nd the neck and bearing him to the ground.

"Run, Benson!" cheered young Melville, "He'll never catch you now!"

CHAPTER XI

WHAT BEFELL THE REAL BENSON

Whistling softly, the real Jack Benson went along cheerily to the
appointed place.

Being wholly courageous, there was no thought of dread in his mind over
any possible treachery.

As he came in sight of the two trees, between which he had been asked to
meet the Italian, he made out a man waiting there.

"Good evening," came the low, soft hail.

Then the speaker stepped forward, proving to be the same who had accosted
the young submarine captain in the afternoon.

"Good evening," was Jack's pleasant reply. "You're on time, I see."

"Oh, sure!" laughed the Italian. "I been here twenty minute, already."

"Where's your friend?"

"Up in the woods. We take this path here, and we find him."

The Italian took Jack Benson lightly by one arm, piloting the boy until
he had turned him into the path. Then the foreigner stepped in advance,
saying:

"We reach my friend, in minute."

Thus they proceeded for perhaps five hundred feet into the woods.
Presently a small light, looking as though it might be the glowing end
of a cigar, appeared ahead.

"Ah, here is my friend," announced the guide. "Giacomo, here is the
young captain."

"Hush! Not too loud," came the soft warning from the man behind the
cigar.

As Benson came up this second man held out a hand, which the submarine
boy unsuspiciously took, at the same time looking over this second man.
He appeared, like the first, to be a laborer at the Melville yard.

"I hear you have some interesting word for me," began Benson. "I--oh,
great Scott! How dare you?"

For, dropping his cigar from between his teeth, this second Italian,
while still holding the boy's hand, gave his wrist a wrenching twist
that forced Captain Jack over to the ground.

In a twinkling the guide fell upon him, too.

"What on earth does this mean!" demand Benson, freeing his right hand
and doing all in his power to fight.

The spot was fearfully lonely. Captain Jack remembered, in a jiffy,
all the gruesome tales he had heard about the dread doings of the
Black Hand. Brave though he was, the young submarine expert felt
suddenly cold and creepy, though he did not once think of giving up the
fight.

"Now, be still you!" ordered the late guide, plaintively. "We not want
to hurt you. But, if you make us--"

"Be still,