CHAPTER XXV

WHERE WITS COUNT!

“There’s another reason, and a better one, why we daren’t try to fire the hut and escape with Margery,” said Nicky, jogging Tom’s arm. “Look beyond the torchlight. Shade your eyes.”

Tom and Cliff did so. At once they saw the reason Nick meant.

Waiting just outside the hut at one end were a dozen men armed with bows—and probably with the deadly poisoned arrows.

At another point was another cluster of men, whose arms were not in evidence; yet they seemed to preserve orderly positions and to be awaiting some signal.

“Good grief!” Nicky said. “We are in a tight corner and no mistake!”

“Yes,” said Tom. “But I think we will get out all right. Margery doesn’t seem to be worried.”

“Where in the world do you suppose Henry Morgan got hold of a suitcase type moving picture machine?” asked Cliff, nodding toward the apparatus that Henry and Mort were fussing over on the ground.

“Henry,” said Cliff, “where did you get that?”

“On the sloop,” Henry answered, fumbling with the lamp, which was of the calcium carbide, and water, type. He did not seem to know much about it, although Mort, who knew less, was fussing and puffing on his fat knees and giving a multitude of instructions, none of which seemed to help. “We thought the Indians would be puzzled about it,” Henry added. “We borrowed it. Do you fellows know anything about it?”

“Work your own magic!” said Nicky, rather maliciously. He could not resist the impulse to dig back at Henry for all the meanness the latter had shown.

“You’ll be sorry for that!” said Mort shortly.

Margery looked on with much mystification, as did the Indians. When the chief questioned his medicine men, evidently asking what sort of magic this was to be, they seemed baffled.

Margery questioned Tom with her eyes but he smiled across at her and while wondering, in his mind, how he was going to make any showing against such a manifestation, he did not lose his courage or his trust in being led to know what to do and how to do it.

“You’ll need water for that carbide,” suggested Cliff. “We’ll tell you that much.”

“Oh, I know that—knew it all the time!” scoffed Mort. Turning to Margery he demanded. “Have water fetched!”

“I know that sort of thing a little,” Cliff said. “Back in high school we had an outfit of that kind. You see, it all packs in a suitcase to make it portable.”

“Yes,” Nicky agreed. “The film is what they call non-inflamable. It won’t burn.”

“That’s right,” Cliff agreed. “That’s why it can be used with an open flame light. You know, don’t you, that the lamp has to be filled with those crystals of calcium carbide—in the can, there. Then, water is put in the container and when it is all assembled and the screw is opened, water drips onto the crystals and they act to make gas.”

“Yes,” Nicky said. “We had something about that in chemistry class.”

But Mort and Henry were not having such a good time setting the machine in position. They got the “head” or apparatus for jerking the bits of exposed film down, back end foremost, and had to turn it around. That made them fidget and sweat.

To a degree, even in face of the danger, the boys were amused at the “hot time,” as Nicky whispered, that the older men were having to get their magic in readiness.

Evidently the chief sensed something of the sort for he made several impatient exclamations and his councillors stirred restlessly. But he said nothing to Henry and Mort and, finally, they seemed to have everything in readiness.

“Now,” said Henry, “Mort, light her up!”

Mort, with a few matches in a flat paper packet, struck the first and tried to light the lamp. The effort was fruitless. Nervously he struck match after match.

Tom, who sensed what was wrong, half opened his lips, but Cliff shook his head and Tom waited.

Mort turned to Henry and demanded more matches. Curtly and bruskly Henry made an exclamation and shoved Mort aside. Upset, the fat one lost his balance and tumbled in a heap. This brought a grunt of amusement from the watching Indians and Mort reddened with anger and dismay. Their plans were not working out so well.

Henry struck his few matches and when failure met his effort to ignite the lamp he sat back with a look of mingled chagrin and fear on his face.

“I guess we’re whipped,” he grunted to Mort. Mort mopped his wet brow and looked appealingly at the boys.

The chief said something as Henry rose.

“He says ‘your magic seems to fail!’” Margery translated. “Does it?”

“Yep,” said Henry, curtly, looking from side to side.

The chief turned toward Tom and his chums.

Tom had a plan. It was based on something that he knew and which Henry and Mort had failed to recall if they, also, knew of it.

When the crystals of carbide are first exposed to water, it takes a fair space of time for the gas to be liberated in a quantity sufficient to generate pressure enough to force it through the burner tip.

That amount of time had elapsed, but in their haste Henry and Mort had either failed to open the setting screw or had not tightened the base enough to hold the pressure. Tom proposed to take advantage of this guess and to turn the older men’s magic to his own account.

“Tell the chief,” he said to Margery, “the magic of the great doctors has not answered their call. Then ask them if they give up to us.”

Margery spoke and gestured; then she turned to Henry.

Morosely Henry and Mort nodded.

“What else can we do?” Mort grunted. “Seems like we can’t work it, seems like!”

“Tell the chief this,” Tom went on. “We do not work evil magic.”

“Listen!” cried Henry, suddenly, with a malicious leer toward Tom. “First you tell the chief that our magic failed because them—them evil ones work against us!”

