Chapter 18

AN IRRITATING DELAY

Paul was awakened the next morning by feeling a gentle tug at his nose. Unused to such a summons as this, he opened his eyes with a start.

There on his breast squatted Grandpa, his little head cocked comically to one side, his beady little eyes glistening with mischief, and his slim fingers just reaching out for another tweak. The monkey gave a lightning-like spring to the back of a nearby seat when he saw Paul looking at him, and here he set up a shrill chattering, which also awoke Bob and caused Tom and John to whirl around.

"You fellows have got a good alarm-clock now, the way it looks," called Tom, laughing, and taking in the situation. "Grandpa will save John and me the trouble of stirring you sleepy heads up after this, I expect."

Paul and Bob sprang out of their hammocks, and the former seized the monkey and laughingly shoved his nose up against one of the window panes. Far down below were the rolling billows of the great Atlantic, the early sun striking them into many beautiful tones of green and blue, and cutting a silver pathway across the curling crests. A school of dolphins was leaping out of the water off to the left. From the opposite window the youth could see a small emerald island in the distance, but everywhere else was water, vast reaches of it.

Grandpa evidently had no eye for nature, as viewed from this novel position, for he quickly twisted out of Paul's arms and jumped down to the floor of the cabin, where he pranced about excitedly.

"It's just a little bit too high to suit your exalted monkeyship, isn't it?" chuckled Paul. "Well, you'll get used to it, Grandpa, before you get around the world with us! I'll promise you, sir, that you will be the farthest-jumping and highest-jumping monkey that ever lived. You ought to be proud!"

After getting something to eat, Paul relieved Tom at the throttle, and Bob tried to get Freetown by radio. Failing, he did get Para, and advised them of their safety and approximate position over the Atlantic.

Now that the weather had cleared up so that they could run in view of the ocean, John and Tom themselves turned in for a much-needed sleep, leaving their younger companions to direct the course of the Sky-Bird on the last stage of the lap. The trade-winds were blowing freely, but with a lack of gustiness which made progress against them quite rapid and smooth.

It was two hours later that those in the Sky-Bird saw the coastline of Africa jutting out into the sea in a great bulge, and a little afterward they recognized landmarks agreeing with their chart. As they were slightly south of their course, Bob made the proper deviation, and in twenty minutes they were over a muddy field, marked with the looked-for white T, at Freetown, Sierra Leone.

As they were spiraling downward they saw a crowd of natives gathered in one portion of the field, and caught a glimpse of an airplane's wings in their midst. Many of this throng now rushed over to where the newcomers had landed, among them a tall Englishman, who introduced himself as the port minister and person who was to supply them with a replacement of fuel. Several other Englishmen, all officers in the garrison of the town, came up and were introduced.

"We 'av' been looking for you fellows, but not quite so soon," stated the port minister. "Hif I had known--"

"How is that?" asked John. "We are just about on schedule."

"So you are; but those other flyers over there, who 'av' been 'ere the past two 'ours declared you 'ad been delayed in South Hamerica hand would not be hin before to-morrow morning, so as we 'av' a coasting vessel with more petrol due 'ere then, I let them 'av' hall the petrol they wanted, hand I fear--"

"They had no reason for telling you we were delayed to such an extent as that, without it was to further their own interests," interrupted John, significantly. "But I don't see their game."

"I don't know, I'm sure," was the response; "but has I was saying, they asked for an hextra filling of their tanks, hand so--well, gentlemen, I am sorry to say it, but there hisn't ten gallons left."

Our friends heard this with mixed feelings. They were rightfully incensed at their rivals for such a dastardly trick, vexed with the port minister, and dismayed to think that they would have to wait until the following day before they could resume their journey, for at Para they had not filled their tanks to capacity.

At this point cries arose in the other part of the field. They heard the familiar whir of an airplane propeller, and as they looked to where the _Clarion_ had stood, they saw the natives scatter and the gray machine of the other crew shoot up into the air. Rapidly it gained altitude, and was soon a mere dot on the western sky.

Ignoring the yells of the port minister and his military countrymen, the _Clarion_ crew had gone straight on, and there seemed nothing for our boys to do now except await the arrival of more gasoline as patiently as they could.

John and Tom set to work cleaning up the Sky-Bird, for the field here was low and very muddy from recent rains, and as they had dashed through the slime in landing much of it had splattered over their propeller and under-carriage.

Paul and Bob went into town, followed by a throng of young negroes who fought for the privilege of getting closest to them. They found the stores small and mostly unpainted, and the houses principally shambling and squatty, most of them having thatched roofs. The streets were narrow, crooked, and dirty, but there were areas about some of the more pretentious dwelling-places which were really entrancing in the wealth of their tropical plants and stately palms. On the whole, the stone garrison, setting a little remote from the town proper, was the largest and best-constructed building, although this looked old and somber. Freetown, the capital of the little British colony of Sierra Leone, is all on low ground, and the air is moist and extremely humid, even unhealthful for those not accustomed to it.

