THE MIDNIGHT BELL.
It required considerable persuasion on the part of Frank and Harry to
induce Mr. Chester to allow them to undertake a trip which, to say the
least, was hazardous. After a long talk, however, it was agreed that the
boys were to be allowed to go providing that if they did not return
within the next three days they were to use every effort to notify their
father of their whereabouts.
All opposition being overcome, the boys, after a hearty meal, made a
change into light woolen shirts, khaki trousers and rubber-soled canvas
shoes. Soft felt hats of the army type completed their attire, and when
they had each buckled on a belt to which were strapped magazine
revolvers and slung field-glasses and water-padded canteens over their
shoulders they were practically ready for their bold dash.
Frank at once made a hasty survey of the ground surrounding the
palm-thatched aerodrome and decided that with a little clearing the
_Golden Eagle_ could be started without any difficulty if no wind got
up. A force of men was at once put to work with machetes and long before
noon a “runway” of five hundred yards leading downhill had been
cleared,—Frank calculating that this would be sufficient to allow the
aeroplane to lift and clear the taller banana bushes. The gasolene for
the sixty-gallon tank had been shipped from Greytown at the time that
Frank and Harry tuned up the _Golden Eagle’s_ engine, and besides
filling the tank to its capacity they loaded their craft up with several
five-gallon cans for a reserve supply. A stock of the best cylinder oil
and grease for the “screw-up” grease cups that lubricated the crank
shafts completed the engine outfit.
The boys calculated on using a pint per horsepower an hour of fuel when
the _Golden Eagle’s_ engine was running at its greatest number of
revolutions per minute. As they did not intend to turn up more than 800
revolutions—or R.P.M., as aviators call it—they calculated on a
considerable saving of fuel unless some emergency arose.
While the runway was being cleared, several of the native workmen had
been at work, under the boys’ direction, hauling away the ballast sacks
with which the _Golden Eagle_ had been weighed down at the time of her
engine test. Harry had also produced a brand-new ensign which he ran up
on halyards rigged to a stern stanchion, while his brother and father
gave three hearty cheers for the fluttering Stars and Stripes.
The last thing the boys did before their final farewells was to tuck a
map of the country over which they were to travel in a corner pocket of
the pilot-house, and also load up a waterproof silk tent and an axe,
shovel and pick.
“It’s always as well to be prepared for everything,” Frank remarked when
his father questioned him about the utility of these last articles. “We
don’t know but we may have to dig for water or—or anything in fact in
which these tools will come in mighty handy.”
Mr. Chester nodded admiringly at his son’s foresight.
“That’s right, my boy,” he assented, “be ready for everything and you
can’t go far wrong.”
“Now,” declared Frank, after the boys had gone over every stay-wire,
stanchion and brace on the machine, and the engine had been carefully
wiped and the brass parts polished, “the Chester expedition is ready to
get underway!”
Harry hopped nimbly into the pilot-house and took up his seat at the
rear of the chassis. His job was that of engineer. Captain Frank
followed him a second later and with his hand on the guide wheel to
which the controls were connected gave a comprehensive look over the
aeroplane.
“What would the Junior Aero boys do if they could see us now?” Harry
hailed from his seat, looking up from his adjusting of the grease cups.
“What wouldn’t any of them give to be going along?” responded Frank.
It had been arranged that the _Golden Eagle_ was to be headed toward the
northwest where, like a blue cloud, the Cordillera range loomed against
the sky. Somewhere over in that little known part of the country Rogero
and his men were marching toward the coast and—the thought thrilled in
both the boys’ minds, though neither spoke of it—it was over there, too,
somewhere in those dim blue mountains, that the lost mines of the
Toltecs lay and the little known relics of that ancient civilization.
There was a final handshake between the boys and their father and a
shouted good-bye to Jimmie Blakely.
“All right astern, Harry?” hailed Frank.
“Ay, ay, sir,” responded his brother.
Harry threw in the switch, having opened the valve that connected the
engine with the gasolene tank a few minutes before. At the same instant
Frank started the engine. There was an involuntary cheer from the hands
who had clustered around the machine but at a respectful distance,
recollecting their disconcerting experience at the time that Frank
tested the engine.
With her fifty horsepower whirring round her propellers at eight hundred
revolutions a minute, the _Golden Eagle_ began to move. Faster and
faster she glided over the ground till after a run of about two hundred
yards her forward end lifted and she shot upward into the air as Frank’s
trained hand had directed the upward gliding planes. The engine was
going at its work with a will and the rhythmical purr, so sweet to the
ear of the operator of an aeroplane, showed that there wasn’t going to
be any balk out of it on this trip.
The watchers below saw the _Golden Eagle_, like a great yellow bird,
leave the ground for the upper air in absolute silence. It was such an
impressive sight that even the usually voluble natives failed to make
any demonstration. At a height of about two hundred feet Frank pulled
the control tiller hard over and the _Golden Eagle_ swung round slightly
on an almost even keel from the eastward course she was on and headed
away to the northwest. The last the group at La Merced saw of her she
was a dull bronze speck against the brilliant blue sky, heading steadily
for the mountains at a height of about six hundred feet.
It had been arranged between the boys that they should keep going till
dusk and then alight in some suitable place and make camp for the night.
That they were running great and grave risks they well knew, but neither
of them was of the caliber that talks much of such things and so as they
forged steadily for the hills with the exhaust throbbing as evenly as a
healthy pulse, their conversation was mainly about the course they
should adopt to save Billy Barnes if he had actually fallen into
Rogero’s hands.
