There was the sound of weeping in the house, the gusty and hopeless
weeping of women. Bell had been walking around and around the plane,
staring at it with his hands clenched. Paula watched him.
"I am thinking," she said in an attempt at courage, "that you said I
must not despair without your permission. But--"
"Hush!" said Bell impatiently. He stared at the engine. "I'd give a
lot for a car. Bolts.... How many hours have we?"
"Four," said Paula drearily. "Perhaps five. You have smashed the radio
in the house?"
Bell nodded impatiently. He had smashed the radio, a marvelously
compact and foolproof outfit, arbitrarily tuned to a fixed short
wave-length. It was almost as simple to operate as a telephone. There
had been no opposition to the destruction. Paula's cousin had disabled
their plane and reported their presence. He was inside the house now,
sick with shame--and yet he would do the same again. In one of the
rooms of the house, behind strong bars, a man was kept who had been an
object-lesson....
"Is there any machinery?" asked Bell desperately. "Any at all about
the place?"
Paula shook her head.
"It may be that there is a pump."
Bell went off savagely, hunting it. He came back and dived into the
cockpit of the plane. He came out with a wrench, and his jaws set
grimly. He worked desperately at the pump. He came back with two
short, thick bolts.
He crawled into the plane again, tearing out the fire wall
impatiently, getting up under the motor.
"We have one chance in five thousand," he said grimly from there, "of
getting away from here to crash in the jungle. Personally, I prefer
that to falling into Ribiera's hands. If your cousin or anybody else
comes near us, out here, call me, and I'll be much obliged."
* * * * *
There was the sound of scraping, patient, desperate, wholly
unpromising scraping. It seemed to go on for hours.
"The wrench, please, Paula."
She passed it to him. The bullet had entered the aluminum crankcase of
the motor and pierced it through. By special providence it had not
struck the crankshaft, and had partly penetrated the crankcase on the
other side. Bell had cut it out, first of all. He had two holes in the
crankcase, then, through which the cylinder oil had drained away. And
of all pieces of machinery upon earth, an aircraft motor requires oil.
Bell's scraping had been to change the punctured holes of the bullet
into cone shaped bores. The aluminum alloy was harder than pure
aluminum, of course, but he had managed it with a knife. Now he fitted
the short bolts in the bores, forced the threads on them to cut their
own grooves, and by main strength screwed them in to a fit. He
tightened them.
He came out with his eyes glowing oddly.
"The vibration will work them loose, sooner or later," he observed
grimly, "and they may not be oil tight. Also, the crankshaft may clear
them, and it may not. If we go up in the ship in this state we may get
five miles away, or five hundred. At any minute it may fail us, and
sooner or later it will fail us. Are you game to go up, Paula?"
* * * * *
She smiled at him.
"With you, of course."
He began to brush off his hands.
"There ought to be oil and gas here," he said briefly. "Another thing,
there'll probably be some metal chips in the crankcase, which may
stop an oil line at any minute. It's a form of committing suicide, I
imagine."
He went off, hunting savagely for the supplies of fuel and lubricant
which would be stored at any emergency field. He found them. He was
pouring gasoline into the tanks before what he was doing was noticed.
Then there was stunned amazement in the house. When he had the
crankcase full of oil the young man came out. Bell tapped his revolver
suggestively.
"With no man about this house," he said grimly, "Ribiera will put in
one of his own choice. And you have a wife and children and they'll be
at that man's mercy. Don't make me kill you. Ribiera may not blame you
for my escape if you tell him everything--and you're hurt, anyway.
Either we get away, and you do that, or you're killed and we get away
anyhow."
He toppled two last five gallon tins of gasoline into the
cockpits--crowding them abominably--and swung on the prop. The engine
caught. Bell throttled it down, kicked away the stones with which he
had blocked its wheels, and climbed up into the pilot's cockpit. With
his revolver ready in his lap he taxied slowly over to a favorable
starting point.
* * * * *
The ship rose slowly, and headed west again. At three thousand feet he
cut out the motor to shout to Paula.
"One place is as good as another to us, now. The whole continent is
closed to us by now. I'm going to try to find that headquarters and do
some damage. Afterwards, we'll see."
