On her many visits to the strange boy, Nikobo had worn a path through the tangled growth of vines and bush. Tenuous trees dropped their branches over this path and stretched out their gnarled roots to trip the unwary traveler. Several times Roger let out hoarse squeals as a huge snake coiled along the limb of a tree, thrust out its ugly head. Gaudy flowers from the vines that closely entwined every tree, filled the air with a damp sleepy fragrance, and Samuel Salt, darting his eyes left and right, held his blunderbuss ready for any savage beast that might spring upon them. But the jungle creatures, thinking the Leopard Men had returned, slunk further and further into the green shadows and without any mishaps or encounters, Nikobo brought the explorers to a small clearing in the whispering tangle of green. Here they were suddenly confronted by a stoutly built cage, its bars constructed of saplings set scarcely an inch apart. On a heap of grass in a corner of the cage crouched the lonely figure of a little boy clothed in a single leopard skin. "Well, goosewing my topsails!" panted Samuel Salt, deceived at first by the leopard skin. "A little wild man, a Leopard boy, as I'm a salt sea sailor!" "It's nothing of the kind," Nikobo contradicted him sharply. "Can't you see he is white and has teeth as straight as your own instead of tusks? He's not like the Leopard Men at all." "But who put him in this cage? What's he done, and what's he doing here?" Slipping off Nikobo's back, Ato pressed his face close to the bars of the strange prison. "I am waiting for my people to come and rescue me," stated the boy, rising with great dignity from his bed of grass. Folding his arms, he looked haughtily out at the explorers. "Who are these men, Nikobo?" he inquired sternly. "Why have you brought them here?" "Because they seemed friendly and speak your language," puffed the hippopotamus, beaming lovingly at her small charge. "Because I thought they might break these bars and set you free. They have a hollow log seventy times as large as the hollowed logs of the Leopard Men. In this they could easily carry you over the waters and back to your own people. I've tried to break this miserable hutch dozens of times," explained Nikobo, turning to Samuel Salt. "But the saplings are sunk so deep, I've been afraid I'd crush Tandy as well as the cage if I pushed too hard." "Quite likely," said Samuel Salt, rapping the bars with his knuckles. "We'll have to fetch an ax from the ship. But who shut you up here, little Lubber, and how long have you been prisoner on this island?" "Five months and a half," answered the boy after consulting one of the bars in the corner of his cage. "I've made a nick in this bar with my teeth for every day I have been here."