CHAPTER XVII.
A MESSAGE FROM THE SKY.
A MESSAGE FROM THE SKY.
A MESSAGE FROM THE SKY.
For a time it looked as if theBerthamust fall far short of the summit and drop to the jagged rocks below. There was nothing whatever the boys could do. The song of the motors had almost ceased, and they understood that through some mischance the gasoline tank had become empty. The situation was a critical one.
The angle at which the flying machine was descending, however, included the summit to which the boys were directing her. In a few moments she landed at the top, and almost rolled down the opposite slope before the momentum could be checked.
Ben instantly ran to the tanks and found them empty. He called to Carl, and the two made a close examination of other portions of the machine. There was nothing wrong anywhere except that the tanks were dry!
Ben pointed to the drain cock at the bottom and found that it had been turned about half-way. That explained the situation.
“What surprises me,” he said, “is that we never noticed the leak. Why, we should have been able to smell the wasting gasoline before we left the camp. I don’t understand why we didn’t.”
“That’s easy,” explained Carl. “We were cleaning up the machines this morning, oiling and shifting a little gasoline from one car to the other, and so we never noted the additional evaporation.”
“I’m sure I never turned that cock when I was working over the machine!” declared Ben. “And I think I’m the only one who worked around the tanks.”
“Look here,” exclaimed Carl, a sudden suspicion coming into his face, “you remember the Chinaman who came out from under the planes and consumed about a dollar’s worth of groceries!”
Ben stared at his chum for a moment and then dropped down on the ground. His face was hard and set.
“That’s it!” he cried angrily. “That’s just it! The Chink ran our perfectly good gasoline into the ground and then sat down at our hospitable board. I only wish I had him here right by the pigtail!”
“In that case,” suggested Carl, “I don’t think he’d want another square meal in about three months. His greatest need would be a hospital.”
“There’s no doubt of that!” replied Ben. “Why, it was actually murder to do what that fellow did! I had an idea while he was eating thathe didn’t act exactly like a man accustomed to eating with chopsticks. I’ve seen men at Sherry’s who didn’t have any better table manners than he had. That fellow was a fraud!”
While the boys were exclaiming over the loss of their gasoline and wondering how they were ever going to get theBerthaout of the position in which she now lay, Carl threw a cushion from one of the seats and sat down upon it, with the remark that it made the rock some softer.
Ben stepped forward and drew a folded slip of paper from the under side of the cushion and held it up.
“Did you leave that there?” he asked.
Carl shook his head wonderingly.
“Of course not,” he replied. “I don’t drop any letters in the post-office when I can communicate verbally with the man I want to advise with. Perhaps Jimmie or Kit left it there.”
“Well, the way to find out about it is to open it,” suggested Ben, “so here goes! There certainly isn’t much of it.”
The boy opened the note and read aloud for the benefit of his chum, who stood by eager-eyed and excited.
“‘Don’t leave this place with the machine. The gasoline is out, or nearly so.’”
“Is it written in Chinese?” asked Carl with a frown.
“Chinese, nothing!” exclaimed Ben. “It’s good honest English, and written in a pretty good hand at that!”
“Then that Chink wasn’t a Chink at all!” cried Carl.
“There are Chinamen who can read and write English,” suggested Ben.
“But this fellow pretended that he couldn’t even understand English.”
“I’d give a heap to know something about this puzzle,” Ben declared. “We find this fellow tied up in a smugglers’ cave one night, and the next morning we find him snooping about our camp, consuming our provisions and wasting our gasoline. That was a treacherous trick for him to play on us! I hope we’ll come across him some other day.”
“The question before the house right now,” Carl explained, “is how we’re going to get off this bald-headed old peak. We might be able to tumble down into one of the valleys below, but we wouldn’t be any better off there than we are here. Besides,” he went on, “our making our way down wouldn’t help us any with the machine.”
“If Jimmie would only show up with theLouise, now, we might borrow enough gasoline to get us back to level ground again. And still,” Ben went on, “we wouldn’t have fuel enough to do much racing until the tanks were filled. It’s a rotten scrape we’re in, and that’s no fairy tale.”
“Here’s a problem for you to solve when you get through with all the others,” grinned Carl. “I want you to tell me why that Chink wasted our gasoline, and then warned us not to use the machine.”
“I give it up!” declared Ben. “There’s no use of trying to guess it out! It’s just another little old mystery!”
“And why did he pretend that he couldn’t understand English?” persisted Carl. “Was that in order that he might hear what we were talking about without our suspecting that he was listening with the intention of betraying us? It seems to me that that must be it.”
“I tell you I don’t know!” almost shouted Ben, “and I’m not going to puzzle over the matter any longer. Here we are up on a bald old peak without any show of ever getting our machine down to the ground again, and that’s enough for me to brood over for the time being.”
“This is a beautiful view from this mountain!” suggested Carl, with a grin. “Note the sunlight on the valleys below.”
“Aw, dry up!” cried Ben. “What’s the use of rubbing it in?”
“But,” urged Carl, “just think of the situation Noah was in when he landed his Ark on top of a mountain!”
Ben threw a pebble at his chum and turned moodily away.
“I wouldn’t have your disposition for a barrel of gasoline!” laughed Carl.
