THE MOVIE BOYS
IN THE JUNGLE
OR
Lively Times Among the
Wild Beasts
BY
VICTOR APPLETON
_Author of “The Movie Boys on Call,” “The Movie
Boys and the Wreckers,” etc._
[Illustration]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
1926
THE FAMOUS MOVIE BOYS
SERIES
BY
VICTOR APPLETON
_See back of book for list of titles_
COPYRIGHT, 1913, 1926, BY
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I UNEXPECTED NEWS 1
II ON TO NEW YORK 12
III THE CIRCUS WRECK 22
IV A GREAT OPPORTUNITY 30
V OFF FOR AFRICA 40
VI AN OLD FRIEND 50
VII BAD NEWS 56
VIII INTO THE INTERIOR 65
IX THE SAFARI 72
X AT A BIG RISK 84
XI “FORWARD!” 93
XII AT THE BURNED STATION 103
XIII THE LION HUNT 113
XIV THE WRONG TRAIL 121
XV AT THE WATER HOLE 132
XVI A RHINOCEROS CHARGE 139
XVII THE ELEPHANT TRAIL 148
XVIII SOME RARE PICTURES 154
XIX A SHOT IN TIME 161
XX DOWN THE RIVER 167
XXI THE LONE MESSENGER 172
XXII AN AFRICAN CAMP 179
XXIII THE ATTACK 186
XXIV A VICTORY 196
XXV SISTER JESSIE 205
THE MOVIE BOYS IN THE JUNGLE
CHAPTER I
UNEXPECTED NEWS
“That’s the way to do it! Jump right into the surf and get after her,
Mr. Piper!”
“Move a little faster, can’t you?”
“If he doesn’t that big wave is going to get him as sure as fate!”
“There he goes! Stop those moving picture machines, boys!”
A big wave came tumbling up the beach, rolling over and over in its
foamy grip a man clad in a life guard’s bathing costume; while farther
up the sands two lads, at the handles of moving picture cameras, ceased
grinding away at the film, and doubled up with mirth.
Then, when the wave had spent its force, the man arose, got rid of the
water in his eyes and the sand in his mouth, and exclaimed:
“I knew it! I knew something would happen if you tried one of these
lighthouse dramas! I’m done! I quit here and now!”
“Oh, C. C., just one more trial!” pleaded a man who seemed to be a
theatrical manager. “You can do it if you try again; I’m sure you can!”
“Never again!” cried the man, and then the two boys and the other
members of the company gathered about him to use their persuasion.
“C. C. is up to his old tricks; isn’t he, Blake?” remarked one of the
lads, as he looked at his moving picture machine to see how many feet
of film had been registered.
“That’s what he is, Joe,” responded the other youth. “But I don’t know
as I can blame him this time. Something did happen, in spite of the
fact that he’s always predicting calamities that seldom come to pass.”
“Think they’ll get him to try it again?”
“Oh, yes, I guess so. Mr. Ringold and Mr. Hadley generally get what
they want. There, he’s going to do it over again. I guess we’d better
get back to our machines,” for the lads had joined the group about the
man in bathing costume.
“Well, I’ll try that rescue scene once more,” finally announced the
person who had been designated as Mr. Piper and also as C. C.
“But it does seem,” he went on, “that I always have to do all the work
in these tank dramas. I’m the one that’s always falling in the water
and getting my death of cold. I always have to do the rescuing. Why
can’t I be rescued myself some time? Though I suppose if I jumped in,
and waited for some one to get me out, they’d let me drown. Oh, why did
I ever go into this miserable business, anyhow?” and while uttering
these dismal words the man made a series of comical faces that sent the
others into spasms of laughter.
“Oh, cheer up, Gloomy!” cried one of the young ladies of the company.
“You’ll be happy yet.”
“I doubt it,” came the answer. “But go ahead!”
“All ready out there!” called Mr. Ringold, head of the Film Theatrical
Company, which was making a series of dramas for moving pictures on the
lower California coast, near San Diego. “All ready out there in the
boat! C. C. is going to try the rescue once more.”
