A MASTERLY RETREAT.
“I don’t see any savages!” replied Glenn.
“Can’t you hear them?” demanded Jimmie.
“I think I can smell something!” Carl exclaimed.
“Don’t get gay, now!” Jimmie answered. “This is no funny business! If
you’ll listen, you’ll hear the snakes creeping through the grass.”
The boys listened intently for an instant and then, without looking into
the tents, sprang toward the machines. It seemed for a moment as if a
thousand voices were shouting at them. They seemed to be in the center
of a circle of men who were all practicing a different style of
war-whoop.
To this day the boys assert that it was the whirling of the electric
searchlights which kept the savages from advancing upon them. At any
rate, for a time, the unseen visitors contented themselves with verbal
demonstrations.
“We’ll have to jump out on the machines!” advised Glenn. “We can’t fight
a whole army!”
“Why, there’s only two!” Jimmie taunted. “You said yourself that we saw
all the black men there were in this neighborhood!”
“Aw, keep still,” Ben cried. “We haven’t got time to listen to you boys
joke each other! Come on, Jimmie! You and I for the _Louise_!”
It was now very dark, for banks of clouds lay low in the valley, but the
boys knew that the machines were situated so as to run smoothly until
the propellers and the planes brought them into the air. They had
provided for that on landing.
With a chorus of savage yells still ringing in their ears, the boys
leaped into their seats, still swinging their searchlights frantically
as their only means of protection, and pressed the starters. The
machines ran ahead smoothly for an instant then lifted.
The next minute there was absolute silence below. The boys were certain
that if they could have looked down upon the savages who had been so
threatening a moment before they would have seen them on their knees
with their faces pressed to the ground.
“They’ll talk about this night for a thousand years!” Jimmie screamed in
Ben’s ear as the _Louise_ swept into and through a stratum of cloud.
“They’ll send it down to future generations in legends of magic.”
“Little do we care what they think of us after we get out of their
clutches!” Ben called back. “It seems like a miracle, our getting away
at all!”
“Do you really think they are head-hunters?” shouted Jimmie.
“You saw more of them than I did,” Ben answered.
After passing through the clouds the starlight showed the way, and in a
very short time the lights of Quito were seen glittering twenty miles or
so to the south.
“What are we going to do when we get to the town?” shouted Jimmie.
“Hire some one to watch the machines and get a square meal!” Ben
replied. “And buy new tents and provisions and everything of that kind!”
he went on. “I suppose those savages will have a fine time devouring our
perfectly good food.”
“And they’ll probably use the oiled-silk tents for clothing!” laughed
Jimmie. “I wonder if we can buy more at Quito.”
“Of course we can!” replied Ben. “Quito has a hundred thousand
inhabitants, and there are plenty of European places of business there!”
The _Bertha_ with Glenn and Carl on board was some distance in advance,
and directly the boys on the _Louise_ saw the leading machine swing
about in a circle and then gradually drop to the ground. Ben, who was
driving the _Louise_, adopted the same tactics, and very soon the two
flying machines lay together in an open field, perhaps a mile distant
from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, the city known throughout the world
as the “City of Eternal Spring.”
It was dark at the ground level, there being only the light of the
stars, faintly seen through drifting masses of clouds, many hundred feet
higher here than those which had nestled over the valley.
“What next?” asked Carl as the four boys leaped from their seats and
gathered in a little group.
“Supper next!” shouted Jimmie.
“But we can’t all leave the machines!” declared Glenn.
“Don’t you ever worry about the machines being left alone!” asserted
Ben. “Our lights will bring about a thousand people out here within the
next ten minutes. Dark as it is, our machines were undoubtedly seen
before we landed, and there’ll soon be an army here asking questions.
We’ll have little trouble in finding English-speaking people in the
mob.”
“I guess that’s right!” Jimmie agreed. “Here comes the gang right now!”
A jumble of English, Spanish and French was now heard, and directly a
dozen or more figures were seen advancing across the field to where the
flying machines had landed.
“There’s some one talking United States, all right!” Jimmie declared.
Directly the visitors came up to where the boys were standing and began
gazing about, some impudently, some curiously and some threateningly.
“Keep your hands off the machines!” Glenn warned, as a dusky native
began handling the levers.
The fellow turned about and regarded the boy with an impudent stare. He
said something in Spanish which Glenn did not understand, and then
walked away to a group of natives who were whispering suspiciously
together.
“Where are you from?” asked a voice in English as Glenn examined the
levers to see that nothing had been removed or displaced.
“Gee!” exclaimed Jimmie. “That United States talk sounds good to me!”
The man who had spoken now turned to Jimmie and repeated his question.
“Where do you boys come from?”
“New York,” Jimmie replied.
“And you came across the Isthmus of Panama?” was the next question.
“Sure we did!” answered the boy.
“Well,” the stranger said, “my name is Bixby, Jim Bixby, and I’ve been
looking for you for two days.”
“Is that so?” asked Jimmie incredulously.
