CHAPTER XXII.
IN AN AEROPLANE IN AN ELECTRIC STORM.
IN AN AEROPLANE IN AN ELECTRIC STORM.
IN AN AEROPLANE IN AN ELECTRIC STORM.
The boys were for pressing on at once but the deliberate Ben Stubbs insisted on a stop being made to “overhaul ship,” as he put it, meaning to tend to the injuries they had all received from the hail of flying rocks driven like small shot by the blast. Had it not been for the prospector’s shouted warning to “lie flat” they would undoubtedly have fared worse. As it was a few cuts, that looked alarming but really didn’t amount to much, constituted the worst of their injuries.
Lighting his pipe Ben sat down by the battery-box and took what he called a “comft’ble smoke,” of palm-bark tobacco of his own manufacture, before he would stir a foot. After that he consented to press forward and, carrying the long stick brought for the purpose of reaching the chain, the little party started on the last stage of their journey. Grappling it with the long stick Frank brought the chain to the side on which they stood without the slightest difficulty.
“So that’s the cable you crossed on,” commented Ben, “an’ to think that it was hanging there all these two years and I never knowed it.”
“I wonder you never thought of making a bridge, Ben?” commented Harry.
“Wall, now,” drawled Ben sarcastically, “I might have done that, mightn’t I, ’ef I could have carried a big enough stick of timber down here.”
“I didn’t think of that,” replied the abashed Harry, while the other boys laughed.
“Ah, there’s a lot of things that younkers don’t think of,” responded Ben sagely; “now when I was aboard the old Dolphin, bound roun’ the Horn for China——”
“Never mind that now, Ben,” broke in Frank impatiently, “let’s get back to camp. I’m simply dying for a good feed and a sight of theGolden Eagle.”
The mention of the aeroplane was an impetus to everybody—the boys because it meant getting back to La Merced and relieving the anxiety of the people there; Billy because with a reporter’s instinct he grew restless when kept out of touch with the world no matter what exciting adventures he might have passed through, and Ben Stubbs out of pardonable curiosity to see what he called a “full-rigged air-ship.”
One by one the adventurers swung across the chasm which had been so nearly the cause of their death in the tunnel, and when Ben Stubbs, who came last, handed the end of the chain to Frank, the leader of the party hung it upon the hook where it had rested so many years with a peculiar feeling that neither he nor any other man would ever use it again.
An hour later they emerged into the bright sunlight through the Rocking Stone gate as they had dubbed it. The boys made a careful examination of its hidden mechanism as they passed out, but the Toltec mechanics who had put the hidden springs that connected it with the quesal’s eye had done their work well, and the young adventurers were no wiser after their examination than they had been before it.
The Treasure Cliff camp was just as they had left it and it seemed curious to gaze on their familiar surroundings and find them unchanged after such a strenuous period of hardship and adventure as they had encountered. Without losing time they at once started down the mountain-side for theGolden Eaglecamp.Here also, things were unchanged and the boys, after a careful scrutiny of their prize craft, announced her fit for a voyage at any time.
It was decided, after a hasty consultation, that they would start for La Merced that night as soon as it was dark. Ben Stubbs and Billy were to be left to guard the camp. Billy remarking:
“I’ll be glad to get a rest. If we are asleep when you come back, tell the maid to wake us.”
“And to think that a few nights ago I was a watching yer camp-fire and ringing the bell and—now—here I am!” remarked Ben wonderingly.
The afternoon was spent in examining the rubies and talking over experiences. Frank, too, drew a rough map of the mines, so that when it became feasible to return to and ransack them of the treasure the process would be simplified. While the boys employed themselves in this way, Ben Stubbs borrowed a rifle and strode off into the jungle. He returned shortly before dark with a young wild pig and several brace of wood pigeons. He prepared these with a skill that bespoke his long experience at shifting for himself and when he announced that supper was ready by pounding on the bottom of a saucepan with a spoon, the boys were ready to fall to and eat the meal of their lives.
They were just concluding the meal when there was a low, far off rumble—like that of an approaching thunder storm. It was deeper, however, and longer sustained.
“There’s a storm coming,” exclaimed Frank and Harry simultaneously.
Ben Stubbs gravely set down his coffee and shook his head.
“Worse’n that, I’m afraid. Sounds to me like the first symptoms of what the greasers call ‘terremoto.’”
“What’s that?” demanded Billy.
