"Frank, what do you make of it?"
"Harry, I don't know what to think."
"Ain't nuffin fer it but ter keep on hopin' fer the best, as the feller said when they had a rope around his neck fer horse-stealing and was about to string him up."
The three—Frank and Harry Chester and Ben Stubbs—were standing round the charred remains of their once lively, well-equipped camp—where they had arrived that morning at daybreak after a tiresome night spent circling about in the moonlight trying to locate it—and now the reason why they had failed to see the white tents was fully apparent by their blackened sites.
"Billy and Lathrop have been carried off!" It was Harry who spoke.
"Beyond a doubt. I thought at first that the raid must have been made by cannibals, but cannibals do not carry rifles, as a rule, and look here." Frank stooped and picked up half-a-dozen cartridges of the kind used by the Arab slave-traders.
"You know there were no shells like that in our party," he went on, "but I can see by the collection of empty shells in the place where the tent stood that Billy and Lathrop must have put up a hot defense."
"Frank, do you—you don't think, do you—" Harry burst out.
"That they have been killed?" Frank finished for him. "No, I do not. Unless they fell in the fight and then we should have seen their bodies down with the others by the river. No, it is my idea that they have been carried off to be sold as slaves. They would have a high market value you know."
Harry groaned.
"But don't you think there is a chance of our getting them back?"
Frank's face grew grave.
"Of course we are going to try every means in our power, but once in the hands of that scoundrel Muley-Hassan it is doubtful if we ever see them again. There is only one thing for us to do."
"And that is—?"
"To get back to the Moon Mountains at once. But we have no gasoline."
This was a stunning blow; in the excitement their of fuel had not occurred even to the farseeing Frank. They had had, as our readers know, to leave most of their gasoline at the Moon Mountains in order to lighten the aeroplane. Without it they could not move an inch in their air-craft. Harry tested the tank. Only a few paltry gallons remained—not enough to drive the aeroplane ten miles.
As the boys stood, struck dumb by the realization of the disaster that had overtaken them, Ben Stubbs, who had been down to the river bank, reappeared.
"Look here!" he exclaimed, holding out at arms length a long white cloak. One glance at the garment was enough—it was an Arab article of dress. There was no further doubt about it, then. Muley-Hassan and his men had carried off Billy and Lathrop.
"But that's not the most extraordinary part of it," went on Ben; "while there are half a dozen of the Arabs' canoes down there, there are a lot of others, that must have belonged to a bunch of natives from their shiftless look—and I could see the bare imprint of the savages' feet in the mud, coming after the Arabs had trod around there."
This was a new mystery. Apparently, then, a tribe of cannibals had been on the trail of the Arabs who had carried off their two young companions. This could only mean one thing, that they meant to punish the Arab slave-dealers for some outrage and, while this would have been quite satisfactory to the boys under other conditions, as things were it meant that there would be a fight in which both Lathrop and Billy would probably be seriously wounded, if not killed. How wrong this surmise was we know, and it serves to show how very wide of the mark it is possible for the constructors of a theory to steer.
And here for a time we will leave our despairing friends while we go back to the Moon Mountains.
The outline of the Golden Eagle II, in her flight to the river camp, had not faded out on the twilight sky, before, through the jungle at the foot of the Moon Mountains, a strange figure pushed its way. It was Sikaso, but a changed Sikaso from the agile muscular black who had wielded his axe with such terrible effect at the fight of the evening before. His ebony body was cut and scarred with the signs of his battle with the thorns and saw-bladed grasses of the dense forest, across which he had cut in desperate haste, scorning all paths in order to warn the Boy Aviators and their chum Ben of the rapid approach of Muley-Hassan. With that strange instinct that white men in Africa recognize in certain of the natives as a sixth sense, the giant black had read in a fire kindled after the battle, that the boys were at that moment in the Moon Mountains, and had at once set out—exhausted as he was—at top speed on the long journey. Only a man of his adamantine strength could have endured the hardships and it had fatigued even his iron frame, as was evident by his stumbling footsteps as he made his way up the side of the mountain—pausing from time to time as if to listen to the whisperings of his mysterious instinct.
Billy and Lathrop, half inclined to accuse the old black in their minds of base desertion, did him a gross injustice. After he had seen the two boys taken prisoners, the old warrior had realized that he could be of far more use to them at liberty than he would be if made captive by Muley-Hassan. Indeed there was no doubt in his own mind that the Arab would put him to death instantly if he ever got his hands on him. He had therefore built a fetish fire and in it had made out distinctly Frank and Harry and Ben in their air-ship, encamped on the mountain-side, and had set out without delay at the peculiar jog-trot by which the native bush-runners can cover daily as much ground, and more, than a horse.
