Page:Tom Swift in Captivity.djvu/205

Rh that's what set them so against me. Boys, this may be our chance!"

"How?" asked Ned.

"The king's brothers may find an opportunity to come and talk to us when the feast is at its height," was the reply.

Anxiously they waited, and in order that the royal brothers might come in unobserved, if they did conclude to speak to the captives, Tom and his companious hung some pieces of canvas over the windows and doors, and had only a single light burning.

It was at midnight that a cautious knock sounded at the side of the hut and Tom glided to the main door. In the shadows he saw the two royal brothers, Tola and Koku.

"Here they are!" whispered Tom to Jake Poddington, who came forward.

"Come!" invited the circus man in the giants' tongue, and the brothers entered the hut.

How Jake persuaded them to throw in their fortunes with the captives the circus man hardly knew himself. Perhaps it was due as much as anything to the dislike they felt toward the king, and the mean way he had treated them.

"Come, and you will be kings among the small men in our country," invited Poddington. The