At this moment when Johnny was thinking these thoughts, Pant was being dragged forward half out of his soggy, water-soaked harness, then slammed back into his seat, to be deluged to the drowning by a downpour that was not rain, he thought, but more like a sky-suspended tank of fresh water. He found himself surprised that the plane held up against it; that it did not sink at once into the sea. His leather coat hung like a weight of steel upon his shoulders; his eyes, his ears, his mouth were filled with water. It chilled, benumbed, depressed him.
The plane was traveling with the gale; whether in a circle or straight ahead, he could not tell. The engine was shut off. Would it start again at his bidding? That he did not know. If not, their situation was hopeless. The time would come when the storm would drop them, as it drops a bird it has harried and beaten to its death. Then, with no power, they would sink helpless into the sea. And such a sea as it must be! He had not seen it since the storm began. He could imagine it, though. Black, angry water tossed into foam. Billows, mountain high. What a landing-place for a seaplane! One resounding crash that echoed above the demon laughter of the waves, then all would be over!
“She must start! She must,” he muttered. Half-unconsciously he put his hand to the lever, then quickly drew it away.
“No, not now, not now,” he muttered. “The dust! The dust! If only it is still dry!”
Then, for a moment, his mind dwelt upon the wind. It was strange about that wind. It did not come in gusts, but flowed straight on like a stream of water. In the utter darkness, flooded by torrents of rain, carried steadily forward by that constant flow of wind, he was overcome by an illusion. He fancied himself passing beneath the surface of the sea. Only the touching of his tongue to his lips, to satisfy his mind that this was not salt water that beat in from every side, could dispel the illusion.
The whole thing was so terrific, so altogether beyond comprehension, that it shunted off the powers that drove his brain to action. It was altogether unbelievable.
As Johnny Thompson’s mind cleared itself of the effects of the airship’s mad whirl, it began puzzling over certain questions: What was to be the end of this? Why where they there?
The truth was, Johnny did not know why they were there. They had come upon this long and perilous air journey over the sea at the request of a stranger. No, perhaps they had not been as mad as that. The man had brought with him a letter of introduction from their employer. Yet, why should he not have told them more of his intentions? How could this journey benefit tens of thousands of children? They were in imminent danger of being destroyed by the storm. He felt that it would help if only he knew the reason why.
There came another whirl. He caught his breath and tried to think clearly. It was a monstrous experience; he could not think of it in any other way.
“Can’t last long—wonder we haven’t hit the water before this. Must have been mighty high up.”
To his surprise and great relief, the plane again righted herself. This time, half on her side, she lay upon the air like a crippled bird poising for its death plunge.
His lips were at the tube.
“What you going to do?” he shouted above the roar of the wind.
“Going—to—get—out—of—here,” came back.
“Can—you?”
“Can—try. Look—out. Start—engine. May—take—tailspin. Can’t—be—worse,—though.”
The next instant there came the thunder of the powerful motor.
“Thank God! Dust’s dry,” Pant muttered as he tried to straighten up his tilted car.
When he heard the thunder of the motors, Pant could scarcely have been more thankful about anything. True, there were not another such pair of engines in the world, but there had been a strain put upon every bolt, rod, feed-pipe and screw such as had been endured by no other engines. If there had been a single break, then all was lost.
When they did respond to his touch, he at once tilted his right plane in such a manner as to square her up. The wind was blowing steadily, and, he thought, less violently, though this was hard to concede, since it seemed to him that a more madly violent gale than even now was blowing would be hard to imagine.
The plane righted herself gracefully. Truly, this was a marvelous bit of machinery, made by master builders. She had been designed for dependability rather than speed, yet she presented a rather rakish appearance, her upper planes jutting out over the lower ones by a full five feet. Her fuselage was built like the body of a wasp, in two parts. In the forward part was the driver’s seat, fully exposed to the open air. In the rear portion was a closed cabin fitted with two seats. These seats in fair weather might be made to collapse in such a manner as to form a bed. Thus it was possible for one aviator to rest while the other was at the wheel.
