CHAPTER XXXV.

TRIUMPH.

It was midnight.  The moon rode high in a cloudless sky, and the camp of the Boy Inventors, to all appearances, was wrapped in slumber.  Through the woods came three creeping, cautious figures.  Each carried a spade and a sack.  They paused by the camp and looked about them.

Then, by the bright moonlight, they saw the bare plateau below.  The black barren where the adventurers had been working that afternoon.  Masterson was the first to see traces of digging.  He seized Eph’s arm and pointed.

“That’s the place,” he said in a hoarse whisper.  “See, they’ve been at work there already.”

“Tom Tiddler’s ground,” whispered Eph.

“I guess we’ll get some of it, too,” chuckled Sam, who had gotten over his fright in a sudden greed at the thought of riches.

Silently, for they had sacks tied round their feet, the three interlopers crept down the rocky slope toward the black barren.  The dark ground, thickly sown with mineral wealth, glittered in the moonlight as if a frost had fallen on it and made it gleam iridescently with millions of sparkling points of light.

As the trio stole down the slope, dark figures from the Boy Inventors’ camp followed them.  Led by Zeb, they found hiding places and watched operations as Masterson and his cronies began to dig.  They wielded their shovels frantically.

“And we can’t stop them,” groaned Dick.

“Wait a minute,” said the professor.

They continued to watch, and before many minutes had passed they saw Sam Higgins lay down his shovel with a grunt.

“Go on and dig,” ordered Masterson.

“Yes, hurry up, we haven’t got all night,” urged Eph.

Sam made a few more feeble movements and then quit.

’"I can’t do any more,” he said languidly.

“Ouch! my hands are burning,” cried Eph suddenly, “and I feel as if all my bones had turned to water.  What’s the matter with the place?”

After a few minutes more both Eph and Sam gave up, but Masterson stuck doggedly to his task, although his hands were burning terribly, and the radio-active stuff was eating through the sacking on his feet.  At last he, too, had to give in.  They were too weak to carry the sacks they had partially filled across the island, owing to the effects of the black barren, and staggeringly they hid them to call for them at a later time.

“I thought so,” said the professor, as the hidden watchers saw Masterson and the other two wearily clamber up the slope.  “They’ll have bad sores to-morrow and may be crippled for some time.”

“But they’ll recover?” said Jack, whose conscience began to smite him.

“Oh, yes, but they will have quite a lesson first,” rejoined the professor.

“Let’s see what they do next,” suggested Jack, and he and Tom carefully made their way to where the trio had left the boat.  Masterson ordered Sam to get on board; but just as the timorous youth was about to obey another hideous laugh from near at hand startled him so that he almost jumped out of his skin.