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CHAPTER XXV
QUATTY AS A SCOUT

Acting on Billy’s suggestion Lathrop did not, as we know, wireless any news of the disappearance of Ben Stubbs to the Boy Aviators. He in fact agreed, after some pondering of the situation, with the reporter’s opinion that it was needless to worry them when they already had their hands full. The night after Ben Stubbs’ mysterious vanishment was passed in no very agreeable way by the young dwellers at Camp Walrus and as for Pork Chops his wails when he learned of it rang to heaven and back again.

“Ah jes’ knowed dat dis yer trip was hoodooed fum de moment dat Marse Frank got dat lil’ green mummery from dat moonshine man,” he said gloomily, and made dire and dismal prophecies till Billy, seeing that Lathrop was very nearly breaking down under the strain, packed the skipper of the Carrier Dove off to bed. Billy and Lathrop spent most of the night hours – except when they fell into troubled dozes from time to time – seated beside the silent wireless instrument, hoping against hope that news of some kind might be received from the boys. Ben’s self-reliance and adaptability had made itself so manifest on the expedition that, as Billy said, it seemed impossible to believe that any really serious mishap had befallen him.

Again and again as they sat by the fire the boys went over and over the puzzling affair. Lathrop repeated his story to Billy a dozen times and each time the young reporter asked for a repetition hoping that some point that would shed a light on the mystery might have been omitted by the other. But Lathrop’s recitals of the incident varied not at all and Billy was fain to give it up at last.

“I’ve worked on a lot of queer disappearance cases,” he remarked sententiously, “but this has them all beaten by ten blocks and the City Hall.”

And when Billy dropped off into a troubled nap he had a vivid dream that his city editor had presented him with a big crocodile, stuffed in a lifelike manner and equipped with silver teeth and claws of enormous size. The young reporter was in the midst of an elaborate speech of thanks when he awoke and found that the first gray heralding of dawn was broad in the east and that the great multitude of herons and fish-eating birds that roosted among the islands was already beginning its pilgrimage to the feeding grounds on the oyster bars of the Archipelago. Dawn in the Everglades is a beautiful and impressive sight, but Billy at that time had no eyes for it. His sole thought was to find Ben Stubbs. He therefore aroused Lathrop and the two boys, after routing out Pork Chops and making him cook them a quick breakfast and put them up a light lunch, started for the canoes, determined to circumnavigate the island in search of their missing comrade. Carefully they explored every inch of the soft muddy beach and in due time arrived at the spot where several feet, intermingled in an inextricable pattern, marked the spot where the Seminoles had blindfolded and kidnapped Ben.

Billy, with a reporter’s trained instinct, was on his hands and knees in a minute and came amazingly near reconstructing the scene of Ben’s capture.

“Ben was seized by several men – Indians I should say. He made a brief resistance but was overpowered and dragged some distance and then carried. He was then hurled into an Indian canoe, which was followed by two others, and taken to some Indian village; where or why, I don’t know,” he declared.

“Well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Lathrop, laughing, in spite of his heavy heart, at Billy’s surprising enthusiasm, which led him to construct what seemed to the other boy at best a fanciful theory, “like Dr. Watson I can understand part of your reasoning, namely that he was seized by Indians for I can see the marks of their moccasins, I can also understand – knowing Ben as I do – that he struggled;” he chuckled again as he pictured the wiry, steel-muscled Ben laying out his captors, “but for the rest please explain.”

“It’s simple enough, my dear Watson,” said Billy in the manner of the celebrated sleuth of fiction, “Ben’s boots had hob-nails – very well, I can see that after stamping round a lot, hob-nails were dragged by moccasins – see the little lines they made in the sand? Then the lines stop but there are no more hobnails, clearly then he was carried.”

“Yes, but the two canoes that followed the one they put him in?” asked Lathrop. “How do you know that there were two others?”

“Ridiculously simple,” replied Billy, “here is the mark made by the keel of one canoe; beyond that, my dear Watson, if you will use your eyes, you will see two other keel marks – hence three canoes.”

