The Flying Machine Boys in the Wilds. Frank Walton

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      “I have!” replied Ben. “I never leave the camp without one!”

      “Then use it!” advised Glenn, “and we will make for the machines.”

      “Don’t you do it!” advised Jimmie. “They’ll throw spears at us!”

      “Well, we’ve got to have a light in order to get the machines away!” declared Carl. “Perhaps the niggers will run when they see the illumination. The light of a searchlight at a distance, you know, doesn’t look like anything human or divine!”

      It was finally decided to advance as cautiously and silently as possible to the camp and spring at once to the machines.

      “We’ll never be clear of these savages until we get up in the air!” declared Ben.

      “But that will leave our tents and our provisions, and about everything we have except the machines, behind!” wailed Carl.

      “It won’t leave all the provisions behind!” declared Jimmie. “I’ll snatch beans and bread if I get killed doing it!”

      During their progress to the camp the boys neither saw nor heard anything whatever of the savages. They found the fire burning brightly and the provisions which had been set out for supper just as they had been left. The machines had not been molested. In fact, the statue-like savage they had observed examining the flying machine now seemed to have come out of a dream and retreated to his world of shadows again.

      “Perhaps it won’t be necessary to leave here to-night,” Glenn suggested.

      “I don’t think it’s safe to remain,” Ben contended.

      “You boys may stay if you want to!” Jimmie exclaimed. “But Carl and I have had enough of this neck of the woods. We’ll take the Louise and fly over to Quito, and you can find us there when you get ready to move on. You boys certainly take the cake for not knowing what’s good for you!” he added with a grin.

      “Oh, well, perhaps we’d all better go!” Glenn advised. “I don’t see anything nourishing in this part of the country, anyway. If you boys had only brought home a couple of fish it might have been different. I’m of the opinion that a square meal at Quito wouldn’t come amiss just now.”

      “It’s so blooming dark I don’t know whether we can find the town or not,” suggested Carl.

      “Oh, we can find it all right!” insisted Ben.

      “If the savages let us!” exclaimed Jimmie excitedly.

      CHAPTER III.

      A MASTERLY RETREAT

      “I don’t see any savages!” replied Glenn.

      “Can’t you hear them?” demanded Jimmie.

      “I think I can smell something!” Carl exclaimed.

      “Don’t get gay, now!” Jimmie answered. “This is no funny business! If you’ll listen, you’ll hear the snakes creeping through the grass.”

      The boys listened intently for an instant and then, without looking into the tents, sprang toward the machines. It seemed for a moment as if a thousand voices were shouting at them. They seemed to be in the center of a circle of men who were all practicing a different style of war-whoop.

      To this day the boys assert that it was the whirling of the electric searchlights which kept the savages from advancing upon them. At any rate, for a time, the unseen visitors contented themselves with verbal demonstrations.

      “We’ll have to jump out on the machines!” advised Glenn. “We can’t fight a whole army!”

      “Why, there’s only two!” Jimmie taunted. “You said yourself that we saw all the black men there were in this neighborhood!”

      “Aw, keep still,” Ben cried. “We haven’t got time to listen to you boys joke each other! Come on, Jimmie! You and I for the Louise!”

      It was now very dark, for banks of clouds lay low in the valley, but the boys knew that the machines were situated so as to run smoothly until the propellers and the planes brought them into the air. They had provided for that on landing.

      With a chorus of savage yells still ringing in their ears, the boys leaped into their seats, still swinging their searchlights frantically as their only means of protection, and pressed the starters. The machines ran ahead smoothly for an instant then lifted.

      The next minute there was absolute silence below. The boys were certain that if they could have looked down upon the savages who had been so threatening a moment before they would have seen them on their knees with their faces pressed to the ground.

      “They’ll talk about this night for a thousand years!” Jimmie screamed in Ben’s ear as the Louise swept into and through a stratum of cloud. “They’ll send it down to future generations in legends of magic.”

      “Little do we care what they think of us after we get out of their clutches!” Ben called back. “It seems like a miracle, our getting away at all!”

      “Do you really think they are head-hunters?” shouted Jimmie.

      “You saw more of them than I did,” Ben answered.

      After passing through the clouds the starlight showed the way, and in a very short time the lights of Quito were seen glittering twenty miles or so to the south.

      “What are we going to do when we get to the town?” shouted Jimmie.

      “Hire some one to watch the machines and get a square meal!” Ben replied. “And buy new tents and provisions and everything of that kind!” he went on. “I suppose those savages will have a fine time devouring our perfectly good food.”

      “And they’ll probably use the oiled-silk tents for clothing!” laughed Jimmie. “I wonder if we can buy more at Quito.”

      “Of course we can!” replied Ben. “Quito has a hundred thousand inhabitants, and there are plenty of European places of business there!”

      The Bertha with Glenn and Carl on board was some distance in advance, and directly the boys on the Louise saw the leading machine swing about in a circle and then gradually drop to the ground. Ben, who was driving the Louise, adopted the same tactics, and very soon the two flying machines lay together in an open field, perhaps a mile distant from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, the city known throughout the world as the “City of Eternal Spring.”

      It was dark at the ground level, there being only the light of the stars, faintly seen through drifting masses of clouds, many hundred feet higher here than those which had nestled over the valley.

      “What next?” asked Carl as the four boys leaped from their seats and gathered in a little group.

      “Supper next!” shouted Jimmie.

      “But we can’t all leave the machines!” declared Glenn.

      “Don’t you ever worry about the machines being left alone!” asserted Ben. “Our lights will bring about a thousand people out here within the next ten minutes. Dark as it is, our machines were undoubtedly seen before we landed, and there’ll СКАЧАТЬ