Margery looked toward Tom. “Tell him,” he agreed.

She did. The chief looked toward Tom and scowled.

“Wait, though,” Tom continued, not at all frightened. “Now tell the chief that these men admit that our magic is stronger than theirs.”

Margery, smiling in spite of the gravity of the occasion, spoke.

The chief nodded, and his next frown was turned toward Henry, who looked a little desperate. Then he said, softly, to Mort. “But them busybody kids can’t do what we can’t. How can they light the lamp?”

Mort nodded and perked up.

“Tell the chief,” Tom added. “Tell him that our magic is good, and it is even stronger than the other. And to prove it we will make their own magic work.”

When Margery had done this the chief looked at the youths with some surprise and a little mystification. His medicine men also nodded and motioned toward the small, compact picture machine.

“Nicky,” said Tom, “unroll that piece of cloth they brought. And you and Cliff go to the side, about ten feet off, and hold it up, as taut as you can!”

While they were doing as he asked, Tom bent down and examined the picture projecting apparatus. It was not yet “threaded up” with film, and he took from the small case one of the three rolls of films, small, tightly rolled, in little tin containers.

Opening a “can” he unrolled a bit of the end, the blank “trailer” that is put between the rollers and toothed gears so that when the machine is started the picture begins properly. “It isn’t marked ‘non-flam’,” he called to Cliff. “It’s just marked with the regular kodak marking in the edge.”

“Then be careful,” Cliff said. “It will blaze up, then. Watch what you do and don’t hold it still while it’s in front of the flame!”

“Maybe you’d better come and work it,” Tom urged.

Margery ran lightly across to take Cliff’s end of the sheet. She and Nicky, tall enough to lift it four or five feet up, held the sheet.

“Now, we put the roll on this spindle,” Cliff said “Then we run the end over this guide roller, down through this ‘gate’ and aperture plate, so it lies flat, then over the lower guide, and fix the end onto the spindle in the ‘take-up’ magazine at the bottom. Now she’s all set.”

He gave the attached handle a small turn and saw that the action was perfect.

“Now for the lamp!” he said. “I hope——”

“She’s O.K.,” said Tom excitedly. “I can smell the gas and the base is tight now.”

“Tell the chief we make the other man’s magic work!” he told Margery.

In her clear, treble tones she informed the company. Outside the men pressed closer in. There was a tense expectancy in the air. All eyes focused on Tom.

“I only hope the gasoline hasn’t evaporated out of this lighter,” he muttered. “It’s a good, tight sort—well, here goes——”

He snapped the wheel. The spark ignited but did not light the wick.

Calmly, although his fingers trembled a little, he closed the small case again and waited until the wick had a chance to be covered for an instant to accumulate some gas. Also he wanted to control his own muscles.

Then again he whisked the small, steel wheel.

There was a spark and the wick sprang into yellow light.

Carefully he lowered the flame, while he opened the thumbscrew on the lantern burner. There came a slight puff of light, like a little explosion, a sizzling flare, and then the flame settled down to an even, vividly brilliant white glare.

Tom snapped shut the burner, shoved the lamp into place in the casing so it was behind the film.

“Crank her, Cliff,” he urged.

And, to the marvelling gasp of the Indians and the little shriek of amazement from Margery, there appeared on the sheet of muslin a square of gleaming white light, covering at once by a moving picture showing a marching army!

The Indians gasped, and several fell down on their faces.

When that reel was over the chief, after a long silence, spoke.

“Oh, dear!” said Margery. “He says the men who have failed are to be sent to their fathers—that means——”

Cowering, shrilly screeching with fear, Henry and Mort tried to dash toward safety. But at a sign from the chief the archers were in the hut, and before the crawling pair of white men appeared the other group, armed with cudgels of knobbed, polished wood.

“Stop!” shouted Tom. “Tell him to stop, Margery!”

Fearlessly he dashed in front of Henry and Mort, and faced the men with the bows. In one hand he held the closed lighter; in the other he unrolled a piece of leader film torn from another roll.

“Margery,” he gasped, “tell that Indian that our magic is good magic and is stronger. But tell him that we want these men spared. Say that if he does not we will use our magic to pour fire on his village and we will burn it to the ground.”

Margery, white-faced under her bronze, and with tight lips, managed to gasp out enough to make the chief listen.

Nevertheless he leaped out of his hammock and strode forward.

Tom put up a hand.

“Watch out!” he shouted.

He dropped the piece of curling film before the chief’s toes and stooping swiftly he ignited the lighter and touched the edge of the film.

As he leaped back, covering his face from the glare, the leader took fire and its celluloid base, almost as combustible as dynamite, shot into a blaze of white fire while a great, pungent puff of smoke flung itself upward and began to belly out in the still air of the hut.

Instantly the chief dropped to the ground like one stunned, and the archers, the councillors, the medicine man and every other Indian seemed to run away and vanish like the disappearance of the film at the end of the magic show.

“Well,” gasped Tom, as Nicky and Cliff dashed to his side, “Margery—come here! I guess we’re safe for awhile.”

And again, as had been hinted when he first saved Henry Morgan’s life, Tom had performed that service for the second time.