“Well, I am a dummy,” exclaimed Lathrop, considerably vexed that he had not puzzled the problem out for himself, “but I don’t see how that puts us any further – in fact it makes it more inexplicable for the Indians, through that rascal Quatty, promised us that they would not molest the camp and yet, if your theory is the right one, they have carried off one of the most valuable members of our party.”

“Hum,” said Billy and scratched his head, “there’s one thing, however,” he said consolingly, “they can’t mean him any real harm or else they would probably have killed him right here.”

“Maybe they are cannibals and mean to eat him,” suggested Lathrop.

“He’d be a pretty tough morsel,” laughed Billy, “but don’t worry about that, Lathrop, the Seminoles are not cannibals and from all I hear are pretty good sort of people, as Indians go. I have got a sort of an inkling that we shall hear from Ben before very long in some way or another.”

“I hope so,” said Lathrop and then – there being nothing else to do – they paddled back to the camp. It was then past noon and after waiting for some word from the boys for an hour or more their two comrades determined to call them up and acquaint them with what had happened.

Patiently Lathrop operated the Golden Eagle’s call for half-an-hour or more.

“What’s the matter?” asked Billy, seeing a troubled look on the boy’s face.

“I don’t understand it,” responded the other boy, “I can’t raise them.”

“Keep on trying,” urged Billy.

But it was no good, there was no answer from the Golden Eagle for a reason that our readers know. At the time that Lathrop was shooting his urgent summons into space the boys were lying in the stocks on Captain Bellman’s island.

Thoroughly alarmed Lathrop sent out the navy call and after a short time got into communication with the Tarantula.

Lieutenant Selby himself responded, after the operator had told him of Lathrop’s grave news. For an hour he and Lathrop talked across space and it was finally agreed that the Tarantula was to send a detachment of men to the island with a machine-gun and other provisions and that if the boys did not shortly reappear a relief expedition would be started into the interior after them.

“What is your latitude and longitude?” spelled out the Tarantula’s wireless, when the arrangements had been completed. At Lathrop’s request Billy hurried into the hut and fetched out Frank’s log-book in which, in his neat writing, the position of the island was jotted down:

“Latitude 25° 29’ 30" N,” he read out, “Longitude 80. 56. 45. W.”

As the young reporter read off Frank’s entries Lathrop rattled them out on the wireless and when they had been repeated through the air, to make certain they were correct, he cut out the instrument.

“It’s queer that if Frank’s information was correct that there is no sign of the submarine at the mouth of Jew-Fish River,” remarked Lathrop.

Billy agreed with him.

“How far is the river mouth from here?” he asked. Lathrop fetched the map and weighting down the corners with stones till it lay flat on the ground, both boys studied it intently. Lathrop announced, after a few minutes’ figuring with dividers and compass, that the river – at the mouth of which the submarine of the Far Eastern power was supposed to be, – was not more than ten miles from the island on which they were then encamped.

“If only the boys were here we could make it in the canoes in a short time,” sighed Billy, “but what are we to do? we don’t know a thing about navigation and we could never find it without Frank.”

“That’s so,” agreed Lathrop. “Oh,” he burst out suddenly, “I wish we’d never seen the Everglades. If only we could get safe on board the Tarantula I believe I’d stay there till she sailed for home.”

“And leave the boys here,” exclaimed Billy, “not much you wouldn’t – not if you are the kind of boy I take you for. Cheer up, Lathrop, we’ll pull out all right. I was with Frank and Harry in Nicaragua in places that you’d think three boys could never have escaped from, but we got through all right and we’ll get through this – try that old sparker of yours again.”

Lathrop once more adjusted his operator’s harness and sent wave after wave humming through the air in search of the Golden Eagle II’s answering vibrations, but no reply came and at last he gave up in sheer weariness.

“It’s more than fifteen hours since we have heard from them,” he said in despair, “and Frank promised not to remain out of communication with us for long, unless something very serious had occurred. What can be the matter?”

“Perhaps her apparatus is out of order,” suggested Billy, “and they are not getting your calls.”

“With an expert like Frank looking after it – not likely,” replied the other boy. “I wish I could consider it probable.”

