hat strange fellow who
had made the record on the disk.

"Couldn't be a native" he murmured. "No native has a voice like that. If
it's a strange white man, why doesn't he join us? Perhaps--" He stopped
short in his tracks. "Perhaps it's one of our own number. Perhaps it's
Pant. He's queer enough to do or be anything."

His mind hung on that last word--anything. Yes, he might not be a man at
all. Might be a girl. Why always that hood drawn tight? Why the goggles?
And, being a girl, she might be more than an adventuress. Possibly she was
a radical, a Russian spy, who had joined his crew to thwart his purposes.
Who could tell?

"Humph!" he shook himself free from these reflections. "Lot of chance of
all that being true. There's witchery in this moonlight. And yet, stranger
things have happened. Whatever you say, Pant's a devil. Who else could see
in the dark?"

He was standing almost directly beneath the rocky cliff. Suddenly with the
quickness of thought, a small brown figure sprang at him. Then another and
another.

Right at his face sprang the first one. Not one nor two of these could be
too quick for Johnny. Like a shot his right arm curved out. With a
screaming shudder the man leaped in air and went crashing down the hill.
The second, seized by his fragile squirrel-skin parka, tore himself away.
The third landed upon Johnny's back. Like an infuriated bucking bronco,
Johnny went over on his back, crushing the wind out of the fellow on the
hard packed snow. But the second man, dressed now in a garment of crimson
hue, which he had worn under his parka, was upon Johnny's chest. His arm
was entwined in Johnny's left in a jujutsu hold. His hand flashed to the
white boy's chin. With such a hold even a small man could do much. The man
pinioned beneath, having regained his breath, added his strength to the
other in holding his adversary flat to the snow. Johnny dug his left elbow
into this one's face, while his right arm turned beneath the arm of the
man on his chest and reached a position of half-nelson behind the man's
head. He was now in a position to break this assailant's neck. Bones
snapped as he applied the terrific muscles of his right arm and the brown
man's muscles relaxed. Johnny's head and arms were free. With the speed of
a wild-cat, he sprang to his feet, faced about, then, with a bounding
leap, cleared the remaining assailant and went tobogganing down the hill.
He had seen five others of the brown villains