Motor Matt leaped about the same time, grabbing the native before he could do the ensign any harm.

Matt, and the man he was holding, fell to the deck, rolled over the rounded plates, and splashed into the water.

"A rope!" howled Carl, jumping up and down on the deck to attract Dick's attention; "a rope! Matt iss in der vater mit a Inchun, und he vill be trowned!"

"Here!" he cried, tossing the coil to Carl. "Get busy, mate. I'll lay the Grampus closer, and mind Matt gets hold of the rope."

Matt and the native were still struggling. The fact that they were in fifteen or twenty fathoms of water did not seem to impress either of them with the necessity of swimming to keep afloat.

When they first tumbled into the water, there was a great splash, and they disappeared; when they came up, they were puffing like porpoises, but Matt had his hands around his antagonist's throat, and the savage was hanging to Matt's hair.

"Help Glennie!" sputtered Matt, who, by then, was some distance astern. "Capture that man!"

"Glennie be hanged!" growled Dick. "We'll save our old raggie, no matter what happens to the blooming ensign."

Carl, standing ready to heave the rope, was mixed up in the ensign's battle by an unexpected trend of it which nearly knocked him overboard. The two, still twisting and striving for possession of the spear, struggled toward the conning tower and collided with the Dutch boy. The matter of self-defense suddenly presented itself to Carl, and he dropped the rope and went for the savage like a tiger.

It wasn't the spear Carl wanted, but the savage himself. The ensign was eliminated, and Carl and the native went down on the deck, rolling and pummeling.

"Ju-jutsu!" exclaimed the ensign, astounded at the science the untutored savage was showing. "Great Moses, he's using ju-jutsu and trying to break Pretzel's arm!"

Glennie didn't impale the savage on the point of the spear, but he used the handle, and gave the arm that was bending Carl's a stout thump. A gasp escaped the savage's lips, and his arm dropped away as though paralyzed. Carl rolled over on top and got his fingers about his antagonist's throat.

"Gif me der rope!" he cried. "Misder Glennie, schust put a leedle piece oof der rope aboudt der feller's handts!"

Dick Ferral was not paying much attention to the fight Carl and Glennie were having. They were two to one, and there could not be much doubt as to the result of the contest. Dick's worry was reserved for Matt, for it seemed as though the savage in the water was bending every effort to drag Matt under and drown the two of them.

The other savage in the dugout was paddling like mad in an effort to get alongside the combatants. It had taken some time and space for the submarine to turn about on her course, and Dick was now driving her straight for the two in the water.

So far as Dick could see, both Matt and the savage were almost at the last gasp. How they ever kept afloat at all was a mystery.

As the boat shot in between the dugout and the pair in the water, the third savage could have thrown his spear to good effect—if he had had it. But he did not have it, and all he could do was to paddle off and furtively await the issue.

The submarine glided alongside Matt and the Indian, and Dick immediately made a discovery that took his breath.

"Here, Matt!" cried the voice of Glennie as he knelt on the deck while the submarine slowed in answer to Dick's signal. "Drop that fellow and catch this rope!"

Glennie reached over with the spear and tapped the savage on the head. Instantly the fellow, with a fierce snarl, let go of Matt and vanished under the hull of the Grampus.

Matt, thus left with his hands free, caught the rope and was dragged aboard. Glennie snaked him to the top of the deck, and, for a space, the young motorist lay there.

"Did you capture the other fellow?" asked Dick, as soon as he had rested a minute.

"He's tied to the other end of the rope that I used for pulling you in," replied Glennie.

"Good enough! Did you notice how that rascal I was fighting with changed color in the water?"

"No war-paint about it, Dick," declared Matt. "There was a yellow skin under that brown paint."

All eyes turned in the direction of the Dutch boy. He was sitting on his enemy's chest, holding him down, and there were dabs of brown pigment all over Carl's face. His hands were fairly coated with it.

"These savages have a yellow skin, Matt," said Glennie, "and it must be that they paint themselves a brown color when they go on the warpath."

"If what I have read is true," returned Matt, "there are no savage tribes at the mouth of the Amazon. All the Indians in these parts are at least half civilized."

"Then where did these rascals come from, and why have they attacked us in this venomous manner?"

"They all look alike to me. Of course, I suspected they were from the same tribe, but I didn't know they were the same men. There were five of them on the island."

"You wounded one of the others. Probably one of the fellows stayed behind to look after the wounded man's injury."

"But how could they get here in that dugout, and lay us aboard, like they did? We're a good ways from that island."

"No doubt, Dick," said Matt, "they surmized that we would take the South Channel on our way to Para. While we were meandering around in that blind passage they were paddling for this place, and getting ready to attack us."

"I like their nerve!" muttered Dick; "three of 'em tryin' to capture the Grampus!"

"They live on an island, all right," returned Matt, "but it's a good many thousand miles from here."

"Some of that chink's dope is still fogging your brain, old ship," observed Dick. "But what's the use of talking? You've got your prisoner, Mr. Glennie. Better bring him downstairs. First thing you know he'll be in the water, and take Carl along with him."

"Nod me!" piped Carl. "Dere iss a rope aroundt his handts, und I'm holting him on der top oof der teck. Aber, I guess, ve might schust as vell dake him by der beriscope room."

"Look at him first," suggested Matt. "Glennie, you give him a close observation. I'm surprised at you fellows."

Glennie, Dick, and Carl were at a loss to know what Matt was driving at. Walking over to the prisoner the ensign bent down and stared at him.

"Now you've struck it," laughed Matt. "Those supposed savages were merely a detachment of our old friends, the Japs. I discovered that as I dropped into the water. That's why I called out as I did. Here's our resourceful acquaintance, Tolo. First he's a Jap, next he's a Chinaman, and now he's a native of the Amazon. There's no telling what he'll be next time if we allow him to get away from us. Take him below, and let's have a talk with him."