Pork Chops had gone down to the canoe anchorage to fish earlier in the afternoon. To his simple mind it was necessary for him to provide his young masters with as good food as possible even though the world were to come to an end; so, seated on a branch overhanging the clear water, he had angled with good luck all the afternoon. As it grew dusk he muttered to himself:

“Dis yar trip ain’t nuffin’ but foolishness no how. Ah jes’ wish ah’d stayed hum at Miami, but Po’k Chops, you fool niggah, you don’ nevah know when youse is well off – no, sah.”

Shaking his head with deep conviction the darky rolled up his tackle and thrusting a long creeper through the gills of his fish he prepared to return to camp. As he rose to his feet, however, he perceived something coming toward him down the channel which caused him to throw up his hands with a yell, letting all his fish drop back into the water and screaming:

“Ghoses!” at the top of his voice, the terrified black raced for the friendly presence of Lathrop and Billy.

The boys’ first impression on seeing Pork Chops’ crazy antics was the wild anticipation that the boys had returned. Their hopes were dashed the next second, however, by the loud wails of their retainer:

“Oh, lawd, Marse Lath’op, oh, lawdy, Mr. Billy. Ah seen a brack ghoses’ coming down de creek. Fo’ de Lawd’s sake, sah, don’ go; he put de hant on you,” he cried in an agonized wail as Lathrop and Billy started for the canoe anchorage to see what had caused the demoralization of Pork Chops. For a minute they were almost as startled as he as their eyes encountered a figure sufficiently alarming to scare a stronger-minded individual than Pork Chops.

Staggering up from the anchorage was a figure in pitiful rags with big, poppy white eyes staring glassily out of a face as black as ink. The figure’s hands were cut and bleeding and it wore, tied about its head, a strip of calico torn from its shirt which lay open, exposing a chest as black as its face. It was several seconds before both the boys recognized this object clearly, and exclaimed in a simultaneous gasp:

“Quatty!”

Quatty it was; but a very different Quatty from the usual debonair black answering to that name. It was more like a ghost of Quatty. It was not till he had been restored with coffee and food that the unfortunate negro was able to render a clear account of himself.

His news was sufficiently disquieting.

“Ah sat der in de lilly canvas boat foh more’n hour,” he said, after he had detailed the rest of the boys’ adventures since leaving the camp, “an’ waited fo’ dem to come back. Ah tho’ght fum de fus’ it was a bobbery kin’ of fing to do, but Marse Frank and Marse Harry – ”

“That will do, Quatty,” said Billy checking the garrulous black, “keep to your story.”

“Wall, sah,” continued Quatty, “I laid dere in de boat waitin’, – it might have been up’ards of an hour – as I said – when I hears de most confounded debbil racket of dogs yelping an’ shoutin’ as ever I did hear – yes, sah. Wall, thinks I, I can creep through the saw-grass a bit an’ see what it is, an’ I does; – den I sees Marse Frank and Harry and a lot of fellers that looked like Chinaman only smaller, an’ a big man who seemed to be boss. Dey had dem two poor boys prisoners an’ fum de looks ob dem I knew I couldn’t hev done no good dere, so I jes’ gets in de boat and paddles and poles back yar and I declare I was mos’ tuckered when dat misbul, ignant savage yander, Po’k Chops, seen me an’ was no mo’ of a gen’l’man dan to run fo’ he life like I been a duppy.”

Of course the first part of his narrative, which is already familiar to our readers, had put the boys in possession of the facts about the Golden Eagle II and the reason they got no answer to their calls. After wirelessing Lieutenant Selby the momentous news the boys held a long consultation, while Pork Chops and Quatty sat on opposite sides of the camp-fire and glowered at each other.

The upshot of their discussion was that it was their duty to set out immediately and if possible recover the air-ship and rescue the boys. It was a plan full of risks, but where the lives of their comrades were at stake neither boy felt inclined to hold back. As Quatty’s strength had by now quite returned, with the quick recuperative powers of the out-door negro, and he was quite sure he could guide them to the mound-builders’ island, as well by night as by day, they agreed to start at once.

The canoes were hastily loaded with duffle and as, with Lathrop and Billy in one and Quatty leading in the other, they made their way along the dark channels, Lathrop was blessing the days back in old New York when he had determined to learn to run an aeroplane.

