FRANK TAKES A DESPERATE CHANCE.
So utterly unexpected was the mysterious sound that even the
steady-nerved Frank lost his wits for a moment and the _Golden Eagle_
gave a dangerous swoop downward as he pulled the wrong plane-control in
his agitation. In a second, however, he had righted his error and she
soared on again on a level keel doing better than thirty miles an hour
under the steady driving of her powerful engine.
Driving an aeroplane at night is a strange sensation. Neither of the
boys was new to it entirely, having made night flights up the Hudson
from New York to Poughkeepsie when they were experimenting with their
ship and wished to keep its performances secret as far as possible.
It is a very different thing, however, to driving along the air above
lit-up towns and a boat-thronged river to be soaring through the
blackness above a dense tropical forest whose only inhabitants are wild
beasts and venomous snakes and, more dangerous than either, tribes of
wandering Indians who would be likely to show small mercy to the young
aviators if they fell into their hands. Both boys were filled with a
sense of isolation and loneliness as the _Golden Eagle_ bore them
through the dark silence toward the distant camp-fires. Moreover both
were thinking of the moment of parting that was to come when they had
arrived near enough to the camp for Frank to put his bold plan into
execution. Both the young aviators realized that a more dangerous
undertaking could not well be imagined but it was not at the danger they
flinched but the idea that this might be the last voyage they would ever
make together.
The fires grew brighter and brighter as the _Golden Eagle_ rushing
through the upper air at express speed drew nearer to them. Frank called
Harry to the wheel and busied himself with the rope-ladder. It was about
thirty feet in length and formed of the best manila hemp rope with tough
lignum vitae rounds. The tops of the ladder were roughened so as to
afford a better hand and foot grip.
Frank’s first step in making his preparations was to hook the two
leather loops at one end of the ladder securely into two hooks screwed
into the edge of the trap-door in the floor of the pilot-house for the
purpose. He then folded it so that the second he was ready to descend he
could throw it out and it would fall in a straight line without
snarling. He then opened the trap and, lying flat on his stomach
carefully scanned through the night-glasses the character of the country
over which they were racing along. Before he did this he gave a sharp
order to Harry.
“Put out the light.”
There was a snap of the switch and the _Golden Eagle’s_ bright eye grew
black.
“Slow down the engine! Muffle her way down!” was the next command, “we
don’t want to have to open her up, with the consequent noise, till we
have to.”
As Harry obeyed, the sharp rattle of the exhaust, which had made the
whole craft quiver under the strain of the hard-driven engine stopped
and became a gentle purr hardly audible.
“That’s better,” commented Frank.
“How does she head for the fires now?” was his next question.
“South-by-a-quarter east,” replied Harry, switching on the binnacle
light for a second and squinting at the compass.
“Bear up two points to the east,” ordered Captain Frank.
Harry obeyed and the _Golden Eagle_ slid away from her straight course
for the lights,—leaving them off on her starboard side.
“Just circle round a few times,” commanded Frank as they grew nearer and
nearer, “the moon ought to be up shortly and then we can get some light
on the subject.”
“It will make us a target for them if they see us,” he went on, “but
that can’t be helped. We must trust to luck and their bad aim.”
As Frank had prophesied the moon shoved the edge of her rim above the
low hills that surrounded the encampment a short time later. From his
lookout place on the floor of the car Frank could see far below him the
silvery radiance that flooded the tree-tops getting stronger and
stronger. It showed him too, to his great delight, that there was a big
space of ground, covered with what seemed to be short scrub, near to the
camp, but separated from it by a dense grove of trees. It looked as if
it would be feasible to swoop down to the earth at this spot close
enough for the daring boy to drop to the ground from the end of the
swinging rope ladder.
“Raise her a hundred feet or so,” said Frank, as soon as he had
completed his survey. “Steer her right over the camp,” he ordered a
second later.
“What?” demanded Harry; not sure that he had heard aright.
“Steer her over the camp,” repeated Frank, “It’s taking a long
chance,—but I’ve got to know the lay of the ground.”
If Frank ordered a thing done Harry was accustomed to obey him without a
word; so he put the _Golden Eagle_ about and pulling the raising plane
levers shot the craft up, till Frank cried.
“She’ll do at that.”
