The escape from the swamp.

In the meantime, Patsy had been in half a dozen different kinds of a brown study. He realized that now the entire situation depended solely upon him, and that the lives of his chief, and of Chick and Ten-Ichi, rested wholly in his hands.

He stood, be it said, all alone, in the midst of a huge swamp, from which escape could only be had by means of a boat, and into which he had been conducted blindfolded. Around him were men, all ready at any instant to take his life for the merest excuse; and already the lives of his three friends were sacrificed unless he could do something-and that very speedily-to save them.

In the cellar at the cottage he had not dared to look squarely at his chief, for fear that the inclination on his own part to make some sort of signal would be too strong for him to resist; and he had known that Madge was watching every act and motion, as a cat watches a mouse.

When he left the cottage, and had gone as far as the edge of the glade, he halted, and waited there for Handsome, for he guessed that the man would be sent away directly; and when Handsome did come, Patsy said to him:

“Sure, Handsome, will ye tell me what is to be done wid the others?”

“I haven’t made up my mind about that yet,” replied Handsome.

“And is it left to you that it is?”

“Certainly.”

“Faith, but that’s fine. I wish it was left to me, so I do.”

“What would you do to them, Pat?”

“I’d skin ’em, begorra!”

Handsome laughed.

“Perhaps I will give you a chance,” he said. “However, it is likely that they will go into the quicksand.”

“Where is that same, then?”

“Out in the swamp a bit. There is no getting out of it, and it tells no tales. Once a man is thrown into that, he sinks out of sight in a few minutes, and that is the last of him. It is our graveyard. There are about fifty in there now. The place is bottomless.”

“Cheerful, isn’t it? Sure, man, it’s unhealthy, it is; but I’ll go and have a look at it. Where is it?”

Handsome directed him how to find it, and he hastened away; but he paused before he started long enough to select a long, strong rope that he had seen near one of the cabins. This he carried with him, and disappeared among the trees.

Patsy was gone less than half an hour, but when he returned he was whistling; and then, after a little, he found an opportunity to linger around the place where Chick and Ten-Ichi were confined in one of the cabins.

And presently he began to sing; at first in a low tone, and in unintelligible words; but his voice was good, and it attracted attention, even among that motley crew, and after a little, perceiving that they were listening, he sang the louder.

If they had but known it, he was singing in Japanese, which Ten-Ichi had taught him to speak perfectly; and the words he uttered as he sang, translated, were:

“There is a quicksand pit not far from here. They are going to throw you both into it. I have carried a rope to the quicksand pit. I have tied it to a tree near there. When you are thrown into the pit, spread out your arms. And also spread out your legs. Keep as still as possible so as not to sink too fast. I will be there as soon as I can do it. I will throw you the end of the rope. And with your own combined strength and mine, we can pull you out. I am not suspected, so I can do the act, all right. Keep up your pluck, and manage not to go into the pit head down.”

He sang this over and over several times until he was sure that Ten-Ichi had heard and understood, and would convey the message to Chick, and then he sauntered away.

Twice after that he tried to get near to the cottage to sing to Nick Carter; but each time he was stopped and turned back again; and at last he muttered to himself:

“I’ll have to wait till to-night for that part of it. After I have rescued Chick and Ten-Ichi I will have them to help me, and then it will be funny if we don’t get the chief out of the pickle he is in.”

It was well toward evening, almost the hour of sundown, before Chick and Ten-Ichi were carried to the quicksand pit; and then a procession followed them. The hands and feet of the prisoners were not bound, for it was desired that they should flounder in the quicksand in order to hasten its work; and without ceremony they were hurled into the midst of it, one, and then the other.

Patsy’s only fear was that the horde of hoboes would throw sticks and stones at the helpless men in the sand pit; but he found that this was against orders, since the presence of such impedimenta would give the victims something to seize hold of; and the operation of sinking was so slow, and the hoboes had seen it so many times, that they had lost interest in it; so that almost at once after Chick and Ten-Ichi were thrown in they began to withdraw to their several occupations; and finally when only a group of four remained, Patsy, who was one of them, called out: “It’s tired of this I am. Come on!” and, nothing loath, the others followed him away.

But he was not long gone. Almost at once he found an opportunity to leave them, and, by making a detour, to hurry back again.

Already when he had reached the pit a second time the two detectives had sunk almost to their armpits; but in an instant Patsy found the rope he had concealed, one end of which was fastened to a tree.

The task which followed can better be imagined than described, and only for the great strength of the trio it must have been unsuccessful. But with Chick and Ten-Ichi straining for their lives at one end, and Patsy pulling on the other as best he could, they came forth inch by inch, until at last they stood, covered with mud, to be sure, but on solid earth.

“Now, go around that way,” said Patsy, speaking rapidly. “The cottage is over there, as you know. You’ll have to cross a neck of the swamp in getting to it, but the chief is there, a prisoner. I have seen him. He is chained to the wall in the cellar. If you get a chance before I do, overcome that beast of a sentinel, who is walking up and down near the house. I’ll go back through the glade, and I’ll manage somehow to join you there, if I have to kill somebody in order to do it; and take these. They are extra ones. I swiped them.” He handed them each a pistol as he spoke.