But the distinctive part of the whole equipment was the engines. If Pant had felt any misgivings about the type of engine their plane was fitted with, the next few minutes made him doubly thankful that they were just what they were.
Hardly had they begun a mad rush straight away with the wind, the nose of the plane tilted twenty-five degrees upward, than there began to play about him vivid sparks of fire.
“Picking up lightning,” he muttered.
Like lights twinkling on the deck of a steamer the sparks leaped from plane to plane. They flashed down the guy-wires and braces, leaped to the motors. Setting her firing irregularly for a second, they raced for the tail, only to flash back to the wheel and give Pant’s arm such a sudden twist that for the second he was paralyzed.
The next moment his lips were at the tube.
“Mighty bad,” he shouted. “Dangerous—I—I—say.”
“Better—stop—her,” came back from Johnny.
Pant’s hand was at the lever. The engine went still, but just at that instant a tremendous flash leaped up from the large tank at the rear of the fuselage.
Pant leaped high, then sank back with a shudder.
“Man! Man!” he gasped. “If that had been gasoline in that tank! If it had!”
His brow wrinkled. “I only hope it didn’t rip her wide open. Anyway, we climbed some. Can afford to glide.”
They were surrounded by a succession of vivid flashes of lightning. The plane was tipped to a rakish angle. Through a storm-washed window Johnny saw what lay below. The ocean, vast, mysterious, dark and terrible, appeared as a limitless open-hearth steel furnace filled with gleaming molten metal.
In the very midst of this was what appeared at first to be a mere splotch on the surface, but which in time resolved itself into the form of a steamship.
He gasped as he made out its form, “To think,” he muttered, “that any ship could live in this!”
Yet, as he thought of it, he knew that they had in years past. He had read authentic accounts of ships riding out such a storm.
Even as he watched he saw the water smooth out into what he knew to be the surface of a gigantic wave; saw, amid the flashes, the ship leap forward to meet it; saw her prow rest on air; saw her plunge; saw her buried beneath an avalanche of sea.
He shut his eyes, expecting never again to see that ship; yet, when he opened them, she was still there battling with the elements.
“Bravo! Bravo!” he exclaimed involuntarily.
The next instant the plane tipped back into position, the engines roared, he felt her turn and knew that Pant had set her head-on against the storm.
He listened to the roar of the engines and thrilled at the battle as he felt the shock of the storm.
Suddenly, as the sheet-lightning flashed, he saw a dark object pass his window, then another.
“The parachutes!” he exclaimed in consternation. He put his lips to the tube: “Storm—tore—the—parachutes—away.”
“I—know,” came back from Pant. “No—good—now,—anyway. Can’t—land.”
Then at the very thought, Johnny laughed. On a calm sea the parachutes might save them; in such a storm, never.
“Saw—a—ship—down—there. See—her?” he asked a moment later.
“Yes.”
“Think—that’s—the—ship—we’re—racing?”
“Might—be.”
“If—it—is—we—win.”
“If—we—live—through,—yes.”
There was silence. But again there came a sound from the tube. This time it was not Pant, but the stranger who rode behind Johnny. Johnny started; he had quite forgotten him.
“What—what is it?” he stammered.
“Thought—I—ought—to—tell—you.” The voice was low and subdued, like a parson reading the funeral service at a grave.
“Tell—me—what?” Johnny asked, bewildered.
“About—the—wreck. Why—we—are—going—”
But at that instant there came a blinding flash, a deafening roar, and the plane seemed to leap into midair, like a rowboat hit by a fifty-pound projectile.
When he had collected his scattered senses after the tremendous lift which the plane had been subjected to, Johnny Thompson knew that they must have been in the midst of a terrific electrical explosion which had occurred in mid-air; a current of electricity such as no mere man-made voltmeter would ever measure had leaped from cloud to cloud. For a fraction of a second the circuit had been broken. The explosion had followed.
Pressing his lips to Pant’s tube, Johnny inquired curiously:
“Any—damage?”