“And look out for the big waves, C. C.,” advised the manager. “Just
swim as you always do. You’ve been in the surf before. And you’re
supposed to be a life guard, you know. They can swim like fishes.”
“I’m not a fish!” declared the actor.
“Be ready, Miss Lee!” called Mr. Ringold, to a young lady, who was out
some distance on the lazily rising and falling ocean, in a small boat.
“Remember you’re supposed to be adrift in an open craft--you have been
lost for days and days. You finally get near shore and the life guard
sees you. He swims out at the peril of his life and rescues you.”
“That’s it--always at the risk of my life,” grumbled C. C. Piper, to
give him his right name. “If I don’t drown, I get my death of cold!”
“Go ahead!” cried Mr. Ringold, impatiently. “Remember, Miss Lee, you’re
supposed to be nearly starved. The life guard brings you in and carries
you to the lighthouse. There you fall in love with the young keeper,
and the life guard and he have trouble over you. But we’ll get those
scenes later. All ready now, C. C. Jump in. Joe--Blake, be ready with
your cameras there!”
“All right!” cried the two lads, and, as the actor once more plunged
into the surf, Joe and Blake began turning the handles of the moving
picture cameras.
The machines clicked and purred as the film unwound from one reel,
passed behind the lens with its rapidly opening and closing shutter,
and then was wound on another reel, pictures being taken at the rate of
sixteen per second.
This time nothing happened. C. C. swam out to the boat containing Miss
Lee, one of the younger actresses, brought her to shore, and she was
carried into the lighthouse, which was near at hand.
“That’ll be all for the present, boys,” directed Mr. Ringold. “The next
scenes will take place in the lighthouse, and I’ll have to arrange for
some lights there, as it’s too dark to get the pictures without. I
won’t need you for several hours, and then this will bring our work on
the Pacific coast to a close.”
“That lets us out, Blake,” said one lad to the other. “What shall we
do?”
“Go back to the boarding house and finish packing up, I guess. If we’re
going to make that trip to China, to look for your sister, who is
supposed to be with some missionaries there, we’ve got lots to do yet.
Where is your father?”
“He went to the postoffice to see if there was any mail. He expected
something from that missionary to whom he wrote for more explicit
directions how to get to the station where my sister Jessie is supposed
to be. He had rather indefinite ones when he started for Hong Kong,
just before he was wrecked.”
“That’s so. I say, Joe! It’s going to be quite an experience for us to
go to China. I’m glad you thought of taking a moving picture camera
along. We will get some good films, I believe.”
“So do I, but I won’t be much interested in them until I find my
sister.”
“I suppose not. Well, come on back to our shack,” and the two lads,
Joe Duncan and Blake Stewart, moving picture operators, who had been
engaged to “film” a series of dramas on the Pacific coast for Mr.
Ringold, packed up their machines and left the beach. The theatrical
company went inside the government lighthouse, which they had been
permitted to use for part of the moving picture play.
Some months before, Joe and Blake, after a series of strange
adventures, which I shall tell you about in brief, presently, reached
San Diego with the company. Joe was on the track of his father, whom
he had not seen since he was a baby. He learned that Mr. Duncan was an
assistant keeper at the very lighthouse in which the little drama was
now taking place.
But Mr. Duncan had left there just before Joe and his chum, Blake,
arrived. It was said he had fled to escape being arrested as a wrecker
of ships by means of false lights, but this was disproved, and it was
learned that Mr. Duncan had set out for China to find his daughter
Jessie, who had disappeared at the same time as had Joe.
But the vessel on which Mr. Duncan sailed was wrecked. He was picked up
by a ship bound for San Francisco, and this craft foundered, too, in a
great storm near San Diego.
It chanced that Mr. Ringold wanted moving pictures of a storm and a
wreck, and while the life savers were rigging up the breeches buoy to
bring ashore the unfortunates, Joe and Blake took moving pictures of
the stirring scene.
The last to come ashore was the captain and Mr. Duncan, and thus Joe
found his father. The latter cleared himself of the false charge,
and told how he had been seeking his daughter, who was said to be a
missionary’s helper in China.