Glennie and Carl, between them, succeeded in getting Tolo down the tower hatch. Before Matt went below he took a look behind. The dugout was far in the distance, with two men at the paddles.

From this evidence it was plain that Matt's antagonist had gained the canoe and was now, with his companion, paddling swiftly away to rejoin the rest of their friends.

CHAPTER XIV.

"I'm a dunderhead, all right," Glennie cheerfully admitted when they were all in the periscope room with the prisoner, lashed hand and foot, lying before them. "I saw this rascal try a ju-jutsu trick on Carl, in an attempt to break his arm, and yet I never suspected that he was a Japanese, let alone Tolo!"

"It's plain enough now, isn't it, Glennie?" queried Matt. "These yellow men are always hard to identify, but this fellow is certainly Ah Sin, otherwise Tolo. Notice how closely his hair is clipped. He had to have a close haircut when he got into his Chinese disguise. All the rest of those make-believe savages had long hair."

"It's tucked away among the islands. This, you know, is a peaceable country, and the Japs would have to be wary in carrying out their designs upon the Grampus. I'll bet those fellows know all about our route, and what ports we expect to call at. It was easy for them to get into the mouth of the Amazon ahead of us, and then wait for us to come along."

A sudden idea occurred to Glennie, and he went down on his knees and began searching the Jap. Inasmuch as the only garment the Jap wore was a short kirtle, the search did not consume much time. Glennie got up disappointedly.

"Where it has already been opened, no doubt, by the leader of these Sons of the Rising Sun. I'm in as deep as ever, and the capture of Tolo hasn't helped me."

"Don't take it so hard," urged Matt. "Go to Mr. Brigham, in Para, and tell him the whole story. Perhaps a way can be found to make Tolo talk."

"We'll try him now," said Glennie, a flash of forlorn hope crossing his face. "Why do you want to treat me like this, Tolo?" he queried, addressing the prisoner.

"Panzai!" exclaimed Carl. "Dot's a funny vay to yell hooray, ain'd it? Panzai! Ach, du lieber!"

"You stole my dispatches, there in La Guayra," went on Glennie, still addressing himself to the prisoner. "What sort of way was that to treat me?"

"Nippon!" grunted Carl. "Vy don'd he say Chapan, like a vite feller? My, sooch a savageness as some nations haf!"

"My country has nothing to do with it. I am a Son of the Rising Sun, and I should like to die for my country. If my hands were free, and I had a sword, then—hari-kiri! It is pleasant to kill oneself for one's country."

"Und he say dot it vas bleasant to tie for vone's country!" murmured Carl. "I don'd agree mit dot. I vould radder lif for my gountry. A deadt hero don't amoundt to nodding, aber a live feller iss aple to do t'ings vat count. Yah, so helup me! Id iss pedder to lif for vone's gountry as to tie for id."

"T'ank you for nodding," returned Carl, with mock politeness. "I know dot pefore you shpeak id oudt, Misder Glennie."

The ensign looked at Carl in a disappointed way, for it must have been plain to him that he wasn't breaking the ice any, so far as Carl and Dick were concerned.

"You pretended to be Ah Sin just so you could get aboard this boat, and destroy it, didn't you?" Glennie pursued, still focusing his attention on the prisoner.

"Why did you and your companions make an attack on this boat?" put in Matt curiously.

"You can't rattle him, matey," put in Dick, "nor get him to say anything that's incriminating. He's Tolo, hard and fast, and it's not so queer why he and his two comrades hove alongside of us. They were engaged in some quiet work, and when Mr. Glennie went on deck, according to your orders, he interrupted them and sprung a fight where no fight was intended."

"Now, Dick," said Matt whimsically, "you're the deep one. Just what do you mean by that?"

"Suppose there was a bomb in that dugout," continued Dick; "and suppose those fellows fastened it to the side of the Grampus, fired the fuse, and then paddled silently away. What would have happened. Will dynamite cause damage sideways as well as up and down?"

Matt gave a startled jump—a jump that caused his wet clothes to rustle, and the water to slosh around in his shoes.

"Great spark-plugs!" he exclaimed. "You've got your finger on the right button, Dick! That was a point that bothered me tremendously—why three men should try such a foolhardy thing as making an attack on a submarine with a full complement below decks. Now I understand, and the whole situation clears. Tolo and his companions stole up alongside of us to put a bomb somewhere about the hull of the Grampus. By luck, Glennie went on deck in time to frustrate the design. By Jupiter, but it was another narrow escape!"

"Once in a while," grinned Dick, "I blunder onto something that's worth telling."

The grin left Dick's face on the instant, and a frown took its place. He turned to the periscope abruptly.

Matt was surprised at the depth of feeling which this action on the part of his chum made manifest. Glennie settled back grimly on the locker. Carl began to hum a Dutch song under his breath—and for that Dick and Matt were thankful. If he had sung the song aloud they would have had to throw something at him. A certain Captain Pierce-Plympton, in Belize, had set the fashion, and now, whenever Carl burst into song he had to dodge everything that was handy.

In the embarrassing silence that followed Dick's action, Matt began to take off his shoes and socks.

"I've got to get into something dry," he remarked. "You fellows better make sure Tolo is well lashed, and then take him into Mr. Glennie's room. That, Glennie," Matt added, removing his water-logged coat, "used to be our prison chamber."

"A good place for me, then," observed Glennie, with a side glance at Dick and Carl.

"You might get off the locker a minute," went on Matt. "I've an outfit of clothes somewhere in that long box you're sitting on."

Glennie got up and helped Carl examine the prisoner's bonds. While they were busy with that, Matt began rummaging for his dry clothes. About the first thing he laid hands on was the old slouch hat with its attached queue.

"Wow!" cried Matt. "What did you put this in here for, Carl? It looked like a snake."