“Can’t—tell—yet,” came back. “Hope—not.”
For a moment there was no sound, save the screaming of the wind. Then, again, came the call of the stranger.
“Hello!” exclaimed Johnny.
“About—the—wreck. Ought—to—tell. May—not—come—out—of—this. You—may—come—out. Can—you—hear?”
“Yes,—yes!” Johnny was impatient of delay.
“Ought—to—tell. Mighty—important. Wreck—mighty—important. Lot—of—people—affected. Children—most. Ought—to—tell.”
“Well, why doesn’t he tell?” was Johnny’s mental comment. “Has the storm driven him mad?”
He wanted to know about that wreck. His life was imperiled for a cause, but what cause he did not know. His mission in life, he had found out long ago, was to help others live more happily and profitably. If the cause were a good enough cause, he might cheerfully die for it. “Children,” the man had said, “many children.” Well, that was best of all: to help many children.
“Well,” Johnny grumbled through the tube, “why—don’t—you—tell?”
“Going—to—tell,” came to Johnny through the tube. Then the Professor told his story. There was a pause between every pair of words; the wail of the storm, the thunder of the engines, the roar of the ocean, made it necessary. Even so, he was forced to repeat several sentences over and over before Johnny caught them. It was aggravating, doubly so since any word might be the man’s last; might be the last Johnny ever listened to, as well. There was one word the man repeated ten times or more, and, at that, Johnny did not catch it. It was an important word, too, the most important word, the very keyword, but Johnny gave it up at last.
“Isn’t any use,” he muttered after the tenth time. “Some great treasure, but whether it’s gold or diamonds, or old ivory or frankincense, I’ll never be able to tell, if I ask him a thousand times.”
The stranger, it seemed, was a professor in a medical college; his brother, a medical missionary in one of those border countries that lie between China and Russia. During the war something became very scarce, but just what something Johnny could not make out. He, the Professor, wrote his brother about it. The something came from Russia—only place it could be obtained. There was fighting still in those regions where it was found, between the bolsheviki and their enemies. Children in the United States, it seemed, tens of thousands of them, would benefit if it were brought out from Russia. Johnny could not see how that could be. “Perhaps the mine belongs to an orphanage,” he decided, half in humor, half in earnest.
The Professor had written his missionary brother of the need. He had written that he thought that, for the sake of the children, the thing must be managed. It could be carried out, the treasure could. It would require a considerable investment, perhaps twenty thousand dollars. The Professor had sold his home, had raked and scraped, borrowed and begged. At last the money was sent to the brother.
Months of anxious waiting followed. Finally there came a cable from an obscure Chinese port. The missionary brother had the precious stuff and was boarding the “Men-Cheng,” a tramp steamer, manned half by Chinamen and half by white men. She bore a Chinese name but carried an American flag.
He had not trusted the officers and steward of her overmuch, so, instead of putting his treasure in their hands, he had chartered a two-berth stateroom and had carried it with him in four flat chests. Piling three of them on the lower berth, and sliding the other beneath, he had slept in the berth above.
That cable was the last ever heard from him. The steamer had been caught in a gale and driven upon the shore of a coral island, as Johnny already knew. The missionary brother did not appear with the rescued members of passengers and crew. All these survivors had been questioned, but none knew anything about what became of him. It seemed probable that he had come on deck in the storm and had been washed overboard.
And the treasure was there still. Beyond question, it was in that stateroom where he had stored it, since none but him knew of it.
The wrecking crew, more than likely, was a gang of ghouls, with no principle, and with no knowledge of such things, anyway. They would either dump the treasure into the sea or carry it away. In either case it would be a total loss, and the small fortune of the Professor would be gone forever. It seemed, however, that the Professor was more concerned about the children’s share than he was about his own.
“What sort of treasure could it be,” Johnny asked himself, “that even the roughest, most ignorant rascals would dump into the sea?”
