CHAPTER IV.A MIDNIGHT ALARM.
“I tell you what,” suggested Andy; “let’s cook our supper here. What’s to hinder, when we’ve got a stove handy, and there’s no great amount of gasolene around? I’m just hungry enough to want to see you throw things about and wrestle with a regular camp dinner. What say, Frank?”
His cousin seemed to reflect.
“Oh! well, I don’t mind,” he presently replied. “Nobody ever knew me to refuse a chance to do my own cooking. But only this once, Andy, remember. We’ll be too busy tomorrow to spend time over a fire. All that will come in time, when we’re off on some of the bully little trips we expect to take, when we get used to piloting our flying machine through the clouds.”
“All right. In the morning we can get breakfast at the house, one at a time, while the other stands guard. After all I guess the only danger is leaving things alone at night. There’s a good moon tonight, too. But since you agree to my game, I’m off to get some grub, and that dandy aluminum camp outfit the colonel gave me on my birthday. Just thechance to break it in. What will I fetch along to eat, Frank?”
“Oh, anything you can grab,” laughed the other, knowing that Andy, being a good feeder, the real difficulty would be in his gathering enough for half a dozen fair meals. “A beefsteak wouldn’t go bad, with some spuds and beans from the garden. And don’t forget the tea, on your life!”
“Listen to him, would you?” jeered Andy, stopping in the doorway to answer. “Why, to hear him talk you’d think he was an old maid. Shall I fetch the cat for you to rub as we sit before the fire? If I had my way it’d be coffee every meal. But I suppose I’ll have to give in like I always do,” and he ran off laughing.
When he came back later he was fairly loaded down with numerous packages, while over his back he seemed to have a little bag thrown.
“Take some of these traps, will you, Frank? That’s the little aluminum cooking outfit in the sack. It nests in a mighty small space, you see, but answers for two persons. But you’ve seen it before and admired it without stint. Just the thing to carry up in an aeroplane, where every ounce of extra weight counts. And I’m pleased to know that you’re going to be the one to take the new shine off my birthday presentfrom the best of guardians, Colonel Josiah Whympers.”
Andy generally pronounced the full name of his guardian. Somehow, he seemed to feel that the old gentleman rather liked to hear it. And besides, it gave an added spice to what he was saying.
Whatever Andy did was right, according to that indulgent party. There might be a limit to his belief in the boy’s capabilities; but if so, it had never as yet been reached.
So, while Frank was once more looking with admiring eyes on the frying pan that could shed its handle, the neat little shiny kettles nesting within each other, the utensils for coffee making, and tea, too, if wanted, not to mention cups and platters, all made of the strongest aluminum, Andy jogged back to the house for another load.
“Here, hold on,” said Frank, looking up when the other had deposited the second assortment of stuff, “d’ye want to swamp us outright? I declare if you haven’t gone and brought out enough for half a dozen already. Look at the steak! How in the dickens are we going to make way with all that, not to speak of cooking it?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you we’re going to havecompany,” said Andy, wickedly, as he made ready to shoot off again.
“Colonel Josiah Whympers’ coming to join us in our frugal repast?” asked Frank, a look of pleasure on his face.
“Just that. When he heard what we meant to do he got fidgetty at once, and finally threw out such broad hints that I had to ask him to join us. Besides,” added Andy, with a look of what his cousin called “soft sawder,” and which was meant as oil is used to allay friction; “he’s been complaining a good deal lately because he never had a chance to taste your cooking, after me bragging about it so.”
“Ah, get along with you,” laughed Frank, pretending to throw something; “but I say, Andy, while you’re about it just borrow the family frying pan from the cook, because this little one would never do for such a gigantic steak, especially since I see you brought a lot of onions along and want them fried, too.”
“O.K., boss! All shall be done as you order, after being so kind as to not kick over the traces because I’ve invited a guest. Butsucha guest! They destroyed the pattern after Josiah Whympers was made, I reckon. I’m going to get blankets this turn and that blessed frying pan ditto,” after which he shot off on a run.
Andy did things with a rush, in which he was ever a marvel to his slow friend, Elephant Small, whose failing seemed to be just the other extreme, as he crawled along after the style of a snail.
Frank always carried out everything he attempted well. If he worked at machinery he was conscientious about every trifling bolt and nut. If he played baseball he did it with his whole soul and made as near a success of his work as was possible. And now, when he was elected “chief cook and bottle washer,” as Andy called it, of the supper that was to be prepared, he set about the job just as an experienced cook would have done.
Evening had come. Already the July sun was hovering close to the horizon. The day had been singularly cool for a summer spell, though doubtless it would grow hot again by the morrow.
At any rate it was not a serious task standing over a fire and looking after the various vessels that simmered and bubbled. Then the fine steak was slapped on a pan that had already been well heated, which was Frank’s way of cooking such a delicious morsel. It immediately began throwing off a most appetizing odor that kept Andy groaning and wondering how long he could stand it.
The onions, too, had a scent all their own. And as if this were not enough, Frank, in honor of the expected guest, had allowed Andy to have coffee, so that there was another fragrant smell added to the lot.
