He was not fighting Amos Belton, but Dion Santenel!
Could the man who looked so much like Amos Belton be Santenel, the hypnotist? The thing seemed impossible, yet Merriwell believed it true.
Another conviction came to him. Santenel had not abducted Inza for the purpose of carrying her away or harming her, but to draw him into this trap, knowing that he would follow Inza to whatever point she might be taken.
“You again, Santenel!” Frank hissed, lunging at the dimly seen form of his enemy.
“So you know me?” screamed Santenel. “You triumphed the other day; it is my turn now!”
The struggle that followed was fierce in the extreme. Santenel’s catlike eyes seemed able to penetrate the gloom. Raging like a madman, he bounded to and fro, striking with the quickness of a rattlesnake. Twice his fist found Frank’s face, each time Santenel dodging back and ducking in the darkness in time to escape a counter-blow.
The launch was speeding through the water.
“Where is Inza?” Frank demanded, as he leaped in between these blows. “Tell me, you scoundrel, or I’ll choke the life out of you!”
“Food for fishes!” he cried. “What you will be mighty soon!”
Then the hypnotist, again ducking and dodging, renewed the fight with a vindictiveness which Merriwell had never seen equaled.
Notwithstanding that the gloom seemed to favor Santenel, Frank at length succeeded in landing a blow that knocked the hypnotist against the wall. He went against it with a thud, dropped downward as if falling in a limp heap, then straightened half up and pitched toward a door which opened to the little deck.
Before Frank could take advantage of his successful blow Santenel had drawn his thin body through this door and was scrambling out of the place.
Frank lunged and caught the man by the coat as he gained the deck. But the hypnotist slipped out of the garment, leaving it in Frank’s hands.
Merriwell sprang after him, intending to catch him and force him to tell what had become of Inza. He did not believe that Inza had fallen or been thrown overboard, in spite of Santenel’s horrible declaration that she had become “food for fishes.”
Santenel tried to dive into and through the other door, the one Frank had first entered, but it stuck fast or was locked. Before the hypnotist could get it open Frank was again on him. and the struggle that had raged below deck was again renewed.