The boys mounted the ladder slowly.
Unused as they were to such a contrivance it required all their nerve to keep on going up, as they swung at a higher and higher alt.i.tude above the river. Neither of them dared to look down, as they were certain that they would be overcome by dizziness.
With their eyes glued to the rock in front of them, they mounted what seemed to be endless rungs till at last they found themselves at the top of the ladder and facing a large opening cut in the rock.
As they found out later, this was the main entrance to the dwelling of this strange community and from it various galleries and pa.s.sages branched off to their separate dwelling-places. Each family lived in a rock house exactly adapted to the size of the circle. There were six stories, so to speak, of these dwelling-places, but they all communicated, either by means of stair-ways cut in the rock or inclined galleries, with the main pa.s.sage at the entrance of which the chums now stood.
Their guide, who was immediately behind them on the swaying ladder, took the lead as soon as the three stood side by side on the summit, and escorted them down the long pa.s.sage. Before they started he took from a bracket in the wall a kind of torch, made of some resinous wood unfamiliar to the boys. Striking piece of flint against his spear blade he soon produced light and holding the torch high above his head, so that its light shone on the walls, rendered glossy by the rub of uncounted ages of greasy elbows and bodies, he led the way down the pa.s.sage. The boys could feel that after walking a short distance it took a sudden rise and yet further a cool wind began to blow in their faces.
About a hundred yards from the spot where they first noticed the air stirring in their hair the boys and their guide emerged on a scene whose beauty at first shock almost took the lads" breath away.
Before them stretched a fertile valley neatly divided into patches--each hedged off in squares in which flourished all sorts of vegetables, including sweet corn and potatoes and several other less familiar varieties. In pastures, fenced in with mathematical regularity by hedges of the African cactus thorn, herds of humped cattle were feeding contentedly in the mellow glow of the setting sun, occasionally lowing softly, which latter made Billy, as he expressed it, "long for the old farm."
The Winged Men likewise cultivated, it seemed, fruits of many kinds and had also stockades in which poultry, of breeds strange to the boys, but undoubtedly sprung from the aboriginal African fowl, were abundant.
It seemed as if they had struck a land in which the inhabitants lived an ideal life, surrounded as they were by every comfort and necessity that one could imagine; but that even they were distressed by the raids of enemies transpired when the boys" guide, whose name they had learned by this time was Umbashi, pointed to the west in which the setting sun was now kindling a ruddy glow and said:
"Sometime elephant come--then much trouble."
Of the full significance of those words, however, neither boy dreamed as, after a supper of fresh corn, bitter melon, stewed deer meat and a dessert formed of some sort of custard they sank to sleep on their couches of skins, spread for them by Umbashi"s direction in a vacant dwelling in the cliff face.
Their slumber senses carried them back to New York and Billy was in the midst of escorting Umbashi in full war paint through the office of the New York Planet, followed by hordes of joshing reporters and inquisitive office boys, who wanted to know whether he"d match his dusky friend to fight Jim Jeffries, when he was awakened by Umbashi himself, who in a few words told him it was morning and time to get up and dress swiftly, as the King of the Flying Men wanted to see him and his young companion at once.
CHAPTER XVI
FOOLING AN ARAB CHIEF
"Frank, what do you make of it?"
"Harry, I don"t know what to think."
"Ain"t nuffin fer it but ter keep on hopin" fer the best, as the feller said when they had a rope around his neck fer horse-stealing and was about to string him up."
The three--Frank and Harry Chester and Ben Stubbs--were standing round the charred remains of their once lively, well-equipped camp--where they had arrived that morning at daybreak after a tiresome night spent circling about in the moonlight trying to locate it--and now the reason why they had failed to see the white tents was fully apparent by their blackened sites.
"Billy and Lathrop have been carried off!" It was Harry who spoke.
"Beyond a doubt. I thought at first that the raid must have been made by cannibals, but cannibals do not carry rifles, as a rule, and look here." Frank stooped and picked up half-a-dozen cartridges of the kind used by the Arab slave-traders.
"You know there were no sh.e.l.ls like that in our party," he went on, "but I can see by the collection of empty sh.e.l.ls in the place where the tent stood that Billy and Lathrop must have put up a hot defense."
"Frank, do you--you don"t think, do you--" Harry burst out.
"That they have been killed?" Frank finished for him. "No, I do not. Unless they fell in the fight and then we should have seen their bodies down with the others by the river. No, it is my idea that they have been carried off to be sold as slaves. They would have a high market value you know."
Harry groaned.
"But don"t you think there is a chance of our getting them back?"
Frank"s face grew grave.
"Of course we are going to try every means in our power, but once in the hands of that scoundrel Muley-Ha.s.san it is doubtful if we ever see them again. There is only one thing for us to do."
"And that is--?"
"To get back to the Moon Mountains at once. But we have no gasoline."
This was a stunning blow; in the excitement their of fuel had not occurred even to the fa.r.s.eeing Frank. They had had, as our readers know, to leave most of their gasoline at the Moon Mountains in order to lighten the aeroplane. Without it they could not move an inch in their air-craft. Harry tested the tank. Only a few paltry gallons remained--not enough to drive the aeroplane ten miles.
As the boys stood, struck dumb by the realization of the disaster that had overtaken them, Ben Stubbs, who had been down to the river bank, reappeared.
"Look here!" he exclaimed, holding out at arms length a long white cloak. One glance at the garment was enough--it was an Arab article of dress. There was no further doubt about it, then. Muley-Ha.s.san and his men had carried off Billy and Lathrop.
