AN “EEL-ECTRIC” DISCOVERY.
Under other circumstances, the situation might have been almost
ludicrous. The Indian, who had so manfully charged upon the impregnable
fortress of the _Wondership_ was, almost literally, hoisted with his
own petard. Two thousand feet above the earth he was clinging with grim
tenacity to the slender framework supporting the rudder. To his simple
mind the occupants of the air-borne machine must have appeared as some
sort of demons from another world, but he had still retained presence
of mind enough to hurl a spear at the first one that approached him,
although there was nothing very demoniacal about Tom’s fat and roseate
face.
The problem now confronting them was to coax this redoubtable savage
to relinquish his position on the rudder frames where he was jamming
the steering wires. Captain Sprowl undertook this task. Taking Tom’s
place he put on as winsome an expression of countenance as his grim
features were capable of assuming.
“Now see here, you benighted son of a sea cook,” he premised, “ain’t
you got sense enough to come in out of the rain?”
Although of course the Indian had no idea of what the valiant skipper
was saying, he regarded him with some interest. Much encouraged, the
captain resumed: “There ain’t no manner of sense in your sitting out
there, my man. In the fust place, you’ve got a long way to drop if
you get chucked off, and in the next you’re jamming our rudder wires.
Savvy?”
The Indian, crouching among the wires and braces, merely stared, not
without awe, at the redoubtable Yankee, who, for his part, was glad to
see that the Amazonian carried no weapons. The spear he had fired at
Tom had apparently exhausted his arsenal.
“That’s my bucko,” went on the skipper coaxingly, “you look almost
human already. Now come home to tea like a good lad. Do you hear me,
you wooden-faced effigy of a cigar store Injun?” he went on in stern
tones. “Come in off that jib-boom, or whatever in thunder it’s called,
or by the piper that played afore Moses, I’ll yank you in.”
The Indian didn’t utter a word.
“Better hurry up!” warned Jack. “We’re going down and I can’t do a
thing with the machine till that rudder wire is free.”
“There, d’ye hear that, you rubber-snouted kanaka?” roared the skipper,
growing purple with rage, his fringe of gray whisker actually appearing
to bristle as he spoke. “D’ye hear that, you tree-climbing lubber you?
We’re going down! down! down! The next stop’ll be the main floor,—the
earth,—and you’ll get a bump that’ll jar the grin off your ugly mug.”
Still the Indian crouched stolidly amidst his “squirrel-cage” of wires
and braces. The captain was exasperated beyond measure.
“You putty mugged Yahoo!” he bawled out in a quarter-deck voice. “For
the third and last time of askin’:—air you a-comin’ aboard? Speak now
or remain forever silent.”
Not a word uttered the quiet, copper-colored figure amid the stern
rigging.
“Ve-ry well, then,” growled the captain, and a muscular arm shot out
and grabbed the astonished Indian by the scruff of the neck, “I’ll have
to get you, my lad.”
With a strength which none of them had guessed the peppery little New
Englander possessed, the captain fairly hove the uninvited passenger
into the machine. The Indian offered no resistance. He appeared to
think that he was irrevocably doomed to death, and that nothing he
could do would save him from his fate.
When the captain had hauled him on board, he lay flat on his face in
the bottom of the tonneau and uttered not a word.
“Get up thar, and act like a Christian,” exclaimed the captain angrily.
“We ain’t goin’ to hurt you, you benighted monkey.”
“I’ll go down,” said Jack presently. “There’s a patch of swamp land
yonder that will make a good landing place. We’ll put him ‘ashore’
there. I guess he can find his way home.”
“The only thing to do with him,” declared the captain. “Of all the
ongrateful scaramouches ever I seed, he’s the wustest.”
Jack set the craft on a downward glide and came to earth on the edge of
a patch of swampy land of some extent. The spot that he had selected
for a landing was slightly higher than the rest and was comparatively
dry. The big craft came down without a bump, and the pumps began
sucking gas from the bag to render the machine less buoyant.
“Now then, you imp of the woods, git up on your hind legs and
skeedaddle,” advised the captain, yanking the Indian to his feet.
The fellow uttered a cry of amazement as he saw that he was once more
on the earth. He looked wildly around him for an instant.
“Go on. Be off with you!” admonished the captain. “You’ve made us
trouble enough.”
Without a word the Indian made a rush for the side of the machine. With
one bound he was over it and in another minute the forest had swallowed
up his rapidly retreating form. Naturally this incident, which had
its serious as well as its ludicrous side, came in for a good deal of
discussion by the adventurers, while the bag was being refilled.