Just before dark a terrific thunder-shower sprang up with all of the suddenness of such equatorial storms, and Bob and Paul made for the field as fast as their legs could carry them. They sprang inside of the Sky-Bird's cabin, wet to the skin, where John and Tom were already ensconsed, and Grandpa the monkey gave them a noisy and hearty welcome. A little later, with the rain pattering heavily down upon the roof, all hands turned in for the first ground sleep they had had since starting out upon their trip.

Shortly after daylight the next morning they were astir, to find the rain had ceased but that the field was a mass of ooze. Through this Tom made his way to the cobblestone street and down to the piers. But the coasting steamer had not yet arrived; in fact, she did not come in until after eight o'clock, and it was two hours later before the flyers succeeded in getting their tanks filled with the gasoline she had brought. Then it was found necessary to secure the aid of a half-dozen negroes, and to lay down many strips of heavy bark for traction, before the Sky-Bird could be run out of her mired position.

Paul was at the throttle as they took off. When he had attained a fair altitude, he gradually increased the speed until they were running full out. Never since the beginning of the trip had they felt such urgent need of putting the airplane through at a fast clip, but that time had now come, for they were fourteen hours behind schedule time and sixteen hours behind their rivals.

The Sky-Bird fairly cut the air like a knife, and the roar of propeller, wind, and engine was so great that our friends found conversation out of the question except by shouting in one another's ears. Poor Grandpa cowered in the farthest corner of the cabin, peeping out from behind one of the hammocks, as meek as a kitten, his tail crooking uneasily. But finding that the strange noises did him no harm, he presently came out and took up a position where he could look through the glass-floor window at the fleeting country below.

It seemed only a few minutes before, rising higher, they shot over the ragged chain of the Kong Mountains in western Senegambia, passing within sight of Mount Loma's bare peak. Then, dropping again until they were not more than a thousand feet high, they flew along over the tablelands to the eastward, recognized the Joliba River as it lay a yellow, twisting band below them, and a little later crossed the southern end of the district of Bambarra.

Great forests and jungles and canebrakes swept past them. In those tangles of gnarled trees, matted vines, interlacing rank grasses, and clusters of towering plants, so dank with the odor of wet and decay that the air even up where the flyers were seemed charged with it, lurked many a monster reptile and ferocious beast. Often the four boys saw the majestic form of a lion or the lumbering shape of an elephant as these animals were quenching their thirst at some open spot along a stream. And once they caught a brief glimpse of a terrific combat between what seemed to be two enormous rhinos, which had met in a little glen in the midst of a cluster of mahogany trees. How they would have liked to see the finish of this battle royal! Indeed, they would have enjoyed nothing better than to land in some favored spot and do a little big-game hunting with their rifles!

If they had been ahead of their adversaries instead of behind, they might have indulged in such sport, they thought. But now it would be unwise to waste a moment. They must make every endeavor to reach their next airport, Kuka, by nightfall. This small town was on the western bank of the salty Lake Chad, in the very heart of Africa, and on the southern border of the great Sahara Desert. It possessed no railroads or telegraph service, being linked with the outside world only by caravan route, and its inhabitants were practically all half-civilized negroes of the Fulbee tribe, who retained all of their forefathers' superstitions and wore no garb over their frescoed black bodies except a short gikki or skirt.

Mr. Giddings and Mr. Wrenn had had great difficulty in getting an English-speaking man to set up a field at this point for their flyers, and it was only after considerable telegraphing that a Scotch trader named MacInnis, situated at Lagos, the nearest coast-port of any size, had agreed to get a supply of gasoline and oil to Kuka and meet the airplanes when they arrived.

It was five o'clock when the boys passed over the low banks of the Niger River. By seven they were in the heart of the wild, level territory of Sokoto, skimming over vast expanses of plume-like grasses and extensive marshes and swamps. Strange birds of enormous size flew up out of the morasses, startled at the sight and sound of the airplane. Some tried to follow it, evidently to give it battle, but the swiftest of them were hopelessly outdistanced before they were well started.

When the sun disappeared behind the forest back of them, the flyers were still making speed for their destination, with Bob at the throttle. Pretty soon the lengthening shadows and obscuring of detail below convinced the crew that night was just about upon them, and that if they did not reach Kuka within the next thirty minutes they were very likely to be in such darkness that they would overrun it and never know the difference.

Some of them began to wonder if they had not missed their course, when a cry came from Bob, and they all ran forward and looked out of the front windows at the object he was pointing out.