They were not a second too soon.
Even as they took their places in the canoe and Billy prepared to slash the gra.s.s-rope that held it, the clamor drew close to the mouth of the tunnel.
From the foot of the cliff the chums and their aged companion saw torches glowing and could perceive Aga and the other pointing at them and evidently explaining to the tribesmen that they had tried to stop their flight. Billy was glad to see that apparently their explanations were accepted and they were not suspected of having aided the escaping prisoners.
With a quick slash of his flint knife, the young reporter severed the rope at which the canoe was straining till it was taut as a piano wire. There were several other canoes lying alongside and before he cast loose Billy cut the detaining ropes of these also.
"Now they"ll have to swim if they want to get us!" he exclaimed as the canoe, released from its bondage, shot forward on the boiling current at a dizzy rate.
But he had reckoned without the flying men. Dozens of them had dropped from their holes and having gained the opposite bank started in pursuit of the boys and the old explorer, who lay as if overcome at the bottom of the canoe. Many of the strange beings carried bows and arrows and they sent their shafts whizzing in a shower at the canoe. One pierced its side and Billy had to stop the hole with a strip torn from his already ripped-up shirt.
But fortunately, except for a slight scratch on Billy"s forearm, none of the arrows did much harm to the voyagers themselves, and borne on the swift current the canoe soon outdistanced her pursuers.
As the sound of their shouting grew faint behind them, Billy and Lathrop grasped the paddle with which they strove to keep the boat on a straight course--there was no need to propel her.
The young reporter realized that three lives--his own, Lathrop"s and that of the long missing explorer depended alone now on their skill and grit.
CHAPTER XX
THE SMOKE READER
And now we must leave the floating canoe with its occupants and turn to the River Camp, where we left the Boy Aviators overcome with anxiety as to the fate of their young comrades. The situation was indeed one calculated to try the stoutest heart. There was only one drop of sweet in their cup of bitter.
Harry, poking about among the ruins of the deserted camp, had discovered several cans of gasoline that the raiders had overlooked.
They formed sufficient fuel with the picric cakes that Frank still had a supply of, to drive the big aeroplane for several hundred miles if the wind conditions were favorable.
But leave the river camp the boys dare not, for they realized that if Billy and Lathrop did manage to make their escape, they would, if possible, come back there. True, it was a chance so remote as to appear almost impossible, but under the circ.u.mstances even the shadow of a hope seemed to a.s.sume substance. And so they waited, and had been waiting, while the stirring events we have related had been happening to their missing chums.
As if to add to their oppression, old Sikaso mooned about the camp, his eyes rooted to the ground in moody absorption and muttering to himself, "five go--three come back," till Frank angrily ordered him to stop. The realization that his gloomy prophecy seemed only too likely to be fulfilled, however, did not tend to relieve the situation.
"If we do not hear from them to-morrow, we shall be compelled to take to the air and fly to the coast," said Frank as they sat that evening round a camp-fire which had been lighted to keep away marauding lions, whose roars ever and anon shook the forest. At such times old Sikaso"s eyes wandered longingly to his great war-axe. There is little doubt that he would have liked to work off his gloomy feelings by tackling a lion single-handed with his weapon.
"You think, then, it isn"t worth while waiting if we have heard no news by then?" asked Harry.
"It isn"t that," said Frank in reply, "but we have not provisions left to more than tide us over another day. What the Arabs didn"t destroy they spoiled."
Harry nodded his head silently.
Cruel necessity, it seemed, was to compel them to evacuate the camp, to which they still clung in the hope the lost adventurers might return.
It was in vain Ben Stubbs cracked his jokes that night and related all sorts of droll sea yarns in the hope of cheering up his young companions. For the first time since he had known them it looked as if the Boy Aviators had really lost all hope, and truly the facts seemed to warrant the stoutest-heart in the world being downcast--to say the least.
Suddenly without a word old Sikaso left the fire and strode off into the forest. He was gone for more than an hour and when he came back his look of gloom had vanished. For him he was almost cheerful.
