There was a flutter of arms and legs, as Frank and Jack, half choking with laughter at the manner in which tragedy had so suddenly and unexpectedly been changed into comedy, pulled Ned and Jimmie apart.  Jimmie sat up, wrinkling his nose until one would think it never would smooth out again, and gazed at Ned with provoking grin.

“Gee!” he cried.  “I thought I was mixing it with six Chinks!  Wonder you wouldn’t knock before entering a private room!”

“I did knock,” laughed Ned, rising from the floor and taking the flashlight.

“Yes, you knocked me down,” grunted Jimmie.

The three marines, standing in the middle of the room with amused faces, regarded the four boys curiously for a moment and then moved out of range of the window.  Also Ned was asked to shut off the light.

“We’re not out of it yet,” one of them said.  “Our men chased the Yellow Faces into a bad part of town, and they are likely to be chased back, not by a few, but by a mob!  These Chinks like Americans about as much as brook trout love the desert.”

“Perhaps I’d better go out an’ see what’s comin’ off,” suggested the little fellow.

“You’ll only get captured again,” Jack suggested, provokingly.

“I ain’t got nothin’ on you in getting tied up with ropes,” Jimmie retorted.  “You looked like one of these mummy things when the light was turned on.”

The officer in charge of the marines motioned to Jimmie to remain where he was, but the order came too late.  Having been relieved of his bonds by Ned’s quick fingers, he fairly dived out of the window into the darkness.

“Now there’ll be trouble catching him again,” complained the officer.  “If he doesn’t get a hole bored through him, we’ll have to hunt the town over to get him out of the Chinks’ hands.  Why can’t you boys behave yourselves?”

“Ruh!” Jack retorted, annoyed at the tone of superiority adopted by the officer.  “I guess we’ve been doing pretty well, thank you!  I reckon you fellows must have followed off a cow path!  We’ve been waiting here for you long enough to walk to Peking on our hands!”

“That’s the fact!” the officer replied, speaking in a whisper in the darkness.  “We were the first ones to fall into the snares set by the Chinks.  Only for Ned, we would still be waiting for you in a house something like this one, in a distant part of the town.  How the boy found us I can’t make out, but find us he did.”

“What are you going to do about that runaway kid?” asked Frank of Ned.  “Shall I go get him?”

It was not necessary for Ned to reply to the question, for at that moment a figure came tumbling through the window and a voice recognized as that of the little fellow cried out: 

“Gee!” he said, feeling about in the darkness, “what do you think of my ruinnin’ into a sea soldier an’ getting chucked through the hole the carpenter left?”