“Bunch of nonsense,” he muttered. Yet there was something about the intense earnestness of the man that gripped him, convinced him that it was not nonsense, but that here was a truly great and worthy cause.
Suddenly it came to him that, were he to outlive the stranger and reach the wreck, he would have no means of identifying the chests. Again his lips were at the tube.
“The—chests!” he shouted, “the—chests!”
“Yes—yes,” came back.
“The—chests. How—can—you—identify—”
His sentence was broken halfway. There came such a thundering, grinding, screaming horror of noises as he had never heard, not even in this hurricane. The seaplane stood still. Her engines were going, but she did not move. It was as if the shaft had broken loose from the propeller and was running wild, yet Johnny knew this was not so. He knew that the violence of the storm had suddenly become so great that the plane could make no headway before it.
So there they stood, halted in mid-air. What must come next? Was this the end? These questions burned their way to the very depths of his throbbing brain.
He had not long to wait for action. The plane began to turn slowly about. It was as if it were set upon a perpendicular shaft, and a mighty hand was gripping and turning it against its motor’s power to resist.
Then the thunder of the engines ceased; Pant had foreseen the ultimate end of the struggle and had prepared himself for it.
The plane swung around, square with the wind, then began a glide which increased in speed with each fraction of a second. Pant was dragged from his seat by the mere force of the air. With nostrils flattened, eyes closed, body bent like a western rider’s, as he is thrown in the air by a bucking bronco, he still clung to the wheel and guided the craft as best he could.
Feeling himself constantly drawn to the right, he realized that they were not gliding straight downward, but were following a gigantic spiral—perhaps miles across. He shuddered. He had experienced something similar to this in his boyhood days—the spiral glide of the amusement park. Yet that was child’s play. This was grim reality, and at the end of the glide lay the remorseless, plunging sea.
Johnny Thompson and the Professor sat in their cabin, too much overcome to move or speak. Through Johnny’s mind there ran many wild thoughts. Now the past, his home, his friends, his mother, were mirrored before his mind’s vision. The next he was contemplating freeing himself from his harness and opening the cabin door. To be trapped in that cabin, strapped to his seat, as they took the plunge into the sea, would be terrible. Better that he might have one fierce battle with the ocean. Yet there was still a chance—a ghost of a chance—some startling development that might save them. Then, if he were loose in the cabin, the cabin door open, he would be shaken out to his death while the plane flew on to safety.
He ended by doing nothing at all, and the plane, holding true to her spiral glide, swung on toward the dark waters. The spiral seemed endless. One might almost have imagined that the storm had an upward twist and was shooting them toward the skies.
A moment’s flash of lightning undeceived them. The sea lay close beneath them, perilously close; almost it appeared to be lifting up hands to grasp them.
Johnny Thompson at last began to struggle with his harness. Pant licked his lips with his tongue and thereby received a revelation. The moisture on his lips was salt; they were in the midst of the salt spray of some titanic wave. The end was not far off.
In desperation he kicked the engines into gear. There followed a moment of suspense. Thinking of it afterward, not one of the three could account for what followed. Perhaps the current of air created by some on-rushing wave had lifted them; perhaps the very force of the powerful engines had torn them from the grip of the remorseless spiral glide. Whatever it was, they suddenly found themselves booming along over the raging sea, and with each hundred yards covered there came a lessening of the wind’s violence. It seemed that they were truly on their way to safety.
Johnny started as from a revery. The signal from the Professor’s speaking-tube was screaming insistently.
“Hello!” he shouted hoarsely.
“Those—chests,” came back through the tube. “Do—you—hear—me? Those—chests—they—are—marked—with—initials—L—B—on the bottom. Do—you—hear? L—like—lake. B—like—bird. Get it?”
“Yes,” Johnny answered.
“All—right.”
Again, save for the thunder of the engines and the diminishing howl of the wind, there was silence.
“Wish I had tried harder to get the name of those things in the four chests,” Johnny mused. “I’d like mighty well to know. Didn’t sound like anything I have ever heard of. Perhaps it’s some kind of Russian fur; new name for Russian sable, maybe. Guess there’s no use asking him about it now. Too much noise; couldn’t hear.”