With that Matt jerked the hat and queue out of the locker and hurled them across the room.

As he was about to return to the locker again and go on with his rummaging, Matt caught a gleam in the prisoner's eyes that caused him to straighten up and watch Tolo more carefully.

Tolo's gaze was on the hat. For once he was betrayed out of his grim passiveness, and there flamed in his eyes something unusual—and significant, to Matt.

The king of the motor boys studied Tolo's face keenly. The Jap's eyes continued to rest on the hat until he saw that Matt was watching him, then the eyes turned away absently and lost their telltale gleam.

"Vat's der madder mit der feller?" muttered Carl. "He seemed to vake oop, for a minid, und now he iss like he alvays iss. Vat ails him?"

"Probably he t'ought oof somet'ing mit a bomb in id," suggested Carl. "I moof ve tie somet'ing heafy aboudt his neck und make him shvim agross der Amazon. Hey?"

No one seconded Carl's suggestion. Matt arose, walked over to the hat and queue, and picked them up. Tolo paid no attention, or did not seem to.

With the old slouch hat in his hand Matt sat down on a stool and began feeling of the crown with his fingers.

"I tell you," said Dick, "our old raggie has still got a twisted brain. Tolo's coffee is continuing to have its effect."

Matt laughed, suddenly turned the old hat over, tore out the lining, and pulled forth a crumpled envelope, closed with a red seal.

And, with that, he staggered across the small room, grabbed the envelope, and waved it above his head.

"I thought so," said Matt. "They have been in that old slouch hat, in the locker, ever since we made that dive to get away from the Japs."

CHAPTER XV.

Ensign Glennie was a happy man. In that blissful moment, when he was hugging his dispatches, he wanted to be friends with everybody, and would have shaken hands as rapturously with Dick and Carl as he did with Matt.

"Before you do too much rejoicing, Glennie," said Matt, "you'd better first examine the envelope, and see if it has been tampered with."

"I don't believe Tolo had any right to tamper with it," said Glennie. "What I mean is, that those other Sons of the Rising Sun who are leading the expedition against the Grampus, would probably demand that they be allowed to open the dispatches with their own hands. Tolo didn't have time to see the others of the Young Samurai between the time he left La Guayra and the time he presented himself to me, in the rôle of Ah Sin, on board the Grampus."

"Ah Sin!" commented Carl. "I nefer t'ought vat a goot name dot vas for der feller. Ven he dook dot he dook der vone vat fitted."

"We can begin to understand, too," spoke up Dick, "why he never took off that old hat. He kept it on so the letter wouldn't get away from him."

"And so that we wouldn't see him without the queue," added Matt. "If he had removed the hat, Dick, he would have been recognized."

"Ain't you fellows getting hungry?" called Speake through the torpedo-room tube. "I'll jump in and scrape together a meal, if you say so. I reckon we can all get a square feed in Para, in the mornin'."

"Get us something, Speake," answered Matt. "That's the way we'll celebrate, Glennie," he added to the ensign.

"It's the biggest streak of luck I ever had in my life!" declared Glennie. "And you brought it to me, Matt!"

"Dot's vat I say," cried Carl. "Anypody vat dravels mit Modor Matt iss pound to haf some oof der luck vat comes py him. I know, pecause I have hat id meinseluf. Ain'd dot so, Tick?"

"Luck hands around her favors to everybody that ships with Matt, matey," agreed Dick. "It don't make any difference whether they're entitled to the favors or not, they get 'em."

This last remark may have been a bit of a slap at Glennie, but the ensign was too happy to notice it.

"What gave you the notion of looking into that hat, Matt?" inquired Glennie. "I'd have thrown it overboard to get it out of the way."

"Why, Glennie," answered Matt, "you and Carl both saw what I did, and spoke about it."

"Didn't the prisoner seem to wake up and brighten perceptibly a little while ago?"

"Well, he did it when I threw the hat out of the locker. His eyes followed it as it flew across the room, and they rested on it as it lay on the floor. I read a good deal of concern in that glance—more concern, in fact, than the old headgear and the attached queue called for. There could be but one thing to make Tolo act like that, and I figured that he had put the envelope in there. It's not a new place for hiding things, boys. Lots of people, out in the Western part of the United States, stow valuable things away in their sombreros."

"Nod me any more," wailed Carl. "Subbose I hat peen foolish enough to pud my money in dot cap oof mine? Den vat? Id vould now be in der pottom oof der ocean. Dalk aboudt your glose shafes! Vy, dot Chap feller vat looked like a safage, sent dot shpear so near my headt dot he dook a lock oof hair along mit der cap. I don'd like dot. Shpears iss pad pitzness. Vat for dit der Chaps use shpears ven refolfers is handtier?"

"They were playing a part, Carl," said Matt, "and whenever a Jap plays a part he does it well. If Tolo and those with him had had firearms they would have been playing out of their character."

"Dey don'd got mooch character to be oudt oof, anyvay. Dey hat bombs, und safages don't haf dose."

A few minutes later Speake came up with the supper. After the meal was out of the way, Speake took Dick's place at the wheel in order to give him a chance to rest, and later assume Gaines' place at the motor. Carl went down to give Clackett a rest, and Matt stretched out on the locker.

It was midnight when the Grampus rounded Cape Magoari and turned into the Para arm of the Amazon. The port of Para was seventy-five miles up the river, and Matt decided to submerge the Grampus, pass the rest of the night on the river bottom, and then ascend to the town with daylight to help.

This arrangement enabled all hands to sleep, and morning found the submarine's complement fresh and ready for whatever fate held in store.

The ascent of the river was made on the surface of the stream, with all who could be spared on deck, searching the shipping with careful eyes. Matt and his friends were looking for the mysterious steamer that carried the fighting contingent of the Sons of the Rising Sun, and were vastly relieved when they failed to sight the vessel.