Chance played into Patsy’s hands when he returned to the glade. Two of the men had been quarreling, and they had taken the centre of the glade to settle their differences; and there a ring had formed around them-a ring which comprised almost every man of the outfit.

The point was that the attention of everybody was diverted from Patsy, and, merely bestowing a single glance upon what was taking place, he hurried silently past them-it was almost dark now-and in a moment more had passed through the pathway to the clearing around the cottage.

As he entered the clearing silently, he came directly upon the sentinel, who, after listening to the row in the glade for a moment, had just turned to retrace his steps; this made him assume a position with his back toward Patsy, and in an instant the young athlete had leaped upon his back and shoulders, and had seized him by the throat, so that he bore him to the ground in absolute silence.

And even as he did that, Chick and Ten-Ichi dashed out of the woods and helped him; and Ten-Ichi, none too gentle, now that his anger was aroused, rapped the sentinel on the head with the butt of his pistol, so that he stiffened out and offered no more resistance.

They had been thoughtful enough to bring the rope with them, too, and it did not take long to tie the man; and then the three assistants of Nick Carter leaped forward toward the door of the cottage, realizing that at any instant they might be interrupted in their work, and knowing that the odds would be terribly against them if they were.

They leaped upon the piazza-and as they did so the door opened directly in front of them, and Nick Carter appeared before them with the senseless form of Black Madge in his arms.

For just one instant he started backward; and then he recognized his three assistants.

“Quick!” he exclaimed. “Hold her, Chick!” and he put Madge into Chick’s arms. “I have drugged her with some of her own stuff. There’s plenty of it in the house. Get into the woods, all of you, over there”-and he pointed to the spot he wished them to go-“and wait for me. I’ll be there in a moment.”

While they obeyed him, he turned back into the house; and from the edge of the clearing, where the others had concealed themselves, they presently saw a blaze flare up inside the house; then another, and then another, until there were many of them; and then Nick Carter dashed out of it again and ran toward them with all speed.

“Look, now!” he said. “Watch that upper window, in the gable!”

And looking as he commanded them to do, they presently saw, when the light had gained in brightness, the form of a woman standing there, outlined against the blazing fire; and if they had not known differently, there was not one of them who would not have sworn that it was Black Madge who stood there, surrounded by flames.

“It is a dummy that I fixed up,” whispered the detective. “It was done to keep the attention of the crowd away from us. Look! The men have discovered the fire!”

The hoboes were rushing toward the scene in crowds now; and they saw the figure of the woman at the window in the gable instantly.

A cry, then a shout, then a wail went up, for they thought it was their chief-Black Madge, otherwise Hobo Harry, the Beggar King, as she preferred to be known outside her own fraternity; and in that instant the crowd went mad.

There was not a soul among them who did not rush to the rescue of their chief, believing that Nick’s dummy at the window was she; and then danced and shouted, and yelled and screamed around that burning cottage, like so many madmen.

“Come, now,” said the detective. “This is our opportunity!”

Like shadows they sped away through the trees. They skirted the glade, now without a sign of life within it; they hurried down the path among the alders toward the place where the boat was kept, and where there were now no less than four boats.

But they took them all in order that none might be left for the pursuers, when it should occur to them to take up the chase; and then, with the strength of desperation, and guided by Nick, who had been twice over the route without being blindfolded, they made their way silently and swiftly through the maze of the swamp, to dry land at the other side of it.

“We have not made good our escape yet,” said Nick, as they climbed the grade of the railway. “If only a train would come along now, so we could flag it-hark!”

Even as he spoke, a freight came around the curve toward them, and Nick, giving the unconscious form of Madge into the care of Chick, leaped out upon the track between the rails, and, at the risk of his life, stood within the glare of the advancing headlight and waved his coat for the engineer to stop.

Fortunately it was a freight, and it was going rather slowly. The engineer saw the frantic appeal, and closed his throttle and applied the brakes.

The party was taken aboard, and Black Madge was locked up in the jail at Calamont. She jeered at her captors, assuring them that she would be free again, and that when she was they had better remember who and what she was.

Nick and his assistants then returned to New York, pretty thoroughly tired out by their experiences with Black Madge and her followers.

The following day Nick Carter called upon the president of the E. & S. W. R. R. Co., and told him the story of the capture of “Hobo Harry.”

“Also, I want to tell you,” said the detective, “that I was one of the burglars that robbed the bank at Calamont. I see there is quite a stir about it. But I know where the loot is concealed, and if you will raise a hundred men for me I will go back and clean out that swamp, and not only return the property to the bank, but I will find almost all that has been stolen from different places for a long time.”

Arrangements were at once made to carry out Nick’s plans, but the detective was not quick enough.

The news of the arrest of Black Madge had spread through the surrounding country like wildfire, and, by the time Nick and his force of railroad employees reached the place, the gang had fled, and the people of the near-by towns, having formed vigilance committees, had swooped down on the stronghold in the swamp.

Nick and his men, however, destroyed everything that remained, with axes and matches, and what they could not destroy in that way they blew up with dynamite, so that the place no longer offered a refuge for the hoboes.