Then his mind turned to the steamer they had seen struggling in that raging sea. He wondered if it had escaped.
“Hope so,” he murmured, “even if they are our rivals. We’ll beat them easily if we get out of this. Looks like we would, too.”
Then, suddenly, his face went gray. He had thought of something—the dust in the fuel tank! There would have been enough to carry them to their destination, and a little to spare, had they not encountered the storm. They had battled the storm for what seemed hours. This had consumed much fuel. What awaited them once they were free from this storm?
He put his mouth to Pant’s speaking-tube, but the message remained unspoken.
“No use to cross a bridge till we come to it,” he muttered. “Not out of the storm yet.”
The coming out of the storm was like riding out of night into the bright light of a new day. Pant, as he sat at the wheel, steering as in a dream, was entranced by the beauty and wonder of it. They had been near death a score of times in a single hour; now they were racing away to life. Life! What a wonderful privilege just to live! How foolish boys must be who risk life for some useless plaything—to accept a “dare” or experience some new thrill. So he mused, and then all at once he realized that they had risked their lives for a cause of which they knew little.
“Well,” he said, as he settled himself more firmly in his position behind the wheel, “we’ve come this far, so we’ve got to see it through. I wonder how far that storm has carried us off our course, and in what direction we are going now?”
Rubbing the moisture off the glass of his compass, he read their direction. Then he started. They were going north by east, and their course was set for south by southwest.
Pant stared at the compass.
“Whew!” he whistled. “At that rate, we’ll be back where we started from in due course of time.”
Then a new thought worried him. He, too, had remembered the dust in the fuel tank. It must be running low. He could not tell their exact position, but believed they were far nearer to a small group of islands which they had sighted shortly before the storm struck them than they were to their destination.
Immediately there was set up in his mind a tense conflict. “It’s better to keep going in your present direction and to seek safety with a fresh supply of fuel from those islands you just passed,” said his native caution. “You have no right to turn back, for if you do you are sure to lose the race,” said his instinctive loyalty to the cause of another.
Loyalty won the day, and with mouth grimly set he gradually turned the plane about. Skirting the fringe of the storm, he sent the plane speeding on her way.
Gradually the smoke of battle—the mists that lay low on the horizon—disappeared, and they emerged into the glorious sunlight. The ocean lay a glittering mass of jewels beneath them, jewels that sparkled on a robe of emerald green. The sky, a vast blue dome, lay spread above them, while a few white clouds skirted the horizon. Behind them, like the uplifted head of a terrible sea-dragon, the storm still reared its masses of tumult to the heavens.
“That,” said Pant through his mouthpiece, “was the worst I ever saw.”
Johnny Thompson threw back his head and laughed. A merry laugh it was. It was easy to laugh when they were free.
For an hour the plane held steadily on its course—south by southwest. It was a wonderful journey. Weary as he was and prone to fall asleep at his post, Pant enjoyed it. Here and there they passed flocks of sea-gulls that rose screaming from the sea. Once they raced for a few miles with a honking wedge of wild geese. The presence of this flock made Pant think they must be near some land. What land it might be he could not even guess, but the thought cheered him.
For an hour, an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half, they sped on. Both boys had forgotten the question of fuel. Johnny was puzzling over the name of the contents of the chests on the wreck; Pant was wondering about the fate of the ship they had sighted in the storm, when there came a hoarse rumble from the right-hand engine, and the thunder of their drivers was lessened by half.
With trembling hand Pant threw the lever out. The other motor was still going, but he realized that it would be but a matter of moments until that one also was dead.
Instinctively, as if preparing to run away from the ocean, which, having been lashed by the storm, must still be rolling in great, sweeping waves that would wreck their frail craft the instant she touched its surface, he tilted the plane’s nose to a sharp angle and set her climbing.