"But that"s not the most extraordinary part of it," went on Ben; "while there are half a dozen of the Arabs" canoes down there, there are a lot of others, that must have belonged to a bunch of natives from their shiftless look--and I could see the bare imprint of the savages" feet in the mud, coming after the Arabs had trod around there."
This was a new mystery. Apparently, then, a tribe of cannibals had been on the trail of the Arabs who had carried off their two young companions. This could only mean one thing, that they meant to punish the Arab slave-dealers for some outrage and, while this would have been quite satisfactory to the boys under other conditions, as things were it meant that there would be a fight in which both Lathrop and Billy would probably be seriously wounded, if not killed. How wrong this surmise was we know, and it serves to show how very wide of the mark it is possible for the constructors of a theory to steer.
And here for a time we will leave our despairing friends while we go back to the Moon Mountains.
The outline of the Golden Eagle II, in her flight to the river camp, had not faded out on the twilight sky, before, through the jungle at the foot of the Moon Mountains, a strange figure pushed its way. It was Sikaso, but a changed Sikaso from the agile muscular black who had wielded his axe with such terrible effect at the fight of the evening before. His ebony body was cut and scarred with the signs of his battle with the thorns and saw-bladed gra.s.ses of the dense forest, across which he had cut in desperate haste, scorning all paths in order to warn the Boy Aviators and their chum Ben of the rapid approach of Muley-Ha.s.san. With that strange instinct that white men in Africa recognize in certain of the natives as a sixth sense, the giant black had read in a fire kindled after the battle, that the boys were at that moment in the Moon Mountains, and had at once set out--exhausted as he was--at top speed on the long journey.
Only a man of his adamantine strength could have endured the hardships and it had fatigued even his iron frame, as was evident by his stumbling footsteps as he made his way up the side of the mountain--pausing from time to time as if to listen to the whisperings of his mysterious instinct.
Billy and Lathrop, half inclined to accuse the old black in their minds of base desertion, did him a gross injustice. After he had seen the two boys taken prisoners, the old warrior had realized that he could be of far more use to them at liberty than he would be if made captive by Muley-Ha.s.san. Indeed there was no doubt in his own mind that the Arab would put him to death instantly if he ever got his hands on him. He had therefore built a fetish fire and in it had made out distinctly Frank and Harry and Ben in their air-ship, encamped on the mountain-side, and had set out without delay at the peculiar jog-trot by which the native bush-runners can cover daily as much ground, and more, than a horse.
But the huge Krooman was doomed to as bitter a disappointment as the youths he was in search of had experienced at their return to the river camp. He found the spot on which the Golden Eagle had rested deserted, but still urged on by his strange sense of locality he finally stumbled upon the ivory cache.
"Um, big fight here," he mused to himself as he gazed about him at the mangled bodies of the gorillas which showed black as ink on the rocks in the sharp, brilliant moonlight. The heap of uncollected ivory was the next thing to attract his eye and with a guttural grunt the negro helped himself to a drink of water from his skin-bag while he sat down to ponder. He did not waste much time in reflection. Springing to his feet he vanished down one of the dark recesses of the mountain-side and was gone about an hour. When he returned he picked up an armful of the ivory--a load that would have staggered three ordinary men--and, hefting it easily in his arms, vanished with it into the dark shadows. For two hours he worked steadily and at the close of that period there was not enough ivory left about the cache to make a watch-charm of. Old Sikaso had found a new hiding place for the stuff the boys were compelled to leave.
Then he sat himself once more down on the rock, and leisurely smashing to pieces with his inseparable axe, the wooden cover that had been over the cache, he selected, with a good deal of care one of the dead gorillas. Having found the one that seemed to suit him; he cut off from its flank a hunk of meat with his keen weapon and producing a flint and steel soon had the meat toasting over a blaze.
When it was done to his satisfaction he leisurely ate it and washed it down with a draught from his skin-bag. He then cooked several more pieces of gorilla meat which he tucked in his waist-band, and shouldering his axe and humming to himself his grim war-song, he set out at the same swinging dog-trot on his long trip to the river bank. With the vitality common to such men, his brief rest and refreshment had rendered his tired frame as vigorous as ever and there was no trace of fatigue in the steady trot of the ebony figure as it plunged into the dark forest and vanished.
A second later, however, the figure reappeared as a noise of voices was heard drawing nearer down a forest trail. Throwing himself on his face and lying as motionless as a fallen log, the Krooman watched as Muley-Ha.s.san and his followers--almost worn out and sadly diminished in numbers since their fight with the boys and with the cannibals--appeared. True, they had beaten the latter off, but at great loss to themselves, and the few men that now limped forward-- urged on only by the fierce voice of Diego and Muley-Ha.s.san-- appeared ready to drop in their tracks from exhaustion.
"A hundred pounds of ivory to every man of you if we get there before they have cleaned the place out," the Arab was shouting by way of encouraging his men. Old Sikaso, with a grim chuckle, watched them make their way up the mountain-side and then laughed softly to himself as their imprecations of rage and fury broke out as they reached the cache--and found it empty!
Somewhat cheered by the vigorous Ben, who proposed to paddle down the river to the nearest settlement himself the next day, if some news were not heard of Billy and Lathrop, the boys were preparing for bed that evening--the bed consisting of the floor of the Golden Eagle"s stripped cabin--when they were startled by Ben holding up a warning finger.
"Hark!" he exclaimed eagerly.
The boys listened.
"There"s somebody coming," were Ben"s next words.
Sure enough drawing closer every minute they could hear a soft patter-patter coming down a jungle-trail and evidently, by the sound, heading for the camp.