He cut in the motor again and flew steadily westward. He rose
gradually to four thousand feet, to five.... He watched his
instruments grimly, the motor temperature especially. There were
flakes of metal in the oil lines. Twice he saw the motor temperature
rise to a point that brought the sweat out on his face. And twice he
saw it drop again. Bits of shattered metal were in the oiling system,
and they had partly blocked the stream of lubricant until the engine
heated badly. And each time the vibration had shifted them, or
loosened them....
They had left the big amphibian no earlier than nine o'clock. It was
noon when they took off for the _fazenda_ of Paula's kin. But it was
five o'clock and after when they rose from there with an engine which
might run indefinitely and might stop at any second.
Bell did not really expect it to run for a long time. He had worked as
much to cheat Ribiera of the satisfaction of a victory as in hopes of
a real escape. But an hour, and the motor still ran. It was
consistently hotter than an aero engine should run. Twice it had gone
up to a dangerous temperature. One other time it had gone up for a
minute or more as if the oiling system had failed altogether. But it
still ran, and the sun was sinking toward the horizon and shadows were
lengthening, and Bell began to look almost hopefully for a clearing in
which to land before the dark hours came.
Then it was that he saw the planes that had been sent for him and for
Paula.
* * * * *
There were three of them, fast two-seaters very much like the one he
drove. They were droning eastward, with all cockpits filled, from that
enigmatic point in the west. And Bell had descended to investigate a
barely possible stream when they saw him.
The leader banked steeply and climbed upward toward him. The others
gazed, swung sharply, and came after him, spreading out as they came.
And Bell, after one instant's grim debate, went into a maple leaf dive
for the jungle below him. The others dived madly in his wake. He heard
a sharp, tearing rattle. A machine-gun. He saw the streaks of tracers
going very wide. Gunfire in the air is far from accurate. A
machine-gun burst from a hundred yards, when the gun has to be aimed
by turning the whole madly vibrating ship, is less accurate than a
rifle at six hundred, or even eight. Most aircraft duels are settled
at distances of less than a hundred yards.
It was that fact that Bell counted on. With a motor that might go dead
at any instant and a load of passengers and gas at least equaling that
of any of the other ships, mere flight promised little. The other
ships, too, were armed, at any rate the leader was, and Bell had only
small arms at his disposal. But a plane pilot, stunting madly to dodge
tracer bullets, has little time to spare for revolver work.
* * * * *
Bell had but one advantage. He expected to be killed. He looked upon
both Paula and himself as very probably dead already. And he
infinitely preferred the clean death of a crash to either the life or
death that Ribiera would offer them. He flattened out barely twenty
yards above the waving branches that are the roof of the jungle. He
went scudding over the tree tops, rising where the jungle rose,
dipping where it dropped, and behind him the foliage waved wildly as
if in a cyclone.
The other planes dared not follow. To dive upon him meant too much
chance of a dash into the entrapping branches. One plane, indeed, did
try it, and Bell scudded lower and lower until the wheels of the small
plane were spinning from occasional, breath taking contacts with the
feathery topmost branches of jungle giants. That other plane flattened
out not less than a hundred feet farther up and three hundred yards
behind. To fire on him with a fixed gun meant a dive to bring the gun
muzzle down. And a dive meant a crash.
* * * * *
A stream flashed past below. There was the glitter of water,
reflecting the graying sky. A downward current here dragged at the
wings of the plane. Bell jerked at the stick and her nose came up.
There was a clashing, despite her climbing angle, of branches upon the
running gear, but she broke through and shot upward, trying to stall.
Bell flung her down again into his mad careering.
It was not exactly safe, of course. It was practically a form of
suicide. But Bell had not death, but life to fear. He could afford to
be far more reckless than any man who desired to live. The plane went
scuttling madly across the jungle tops, now rising to skim the top of
a monster _ceiba_, now dipping deliberately.
The three pursuing planes hung on above him helplessly while the
short, short twilight of the tropics fell, and Bell went racing across
the jungle, never twenty feet above the tree top and with the boughs
behind him showing all the agitation of a miniature hurricane. As
darkness deepened, the race became more suicidal still, and there were
no lighted fields nearby to mark a landing place. But as darkness grew
more intense, Bell could dare to rise to fifty, then a hundred feet
above the tops, and the dangers of diving to his level remained
undiminished. And then it was dark.
