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 shells like that in our party," he went on,
"but I can see by the collection of empty shells 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-Hassan 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 farseeing 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-Hassan
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 grasses 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-Hassan. 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-Hassan. 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-Hassan 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-Hassan--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.
"Who can it be?" exclaimed Frank in a low tone, not daring even to
mention the wild hope that surged in his heart. For a minute he
thought that it might be the missing chums, and that even Harry and,
to a less degree, Ben, shared his thought he saw by their parted
lips and tensely strained eyes.
In absolute silence they listened as the footfalls drew in toward
them, but not by even the wildest stretch of the imagination could
they make out more than one man's footsteps.
Instinctively each member of the party raised his revolver as the
bushes parted and from them tottered a man who was very evidently in
the last stages of exhaustion. The figure staggered forward to the
aeroplane as the boys and Ben lowered their revolvers, seeing that,
whoever the newcomer was there was no fear of violence from him. It
was Ben who recognized him first:
"Sikaso!" he cried, as the figure crumpled up in a heap, completely
exhausted.
The boys rushed to the fallen man's side as they heard the name.
They bathed the huge black's head with water and after a few minutes
he opened his eyes and recognized them with a faint smile. After he
had been given some nourishment he completely recovered from his
spell of weakness which he called:
"Big fool--all same woman," quite omitting to state that he had
traveled almost eighty miles since the preceding midnight.
The boys sat late listening to what the black had to tell of the
attack on the camp--of Professor Wiseman's treachery and death--and
of the carrying off of the boys. Then Sikaso went on to gleefully
relate, while they warmly clasped his mighty hands, how he had
hidden the rest of the ivory and how he had seen Muley-Hassan pass
on his way to the rifled hiding place.
"But Billy and Lathrop, Sikaso, tell us quick, were they with
Muley-Hassan?"
The black shook his head slowly.
"No see Four-Eyes--no see Red Head," he said sorrowfully.
The last ray of hope concerning the fate of the two young
adventurers seemed to have been extinguished.