It was nearly noon when the red roofs of Para came into view. The river, opposite the town, was about twenty miles wide, but so cut up with islands that the steamer with the black funnel and the red band might have lain among them and so escaped observation. However, Matt and his companions chose to think that the Young Samurai were too discreet to make them any trouble in a peaceable port.

The Grampus was moored alongside a wharf, and a gayly uniformed harbor official came aboard to learn the submarine's business, and to find whether there was any need of a customs inspector. The sight of Glennie, and his declaration that the boat had merely put in at the port to give some of her crew a chance to pay their respects to Mr. Brigham, the United States consul, was enough.

Matt, although he fancied the boat secure, did not intend taking any chances. Dick, Carl, and Speake were to be left aboard as an anchor watch, while Matt and Glennie called on the consul, and Gaines and Clackett whiled away a few hours in the river metropolis. The prisoner was to be left in the steel room until the consul should advise what had better be done with him.

Consul Brigham, Matt and Glennie quickly learned, lived on the finest avenue in Para—the Estrada de Sao José. Through this thoroughfare bordered with a colonnade of royal palms, Matt and Glennie were driven on their way to the consulate.

In the office of the consulate was a gentleman in shirt sleeves and white duck trousers. His feet were elevated on the top of a table, and he was trying to keep himself cool with an immense palm-leaf fan.

The sight of a United States naval uniform brought the consul to his feet immediately.

"What's left of him, my dear sir," was the answer. "I've melted considerably during this spell of hot weather. You'd naturally think the trade winds, which blow continually in this section, would temper the air. But trade winds, my dear sir, are not what they're cracked up to be."

Glennie introduced himself, and then presented Matt. Mr. Brigham smiled expansively, and drew a bandanna handkerchief over his perspiring brow.

The consul tucked a cablegram into Glennie's fingers. It had come from Belize, and was signed by the captain of the Seminole. Glennie read it aloud:

"Nice, long message, eh?" queried Brigham, slapping Glennie on the back. "Plenty of useless words, but what does the captain of the Seminole care? Uncle Sam stands[Pg 27] the cable toll, and, besides, on grave matters it is well to be explicit. Hang a few extra dollars, anyway. Where's the dispatches?"

Glennie imagined how he would have felt if he had been obliged to report, in view of that cablegram, that his dispatches had been lost and not recovered.

"I want to tell you something about those dispatches before you read them, Mr. Brigham," said the ensign.

Thereupon Glennie told the whole story connected with the loss of the dispatches and their final recovery. Everything went in, and a half hour was consumed in the telling. More than once Brigham whistled and puckered his brows ominously. But he was absorbed in the narrative. When it was done, he reached his hand toward Matt.

"Pardon me, youngster," said he, "but I never miss a chance to shake hands with a live one. Possibly it's because I've lived so long in this dead place, where you can't turn around without having some sluggard tell you 'mañana.' You're the clear quill, and I'll gamble you'll get along. If I was younger, blamed if I wouldn't like to trot a heat with you myself. Put 'er there!"

Matt, flushing under the compliment given him by the consul, allowed his hand to be wrung cordially.

"Now," said Brigham, "look out of the windows at the beautiful palms while I go through these papers."

Matt and Glennie returned to the chairs they had previously occupied. They were surprised at the change that had come over Mr. Brigham's face. On their arrival, it had been bright and smiling, while now it was dark and foreboding.

"I guess you lads know how it feels to be in the jaws of death, and just slip out before they close," said he, "but you don't know the whole of it, not by a jugful. Of all the high-handed proceedings I ever heard of, this certainly grabs the banner. Now, listen."

CHAPTER XVI.

"Did you know, Motor Matt," asked the consul, by way of preface, "that Captain Nemo, Jr., right there in Belize, had been approached by an agent of the Japanese Government and offered two hundred thousand for something he's selling to our government for just half that?"

"No, sir," answered Matt. "But I know the captain well enough to feel sure that he wouldn't sell the Grampus to any other country but the United States, not if he was offered a million. He has invented a submarine that is better than any other craft of its kind that was ever launched, and the captain is patriotic enough to want his own country to reap the benefit."

"Exactly. Captain Nemo, Jr., is a man after my own heart, by gad! Well, he refused the offer, and two days later he received a warning signed simply, 'The Sons of the Rising Sun,' saying that if he did not reconsider the Grampus would be sunk in the bottom of the ocean. How was that for audacity? But the captain thought it was all bluff—the Japs have learned a lot from us, my lads, and bluff is not the least of their acquirements.

"The captain said nothing to you, Motor Matt, about this warning from the Sons of the Rising Sun. He treated it with silent contempt, well knowing that you would do everything possible to safeguard the submarine without any unnecessary talk from him.

"Now, from what you lads have told me, we must change our minds about that warning being a bluff. If it was a bluff, then the Japs are trying to make good. But the Japanese Government knows nothing about this. If the high boys among the Japs in Tokio knew, they would be the first ones to send a warship after these precious Sons of the Rising Sun. The Young Samurai are going it on their own hook; they're going to help their beloved country whether the country wants them to or not.

"The Grampus is a good thing. The Japs are able to tell a good thing when they see it, and that's what makes the Sons of the Rising Sun so hungry either to buy the submarine or send her to the bottom in such a way that she can't come up. They're a lot of hotheads, that's what they are, and they don't care a picayune what happens to them just so they can get in some wild stroke that, in their overheated estimation, may benefit Nippon.