* * * * *
Bell climbed to two hundred feet. To two hundred and fifty. With more
freedom, now, he could take one hand from the controls. He could feel
the menace of the tumultuously roaring motors in his wake, but he was
smiling very strangely in the blackness. He reached inside his flying
suit and tore away the front of his shirt. He reached down and
battered in the top of one of the five gallon gasoline tins in the
cockpit with the barrel of his revolver. He stuffed the scrap of cloth
into the rent. It was wetted instantly by the splashing. Another
savage blow, unheard in the thunder of the motor. In the peculiarly
calm air of the cockpit the reek of gasoline was strong, but cleared
away. And Bell, with the frosty grim smile of a man who gambles with
his life, struck a light. The cloth flared wildly, and he reached his
hands into the flame and heaved the tin of fuel overside.
The cloth was burning fiercely, and spilled gasoline caught in
mid-air. A fierce and savage flame dropped earthward. Spark on the
cloth, and the cloud of inflammable vapor that formed where the
leaking tin fell plummetlike, carried the flame down when the wind of
its fall would have blown it out.
The following planes saw a flash of light. They saw a swiftly
descending conflagration tracing a steep arch toward the tree tops.
They saw that flaming vanish among the trees. And then they saw a vast
upflaring of fire below. Flames licked upward almost to the tree
tops....
Bell looked back from two thousand feet. Wing-tip lights were on,
below, and disks of illumination played upon the roof of the jungle
above the fire. The three planes were hovering over the spot. But a
thick dense column of smoke was rising, now. Green things shriveling
in the heat, and dried and rotted underbrush. Altogether, the volume
of smoke and flame was very convincing evidence that an airplane had
burst into flame in mid-air and crashed through the jungle top to burn
to ashes beneath.
* * * * *
But Bell climbed steadily to five thousand feet. He cut out the motor,
there, and in the shrieking and whistling of wind as the plane went
into a shallow glide, he spoke sharply.
"Paula?"
"I am all right," she assured him unsteadily. "What now?"
"There's a seat pack under you," said Bell. "It's a parachute. You'd
better put it on. God only knows where we'll land, but if the motor
stops we'll jump together. And I think we'll have to jump before dawn.
This plane won't fly indefinitely. There's just one chance in a
million that I know of. There'll be a moon before long. When it comes
up, look for the glitter of moonlight on water. With the wing-tip
lights we may--we may--manage to get down. But I doubt it."
He moved his hand to cut in the motor again. She stopped him.
"If we head south," she said unsteadily, "we may reach the Paraguay.
It is perhaps two hundred miles, but it is broad. We should see it.
Perhaps even the stars...."
"Good work!" said Bell approvingly. "_Nils desperandum!_ That's our
motto, Paula."
He swung off his course and headed south. He was flying high, now, and
an illogical and incomprehensible hope came to him. There was no hope,
of course. He had had, more than once, a despairing conviction that
the utmost result of all his efforts would be but the delaying of
their final enslavement to The Master, whose apparent impersonality
made him the more terrible as he remained mysterious. So far they
seemed like struggling flies in some colossal web, freeing themselves
from one snaring spot to blunder helplessly into another.
But the moon came up presently, rounded and nearly full. The sky took
on a new radiance, and the jungle below them was made darker and more
horrible by the contrast.
And when there were broad stretches of moonlit foliage visible on the
rising slopes beneath, Bell felt the engine faltering. He switched on
the instrument board light. One glance, and he was cold all over. The
motor was hot. Hotter than it had ever been. The oil lines, perhaps
the pump itself....
* * * * *
Paula's hand reached back into the glow of the instrument board. He
leaned over and saw her pointing. Moonlight on rolling water, far
below. He dived for it, steeply. The wing-lights went on. Faint disks
of light appeared far below, sweeping to and fro with the swaying of
the plane, bobbing back and forth.
It seemed to Bell that there had been nothing quite as horrible as
the next minute or two. He felt the over-heated, maltreated motor
laboring. It was being ruined, of course--and a ruined motor meant
that they were marooned in the jungle. But if it kept going only until
they landed. And if it did not....
White water showed below in the disks of the landing lights' glow. It
tumbled down a swift and deadly _raudal_--a rapid. And then--black,
deep water, moving swiftly between tall cliffs of trees.
Bell risked everything to bank about and land toward the white water.
The little plane seemed to be sinking into a canyon as the trees rose
overhead on either side. But the moonlit rapid gave him his height,
approximately, and the lights helped more than a little.