They had been traveling some three thousand feet above the sea. Now they climbed rapidly. Four thousand, and five thousand, six, seven, eight, nine thousand. They were now entering a filmy cloud that sent long waving arms down to clutch them. Now and again they “bumped,” dropping straight down a hundred feet, then rising again. It was a glorious experience, even if it might be their last.
With ears alert, as are the ears of a man expecting the sentence of death, Pant awaited the last hoarse cough of the engine.
Finally it came; a grinding whirr, a tremor running through the plane, as a shudder runs through the form of a dying animal, then all was silence.
It was such a silence as none of the three had ever experienced. For hours they had listened to the scream of the storm, to the roar of breakers, to the thunder of their engines. For another hour and a half they had listened to the engines alone. Now there was utter silence; a silence so intense that, had a feather been falling from a sea-gull’s wing, it seemed that its passage through the air might be heard.
The plane had broad, spreading wings. It would float with easy grace to the very surface of the sea. But then?
There was plenty of time to think now. No one cared to speak. Their minds were concerned about many things. Life as they had lived it lay spread out before them like the pages of a picture-book. All the past moved before them. They came to the end, at last, and thus to the question of the ship in the storm and the wreck on the desert island. Had the ship escaped from the storm? Was the wreck still intact, or had it been destroyed by the waves? Would the wreckers find the treasure? What then?
Slowly the plane drifted down. Eight thousand feet, seven thousand, six, five, four, three.
Suddenly Pant moved in his seat. Seizing his tube in his excitement, forgetting that they might easily speak to one another since the sound of the engines was gone, he shouted:
“Listen!”
Johnny threw open the door of the cabin and sat listening.
“I only hear the waves,” he said.
“Two kinds of sounds, though,” smiled Pant; “a steady wash and a thundering.”
“Yes, I hear them.”
“The thundering means land.”
“Eh?” Johnny gazed down toward the wide circle of the sea. “But where?”
It was true. From this point in the air, though they could see for many miles, only the unbroken expanse of dark green waters met their view.
“There!” exclaimed Pant in triumph. He was pointing to a long line of white. “That’s surf. Some coral island there. Surf’s breaking over it. If we can make the lee of it we’re safe.”
He brought the nose of the plane about until it pointed toward the white line. Silence followed—a silence that could almost be felt. Only the murmur of vast waters and the distant thunder of the breakers, like the falls of a great river, disturbed that silence. Their lives depended on the length of a single glide.
Johnny Thompson opened two small round windows, portholes to the cabin. The Professor, sensing the tenseness of the situation, without fully understanding it, did likewise. Then the three of them watched the rolling ocean as it rose up to meet them.
Now they appeared to be a mile from that white line of foam. They were twenty-eight hundred feet in air. At fifteen hundred feet they appeared to be scarcely half a mile away. Beneath them rolled the treacherous waves; before them the breakers roared. Just over that crest of foam there lay a narrow bay, still as a millpond. Could they make it? Pant lifted a trembling hand to his forehead to brush away cold perspiration. Johnny stirred uneasily. Only the Professor was silent. Motionless as a sphinx, he watched the ocean spin along beneath him.
Gradually as they sank lower and lower objects became distinct to them. The north end of the island appeared to rise some twenty feet above the sea. The south end was lower. The whole of it was lined with a fringe of palms.
“Better turn her a bit south,” Johnny suggested. “It’s lower there and less chance of a smash.”
Without a word Pant followed his directions.
Lower and lower they drifted. Closer and closer came the island. For a time it seemed that they must inevitably drop into the sea. Then it appeared that they would miss the ocean but drive into the palms.
A hundred feet in air they swept on. Catching his breath, Pant unbuckled his harness. Johnny and the Professor followed his example. The next second, with a strange, land-like breath of air sweeping up to them, they passed over the very fringe-tops of the palms. One moment later they were standing up in their craft, which gently rose and fell with the water. Without a word they solemnly shook hands.
There are moments in the life of every person when he feels himself so closely welded to the life of some other one that only death can separate them. Johnny felt that such a time had arrived in his life. He and Pant were already inseparable. Now, by this simple, silent handshake, they took the Professor into their narrow circle. They had suffered in peril together.
