A few minutes later the car began to bound forward, the elder Pulsifer "opening her up," as they drew out of the few scattered huts on the outskirts of the town. They emerged into an arid, stony region, fringed with low, barren hills, clothed with scanty vegetation. Huge cacti stood up weirdly, like tombstones in the moonlight, and a few half-starved cattle plunged off to both sides of the track as the car sped along. So far as _one_ of the prisoners becoming obstreperous was concerned, there was no danger, or immediate danger, at any rate. Henry Varian lay like one dead, with his face of a marble whiteness, in the cold moonlight. "Say, the guv'nor must have given him a pretty heavy dose," muttered Kennell, bending over the inventor and feeling his heart. "I hope he hasn't overdone it." "What's the difference?" inquired the soft-voiced Carl, in a casual way. "We find plendy of places alretty vere ve get rid off him if he dond come back." "I don't know. I don't care much about taking such chances," muttered Kennell; "killing a man is bad business. I should think you and Silas would realize that, after your escape----" "Hush! der boy hear!" warned Schultz, holding up a thin, white hand. Kennell subsided with a growl of "what's the difference," but said no more, to Ned's intense disappointment. It was no trick of their eyesight, then, when the two Dreadnought Boys had recognized in the two pictured convicts, at the biograph exhibition, their two dastardly shipmates. Moreover, it seemed, from what Kennell had let drop, that both men were jail-breakers. Revolving this in his mind, Ned saw the cunningness of the two men's movements, if they had actually escaped from Joliet. What less likely place to find an escaped prisoner than in the United States navy? They must have forged papers of recommendation and character, and thus tricked the careful authorities. In fact, Ned learned later that this was the case. On and on droned the car, speeding through the same monotonous moonlit wastes of hills and scrub-grass--with here and there the gaunt form of a tall royal palm--as it had encountered on leaving the scattered outskirts of the town. All the time Ned had been working feverishly, but quietly, at his bonds, and now he began to feel what at first he scarcely dared believe--the ropes were becoming slightly loosened. In ten minutes more he had stretched the new rope, of which the thongs were made, till he could slip them off by dint of rubbing them against the cushion at his back. His mind was made up as to what he would do the instant he found himself at liberty to make his escape. He would drop from the car and trust to luck to get away. The surface of the hills was rough and creased with numerous deep gullies. If he could get into one of these, it would be impossible for the auto to follow, and on foot--well, Ned had a few records for sprinting behind him, and he was confident he could outdistance any one of the occupants of the car.