“Why, that’s an airthquake,” replied Ben, “and every once in a while when they do come, they raise par’ticlar dickens. Ef you two young fellers is thinking of making a trip in that thar sky-jammer of yours to-night, you’d better get a move on with your start,” he went on, addressing Frank and Harry, “fer when thar comes an airthquake thar comes an almighty big wind right on its heels.”
The boys exchanged looks of concern. It was most important—nay urgent—that they should get to La Merced that night, or at any rate by morning, and set their father’s mind at rest concerning their safety. A sudden wind storm would mean that theGolden Eaglewould have to make such a struggle for life as she never had before.
“We’ll have to chance it,” decided Frank finally, “after all it must be some distance off and we must get to La Merced to-night. If we don’t, we may be delayed several days and in that event we won’t know what might happen. We don’t want mother in New York to hear that we are lost;” he added gravely. This consideration wiped out at once whatever hesitancy they might have felt.
The preparations for launching theGolden Eaglewere simple. Judging that he could not improve on the “backing-up” method he had adopted the last time they sailed from the plateau camp, on the memorable occasion of Billy’s rescue, Frank adopted the same tactics with the result that they secured a perfect start, and shot into the darkness with the gracefulness and velocity of a homing pigeon.
It was pitchy dark and in the air there was a hot sulphurous feeling. Not a breath of wind stirred, and if one had lit a candle its flame would have gonestraight up without a flicker. Before sunset a heavy bank of lurid-rimmed clouds had loomed up in the southwest.
“Something is coming,” said Frank as with one eye on the map and the other on the compass in the lighted binnacle, he steered theGolden Eaglesteadily through the ominous blackness.
“Well, we’ve got to keep on now,” replied Harry, “we can’t turn back very well and make a landing on the plateau in such darkness as this.”
As he spoke a long tongue of livid blue lightning flickered across the sky to the north. It lit up every wire and stay on theGolden Eagle, as if she had been enveloped in the glow of a blue calcium light. In an instant the illumination died out and it grew as black as ever, or rather the darkness seemed all the more impenetrable to the navigators of theGolden Eagle, by reason of the brilliant illumination that had just shattered it.
As they tore along, the engine chugging steadily in a whining purr like the steady voice of a big dynamo, the flashes grew more and more frequent.
“Looks as if we are in for it,” remarked Frank.
At the same instant a few heavy drops of rain pattered down on the covering of the planes and then stopped as suddenly as they commenced.
“How far do you figure we are from La Merced, now?” asked Harry after a long silence in which the lightning had kept the aeroplane illuminated in an almost constant blaze of lambent flame.
“Not more than twenty miles,” returned Frank, “we must make it before this hits us or——”
He did not mention the alternative. There was no need to. Both boys knew that anything more risky than handling an aeroplane in a gale of wind could not be imagined.
More and more frequent grew the lightning flashes and they were now accompanied by terrific peals of thunder, that seemed to shake every rib and stanchion of the aeroplane.
“It’s an electric storm and a bad one, too,” exclaimed Frank, as a hissing bolt of lightning tore across the sky as it seemed only a few feet from the laboring aeroplane and struck the earth with a terrific report. Save for the first few warm drops there had been no rain and both boys were inwardly thankful for this. They believed theGolden Eaglecould force her way through a rain storm, but they did not want to try. For an aeroplane, rain is almost as unfavorable an element as wind.
So filled with electricity was the air that occasionally after a particularly vivid flash, the metal portions of theGolden Eaglewere outlined in living fire. This added a new terror to the boys’ position.
What if the engine short-circuited?
Almost as the thought flashed across their minds theGolden Eagleseemed to become suddenly enveloped in a perfect sheet of fire. The boys could hear the hiss of the live electricity as it ran along her stay wires and stanchions. Blinded and half stunned, they realized as the glare crashed out that it must have short-circuited something.
With a great sigh of relief, however, Frank realized that the engine was still running sweet and true. He glanced at the binnacle.
Ah, that was it!
The dynamo had been short-circuited and they had no means of illuminating the compass. True they had matches, but it would be impossible to steer theGolden Eagle’scourse true by that means. The accident was serious.
Hurriedly Frank communicated his discovery to Harry. The younger brother whistled.
“What on earth are we going to do, Frank?” he gasped out.
“Keep right on till we drop. It’s all we can do,” was the stern rejoinder, “we can’t pick up La Merced, without a binnacle light.”