“I wish I could trade my disposition for a barrel of gasoline,” grinned Ben. “That might help some.”
“Well,” Carl said rather excitedly, in a moment, “you may keep your precious disposition, for here comes our barrel of gasoline!”
“You must have been reading a dream book!” exclaimed Ben.
“Honest!” shouted Carl. “If you’ll take a squint up there to the north, you’ll see theAnncome poking back! If you don’t believe that is theAnnwith Havens on board, just observe the signals in sight.”
“I guess that’s theAnnall right,” Ben returned. “I hope she’s got full tanks of fuel. We need a lot right now.”
The great flying machine came winging south at a great rate of speed, and finally, after circling the peak several times, volplaned down to theBertha. The boys sprang forward to greet Havens, but drew back in a moment for the aviator was a man they had never seen before.
The machine was theAnn, sure enough but she was in the hands of two men who were total strangers to the boys. They were slender, dark fellows, with oblong eyes and low foreheads.
“TheBertha?” asked one of the men in almost perfect English, stepping close to the machine. “You seem to have met with an accident.”
“It’s theBerthaall right,” Ben answered, “and we’re out of gasoline.”
“And where is theLouise?” asked the other.
“Off on a scout somewhere,” was the indefinite reply.
“That’s unfortunate,” the other began, “for we are instructed by Mr. Havens to notify you all to turn back to New York at once.”
“What’s the meaning of that?” demanded Carl.
“Mr. Havens didn’t take me into his confidence to any great extent,” was the reply, “but I understood from what he said that you were no longer needed in this section. Is there any way you can signal to theLouise?”
Now Ben did not believe the man to be speaking the truth. In the first place, Havens would never have sent an entire stranger in theAnn. In the second place, Phillips, one of the murderers, had been seen at liberty in that district that very morning, so the hunt was still on!
The natural result of this reasoning was the belief on the part of the boy that theAnnhad been stolen.
“We have no means of reaching theLouise,” Ben replied after studying the matter over for a moment. “In fact Jimmie went away with her without our knowledge or consent. We don’t know where he is.”
While answering in this manner, a third reason for disbelieving the statement of the Japanese, for such the men appeared to be, was that Jimmie had been chased desperately by the machine which they had seen on the coast during the night. The boy drew away suspiciously.
“If you don’t mind,” the Japanese said then, “we’ll loan you gasoline enough to keep you in motion until the tanks can be filled.”
“That’s just what I was about to propose!” exclaimed Ben.
“Where are you going in theAnn?” asked Carl.
“After fitting you out,” was the reply, “we are going to find the other machine, deliver our message, and turn back east.”
“Supply us with fuel,” Ben suggested, “and we’ll go with you in search of Jimmie. Perhaps we can help you find him.”
The two men who had arrived in theAnnconferred together for a few moments, and then one of them began supplying the tanks of theBerthawith gasoline. The boys stood by in a brown study as to what they ought to do next. The Japanese eyed them keenly.
“We want to stay right by the machine, so they won’t hop up and run away!” Carl whispered to Ben.
“If they do, I’ll send a bullet after them!” Ben whispered back.
While the boys talked at one side of theBerthaand the two Japs engaged in conversation on the other side, an aeroplane shot into view, coming swiftly from the west.
“I guess that’s Jimmie now,” suggested Ben turning to the Japs. “In that case you can deliver your message, and we’ll all go east together.”
As the reader will understand it was by no means the intention of the boys to follow the instructions given by the Japs. They had been supplied with gasoline enough to last for several hours, and their purpose now was to get out of the company of the strangers as soon as possible.
There was an indefinite resolve at the back of Ben’s brain to get out of the company of the Japs by leaving them stranded on the summit! It was a daring thought, but the boy was actually considering the possibility of getting away in theAnnwhile Carl navigated theBertha.
If the aeroplane now approaching proved to be theLouise, he thought, the trick might be turned with the assistance of Jimmie and Kit.
Presently Carl leaned forward and whispered in his chum’s ear:
“That isn’t theLouiseby a long shot!”
“How do you know?” demanded Ben.
“Because of the way she carries herself,” returned Carl, speaking in a low whisper, thereby bringing two pair of suspicious eyes in his direction. “That’s what we call the third machine!” he added.
“You can run theAnn, can’t you?” asked Ben.
“You bet I can!” was the reply.
“Then get ready to make a jump for the seat!” whispered Ben. “We’ve just got to recover the stolen machine and get away from these Japs. And we’ve got to do it before that other machine gets here, too,” he went on, “because it’s pears to pumpkins that the man aboard of her is the blond brute who tried to blow up theLouiseand theBerthanear St. Louis!”
“I’d like to know where Havens is!” whispered Carl.
“We haven’t got time to consider that,” suggested Ben. “When that aeroplane gets a little closer, these two fellows will be watching her and perhaps signaling. That will be the time for us to act. Jump on theAnnand press the button and I’ll do the same with theBertha. We may get dumped down the mountainside, or we may catch a couple of bullets, but anything is better than being tricked by these Japs and losing our machine and Havens’, too! Watch for the chance.”
The moment for action came almost immediately. The Japs ran to the edge of the level space and flung their arms wildly into the air. At the same instant, the boys sprang to seats on the two machines and pushed the levers which controlled the starters.