“You see, our friend here had traced you to the barge and found out her destination, and if you had come ten minutes later you would have found that we had all just started for Rotterdam. I was only waiting for Chester and Malcolm to return to set out. I am sorry, Mark, that you have lost your diamonds; not so much because they are gone, for I can well understand you to be thoroughly glad to be rid of such dangerous articles, but because they have carried them off in our teeth, after we have been specially retained to protect you. I certainly thought that with such a bodyguard you were absolutely safe from any number of Hindoos.” “Yes, we made a regular mess of it, Mr. Thorndyke,” Gibbons said. “I never felt so certain of winning a battle as I did that you would not be touched as long as we were looking after you. Tring and I, if we had been asked, would have said that we could each have taken on a dozen foreigners easily. Mr. Chetwynd is handy with his fists too, though he hasn't your weight and reach, and your two other friends are both pretty well accustomed to deal with rough customers. As for Tring and me, it makes one feel small to know that we have been bested by a handful of niggers, or Hindoos, or whatever the chaps are, whom a good sized boy of twelve ought to be able to polish off.” “Now, Mark, what is to be done next?” Dick Chetwynd asked. “The next thing will be to get back as soon as we can, Dick. I, for one, have had enough of Holland to last me for a lifetime.” “I am afraid, gentlemen,” the Lieutenant said, “you will have to wait a day or two before you can leave. I have nineteen men in prison, and there will be a meeting of magistrates this afternoon. Now you have come back, Mr. Thorndyke, the charge against them won't be as serious as it would have been before, but they are guilty of a desperate and premeditated assault upon six passengers on their arrival here; they have already admitted that they were paid for their work; and as among them are some of the worst characters in the city, you may be sure that now we have got them fairly in our hands we shall not let them go. It is so simple an affair that the investigation ought not to take long, but we shall want to find out, if we can, who acted as the intermediary between the Hindoos and the prisoners. I should think that two meetings ought to be sufficient for the present, but I am afraid that there may then be a long remand, and that you will either have to remain here or to come over again.” “It would be a horrible nuisance,” Dick said; “still it would be better to come back again than to wait here indefinitely, and anyhow I don't suppose it would be necessary for all of us to come back again.”