They were now on a narrow island of the Pacific in a seaplane without fuel, and with provisions for but a day. Come what might, they would stick together until the end.
Their first precaution was to bring their plane as close in shore as the shallow water would permit, then to anchor it securely. After that they unfolded a small, collapsible boat and prepared to make their way ashore.
“Inhabited or not?” smiled Pant.
“If inhabited, cannibal or otherwise?” Johnny smiled back.
“I hope we are not to tarry here long,” said the Professor.
“We’ll tarry until we discover some fuel, and I don’t think green palm trees will be of much use,” said Johnny seriously. “Have you anything to suggest?”
The Professor seemed inclined to take these remarks as being in the form of a joke, but seeing that Johnny was serious, he said, as his brow wrinkled:
“It is really very important that we be on our way. We cannot be more than a hundred miles from our destination.”
“Perhaps not even that,” said Pant, “but they may be very hard miles to travel.”
“If we only were there,” sighed Johnny. “There is sure to be coal on the wreck.”
“But, since we’re not, let’s explore our island,” suggested Pant.
“And sleep,” said Johnny. “I’m about to fall asleep as I walk.”
“Better bring the rifles,” suggested Pant. “Doesn’t seem likely that there is a single living soul on this island—it’s no more than a coral rock sticking up out of the sea; can’t be two miles long—but you never can tell.”
Johnny brought two rifles from the plane. After rubbing the moisture from their barrels, he slipped a handful of cartridges in each, and set them up in the bow of the boat.
Pant had already gathered up an armful of sacks and cans, enough food for a day ashore. Throwing these into the bottom of the boat, he exclaimed: “All aboard for no man’s land.”
Then all climbed in. Johnny took the oars. Ten minutes of rowing brought them ashore.
It was a strange sensation that came to them as they stepped on solid ground once more. They had been swinging and tossing about for so long that solid earth seemed unreal—only part of a dream.
“Don’t see a sign of life,” said Johnny as he glanced up and down the beach, then into the depths of the palms.
“Here’s a bit of bamboo that looks as if it had been cut with a knife,” said Pant.
“Might have drifted in,” suggested Johnny. Other than this they found no sign of life.
After a brief consultation they decided that, simply as a matter of precaution, they should make the rounds of the shore before settling down to sleep.
Night would be coming on in an hour, so, after partaking of a hasty repast, the two boys, armed with the rifles, struck up the beach to the right. The Professor was left to keep an eye on the plane.
Nothing eventful happened until the boys had made three-fourths of their journey. As they had expected, they had found no sign of human life on the island. Night was falling; the sea was growing calm after the storm; they were looking forward to a few hours of refreshing sleep when, of a sudden, as they rounded a clump of palms, Johnny sprang backward, and, clutching his companion’s arm, dragged him into the deeper shadows.
“Wha—what is it?” stammered Pant.
“A camp fire on the beach, and men, six or eight of them, I think, sitting about it. Natives, I should judge.”
For a time the boys stood there in silence. It was a tense moment. Each in his own way was trying to solve the problem that had suddenly thrust itself upon them. Should they show themselves to the natives, or should they try to discover some way to escape from the islands?
“I don’t think,” said Pant, as if talking to himself, “that we can get off the island without their aid.”
“A ship might appear,” suggested Johnny.
“Not likely,” said Pant. “We’re too far off the beaten path of sea travel.”
“All right. C’m’on,” said Johnny, as he led the way out into the open where the camp fire gleamed.
The two boys approached the strangers with rifles loosely slung under their arms, as if they had just come from hunting. The men about the fire showed no signs of surprise. They did not leap to their feet nor attempt to glide away. They merely turned their heads at the sound of footsteps, then sat there watching as the boys approached.
Pant took the lead. He had lived among men of many climes, and would doubtless be better able to understand these strangers. Reaching the edge of the circle he sat down by the fire, motioning Johnny to do the same.