That there would have to be quick action neither boy doubted. Rogero was
not the man to stop at half measures, and that Billy would be shot or
tortured after a drumhead court-martial; or, perhaps, with even not that
attempt at legal formality, was practically certain.
As he sat at the wheel, Frank, from time to time, called Harry to take
his place at the duplicate tiller wheel while he with the field glasses
swept the earth below for any sign of any camp. The portion of Nicaragua
over which the _Golden Eagle_ was soaring is very sparsely inhabited.
With the exception of an occasional river bank camp of wandering
rubber-cutters, there is little human life.
“What are we making, should you judge, Frank?” asked Harry, when they
had been underway about an hour with only the monotonous dull-green
jungle, like a leafy carpet beneath them.
“Easily twenty,” replied Frank, “throttled down as we are.”
“Has it occurred to you that we are going to find some difficulty in
securing a suitable landing-place?”
“I’ve been thinking of that,” replied the elder boy, “it is of course
impossible to make a landing anywhere here, and I can’t for the life of
me, see any break in the jungle in the direction we are headed.”
“No,” replied Harry, eagerly, “but have you noticed those hills? As we
get nearer to them I can see through the glasses that there seem to be
rocky plateaus on their upper ridges that would just about suit us for a
settling-down place.”
“What do you propose then?” asked Frank.
“I was thinking that it would be a good idea to speed up a bit so as to
reach the mountains by dark and make camp there till we can scout about
a little and get Rogero’s bearings.”
“That’s a good idea,” replied Frank, “I’ve been thinking anyway that we
would do Billy more harm than good if Rogero knew that we were flying to
his rescue. Our best plan is to pitch our tent there in the hills on one
of the plateaus and work from that point as our headquarters. There’s
the question of gasolene, too, we don’t want to run out of that and the
less needless flying we do the better say I.”
“How far do you suppose those hills are from us now?” asked Harry.
Frank consulted his map.
“Not more than fifty miles at the outside. We can make them easily by
sundown if we speed her up,” he announced. As he spoke he increased the
velocity of the engine till it was running almost at its revolution
capacity. Under the increased impetus the _Golden Eagle_ drove forward a
good ten miles an hour faster.
As the hills grew nearer both boys eagerly focussed their glasses on
them. At a distance the range had not looked to be a very considerable
mountain formation, but on a closer approach the boys were astonished to
see that they were a formidable chain of hills, slashed and cut into
every direction by deep canyons, between which there were several broad
plateaus almost entirely unwooded. In other places giant trees clothed
the hills almost to their summits.
“One of those bare plateaus will make an ideal landing-place,” said
Frank, as the _Golden Eagle_ swung steadily forward toward her decided
destination. “The big trees will screen us from the view of anyone
except an airship scout and I don’t think that there will be much
likelihood of our encountering one of those.”
It was twilight when Frank swung the starboard rudder over and the
_Golden Eagle_ began to describe swooping circles above a plateau about
five hundred feet up on the mountain-side. It was a ticklish job to
land, but under Frank’s skilful manipulation of the planes and rudders
the boys’ ship settled down as gently as a tired bird toward the smooth
surface of the plateau. As she struck the ground in a little cloud of
dust, but without the slightest jar, Harry threw in the brake clutch
that controlled the settling wheels and after sliding about twenty feet,
the _Golden Eagle_ came to a stop in the wildest part of the Cordilleras
of Nicaragua. With a cheer both boys jumped out and excitedly assured
each other that their adventures had really begun at last.
There was but little time that night to survey their landing-place. By
the time the sun dropped, however, they had accomplished such good work
that the tent was up, the portable cots erected and Harry had a fire
lighted; while Frank had announced with a shout of triumph that he had
found a little runnel of water oozing from the mountain-side which by a
little enlargement with the pick and shovel soon formed a pool of clear,
cold water.
It was with light hearts that the boys fell to on a supper of fried
bacon, coffee and bread. There was not time to cook a more elaborate
menu that night, but both declared enthusiastically that what they did
have tasted to them as good as a banquet. Supper over and a lantern
lighted in the tent it was arranged that Frank should take the first
watch, lasting till midnight, and that he should then awake Harry who
would do sentry duty till dawn. Till they learned if they had any
undesirable neighbors this was agreed to be the prudent course.
After Harry turned in Frank looked over his rifle and revolver and took
up a position by the camp-fire. He employed the early part of the night
with pencil and pad, figuring out some aeronautical problems, but as it
grew near to his hour to be relieved he grew so sleepy that he got up
and paced about to fight off his drowsiness. He had made perhaps a dozen
turns up and down in front of the tent when something happened that
caused even the usually hard-headed boy to start violently and feel a
queer sort of chill down his spine.
It was the tolling of a bell!
The hour, the loneliness of the spot all combined to augment Frank’s
startled amazement at the sound. He could hardly believe his ears. With
a beating heart he strained his attention to locate the sound. It seemed
to come from a spot further up the mountain-side. Whoever the
bell-ringer was he paid no attention to time or rhythm. The bell would
toll loud and sharp for a few minutes and then its clangor would die
down and almost cease. Then without any apparent reason it would start
up again furiously. Hurriedly Frank awoke his younger brother.
“What on earth do you suppose it is? Spooks?” demanded the startled
Harry.
“I don’t know, but it’s something human, and I mean to find out before
we leave this place,” declared Frank, doggedly.