Pretty soon a thumping announced that Colonel Josiah had arrived, and Andy jumped up to welcome the old man. He came in, sniffing the air vigorously and manifesting the most intense delight.
“Reminds me of many a scene in my checkered past, lads,” said the old gentleman, who was a smooth-shaven party, with long white hair, and eyes that had not lost the fire of their younger days. “And I’m glad I held off until the feast was nearly ready, because I just couldn’t stand that long. This looks homelike. Glad to be with you, my lads. It was nice of you to ask an old codger like me. Perhaps I can repay you by relating a number of events this reminds me of.”
That was his one weak point. His past had really been so filled with adventures without number that everything served to bring some striking scene to his mind. But boys with red blood in their veins never tire of hearing about such things. And these two lads were built along such lines, for they deemed it a treatwhenever they had a chance to listen to his thrilling recitals.
And the colonel never forgot to impress a moral to his tales. Old age was beginning to give him a different view of life from what he may have entertained at the time these scenes he mentioned were being enacted.
They sat there for nearly two hours talking. From his own past experiences the old man deftly turned the conversation in line with their aspirations, and asked many questions concerning what they expected to do when they found they could manage their aeroplane, which he had examined with considerable curiosity, and not a few words of praise.
Finally he announced that he had better be returning to the house. Andy would not let him go alone, though the moon was shining brilliantly.
When he came back later he found his comrade deep in the job of cleaning up.
“Oh, what’s the use doing that tonight?” asked Andy, prone to want to put off things to another day that ought to be done now.
Frank knew his little weakness only too well.
“Not much,” he said, decisively. “We’ll find enough to do in the morning. Here, you get a towel and start in to wiping these things.And with such a dandy outfit I do hope you take a little pride in keeping things clean and bright.”
“Huh!” grunted Andy, “thought that was the best thing about aluminum—that a fellow never needed to clean it up.”
“Listen to him, will you?” laughed his cousin; “perhaps you had a sneaking notion, too, that it might get the spuds peeled and do all sorts of stunts. Make up your mind, my boy, nothing is ever gained without some work. Give that dish another rub while you’re about it, Andy, and then set it back on the stove to warm up. Soon be through here and then, if we feel like it, we can get at those bike wheels that are to go under our framework, according to the design we’re following after.”
Although possibly Andy may have confessed to being somewhat tired, still, the fever was rioting through his veins, and he could not say no, when Frank proposed anything connected with the completion of that wonderful monoplane that haunted his very dreams, so much was it in his mind during his waking hours.
Accordingly they set to work. Frank had arranged his plans and knew just how this thing and that must be managed in order to secure the greatest amount of success.
“Now she looks like the real thing!” declared Andy, enthusiastically, when the little wonder had been duly elevated and fitted with the wheels that were to prove so useful in starting off and in landing.
“Watch how the engine works again in this new position,” said Frank, as with a few deft turns of his hand he set things in motion.
The quick pulsations of the motor thrilled them. Small wonder then that these enthusiastic novices of the air navigation idea could hardly tear themselves away from a contemplation of their prized aeroplane and think of such an ordinary thing as securing some sleep.
“Come, look here, it’s going on midnight,” declared Frank, finally; “and we must get our bunks ready to turn in. I’m going to tumble over on this pile of planks here. Nothing like the soft side of a board for a bed, they say.”
“And since I went and fetched this cot out, thinking you’d accept it, why, sooner than see it lie idle, I’ll dump my blanket in there and curl up. Got the bar across the door, Frank?” asked Andy, as he started to yawn again.
“Sure,” replied the other, “and the little window partly open, to give us air, for it’s close in here. Now turn in and don’t let me hear a yawp from you till morning.”
“Oh, I’ll sleep as sound as a nut; always do. That is, if I don’t get to dreaming something about that darling little——” but as Frank threw a block of wood across the shed and made the speaker duck his head, he did not finish his sentence.
Presently all was quiet within the long shed, save the regular breathing of the two boys. The moonlight sifted in through the open window and lighted up the queer workshop after a fashion, so that the great batlike object occupying so much space could be dimly made out.
Perhaps an hour had gone by. From without there came only such sounds as one might expect to hear on a July night in the country, for the place of Colonel Whympers was outside of Bloomsbury and really surrounded by fields and woods.
Something suddenly aroused Frank. He hardly knew himself what it could have been, but as he sat upright in his blanket he believed he heard loud voices somewhere outside. Then something that seemed to be very heavy came down with a loud impact that awoke even that hard sleeper, Andy.
“What was that?” he exclaimed, sitting bolt upright.
Frank, quick to act, was already out of his warm nest and making a bee line for the window,which happened to be in a quarter that could be reached without his stumbling over the monoplane occupying the middle of the place.
Of course, not to be outdone, Andy tumbled off his cot, climbed to his feet and as the doors happened to be more convenient to him, he was quickly throwing the heavy bar aside. This done, the impulsive Andy rushed straight outside, clad only in his pajamas as he was.