As the _Golden Eagle_ swept high in the air over the sleeping camp Frank
noticed with exultation by the flag seen in the light of the bivouac
fires it was indeed Zelaya’s camp. He also observed that they kept a
very poor watch. Several men, evidently supposed to be doing sentry duty
were asleep round the blaze of one of the outer fires, and only in front
of a small tent detached from a group of several that Frank assumed to
be those of the officers, was there a guard patrolling. This fellow
walked up and down unceasingly with his rifle over his shoulder and from
time to time pulled open the tent-flap and peered in.
“He’s guarding a prisoner,” thought Frank, noticing these actions, and,
he added to himself, “if the prisoner isn’t Billy I shall be much
surprised.”
His survey of the camp completed, Frank had a pretty good mental
photograph of it fixed in his mind. The next step in the rescue of Billy
Barnes was to be the most dangerous; except the actual dash for freedom.
“Now keep cool Harry,” wound up Frank, after the boys had selected the
spot on which the _Golden Eagle_ was to be brought near enough to the
ground in a low curve for Frank to swing himself off onto terra-firma.
“All right Frank,” replied the boy, as he manipulated the needful levers
for the downward swoop. He did not trust himself to say more. The next
minute he felt Frank’s firm grip on his shoulder.
“Don’t take your hand off the wheel,” remonstrated Frank, as Harry
prepared to grip his brother’s hand in farewell. “Good-bye old fellow
and good luck to us all three.”
A few seconds sufficed to throw down the ladder and Frank slid down it
to its lowest rung with the agility of a cat. He hung there on the
plunging contrivance while the _Golden Eagle_ swept downward like a
pouncing hawk. Suddenly there was a jerk and Frank felt the end of the
ladder hit the ground. The _Golden Eagle’s_ impetus had almost ceased at
this lowest point of her swoop and Frank, as he let go with a whispered
prayer, could feel the vibration, even where he hung as Harry, opened
the engine up for the ascent,—without which the _Golden Eagle_ would
have been dashed to pieces.
Frank landed in a pile of low bushes which broke his fall and saved him
from possible serious injury. Harry in performing the ticklish evolution
had been unable to check the speed of the air-craft sufficiently to
avoid giving Frank a severe tumble when he dropped off, as Frank learned
later the _Golden Eagle_ had, in fact, very nearly refused to answer her
helm.
As soon as he collected his senses Frank ducked down behind the clump
into which he had fallen and lay very still. He wanted to ascertain if
the solitary sentry had noticed anything unusual. Apparently he had not,
for the relieved boy could catch the sound of his regular footfalls as
he paced to and fro in front of the tent in which, Frank was pretty
certain, Billy lay a prisoner.
Reassured, Frank crept cautiously through the brush up to the edge of
the grove of trees already mentioned as separating the camp from the bit
of open ground on which he had landed. The solitary tent stood on the
opposite edge of this clump and Frank’s plan was to creep up near to it
under cover of the dark shadow cast by the grove, before he made his
presence known to the occupant.
He threw a glance up from time to time as he made his way carefully over
the ground. Far above him the _Golden Eagle_ was soaring, and Frank knew
that the boy at her helm was at that moment wondering with all his might
how their daring adventure was to turn out. Frank noted with
satisfaction that the _Golden Eagle_ was not nearly as conspicuous as he
had imagined she would have been. In fact if he hadn’t known that she
was up there, he concluded that he would have had to search the sky for
some time before he made her out.
It took him what seemed to be an interminable length of time to reach
the edge of the clump of trees and wriggle his way up to the back of the
tent, but at last he accomplished it, and lay behind the rear flap of
the shelter with nothing to shield him from the eye of the sentry but a
patch of deep shadow cast by the trees behind him.
Slowly Frank extended an arm and cautiously raised the edge of the flap.
He was running a terrible risk he knew. It was, after all, pure
assumption on his part that Billy was in there at all. It might as well
be Rogero’s tent. This thought made Frank pause for a minute but he
determined to go ahead as he had planned. If the worst came to the worst
he had his pistol and he could make a dash for the open and trust to
Harry’s being able to pick him up before they were riddled with bullets
by the machine guns that he could see packed in another part of the
camp.
With fast beating heart he waited till the solitary sentry had reached
the farthest point of his patrol. Then he raised the flap a few inches
and whispered:
“Billy, are you there? It’s me—Frank.”
The answer that came back almost made him forget the terrible risk he
ran and cry out aloud with joy.
“What’s left of me;” came back a whispered rejoinder in Billy’s
well-known tones, “I’d got a hunch you’d come.”