* * * * *
He landed with a terrific crash. The plane teetered on the very verge
of a dive beneath the surface. Bell jerked back the stick and killed
the engine, and it settled back.
A vast, a colossal silence succeeded the deafening noise of twelve
cylinders exploding continuously. There were little hissing sounds as
the motor cooled. There was the smell of burnt oil.
"All right, Paula?" asked Bell quietly.
"I--I'm all right."
The plane was drifting backward, now. It spun around in a stately
fashion, its tail caught in underbrush, and it swung back. It drifted
past cliffs of darkness for a long time, and grounded, presently, with
a surprising gentleness.
"Do you know," said Bell dryly, "this sort of thing is getting
monotonous. I think our motor's ruined. I never knew before that
misfortunes could grow literally tedious. I've been expecting to be
killed any minute since we started off, but the idea of being stuck in
the jungle with a perfectly good plane and a bad motor...."
He fished inside his flying suit and extracted a cigarette. Then he
lit it.
"Let's see.... We haven't a thing to eat, have we?"
* * * * *
There was a little slapping noise. Bell became suddenly aware of a
horde of insects swarming around him. Smoke served partially to drive
them off.
"Look here," he said suddenly, "we could unfold a parachute and cover
the cockpits for some protection against these infernal things that
are biting me."
"We may need the parachute," said Paula unsteadily. "Does--does that
smoke of yours drive them away?"
"A little." Bell hesitated. "I say, it would be crowded, but if I came
up there, or you here...."
"I--I'll come back there," she said queerly. "The extra cans of
gasoline here...."
She slipped over the partition, in the odd flying suit which looks so
much more odd when a girl wears it. She settled down beside him, and
he tried painstakingly to envelope her in a cloud of tobacco smoke.
The plague of insects lessened.
There was nothing to do but wait for dawn. She was very quiet, but as
the moon rose higher he saw that her eyes were open. The night noises
of the jungle all about them came to their ears. Furtive little
slitherings, and the sound of things drinking greedily at the water's
edge, and once or twice peculiar little despairing small animal cries
off in the darkness.
* * * * *
The jungle was dark and sinister, and all the more so when the moon
rose high and lightened its face and left them looking into weird,
abysmal blackness between moonlit branches. Bell thought busily,
trying not to become too conscious of the small warm body beside him.
He moved, suddenly, and found her fingers closed tightly on the sleeve
of his flying suit.
"Frightened, Paula?" he asked quietly. "Don't be. We'll make out."
She shook her head and looked up at him, drawing away as if to scan
his face more closely.
"I am thinking," she said almost harshly, "of biology. I wonder--"
Bell waited. He felt an intolerable strain in her tensed figure. He
put his hand comfortingly over hers. And, astoundingly, he found it
trembling.
"Are all women fools?" she demanded in a desperate cynicism. "Are we
all imbeciles? Are--"
Bell's pulse pounded suddenly. He smiled.
"Not unless men are imbeciles too," he said dryly. "We've been through
a lot in the past two days. It's natural that we should like each
other. We've worked together rather well. I--well"--his smile was
distinctly a wry and uncomfortable one--"I've been the more anxious to
get to some civilized place where The Master hasn't a deputy
because--well--it wouldn't be fair to talk about loving you while--"
he shrugged, and said curtly, "while you had no choice but to listen."
* * * * *
She stared at him, there in the moonlight with the jungle moving about
its business of life and death about them. And very, very slowly the
tenseness left her figure. And very, very slowly she smiled.
"Perhaps," she said quietly, "you are lying to me, Charles. Perhaps.
But it is a very honorable thing for you to say. I am not ashamed,
now, of feeling that I wish to be always near you."
"Hush!" said Bell. He put his arm about her shoulder and drew her
closer to him. He tilted her face upward. It was oval and quite
irresistibly pretty. "I love you," said Bell steadily. "I've been
fighting it since God knows when, and I'm going to keep on fighting
it--and it's no use. I'm going to keep on loving you until I die."
Her fingers closed tightly upon his. Bell kissed her.
"Now," he said gruffly, "go to sleep."
He pressed her head upon his shoulder and kept it there. After a long
time she slept. He stirred, much later, and she opened her eyes again.
"What is it?"
"Damn these mosquitos," growled Bell. "I can't keep them off your
face!"