"I don't know as we can blame them. It hasn't been so mighty long since they broke through their chrysalis of heathendom, and they are drunk with their success in their late unpleasantness with Russia—Russia, a country that has been our firm friend ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

"Well, you have faced desperate risks, and you may be compelled to face more. I wish I could assure you that there were no more troubles in sight, but the Japs are a persistent race, and whenever young firebrands like these Sons of the Rising Sun get started at anything they never know when to let go. But," and here the consul brought his fist emphatically down on the table, "I don't think you can possibly meet any greater dangers than you have already met and successfully passed through. Bearing that in mind, I'd be willing to bet every dollar I've got that Motor Matt will make good, and deliver this old catamaran at Mare Island, right-side-up with care, and everybody smiling—except, of course, the Sons of the Rising Sun. I'll back Young America against Young Japan any day. Catch my drift? That's about all. Come in and eat with me—we have to eat, you know, no matter how hot it is. After dinner we'll[Pg 28] look after Mr. Tolo, and I'll give Matt a letter to an agent who will supply him with gasolene, or any other old thing that happens to be necessary in order to make a submarine go. There won't be any water in the gasolene, either. Come on, now, and let's try and be cheerful. Heaven knows you boys have got enough ahead of you to make your hair stand on end like quills on the fretful porcupine, but what we're not sure of hadn't ought to trouble us."

Matt and Glennie had a good dinner, and after it was over the consul went with them to the Grampus and gave the craft a sizing. He was charmed with the boat, and all the useful odds and ends of machinery with which she was packed.

Following that, he went to the prison chamber and surveyed Tolo as he lay bound and helpless on the floor.

"You're a nice young patriot, I must say!" exclaimed the consul, as he looked down on the quiet, uncomplaining Japanese, "but you met more than your match when you went up against Motor Matt. Where are the rest of your rascally outfit?"

"I speak nothing, honorable sir," replied Tolo, "not because of any disrespect for you, but out of regard for my dear Nippon."

"High-handed outrage stalks the seas," he muttered, "and this poor fool calls it love of country! Well, well! I wonder what Commodore Perry would say if he could hear that? The Japs are our great and good friends, all right, but we don't count for much when there's a little thing like a patent boat on the programme. I'll take care of you, my lad," he added to Tolo. "You'll stay in Para until the first United States warship comes along, and then you'll travel to the States and give an account of yourself."

A few minutes later the consul left the boat, and, an hour after he was gone, police officers arrived and carried the misguided Tolo to the municipal bastile.

Matt and Glennie refused a pressing invitation to stay all night at the consul's palatial home. They explained to him that, in view of the vague dangers threatening them and the Grampus, they felt as though they ought to stay with the boat.

Mr. Brigham commended their zeal, repeated his encouraging auguries for their ultimate success, and warned them again of dangers ahead.

"Desperate risks are what you're to take," said he. "It may be that you have clipped the claws of the dragon, and that nothing more will be heard of the Sons of the Rising Sun. That's the bright side of the picture, but please don't look at it. In a case of this kind it is better to expect the worst; then, if better things come to you, they will be in the nature of a happy surprise."

On the second day of their stay in Para Dick went ashore and got their supplies. It had been on the schedule that the Grampus was to put in at Rio, but Mr. Brigham advised the boys to give that port a wide berth.

"Your itinerary," he explained, "is probably known to these hotheaded Japs. The way to fool them is by dodging the itinerary and putting in at the places where you are not expected."

"We'll have to stop somewhere before we round the Horn," said Matt; "and I believe we'll call at——"

"Don't tell me!" protested the consul. "Don't tell any one in Para, or even talk it over among yourselves until you are well away at sea. Then, when you speak the name of your next port of call, go down to the ocean bed and whisper it. Do you think I'm piling it on? Well, perhaps so, but I am only trying to let you understand how necessary it is to keep your own counsel. I'm mightily interested in you, and in your ultimate success, and what advice I give I give earnestly, and trust you will take it so. You'll get around the Horn, all right, and you'll get to Mare Island, and the Grampus will become part and parcel of our country's navy, perhaps with Ensign Glennie in command. That's a cinch, my lads; but what you're to go through before you reach 'Frisco is a horse of another color. Don't be overconfident. Remember what I say, and keep your eyes on the dark side of the picture. Good-by, and luck go with you."

On the morning of the third day after their arrival at Para the Grampus slipped down the river toward the open sea. She carried confident hearts and determined wills—and, in spite of the fact that all had their eyes on the "dark side of the picture," there was plenty of hope and also of good cheer in the stout steel hull of the submarine. For the king of the motor boys was in command. He had brought the Grampus through many perils, and all had faith to believe that he could bring her through many more.

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IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY.

Jim Dean's face looked ugly when the Portuguese, who was called Da Silva, deliberately thrust the muzzle of a revolver against his chest.

"You confounded disgrace! What are you going to do?" he inquired spitefully. "You putty-colored dago, do you think you can intimidate me with your theatrical performances? Man, I've looked inside more gun muzzles that you've ever heard of."

"This, then, is the last the senhor shall have the pleasure of examining," answered the Portuguese imperturbably. The insults he waved aside with his lemon-colored left hand, and he blew out between his lips a serene stream of cigarette smoke.

"The senhor is what you call a fire-eater, is it not? But even with a good appetite it is possible to eat too much. Is the senhor going to take his last meal?"

Da Silva talked leisurely as though he enjoyed the conversation. He looked carelessly around the trading office, where in orderly confusion lay books and papers containing records of many a cargo of cotton, palm oil, rubber, mahogany logs and the like from the opulent interior. For this, the highest trading station on the Bawa River, was the channel through which the produce of a vast savage country went to the coast, where cotton goods of pronounced colors went in exchange for lumps of wild rubber, and where square-face gin or various jimcracks bought so much oil or kernel.

Jim Dean managed this factory, from which he had to account to a board of directors in Liverpool for his doings, and for his profits and losses. Of late there had been losses, for from the wild interior had come tales of caravans attacked, of laden canoes cut off, of villages, where stores were accumulated, raided, with rumors and threats of worse things.

So far as he was personally concerned, this present incident was the apex of the unexpected. He was sitting in his office sweating at his books when three natives, coming in as he supposed on trading business, without ceremony, gripped him in their odorous arms, flung a grass rope about him, and trussed him up like a fowl ready for the roast.

