THE FLYING MEN
For a breath the boys stood petrified and then Billy hastily slipped
a cartridge into the rifle he had taken from the dead slave-trader.
But even as he did so the lioness curved her lithe body, as if her
backbone had been a steel spring, and launched her great form
through the air.
That minute would have been Billy's last--for in his excitement he
pulled the trigger before he had brought the rifle to his shoulder
and the bullet whistled harmlessly into the air--but for a strange
thing that now occurred.
While the tawny brute was in mid-spring, her cruel claws outspread
to maul the unhappy reporter, a great spear whizzed straight at her
and buried itself in her heart just behind the left shoulder. With
a howl of pain the brute fell short in her spring and, before she
could make another attack, Billy had reloaded and sent a bullet
crashing between her eyes. As the lioness rolled over dead, the
tall form of a. savage sprung out of the jungle and stood for a
second gazing at the boys, as much astonished, it seemed, at them as
they were at him.
Billy, seeing that the best plan was to be pacific, threw down his
rifle and cried:
"Seesenab," (peace); the word be recollected hearing the big Krooman
use the day that he attempted to take his unlucky photographs.
"Seesenah--white boys," replied the other, the latter words in fair
English and in a deep guttural tone, coming forward with the head of
his other spear held downward in token of peace. "From where come
the white boys--what do they in our land?" was his next question.
"We are lost," explained Billy, "and we are also, blamed hungry," he
added, in a burst of confidence.
The savage smiled and rubbed his stomach.
"That's the idea," cried the irrepressible reporter.
"Heap--empty--savee?"
The man leant over the dead lioness and, using his spear-point as a
skinning knife, rapidly stripped her of her hide. Then, swinging
the pelt over his shoulder he motioned to the boys to follow him.
"I don't know where the dickens he means to take us," confided Billy
to Lathrop as they obediently trailed along behind, "but so long as
we get something to eat I'm so hungry that I don't care if we get
eaten the next minute."
"That's just the way I feel," agreed Lathrop, "and anyhow he seems
to be a pretty decent sort. He saved your life, that's one thing
sure."
"I guess I'll never make a mighty hunter," said Billy dolefully,
"there was a chance to make real Bwana Tumbo shot and I missed it."
The savage stalked along in front of them for some distance till
they suddenly emerged on a small clearing by a river bank, in which
a rough native camp had been pitched. The tents of grass occupied
by the hunters being of a peculiar conical shape, like the pointed
caps that used to be labeled "Dunce."
Much excitement was created by the arrival of the two boys and their
companion, and the hunters crowded round the chums while their guide
explained with a wealth of gesture the incident of the killing of
the lioness, and also the fact that the boys were very hungry.
Several of the men instantly filled wooden bowls with something from
a pot that simmered over the fires and the bowls were thrust before
the two ravenous boys. As there were no forks of course the boys
used their fingers. But this did not interfere with their appetite
and after they had put away two bowls apiece the savages' opinion of
them evidently rose considerably. Among the West African natives a
big eater is esteemed as a mighty man. Lathrop was considerably
embarrassed, however, while he satisfied his hunger by the attention
the hunters bestowed on his red hair. Several of them came up
behind him and rubbed their hands in it as if they imagined it
possessed some sort of medicinal value. Had any one at home dared
to take such liberties with the boy's rubicund locks there would
have been a fight right away, but Lathrop felt that the best policy
to assume in the present situation was silence, and as the old ship
captain said to his mate, "dem little of that."
"I say, Billy," whispered Lathrop suddenly, as, after eating the
stew, they watched the hunters piling their belongings into their
canoes, "you don't suppose they mean to fatten us up to eat us, do
you?"
"Well, we can't starve even if that is the reason," replied the
practical Billy, "but so far they seem friendly enough. They have
not even taken my rifle away."
"That looks encouraging, certainly," replied Lathrop; "if only we
knew where Frank and Harry and good old Ben were we might find this
all very interesting, as it is though--"
"We've got to make the best of it," chimed in Billy, "come on. See
old job-lots is signing to us to come down and get in a canoe."
"Whatever they mean to do with us they seem determined to make us
comfortable," remarked Billy, as the boys took their seats in a
canoe in which skins had been piled to make an easy seat.
For most of that afternoon they paddled steadily up the brown river,
the savages singing from time to time an unending sort of chant,
that sounded like nothing so much as a continuous repetition of:
"I-told-you-so. I-told-you-so. I--told-YOU-SO."
"Hum," commented Billy, "if anyone had told me so I'd have stayed in
New York."
At length after what seemed endless hours of paddling and chanting
the river took an abrupt turn and the boys found themselves at the
foot of a steep cliff that towered up, it seemed, for six hundred
feet at least. It was formed of black basalt and was crowned with a
fringe of contrasting vegetation, but the most remarkable thing
about it was that its surface was literally honeycombed with small
holes from which, as the canoe cortege drew up, innumerable heads
were poked.
An astonishing thing, however, about the men who scrutinized the
lads from their lofty watch-towers, was that they were several
degrees lighter in complexion than the boatmen and almost as white
as the boys in fact. Their features, too, were different. As the
boys looked in wonderment at this extraordinary dwelling-place and
its equally strange inhabitants, Billy gave an excited shout:
"Great jumping horn-toads, look at that!"
One of the light-colored men had emerged from his, hole and with as
little concern as if he were taking a walk had suddenly launched
himself into space. But instead of falling to the ground or into
the river, as the boys had fully expected to see him do, he floated
gracefully to the opposite bank of the river with as little effort
as a settling bird.
"Good land of hot-cakes, Lathrop, do you realize where we are?"
almost shrieked the excited Billy.
"In the village of the Flying Men," stammered Lathrop, as, one after
another, the inhabitants of the rock holes dropped from their aeries
and floated groundwards. As the boys watched they saw distinctly
that each man, from his wrist to his side, was possessed of a sort
of leathery fiber like that of bat's swing, and that as their arms
were of unusual length this fiber supported them in their downward
flights like a parachute.
"I'll never call any one a liar again as long as I live," choked out
Billy, as one after another these strange beings gathered in a
chattering group on the river bank.
"But they can't fly upward," exclaimed Lathrop, pointing eagerly to
where some of the gliders, having swum the river, were nimbly
clambering up a grass rope-ladder to their homes.
"Oh, gee! if I only had a camera," groaned Billy.
"It will be no use telling anyone about this even if we do get out
of here, they'll say that we have had a rarebit dream."
"That's so," assented Lathrop, "and honestly, Billy, are you sure we
are awake?"
"Sure," replied the reporter giving himself a vicious pinch, and
exclaiming "Ouch!"
But there was no time to talk further. Their guide now came up to
them and jumping into their canoe paddled them to where the end of
the rope-ladder dangled in the stream. He pointed upward for them
to ascend. But Billy's curiosity would not let him mount before he
had asked a question.
"Who are these people?" he asked in, for him, an awed tone.
"Very old-time people," rejoined their guide. "We hunt for them,
work for them. They the same as fetish."'
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
altitude 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 passages
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 passage 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 passage. 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 passage. 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.