CHAPTER XXVI
LATHROP AS AN AIR PILOT

“Dere she is, massa.”

Quatty’s dark figure standing up in the canoe was outlined against the deep ultramarine blue of the night sky as he pointed to an indistinct blur on the horizon.

“She” both the boys instantly realized with a thrill was the mound-builders’ island on which the Golden Eagle II had been left. They had been paddling hard all night and sometimes poling where the maze of streams they followed shallowed to a mere puddle. With the sudden nearing of their goal a new fear was borne in upon them.

Would the aeroplane be there? Or had the same mysterious forces that held the Boy Aviators captive wrecked their ship, too?

Silently – after the first flush of the excitement at Quatty’s having guided them right through a wilderness that it seemed impossible to traverse except at random – the boys paddled on. Their minds were both busy with the same question. What would they find when they got there? Perhaps after all their errand would prove to be in vain.

Lathrop was the first to voice the apprehension, they both felt.

“Suppose the Golden Eagle II is gone?” he asked in a low voice.

“Then we will hunt up the Tarantula, get a detachment of bluejackets and clean out the Everglades before we’ll give up the search,” was the determined reply of the young reporter. Billy was rising to the emergency.

The sun had already risen when the outlines of the distant island became visible in detail and Billy, after a long and careful scrutiny through the glasses, declared he could see something that might or might not be the Golden Eagle II perched on its summit. This was cheering news and put new strength into the paddlers’ flagging arms. From that time on till they reached the island and found that all was well the boys did not speak a word, but put all their strength into the work of urging the boats through the water. It was aggravating work too, for at times they would be only half a mile from the island and then they would find that they were compelled to follow another watery path that took them a couple of miles away from their destination. At last, however, the keels of the little flotilla grated on the island and Billy and Lathrop ran up the well-worn trail leading to the summit.

Their joy at finding the air-ship intact may be imagined. It was better luck than they had dared to hope for. Speed was the main thing now and while they might have reached the island of the formula stealers by boat the journey there and back to the coast again by water would have been a tedious one and might indeed, by its very length, have defeated their purpose.

Lathrop’s first care was to examine the gasolene supply. He found to his satisfaction that the tank was more than half full and he immediately dumped into it the contents of the two five-gallon cans of reserve supply that the boys had brought along and which were stored under the transom.

For an hour or more the boy went over the machine carefully, striving to master to the minutest detail its working parts. Lathrop was an aviator and next to the boys, perhaps was as skilled a navigator of aerial craft as the old school in New York had turned out, but he was a little dubious about his ability to run the Golden Eagle II. However, it had to be done and after giving Billy careful instructions about keeping the oil cups filled and seeing to it that the condenser was in constant working order, Lathrop decided that things were about ready for his experimental flight in the Chester boys’ big aeroplane.

“And to think that in White Plains I’d have given my head to see it and here I am going to run her,” he could not help saying to himself as he stepped back and gave a final look over the craft.

Under Lathrop’s direction the aeroplane was wheeled back to the furthest boundary of the top of the mound as he did not want to take chances on not securing a good running start. Lathrop knew that aeroplanes are like horses, they will go well for the man who is used to them under almost any condition; but when a new hand takes control accidents are likely to happen unless the greatest care is used. As he well realized he knew nothing of the habits of the Golden Eagle II, which was a far bigger aeroplane than he had ever run or in fact ever seen.

The boy’s heart beat a little faster as he clambered into the pilot section of the chassis and adjured Billy for the last time to look well to the engine.

“That’s all right,” Billy anxiously assured him, “I’m as good an engineer as Harry himself, or will be,” he added.

“Don’t holler till you’re out of the wood,” said Lathrop, “and obey orders.”

It is curious how circumstances will alter cases. Billy Barnes, by virtue of his greater age and knowledge of the world was easily Lathrop’s leader, ordinarily. Now, however, when Billy was about to enter upon a duty of which he knew nothing and the other boy a whole lot, their positions were readjusted and it was Lathrop who became the leading spirit.

Quatty, it had been agreed, was to be left behind, and was to make his way back to the coast with the canoes as soon as possible and apprise the Tarantula people of what had occurred. He silently watched the boys’ preparations with interest from a safe distance.