"I'd give six months' wages to have a quarter of an hour at handling you with bare fists," snapped Dean. "I should hate touching your hide with my fingers, but I'd do it like I might have to lift a bit of dirt out of my food."

"The senhor makes it no easier for himself," said the Portuguese with a show of teeth.

"You just put your gun away and give me my hands free and I'll show you something," returned Dean spitefully.

The patience of the dago man suddenly came to an end. He withdrew his eyes from sight of the brown river beyond the veranda, whither they had dreamily wandered, and suddenly set them viciously on the white man.

"I'm going to give you three minutes," he said. "If you are still acting the fool, then I shall shoot. You know what I want. Down river at the Bawa factory is a steamer just arrived from a British port. Among her cargo are a thousand rifles, with ammunition. For purposes of my own, not unconnected with my desire to be top dog in this portion of Africa, I want to get possession of those arms, and to do so I want to send such a message to the coast as will insure the steamer hurrying up the river with this part of her cargo aboard. Therefore, you will write on the company's note paper, in your own hand, something to the effect that the station is in the extremest danger, that the whole hinterland is risen, and that unless you have arms and ammunition in plenty sent you at once, the whole factory and those in it will be wiped out of existence. It's a million to one they'll send the steamer up, for it would be the quickest, and there's deep water all the way. Now, I'll dictate the exact words to you. You won't mind writing it, anyhow, because it's true."

"I make arrangements to acquire the cargo on—well, on easy terms," answered the half-breed with a smile.

"All right, you disgrace of two continents, you do all the arranging. I'm not in it. You shoot, my friend."

It was quite true that Jim Dean had looked into death's face more times than once, but he had hardly been nearer making his exit than during the next five seconds; for Da Silva's revolver muzzle was pressed over his heart and an angry finger was on the trigger. Then the half-blood hesitated, not because he had either fear or scruples, but because Dean at the moment was worth more to him alive than dead. He had great ambitions, for the realization of which the cargo of arms was necessary, and he could think of no better way of obtaining them than by using Dean in the way he had indicated.

"On the whole, I think shooting would be too sudden," he said. "If you refuse to do as I say I will invent a method of putting you out of this world of misery that will give you the longest dose of pain that a human body can stand. Savvy?"

Jim Dean did understand. Da Silva had in the hinterland an unsavory reputation for a ferocity that, rumor said, stood at nothing, and he was credited with one or two dark doings in the back no-man's land that will not bear repeating.

He lighted another cigarette, and with malicious deliberation he detailed the manner in which he would inflict death on the other which had something with a slow fire in it and added refinements, and then he retired to make arrangements for the exit, as he termed it, leaving Dean under the guard of one negro.

These circumstances set Dean thinking furiously, and after a while he decided that though a death by torture might be picturesque, there would not be much common sense in submitting to it when there was a way out, which, though humiliating enough, might yet afford him another chance. With his life he might get the game into his own hands—with death was the end of the game.

"All right," he said. "You've got the bulge on me this time. Just free my hands, and I'll write what you say."

Da Silva dictated with his finger on the trigger of his weapon, and the muzzle of it somewhere between Dean's shoulder blades.

Macfarlane, manager of the coast factory on the Bawa River, ran across the strip of sun-scorched beach and tumbled[Pg 30] into a dugout boat of cottonwood, and with a speed that indicated he was handling matters of great urgency, he pushed the boat out into the yellow stream and paddled for all he was worth toward the rusty tramp steamer which lay in mid-river. Lettering under her stern indicated the double fact that she was classically called the Athena, and that she hailed from Liverpool. An inspection of her decks would have shown that in the midday heat her crew were resting. The steam winch sizzled, the drip from a steam pipe falling on the hot iron deck almost dried before it touched the plates, the heat rose from the iron hull as from a stove; there was probably not a bearable spot in the ship.

Macfarlane came up the ladder in a hurry, and he mounted to the chart room on the little bridge deck with a speed that made some eyes open in surprise. Captain Bingham, who was reclining on a locker dressed in pajamas open at the chest, looked mild surprise at the agent's hurry, when the latter thrust into his hand a somewhat crumpled piece of paper and bade him read it.

"A nigger has just brought it," he said. "Dean, our man up the river, is in danger. In fact, you might say more. The whole back of the country is in danger. There's a rising in progress, and the first thing they'll attack is the upper factory, that being the sign and token of white aggression. Their cry is the black man's country for the black man, which may be all right, only we're white men, and we're here, and we want to keep on our trade. Now, I shouldn't be surprised if there isn't some one at the back of all this. There's a brainy, unscrupulous beggar called Da Silva, who's Portuguese. He's got some sort of a crack-brained notion of a black republic with himself as president, and incidentally owner of our factories and trading posts. He's been in the hinterland for the last six months to my knowledge, and up to no good, I'll stake my swizzle stick. If this trouble is Da Silva's palaver, you can bet it's going to be a jugful, and the thing in such a case, or any other like it, is to blow the froth off it early. Strike a blow at once. Here's Dean writing in a hurry saying that while he has men he's no arms worth reckoning, and that practically the fate of the whole colony depends on his having enough rifles and ammunition in his hands within twenty-four hours."

"You're making me hotter than I was," breathed the skipper of the Athena. "What do you want? I'm not an advice merchant."

"If you'll read what Dean's written you'll see he says that if I have any arms, the best way is to charter the best steam craft I can put hands on, put the stuff on it, and send her upstream. Now, there are a dozen cases of rifles in your hold, which were going into Portuguese territory. They haven't been unloaded yet, see?"

"I can see you are going to put me in for something that my owners don't reckon on," said Bingham with a laugh, opening the jacket of his pajamas, and throwing out his broad chest.