Of course, Joe at once decided to give up his work for the Film
Theatrical Company and accompany his parent on the quest, and Blake
elected to go with his boyhood chum. But there were a few moving
pictures yet to be taken to finish the work on the coast, and the boys
agreed to do them for Mr. Ringold. This was what they were engaged on
when the present story opens.
“I wonder what it will be like in China?” mused Joe, as he and his chum
walked on.
“Oh, just like what we’ve read about, I expect. Men with pigtails, and
women with fans, tea gardens, vases, dragons, and all that.”
“We ought to get some pretty good pictures, then,” went on Joe.
“That’s right,” agreed Blake.
“I can hardly wait to start,” continued his chum. “To think that I’ve
found my father, when I never expected to see him again, and that I’m
going to have a sister. I’ll soon have quite a family, Blake.”
“That’s what you will. Well, I wish you luck. I wonder what your sister
Jessie will be like?”
“She’s about a year older than I am,” remarked Joe. “Dad said so. And
he said she was very pretty when she was a baby. Poor Jessie! To think
that she doesn’t know she has a father any more than I did a few months
ago. Won’t she be surprised when we come walking in on her, over in
China, and ask for a cup of tea?”
“I guess she will, Joe. Well, I’m going to pack up. We have only about
a week more here, and then Ho! for Hong Kong!”
“That’s right. Say, I’ll need two trunks to take all the truck I’ve
accumulated since we came here.”
“You’ll have to leave some of it, I reckon.”
For a time there was silence in the rooms of the two lads, broken only
by the noise they made in packing their trunks. Presently Joe said:
“Seems to me Dad is a long while coming back from the postoffice,”
for Mr. Duncan had taken up his residence with his son in the big
theatrical boarding house on the beach.
“It’s quite a walk into town,” observed Blake.
“I’ll tell you what let’s do,” suggested his chum.
“What?”
“Let’s walk in and meet him. Then I’ll know sooner just where my sister
is. I want to write to her.”
“All right, I’m with you; come on,” and the two, leaving their packing
half finished, started for San Diego, which was some miles from the
little fishing settlement of Chester, where most of the films had been
made.
“That looks like him coming,” observed Blake, some time afterward, when
he and his chum had walked on for a considerable distance toward the
town. “It walks like him, anyhow.”
“Yes, that’s Dad,” observed Joe. “Say, do you know he’s just like I
pictured him in my mind, after we met Uncle Bill, the time he rescued
us from those Moqui Indians. Dad is just as I thought he’d be; a bit
younger, perhaps, but otherwise the same.”
“That’s good. It’s nice not to be disappointed. But he seems to have a
letter, Joe.”
“That’s right; he has. I hope it’s from Jessie, though that can hardly
be, as Dad only wrote to the missionary headquarters in New York to
find out her exact location in China. But he sure has something,” and
Joe looked closely at the man who was approaching, holding in his hand
a bit of paper.
At that moment Mr. Duncan looked up and saw his son and the latter’s
chum. But he did not quicken his pace, though Joe broke into a run.
“Hello, Dad!” he cried. “Any news?”
“Yes--there--there’s some news, Joe,” was the answer.
“That’s rather odd,” mused Blake. “He doesn’t speak as if it was good
news. I wonder if anything could have happened?”
The same thought must have come to Joe, for he hesitated a moment, and
then, hastening on, was soon at his father’s side.
“What’s the matter, Dad?” he exclaimed. “Is anything wrong? Isn’t
Jessie in China? Is she--is she dead?”
“No, Joe, not dead, as far as I can make out, but I have unexpected
news just the same--news I don’t like!” and he looked at the letter in
his hand.
“What is it, Dad? Tell me!” urged his son. “Has anything happened to
Jessie? Isn’t she in China?”
“No, Joe, she isn’t.”
“Where is she?”
“Why, this letter from the missionary society says she changed her mind
at the last minute, and instead of going to China went to the interior
of Africa.”
“To Africa!” cried Joe.
“Yes, into the jungle; and Joe,” went on Mr. Duncan, with a tremor in
his voice, “it’s in a locality where the natives are said to be none
too friendly. Poor Jessie! My poor little girl!” and Mr. Duncan turned
his face away.