is!" Sandy called out, directly. "Here is a tunnel. Say, but
I never knew about this before. Come on!"

Frank led, but proceeded only a short distance. Then his light rested
on the grinning face of a Chinaman.

The tunnel was guarded. The boy turned back and looked into the tunnel
by which they had entered the chamber. Within a foot of the muzzle of
his searchlight he saw the grinning face of another Chinaman.

He stepped back to the mouth of the tunnel and motioned Jack to guard
the exit, explaining, briefly, that they had been trapped, not in a hut
on the street level, but in a subterranean chamber where they could not
be heard, and where no one would ever think of looking for them.

"Oh, no," Jack cried, regarding Sandy angrily, "you didn't know anything
about this--not a thing! You treacherous dog!"

"I didn't! I didn't!" shouted the boy. "Call them men in an' ask them
if I did."

"You wait a minute," Jack gritted out, "and I'll see if the Chinks will
stand quiet while I beat their accomplice up!"

"Quit it!" Frank commanded. "We're in trouble enough now, without
bringing the Chinks down on us. I'd give a good deal to know if Ned and
Jimmie are still alive!"

CHAPTER XIII

A VANISHING DIPLOMAT

Ned turned to the Captain as the men in slate-colored robes lifted their
hands after the manner of fake mystics the world over. He was not
uninterested, but he was anxious.

They were now some distance from the grove in which the camp breakfast
had been prepared, and the grove, in turn, was some distance from the
highway. They were also some feet under ground, where any calls for
assistance that might be necessary would be muffled by the hewn stone
and the damp air and earth.

Besides, the alleged priests had mapped out this scene before the
arrival of the boys, as Ned believed. Therefore they might have half a
hundred natives within call, prepared to do murder if necessary.

The marines had been ordered by the Captain to gradually surround the
temple, to guard every entrance that could be discovered, and to force
their way in if anything of a suspicious nature occurred. Ned did not
know the men as well as he knew the Captain, therefore he asked:

"The men will obey your orders to the letter? You see, we are in a box
here!"

"They will obey," said the officer. "What do you make of the mummery
now going on?"

The "mummery" consisted in slow, gliding motions, in whirlings about
inten