"I reckon your owners value the trade on this bit of coast," said Macfarlane dryly. "It means losing it all if Dean doesn't get his guns. And there's a twenty-foot channel all the way upstream."

"If we can keep in it—I know. This old craft is no mud plugger. Still, with more cargo out of her she'll swim a bit higher. I'll just rouse up that crew of mine. And you get your boats around sharp, because I'm going to make that cargo buck."

Thereafter came a continual roar for many hours of both fore and aft steam winches, and the way the cargo was vomited out of the Athena's hold was a pretty good record for that river mouth.

Half an hour before sunset the Athena's anchors broke mud, and with her plimsoll and the red streak of her watermark high up out of the brown wash, she started nosing her way up against the current. The night fell suddenly like the quick closing of shutters, and from the river and the dank vegetation on its banks rose the mist that spelled fever and sickness. There was a ladling out of quinine that night to all hands. Macfarlane took a double dose. This river with its sickening smell of crushed marigolds, where the mangroves threw hideous twisted roots into the slime, and noisome creatures sprawled in the gloom, had a breath of poison.

"I'm hanged if I don't think," said the agent, as he took his second dose of quinine wrapped in a cigarette paper, "that we'd be better off with Da Silva in possession and us at home. I'm homesick. And this is West Africa. My stars! listen to the splashing of that crocodile!"

The skipper swore softly when a little shiver went through the hull. "That's the bottom," he said. "That deep channel may be there, but it takes keeping in. Now, if you take my tip, you'll get those shooters of yours unpacked. Your man may want a few in a hurry. Gosh! there's the bottom again. It'll be no soft thing if we get stuck, either for us or your man." But they went up the waterway in safety till dawn came, when Captain Bingham breathed more freely.

"All the same, I'm not enjoying myself," he said. "The salt sea is a dashed sight more to my liking. How much further is it?"

"We shall strike it this evening," said Macfarlane. "If we had been crows we could have got there in one-third the distance. This river winds about some."

It was the long, roundabout journey that the vessel had to go which enabled the plotter, Da Silva, to get news of her approach, and of the success of his plans, for the native runner, who had in the first place conveyed the letter, forced from Dean, by way of direct forest paths, went back the same way, carrying promise of immediate assistance.

Therefore the half-blood went on with his arrangements. To begin with, he sent runners out to various villages both near and distant, whence fighting men could come. He sent word that for each man there would be a rifle and cartridges, and that the war to regain the black man's country for the black man was ripe to commence. And then he constructed a simple, unsuspicious arrangement for trapping the ship that was nosing her way up the river.

Four hundred yards down from the strip of sun-baked beach in front of the trading factory the river was divided by a lush, swampy island into two channels. The near one was the only practicable way, and this he carefully filled up by dropping a couple of giant cottonwoods from the bank into it. The parts of the trees above the water lopped off till their presence was inconspicuous, and so came about as he intended the catching of the Athena like a jackal in a trap.

Going many miles at half speed, more miles at dead slow, the ocean tramp, making her uncertain way up this muddy channel into the heart of Africa, did not arrive within sight of her destination till close on midnight.

"We're close now," Macfarlane was saying. "Why not give a tootle on our siren just to buck up Dean, and give his enemies a shiver if they are near?"

Bingham got hold of the string, but with the first stabbing of the tropic night by the shrieking whistle there came a sudden shiver through the ship, a violent scraping, and a bumping on the plates below water. The siren stopped short, and the telegraph handle was suddenly dragged over to full speed astern while Captain Bingham said things. The propeller swirled up whirlpools of mud, and cast up enough crushed marigold smell to choke them; but the ship did not move, and Captain Bingham let his soul go out in bitterness.

"We've got to wait till daylight, anyhow," he said finally. "We're fast, and we can't do anything till we can see what's holding us."

Meanwhile things were happening ashore. For three days Jim Dean had sweated, a prisoner in his own office. He had seen little of Da Silva, one big negro, who smoked black cigars all day long, and wore a nautical cap, being his guard. The black seemed to possess the faculty of infinite wakefulness. If he ever slept he did not seem to. His eyes were[Pg 31] always open, dreamily watching the smoke from his tobacco. Dean thought and thought, and produced nothing. The negro was twice his size, armed and wakeful. He, while not trussed up, had the area of his activity circumscribed by a thong fastened round his waist and made fast to the floor. The odds were too great for any effective dealing with the situation, until by accident he alighted on a small possibility of at least freeing himself. And with freedom of movement much was possible. He wriggled on the floor.

A prick in the calf of his leg betrayed the point of a nail sticking up in the floor. He altered his position so that he could get a bend of the thong against the nail point, and then he tried gently rubbing it, or rather letting the nail peck at the hide. There was not much strength in the nail, so that the operation had to be done with care; but it was done ultimately, and when there fell on Dean's surprised ears the fragmentary shriek of the steamer's siren he was both ready and able to go!

He fell on the negro as though a steel spring propelled him, and he bowled him over, and hammered the black head on the floor before the brain inside the woolly skull had awakened to what was happening. It was a thick skull, but the blow was in proportion, and the big body rolled over on the floor.

Possessing himself of the black's revolver, sheath knife, and belt, and the nautical cap to save his head from thorns, Dean slipped out from the veranda and down into the garden.

But this had not been done without some noise, and as Dean ran away toward the gate of the inclosure, he heard voices in the darkness, and cries of warning and alarm. The door of the inclosure was fast. Precious moments were wasted unbolting it. By the time he was fleeing across the strip of beach he knew he was pursued. He ran along the water's edge as far as he could till the thick brake of mangroves, which succeeded the beach, prevented him, for they grew right to the edge of the water, and the giant twisted roots snaked far out into the very slime of the river itself.