“Now, then, crank her up,” shouted Lathrop, as he threw in the spark on the control wheel and waited patiently for results as Billy turned and sweated at the self-starting apparatus.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded, as there was no answering explosion from the engine.

“I don’t know,” stammered Billy wiping his brow, “there doesn’t seem to be anything doing, does there?”

“What can be the matter?” exclaimed Lathrop, throwing out the switch and coming aft.

He examined the spark plugs in turn and found that they were sparking in perfect order. Next came an inspection of the carburettor – that, too, was in good trim. Evidently the reason for the failure to start was not there. Lathrop was puzzled, he had never known an engine to behave in such a mystifying way before. He went over it again part by part, carefully, and cranked it and rocked it till his arms were ready to drop off.

Suddenly an idea struck him – not so much for the reasonableness of it, but because he had examined about every other likely cause of failure to start.

“Well, Billy, you are a wonder,” he exclaimed in a vexed tone, when to his surprise he found that what he tried in desperation proved correct.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Billy cheerfully.

“Why you only forgot to open the gasolene valve, that’s all.”

For the first and last time in his life the reporter was fairly taken back.

“Well, Lathrop, I will admit that I am a first-class, blown-in-the-bottle chump,” he exclaimed contritely. The next cranking proved successful and after the engines had settled down to a quiet easy purr, Lathrop with a warning cry of:

“Hold tight, I’m going to throw in the clutch!” started the big aeroplane on its flight of rescue.

With a swift, wobbling motion that threw Billy from side to side of the car the Golden Eagle II, under the direction of her unskilled pilot, skidded across the top of the mound-builders’ island while Quatty waved his arm in farewell.

Unaccustomed as he was to the Golden Eagle II, Lathrop made his first mistake when he tried to raise her after too short a run. To his despair and amazement she refused to rise when he raised his upward planes. They were traveling over the ground at a rapid speed, now with the two big propellers threshing the air at a rate of 1200 revolutions a minute; the roar of the exhaust was like the discharge of a score of gatling guns.

Lathrop set his teeth desperately and jerked the planes at an even acuter angle in his effort to get her to rise. They were only a few yards from the edge of the mound now and if she refused to rise by the time they reached it they would be inevitably dashed down to death in the ruins of the big sky-skimmer. With that desperate determination that comes in the face of crucial emergency, Lathrop threw in another speed on the engine and they attained a velocity of 1500 revolutions a minute.

“I’ll make her rise or bust,” he said grimly to himself.

But the end he feared did not come; under the added impetus of her increased speed and the acute angle at which the boy had set the rising planes the Golden Eagle II shot into the air, as abruptly as a sky-rocket, as she reached the edge of the mound. The result for an instant, however, threatened to be almost as serious as if she had gone over the edge without rising.

In his excitement Lathrop had set the rising planes at such an abrupt angle that when the ship shot up she reared like a horse, hurling Billy Barnes back among the engines and almost overboard and causing Lathrop to let go of his steering wheel for the fragment of a second to grasp a stanchion. At the same instant the aeroplane, left unguided for a second, gave a sickening plunge sideways, like a wounded hawk. Lathrop in his agitation seized the wheel and gave it a twist that brought her round, it is true, but as her starboard propeller was working in direct opposition to the curve he wished her to describe, he almost twisted her rudder off and made her careen at just as alarming an angle in the opposite direction.

To Billy it looked as if they were gone but Lathrop, who was fast learning the peculiarities of the craft he had under his control, managed by a skillful manipulation to right her and the next minute with her propellers beating the air at top speed the big craft dashed forward as steadily as an ocean liner. It had been a narrow escape, though, and taught Lathrop something about navigating a twin screw air-ship. In a craft of this kind, in a maneuver executed to port, the course of the ship is bound to receive a backward pull from the starboard propeller and vice versa. It is necessary for the operator, then to swing in an easy curve to avoid pulling his steering gear out by the roots and being dashed to death.

“That’s only the overture,” cried Lathrop, exhilarated by the rapid motion as they rushed toward the island, “wait for the big show.”