But the huge Krooman was doomed to as bitter a disappointment as the youths he was in search of had experienced at their return to the river camp. He found the spot on which the Golden Eagle had rested deserted, but still urged on by his strange sense of locality he finally stumbled upon the ivory cache.
"Um, big fight here," he mused to himself as he gazed about him at the mangled bodies of the gorillas which showed black as ink on the rocks in the sharp, brilliant moonlight. The heap of uncollected ivory was the next thing to attract his eye and with a guttural grunt the negro helped himself to a drink of water from his skin-bag while he sat down to ponder. He did not waste much time in reflection. Springing to his feet he vanished down one of the dark recesses of the mountain-side and was gone about an hour. When he returned he picked up an armful of the ivory—a load that would have staggered three ordinary men—and, hefting it easily in his arms, vanished with it into the dark shadows. For two hours he worked steadily and at the close of that period there was not enough ivory left about the cache to make a watch-charm of. Old Sikaso had found a new hiding place for the stuff the boys were compelled to leave.
Then he sat himself once more down on the rock, and leisurely smashing to pieces with his inseparable axe, the wooden cover that had been over the cache, he selected, with a good deal of care one of the dead gorillas. Having found the one that seemed to suit him; he cut off from its flank a hunk of meat with his keen weapon and producing a flint and steel soon had the meat toasting over a blaze. When it was done to his satisfaction he leisurely ate it and washed it down with a draught from his skin-bag. He then cooked several more pieces of gorilla meat which he tucked in his waist-band, and shouldering his axe and humming to himself his grim war-song, he set out at the same swinging dog-trot on his long trip to the river bank. With the vitality common to such men, his brief rest and refreshment had rendered his tired frame as vigorous as ever and there was no trace of fatigue in the steady trot of the ebony figure as it plunged into the dark forest and vanished.
A second later, however, the figure reappeared as a noise of voices was heard drawing nearer down a forest trail. Throwing himself on his face and lying as motionless as a fallen log, the Krooman watched as Muley-Hassan and his followers—almost worn out and sadly diminished in numbers since their fight with the boys and with the cannibals—appeared. True, they had beaten the latter off, but at great loss to themselves, and the few men that now limped forward—urged on only by the fierce voice of Diego and Muley-Hassan—appeared ready to drop in their tracks from exhaustion.
"A hundred pounds of ivory to every man of you if we get there before they have cleaned the place out," the Arab was shouting by way of encouraging his men. Old Sikaso, with a grim chuckle, watched them make their way up the mountain-side and then laughed softly to himself as their imprecations of rage and fury broke out as they reached the cache—and found it empty!
Somewhat cheered by the vigorous Ben, who proposed to paddle down the river to the nearest settlement himself the next day, if some news were not heard of Billy and Lathrop, the boys were preparing for bed that evening—the bed consisting of the floor of the Golden Eagle's stripped cabin—when they were startled by Ben holding up a warning finger.
"Hark!" he exclaimed eagerly.
The boys listened.
"There's somebody coming," were Ben's next words.
Sure enough drawing closer every minute they could hear a soft patter-patter coming down a jungle-trail and evidently, by the sound, heading for the camp.
"Who can it be?" exclaimed Frank in a low tone, not daring even to mention the wild hope that surged in his heart. For a minute he thought that it might be the missing chums, and that even Harry and, to a less degree, Ben, shared his thought he saw by their parted lips and tensely strained eyes.
In absolute silence they listened as the footfalls drew in toward them, but not by even the wildest stretch of the imagination could they make out more than one man's footsteps.
Instinctively each member of the party raised his revolver as the bushes parted and from them tottered a man who was very evidently in the last stages of exhaustion. The figure staggered forward to the aeroplane as the boys and Ben lowered their revolvers, seeing that, whoever the newcomer was there was no fear of violence from him. It was Ben who recognized him first:
"Sikaso!" he cried, as the figure crumpled up in a heap, completely exhausted.
The boys rushed to the fallen man's side as they heard the name. They bathed the huge black's head with water and after a few minutes he opened his eyes and recognized them with a faint smile. After he had been given some nourishment he completely recovered from his spell of weakness which he called:
"Big fool—all same woman," quite omitting to state that he had traveled almost eighty miles since the preceding midnight.
The boys sat late listening to what the black had to tell of the attack on the camp—of Professor Wiseman's treachery and death—and of the carrying off of the boys. Then Sikaso went on to gleefully relate, while they warmly clasped his mighty hands, how he had hidden the rest of the ivory and how he had seen Muley-Hassan pass on his way to the rifled hiding place.
"But Billy and Lathrop, Sikaso, tell us quick, were they with Muley-Hassan?"
The black shook his head slowly.
"No see Four-Eyes—no see Red Head," he said sorrowfully.
The last ray of hope concerning the fate of the two young adventurers seemed to have been extinguished.
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