In the midst of their talk, Tom noticed some odd-looking holes which
were distributed at fairly regular intervals all over the swamp.
Motioning to Dick, he slipped out of the machine and proceeded to
investigate. The holes were all about seven or eight feet in diameter
and filled almost to the top with muddy water. They had every
appearance of having been made by man.
Considerably puzzled, the boys examined several of the holes carefully,
and by the motion of the water in one of them judged that they might
contain fish.
They hastened back to the ship and told the professor the result of
their investigations. The little man at once became interested.
“Maybe dey vos spezimens of some kindt,” he declared eagerly. “Ve catch
some, hein?”
“Don’t be too long,” warned Jack; “we’re ready to start now, but we can
wait a while if you don’t take too much time.”
The professor assured him that they would hurry their investigations,
and in company with Tom and Dick he moved off, armed with a big landing
net which formed a part of his paraphernalia. He commenced dabbling
with this in the hole where the boys had noticed the commotion.
Suddenly he gave a shout.
“I godt idt! I godt idt! Himmel! Idt vos a big vun, too. Ach! mein
leiber, I got you, ain’d idt?”
As he uttered the last words, the professor, with an adroit twist of
his net, drew it out of the water, and the boys saw that it was filled
with struggling, snake-like looking creatures of a steely blue hue.
“Eels!” yelled Tom. “We’ll help you, professor.”
As the net was hauled in both boys rushed forward and seized it.
Through the interstices of the netting their fingers encountered
writhing, slimy bodies.
“Ow! Ouch!” screeched Dick, dropping the net with a yell.
“Wow! They bit me!” howled Tom, shaking his fingers vigorously.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the professor, cautiously approaching the net and
poking it with his fingers. Suddenly he gave a bound backward and gave
vent to a yell.
“Himmel! Dey gif me a shock!” he exclaimed dancing about, while his
spectacles bobbed up and down on his nose.
“A shock!” exclaimed Tom incredulously. “They bit _me_.”
“No, idt vos a shock you godt. I ought to haf known bedder. Dese must
be electric eels!” cried the professor.
“Electric eels!” cried Dick. “What, really electric?”
“By all means,” was the professor’s reply. “Dey is fulled mit
electricidy. Nobody hass ever explained chust how idt is, budt such is
der fact. Try dem again undt maype you get annuder shock.”
But Tom wouldn’t. Dick, however, was game, and touched the wriggling
mass in the net gingerly with his finger tips.
“Wow! I got another shock!” he yelled. “Say, by the arc-lights of
antique Arabia, these eels ought to organize an electric railroad
through the jungle.”
He broke out into rhyme at the thought:
“Some electric eels feeling quite jolly,
Said, ‘Let’s run a tropical trolley;
With a motorman monkey,
A sloth for his bunkie,
The eel-lectric trolley is jolly,
By golly!”
“Say, if you do that again, I’ll chuck you into one of these holes,”
declared Tom, laughing in spite of himself.
“It’s a wonder that you inventive young geniuses wouldn’t hitch a tank
full of electric eels on to your ship,” continued the irrepressible
Dick, dancing about at a safe distance. “You would be able to carry
food and power then in the same box. When the batteries, or whatever
the eels make their current with gave out, you could fry ‘em.”
The professor insisted on taking his electric eels back to the ship,
where all on board took turns at “getting shocks.” But it was found
that after a few shocks had been delivered the power of the electricity
died out. Finally the professor threw the eels back into one of the odd
pools that they had made, as it was impossible to carry them with them.
“I had an eel-lusive idea that we might have some for dinner,” said
Dick, who was fond of fried eels.
“Shucks,” declared Tom, “I’d just as soon swallow a dynamo as tackle
those fellows. You would just about get a dish of them down when you’d
start a storage battery in your tummy. Not for me, thanks!”
After the episode of the electric eels Jack lost no time in rising
once more. Again they found themselves winging their way above the
mighty forest. From time to time silvery streams could be seen flashing
among the trees, and here and there were patches of open swamp where
tail jungle brush grew rankly, above which they could catch the hot
breath of miasmatic vapors. In some of the swamps were big pools, and
as the shadow of the flying ship swept over them they could see big
alligators flopping off logs in alarm.
At noon, being over an open spot which appeared to be dry and fairly
free from brush or obstructions, they decided to descend for lunch. Of
course, cooking was out of the question in the air, the boys not daring
to risk having a lighted stove under such a volume of inflammable gas
as was contained in the big lifting bag.