He struck into the thick mass of vegetation, away from the river, but keeping as near parallel to the bank as he could. Ropes of prickly creeper held him again and again. Boughs of sickly sweet blossoms dashed against his face, and to force his way through the tangled mass of greenery he had to slash out with his knife at almost every step. Then he made for the river bank again.

He could hear the pounding of the ship's propeller, and he rightly guessed she was struggling to get free from the trap that she had got into. He came out upon the river bank and picked his way through the sprawling roots of the mangroves. He sank knee-deep into the slime, then he made a plunge and bore out into the river. He could see the steamer scarce a hundred yards away, and he put his best work into his swimming, not the less because he knew there were crocodiles in the water.

He had not covered more than half the distance when he heard the sound of paddles no great way off. He looked over half a shoulder, and he saw a dug-out canoe shoot from the shore with half a dozen paddles at work. He swam till every muscle and sinew ached with the strain. He tore through the water, and grasped a rope that hung over the cathead of the Athena, thirty yards ahead of the pursuing canoe. He was over the edge of the forecastle just as the canoe came below. A moment later, with the water dripping from him, he had turned, and was firing at the black heads that sprang up above the cathead. A short spear plunged at his head, and stuck quivering into the forecastle planks; but two big splashes followed his shots, and there came a discordant chorus of yells from below, that a moment later was broken into by a deep-throated cry of inquiry from the bridge.

"You are trapped, that's all," answered Dean, taking aim at the retreating canoe.

"Gad, is that Jim Dean?" Macfarlane came running forward. "Have you had to swim for it at the finish? Are we too late with the arms?"

"No, you're just in time," said Dean, watching the effect of his shot, "that is, if you have some men who can use them."

"I'd better own up," said the young man, "although it hasn't a pleasant taste in my mouth. I wrote that letter at Da Silva's dictation with a pistol at my head. There was likewise a pleasant alternative of being spitted over a slow fire. He wants this cargo himself. Odds are on it that we shall get an attack before dawn."

"Then, by the great James, we'll have some handshakes ready for them," declared Captain Bingham. "Now, you just loosen out some of our cargo, Mr. Macfarlane."

The expected attack came about half an hour before dawn, when the white mists at the river edge were thickest. Half a dozen big canoes filled with men shot out from the banks. There were one or two firearms among them, but these were discharged at too great a range for savage marksmen, and they did no more than emphasize the alarm, though that was not needed, for watchful eyes had kept a careful lookout on the Athena all night.

"They'll be monkeys, and a bit over, if they climb up here," observed Macfarlane; for the ship with no cargo in her stood high out of the water, but the attack had been arranged by a brain. The first canoe to reach the vessel's side wasted, for savages, little time in shouting and brandishing spears, but straightway made casts with looped lengths of grass rope, and before the defenders were quite up to the move half a dozen black bodies were swarming up toward the mizzen chains.

Shots accounted for three, but the other three got up to the rail, and it was an ugly fight before accounts were settled. Each canoe was supplied with these ropes, which were cast with amazing skill, and wherever there was the slightest hold or projection there was a rope quickly looped over, and a black body swarming up the next instant. Axes and cutting knives hacked at them, but many a savage got aboard, and there were gashes and spear thrusts in plenty among the crew of the Athena when dawn broke.

The affair finished just as the sun slipped up over the trees, with the canoes, such as had men to propel them, paddling away to the shore, while two others drifted downstream, with only dead and wounded men in them. The daylight showed half a dozen blacks, either dead or badly wounded, on the ship's decks, and the second engineer lying on the fidley with a gashed head and wounded thigh.

"And there's ane de'il ah hae made prisoner after a vera bonny fecht," said the Scotch bosun. "Ah'm thinking he's no' a'together a nigger. The scoondrel's a bit tae yellow."

They found the dago, lying on the main deck, panting and furious, clothed only in a loin cloth, with half a dozen of his own grass ropes around him.

"Sae ye're the captain o' this dirty crood, air ye?" observed the bosun critically, as the half-blood lay there swathed in the grass rope.

"Mon, ye started something outside yere weight. But perhaps ye'll be useful. When we've had a bite o' something tae eat, we shall want a few hondy niggers tae chop awa' the trees we've rinned upon, and mebbe ye can whustle up a few."

But while they were snatching a hasty scrap of food, the prisoner, unwatched for a few minutes, managed to partly wriggle out of the rope, and to crawl toward an open sally port.

They heard him splash over the side, and a moment later, as they saw him swimming, in spite of rope-encumbered legs, he was seen to suddenly turn over in the water and to cast a look of fear back at them. The next moment he gave a shriek, and sank from sight. A little eddy in the brown water showed only for a moment where he had disappeared.

"A crocodile," said Dean with a shudder. "And I swam over there myself last night. Poor beggar. When you're ready I should like to go ashore. I expect my office will be a bit upset."

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Transcriber's Notes:

Retained some inconsistent hyphenation from the original ("dugout" vs. "dug-out").

Page 3, "Curaçoa" is probably a typo for "Curaçao" but has been retained in case it is an archaic spelling.

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THRILLING ADVENTURE	MOTOR FICTION
NO. 18 JUNE 26, 1909.	FIVE CENTS
MOTOR MATT IN BRAZIL	OR UNDER THE AMAZON
By The Author of Motor Matt
	STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.

3 months	65c.
4 months	85c.
6 months	$1.25
One year	2.50
2 copies one year	4.00
1 copy two years	4.00

________________________ 190
STREET & SMITH, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City. Dear Sirs: Enclosed please find ___________________________ cents for which send me:

TIP TOP WEEKLY,	Nos.	______________________	BUFFALO BILL STORIES,	Nos.	______________________
NICK CARTER WEEKLY,	"	______________________	BRAVE AND BOLD WEEKLY,	"	______________________
DIAMOND DICK WEEKLY,	"	______________________	MOTOR STORIES,	"	______________________

Name ________________ Street ________________ City ________________ State ________________