“I don’t believe they’ll come back,” he murmured to himself.  “Like as not they are afraid to advance on the trail and also afraid to trust themselves to this jungle in the darkness.”

Dick had found some wild fruit growing close at hand and he began to sample this.  But it was bitter, and he feared to eat much, thinking it might make him sick.  Then, to keep awake, for he felt sleepy because of his long tramp, he took out his knife and began to cut his initials on a stately palm growing beside the temporary camp.

Dick had just finished one letter and was starting the next when of a sudden he found himself caught from behind.  His arms were pinned to his side, his pistol wrenched from his grasp, and a hand that was not overly clean was clapped over his mouth.

“Not a sound, Rover, if you know when you are well off!” said a voice into his ear.

Despite this warning the lad would have yelled to his brothers, but he found this impossible.  He had been attacked by Merrick and Shelley, and Cuffer stood nearby, ready with a stick, to crack him over the head should he show fight.  The attack had come in the dark, the gas lamp and the lantern, having been extinguished when the party from the Josephine drew close.

Merrick had prepared himself for his nefarious work, and in a twinkling he had Dick’s hands bound behind him and had a gag placed in the youth’s mouth.  Then he had the lad bound fast to a nearby tree.

In the meantime Tom and Sam were sleeping soundly.  The two brothers lay each with a hand close to the other, and with caution Merrick and his party tied the two hands together.  Then they tied the lads’ feet, so that they could not run.

“What’s the meaning of this?” cried Tom, struggling to rise, as did Sam.

“It means you are prisoners!” cried Tad Sobber, who had had small part in the operations, but who was ready to do all the “crowing” possible.

“Prisoners!” gasped Sam.  “Where is Dick?” he added.

“Also a prisoner,” said Tad, with a chuckle.  “You thought you had fooled us nicely, but I guess we have turned the tables on you.”

“I suspected you Rovers,” said Sid Merrick.

“Really!” answered Tom, sarcastically.  “You acted it!”

“See here, don’t you get funny, young man.  Please remember you are in our power.”

“And we’ll do some shooting, if we have to,” added Tad, bombastically.

“Tad, I guess I can do the talking for this crowd,” said his uncle.

“You were afraid of the ghosts, Tad,” said Sam.  “You must have run about a mile!” And the youngest Rover grinned in spite of the predicament he was in.

“You shut up I.” roared Tad Sobber, and exhibited some of the brutality that had made him so hated at Putnam Hall by raising his foot and kicking Sam in the side.

“Stop!” cried the youngest Rover, in pain.  “What a brute you are!”