For several moments the little group sat in silence. Out of the corner of his eyes, Johnny studied the strangers. There were five heavily-built, raw-boned fellows with dark skins and thick lips. They were dressed merely in breech-clouts. There were two small brown boys with the squint eyes of Orientals.
“Couple of Japs and their serfs,” was his mental comment.
Presently one of the Orientals dug from the ashes of the fire two roasted sweet potatoes. These he offered to the guests. After that he supplied each member of his own group in the same manner.
Johnny noticed that there was a little pile of these potatoes on the beach, also two brown hempen sacks full of some commodity. These sacks were tied tightly at the top.
They ate the potatoes with great relish. After that they were given water to drink.
When they at last attempted to engage the strangers in conversation, they found them quite incapable of understanding English.
Finally Pant, growing tired of the effort, rose and strode down to the beach where the brown sacks were lying. He thumped one of the sacks, then lifted it from the ground.
“About a hundred pounds,” he muttered. Then, turning, he walked back to the group by the fire. He had taken one hand from his pocket. In its palm reposed a shiny ten dollar gold piece. He pointed to the sack he had lifted, then offered the gold to the smaller of the two brown boys.
The boy reached out his hand and took it.
The act was repeated in reference to a second gold piece and the remaining sack. This offer was also accepted.
“They know the value of gold all right,” he smiled. “I have bought two hundred pounds of rice. Let’s get it on our backs. I think if we cut right across beneath the palms here we will about strike our camp.”
With the sacks of rice on their shoulders, they trudged on for a time in silence. At last Johnny spoke:
“What do we want of all this rice?”
“Three people can live a long time on two hundred pounds of rice.”
As he stepped out again into the moonlight he gazed about him for a time, then in a musing tone said:
“I wonder where we’ll be to-morrow night. It’s going to work all right. The only question is, how many miles do you get out of a hundred pounds of rice?”
The next morning, after they had taken their bearings, Pant said, “Far as I can make out, we’re something like a hundred and fifty miles from the wreck. Question is, will our fuel carry us that far?”
“Our fuel? What fuel?” his two friends echoed.
“Yes,” smiled Pant, “we have some fuel—two hundred pounds of it.”
“The rice!” exclaimed Johnny. “I hadn’t thought of using it for that.”
“Well, perhaps we’d better not,” said Pant, wrinkling his brow. “It’s all that stands between us and starvation. Our brown friends left the island last night. What’s more,” he went on, “I don’t know how much carbon there is in rice. Do either of you?”
They both answered in the negative.
“Well, there you are,” said Pant. “You see, if we can’t tell that, there is no way of guessing how far two hundred pounds of rice will carry us. It may let us down after we’ve gone fifty miles and clump us right into the ocean. And the next time we may not be as fortunate as we were this time in finding a safe harbor. Then again, we might land safely in the lee of another of these islands, only to find ourselves without a single mouthful of food. So you see there’s something of a hazard in it.”
The Professor rose and began to pace back and forth. He was very plainly agitated. For fully five minutes he did not speak. Then he turned to face the boys.
“The need of haste,” he said slowly, “is great. Nothing in the world, it seems to me, could be much more important. But you have risked your lives for the cause; I will not press you to do so again. You must decide for yourselves whether we shall take the venture or not. As for me, I am ready to go.”
Pant and Johnny looked at one another. Pant read Johnny’s answer in his eyes.
“Fair enough.” He sprang to his feet. “We go.”
A half-hour’s time was consumed in grinding a quantity of the rice, then they were away. The remaining rice might be ground and fed to the engines as they traveled.
Pant was again at the wheel. On his face there was the strained look of one who constantly listens for some dread sound. They were flying low. Now and again his gaze swept the sea. Twice he dropped to an even lower level, as he fancied he caught the rush of waters upon an unseen shore. Each time he climbed back to their old level and they sped steadily onward.
Fifty miles were recorded, then seventy-five. A hundred stretched to a hundred and twenty-five.