He swung his terrible axe in all sorts of fantastic evolutions and hummed to himself his grim chant with a fierce sort of joy.
"White boys, the smoke is going to tell me things to-night," he exclaimed suddenly. "When the moon reaches to the top of the sky I shall tell you news of the four-eyed one and of the red-headed."
Impatiently they waited till the moon reached her zenith and then watched wonderingly while the old savage built a small fire of sticks, over each one of which he mumbled something in African.
"What good does he suppose all this hocus-pocus is going to do us?"
muttered Harry irritably, "as if an old fire could tell us anything we didn"t know already. It"s all rubbish, I say."
"I"m not so sure," remarked Frank thoughtfully. "We have already seen something of what his skill can do and I don"t mind letting him see if he can"t conjure up something to give us a ray of hope."
"Oh bosh, Frank," replied Harry, "if he ever did get anything right through this rigmarole and hanky-panky it was simply because he had good luck. That"s all."
"For my part, I"ve knocked around the world too much to be so c.o.c.k sure of some things as some young chaps seem to be," put in Ben Stubbs, with a chuckle, looking up from the frying-pan that he was scouring with sand.
Harry looked abashed and said nothing.
If old Sikaso had heard any of this colloquy he made no sign, but with the face of a graven image went about his preparations. Slowly he struck the sparks from his never-failing flint and steel, and a few seconds later the little fire was sending up a blaze.
"Do you see anything?" asked Frank.
"Too soon now, wait till smoke come," he said, and resumed his intense watching of the fire.
After a delay that seemed maddening, to two at least of the group that was watching, the old Krooman announced that all was ready.
Even Harry felt a thrill of interest as the old man began to spin slowly on his toes round the column of smoke, chanting slowly some strange mixture of savage music which was, as Frank guessed, an incantation to the fetish that, as he believed, dwelt in the smoke.
As the smoke grew thicker he cast some sort of powder from a skin-bag into it and instantly a thick yellow column of vapor shot up.
The whole forest about seemed impregnated with the strong odor of the stuff and the boys" eyes smarted. Old Sikaso kept up his dance, bending lower and lower till it seemed that he must be actually inhaling the pungent, acrid smoke.
As this strange scene progressed, Frank felt his eyes begin to grow dim and an unaccountable languor fill his limbs. His head swam round and he desired nothing so much as to lie down and sleep---and yet a compelling power forced him to keep his eyes fixed on the column of smoke over which the aged Krooman was now stooping with outspread hands.
Suddenly he gave a sharp cry--an exclamation almost of command.
"Look--look, white boys, and you, old man of the sea and the forests of the far-off land, and I shall show you the magic of the sleeping heart of Africa."
With eyes that started from his head Frank gazed, in obedience to a majestic sweep of the African"s hand, full into the ascending column of yellowish smoke.
The languor the boy had felt at first had now quite left him and he was only intent on seeing what was about to transpire.
Sikaso"s voice once more rose in his dismal chant and he cast more of the powder from his skin-bag into the fire. The smoke pillar grew to an immense size and, as he gazed at it, before Frank"s amazed eyes a scene as strange to him as any he had ever set eyes on, began slowly to take shape.
There was a river edge with mighty banks at the summit of which waved fronds of tropical plants and in which huge beasts, that he recognized as hippopotami, wallowed and sputtered. An unhealthy steam arose from the banks and the river boiled angrily along between its confines in a dark mud-colored flood.
So far the scene was not unlike the river in which he and Harry had so nearly lost their lives, but as he gazed the details grew clearer, as if it had been a magic lantern view, growing by degrees stronger and every outline of the tropical view was suddenly thrown into strong relief.
All at once the boy uttered a sharp cry, which was echoed by his brother and Ben. Old Sikaso never moved a muscle but kept on chanting.
Into the center of the wonderful smoke picture there had swum a canoe.
And in it were seated Billy Barnes and Lathrop!