There was still an excited grin on the midshipman's lips. But he was by no means happy. Who could have been under the circumstances? for there he and Alec were, free for the moment to be sure, but separated from their friends, while the latter were bound hand and foot and imprisoned in the huts opposite. As to the natives by whom they had been captured, they were an ill-smelling, murderous-looking lot. Tall, and extremely athletic, their bodies covered with knotted muscles, they were now parading the street, coming past the courthouse in a body, led by three dreadful individuals who wore ugly masks, and to whose persons hung a hundred different items. To a clattering dirge played by some twenty musicians, a dirge that boasted of no traceable tune, the three natives in front were dancing wildly, extravagantly throwing their limbs about, twisting and writhing and foaming at the mouth. "Hideous brutes. Men of mystery, I suppose," whispered Dick. "Medicine men, sorcerers, or whatever they call 'em. Look at the chaps behind with clubs in their hands, and the rest with bows and arrows and spears. This is a precious pickle!" It was worse. It was a desperate situation in which to find themselves, and the trouble was that Dick and Alec, though burning to do something active, could see their way to do nothing. "Couldn't reach the ship. Impossible," muttered the latter. "First thing, we don't know where she is. I couldn't find my way to her for a fortune. Then I'd be so long over the job that I'd arrive too late. Eh, Dick?" "Got to work this little business out ourselves," came the answer. "You're right about the ship. Those beggars carried us a long way, for they walked very quickly. Besides, there ain't time, as you say. We've got to get a move-on ourselves, for, if I'm not mistaken, that band ain't working for nothing. Look at the village folks following. They turned out in force to see the fun." And fun it must have been to those untutored savages, though to the prisoners it was an agony. For those three horrible medicine men halted opposite the hut in which Dick's friends had been incarcerated and began another dance, if possible more frenzied than the last. The band, too, made the most of the occasion, each instrumentalist beating his parchment-covered gourd, or his wooden native piano, as if he wished to outdo his comrades. Then stakes were brought, fresh cut from the jungle, their ends pointed, and to the sound of the instruments, to the wild yells of the natives and the dancing of those three wretches, they were driven into the ground, three in front of each hut, and two before that so recently occupied by Dick and Alec. Then firewood was brought by the women and children and laid close to them.