“You see,” Bixby went on, “I am a dealer in automobile supplies,
probably the only one doing a large business in this part of the
country. Some days ago I received a telegram from Louis Havens, the
millionaire aviator, saying that four pupils of his were coming this
way, and advising me to take good care of you.”
“Where did Mr. Havens wire from?” asked Jimmie.
“First from New York,” was the reply, “and then from New Orleans. It
seems that he started away from New York on the day following your
departure, and that he has been having trouble with the _Ann_ all the
way down. His last telegram instructed me to ask you to wait here until
his arrival. He ought to be here sometime to-morrow.”
“That’ll be fine!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“And now,” Bixby went on, “you’ll have to employ two or three fellows to
watch your machines for the night. The natives would carry them away
piecemeal if you left them here unguarded.”
“Perhaps you can pick out two or three trusty men,” suggested Glenn.
“I have had three men in mind ever since I received my first message
from Mr. Havens!” replied Bixby. “When your machine was sighted in the
air not long ago, I ’phoned to their houses and they will undoubtedly be
here before long.”
“How’ll they know where to come?” asked Jimmie.
“Don’t you think that half the people in Quito don’t know where these
wonders of the air lighted!” Bixby laughed. “The news went over the city
like lightning when your planes showed. Your lights, of course, revealed
your exact whereabouts to those on this side of the town, and telephones
and messenger boys have done the rest.”
While the boys talked with this very welcome and friendly visitor, the
clamor of an automobile was heard, and directly two great acetylene eyes
left the highway and turned, bumping and swaying, into the field.
“There will be damages to pay for mussing up this grass!” Carl
suggested, as a fresh crowd of sight-seers followed the machine into the
enclosure.
“Of course,” replied Bixby, “and they’ll try to make you pay ten times
what the damage really amounts to. But you leave all that to me. I can
handle these fellows better than you can!”
“We shall be glad to have you do so!” Glenn replied.
In a moment the automobile ran up to the planes and stopped. Of the four
men it contained, three alighted and approached Bixby.
“These are the guards,” the latter said turning to the boys.
The men, who seemed both willing and efficient, drew a long rope and
several steel stakes from the automobile and began enclosing the
machines with the same. As the rope was strung out, the constantly
increasing crowd was pushed back beyond the circle.
“Won’t they make trouble for the guards during the night?” asked Ben.
“I think not,” was the reply. “I have already arranged for a number of
native policemen to assist these men.”
“Gee!” exclaimed Carl, “I guess Mr. Havens picked out the right man!”
“How did he know we were going to stop at Quito?” asked Ben.
“He didn’t know!” replied Bixby. “But he surmised that you’d be obliged
to land here in order to fill your fuel tanks.”
“Well, we didn’t come here for that purpose,” laughed Glenn. “We came
here because the savages chased us out of a cute little valley about
twenty miles away!”
“It’s a wonder you got away at all if they saw you!” said Bixby.
“I guess they didn’t seem to understand about our motors getting into
the air!” laughed Jimmie. “The minute the wheel left the ground their
war-cries ceased.”
“It’s a wonder you were permitted to get to the machines at all if they
caught you away from them!” said Bixby.
“Aw, we always have the luck of the Irish,” Jimmie replied. “The
shooting and the display of electric searchlights kept them away until
we got into the seats and our way of ascending into the sky did the
rest.”
“You are very lucky boys!” insisted Bixby.
“It’s nice to hear you say so!” Ben answered, “because we’re going to
follow this line of mountains down to Cape Horn, and visit every ruined
temple on the route that has a ghost on its visiting list.”
“If you’ll listen to the stories you hear in the cities,” laughed Bixby,
“you’ll visit a good many ruined temples.”
“Glenn was telling us about a temple down on Lake Titicaca,” Ben
replied. “He says that figures in flowing white robes appear in the
night-time, and are seen by the light that emanates from their own
figures! He says, too, that there are illuminations of red, and green,
and yellow, which come from no determinable source, and that there are
noises which come out of the clear air unaccounted for!”
“There is such a temple, isn’t there, Mr. Bixby?” asked Glenn.
“There is a temple about which such stories are told,” laughed Bixby.
“Are you boys thinking of going there?”
“Sure thing, we’re going there!” asserted Jimmie.
During this conversation the three men who had been employed by Bixby to
guard the flying machine during the night had been standing by in
listening attitudes. When the haunted temple and the proposed visit of
the boys to it was mentioned, one of them whose name had been given as
Doran, touched Jimmie lightly on the shoulder.
“Are you really going to that haunted temple?” he asked.
Jimmie nodded, and in a short time the four boys and Bixby left for the
city in the automobile. As they entered the machine Jimmie thought that
he caught a hostile expression on Doran’s face, but the impression was
so faint that he said nothing of the matter to his chums.
In an hour’s time Bixby and the four boys were seated at dinner in the
dining-room of a hotel which might have been on Broadway, so perfect
were its appointments.
“Now let me give you a little advice,” Bixby said, after the incidents
of the journey had been discussed. “Never talk about prospective visits
to ruined temples in South America. There is a general belief that every
person who visits a ruin is in quest of gold, and many a man who set out
to gratify his own curiosity has never been heard of again!”