“You don’t have to do that,” declared Arnold.  “Just cross my palm with a piece of silver and I’ll locate him for you,” he added with a laugh.  Then pretending to take an imaginary piece of money from Charley, he went on, “Your chum is on a boat called the ‘Fortuna.’  He is in the hands of friends who wish him well.  He has been seeking diligently for you but cannot find you.  Where have you been?”

“Well,” laughed Charley, amused at the joke, “I’ve been sailing around and around and around.  Most of the time I have been on a shrimping schooner on the Gulf.  This morning the men aboard of her said that I was dangerous, so they were going to put me out of the way.  They brought me here and tied me up.  That’s all.”

“Didn’t you whistle ‘Bob White,’ at us when we were coming into the harbor here?” inquired Harry breathlessly.  “I know you did.”

“Maybe I did,” admitted Charley.  “I whistled ‘Bob White,’ at all possible and impossible times until they threatened to kill me.”

“The brutes.  I almost believe they’d dare do anything.”

The tender sympathy that was evident in the tones of his new found friends proved almost too much for the fortitude of the late captive.  It was only with a great effort that he restrained the tears.

“Well,” at length Harry decided, “if you lads are rested, I move that we get busy, break out of here and go back to the—­”

A heavy footstep sounded on the gallery outside the door.  Lopez and Doright entered through the door.  Doright carried a tin pail.  He was followed by Lopez with one of the boys’ automatics in his hand.  His face darkened instantly when he saw the lads.

“You sure are tough customers,” declared he.  “I guess, Doright, youall better go get them old slave chains.  They won’t break them.”

“Yaas, Sir, Boss,” replied the negro hastening away.

“If you’re hungry, better get at that grub while you got the chance,” offered Lopez.  “In a minute that nigger’ll be back with the irons, and then you won’t be runnin’ around loose.”

Urged on by their hunger the boys lost no time in attacking the tin pail.  It contained but “grits,” a small hominy, cooked with a piece of bacon, yet never it seemed to the lads had they tasted better food.  Only the merest crumbs remained when Doright entered bearing an armful of clanking chains.  These he threw on the floor.

“Make ’em fast,” ordered Lopez, keeping the muzzle of his automatic pistol ever trained on the group before him.  “Put them leg irons on good and tight.  Make sure of your work this time.”

Obediently the negro clamped the irons tightly about their ankles.  Then drawing a longer chain through the leg irons he lifted a board from the floor to pass the long chain under a heavy hewn joist.

A padlock securely fastened the ends of this longer chain and thus the boys were shackled beyond hope of releasing themselves.