The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the Insurgents

“That’s all right, shipmates,” Ben kept repeating, much embarrassed, “’twarn’t nothing at all – nothing at all – I’d have liked – ” he added, with a touch of wistfulness in his voice – “for my poor dead mates to have been here, too, this day.”

As they started down the passage under such different auspices to those under which they had made their way up it, Frank suddenly stopped and with his knife cut off about six inches of the trailing rawhide rope. He sliced this length up again into four pieces, kept one himself and handed one to each of his three companions. Long afterward they were to remember those souvenirs and treasure them as among their choicest possessions.

Frank had contrived a sort of sling, out of blankets, in which the heavy keg of powder was slung. Through the loop that this formed a long branch with a hooked end was thrust. This was to grapple the chain with, after the explosion from which they hoped so much had taken place. It was a short time later that they reached a spot about half-a-mile from the White Serpents’ Chasm, and here the keg was left after Ben had selected a couple of long brownish sticks from it. These he tipped with fulminate of mercury caps, which were later in their turn to be attached to the five hundred feet of sparking wires of the battery.

At this moment Frank recollected something that sent a thrill of disappointment through him.

“How old is your battery?” he asked anxiously of Ben.

“All of five years,” responded the prospector, “why?”

“Because I’m afraid it’s too old to be any good,” was the reply that sent a shock of bitter disappointment through them all.

Anxiously they watched while Frank made a test. His fear was only too true. No encouraging blue spark responded, when the detonating key was pressed down. In the first feeling of dumb despair nobody found words. Billy was the first to speak:

“Hold on there,” he cried, “you fellows have got electric light torches in your pockets?”

“By Jove,” cried Frank happily, “what a dumb idiot I am – thank you, Billy. I never thought of that.”

To the boys’ delight the batteries from their torches, which luckily they had had made of extra power and efficiency, answered perfectly. When they were connected up to the wires a good “fat” spark was shown.

“That’s a massive brain of yours, Billy,” complimented Frank.

“Oh, pshaw, Frank; you’d have thought of it later,” protested the reporter, delighted nevertheless at having gained the young leader’s approbation.

“Now then,” said Ben, when all was declared ready, “this thing is one man’s job. Old man dynamite don’t like a crowd around when he celebrates. You boys stay back here.”

In view, however, of the danger of an attack by the aroused serpents he consented finally to allow Frank to accompany him down the tunnel to the chasm. The two companions, – the seasoned, toughened man and the brave boy, – set forth on their dangerous mission in silence. It was no time for talking. All their plans were agreed upon. Ben was to lower the sticks of dynamite, cautiously over the brink of the serpent-filled abyss and Frank, with his rifle ready for emergencies, was to stand behind him ready to drop any of their scaly enemies that might protest against the invasion of their long undisputed kingdom.

A creepy feeling came over Frank as their candles showed them that they were hard upon the chasm. The hour of the experiment upon which so much hung was at hand. Ben without the quiver of an eyelid, held up a hand to enjoin absolute silence and crept on his belly to the edge of the pit. So far everything had gone well. There was not a sign, but the peculiar odor of musk that filled the air, that they were on any more dangerous task than the placing of an ordinary placer mine blast. Frank, as he watched Ben proceed to work, realized the purpose of a long bit of heavy board the prospector had brought with him.

Ben stuck one end of the board, which was about six feet long, out about two feet beyond the edge of the pit brink, having previously rigged the wires into a notch he had cut in its outer end. Frank saw at once that this was to obviate any danger of the giant powder striking the edge of the chasm as it was lowered and causing a premature explosion, which would certainly have cost them their lives.

All went well till Ben had lowered possibly sixty feet of wire and then there came a loud angry hiss, which soon grew into a sound of furious reptilian rage that reverberated in the narrow tunnel, like waves breaking on a beach. As Frank heard, with a chill of horror, this indisputable evidence that at that very moment the dynamite was brushing the soft scaly backs of a nest of huge white serpents, his blood ran cold.

Suddenly, Ben straightened himself up with a shout.

“All set!” he roared, and, leaping to his feet, started running like a jack rabbit back down the tunnel toward the battery-box. As if his cry had been a signal, an enormous white head, with the same sightless eyes that had distinguished the serpent Billy escaped from, arose from the edge of the pit with an angry hiss. In its snow-white head, its red tongue darted in and out like a flash of livid flame.

“Run Frank! Run for your life!” shouted Ben, as the loathsome monster hurled itself out of the pit and started after him. Hardly knowing what he did, Frank fired point-blank at the creature in a perfect spasm of disgust and fear. He saw it writhe in great convulsions and as if in a nightmare, witnessed the awful spectacle of two of its enraged brethren wriggle toward him at lightning speed over the edge of the pit. He turned to run but stumbled. As he fell he felt himself picked up by Ben Stubbs and fairly dragged over the ground up the tunnel to where the battery stood. He saw Ben bend over the box and shout back into the tunnel to where the others were: “Lie flat everybody!”

Mechanically, Frank lay still and mechanically he heard the quick snap as Ben closed the circuit.

The next moment there was a roar that seemed to be the tearing out of the bowels of the earth. The tunnel became filled with choking fumes and Frank knew no more till he found himself crawling back with bleeding and cut hands and face to where the others lay, also stunned from the terrific concussion of the explosion in the small space in which it occurred.

Dazed and staggering the boys still managed to regain their wits in a few minutes, and made their way down the tunnel to where Ben Stubbs had set his battery-box. To their inexpressible relief they found the hardy outcast sitting up with a cheerful grin on his countenance, dabbing away at a wound on his forehead.

“Kind ’er like settin’ in a gun-barrel, when someone pulls the trigger, eh, boys?” he remarked cheerfully, “but I guess we set off our little Fourth of July celebration just in time.”

It was even as Ben said. When they had sufficiently recovered from their daze to proceed, they discovered the bodies of the three serpents – the one Frank had shot and the two others – torn almost to rags by the force of the concussion.

“There ain’t much sarpint life left in that hole now, I’m thinking,” remarked Ben, leading the way to the edge of the chasm. The blue smoke of the explosion still curled up from it; but when they threw down some rocks by way of experiment, no answering hiss came back. Modern dynamite had wiped out the Toltecs’ watch-dogs.

CHAPTER XXII.

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 the Golden 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 the Golden Eagle camp. 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 the Golden Eagle would 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 the Golden Eagle were 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 gone straight 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 the Golden Eagle steadily 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 the Golden 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 the Golden 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 the Golden Eagle could 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 the Golden Eagle were 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 the Golden Eagle seemed 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 the Golden Eagle’s course 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.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

SAVED BY WIRELESS

Frank was right. To keep on was all they could do. Without even a star to guide them and a wind fast springing up, surrounded by a display of electricity, that viewed from a place of safety would have been magnificent, but situated as they were was a terrible menace, they had no alternative.

The boy captain of the Golden Eagle stuck bravely to his wheel and time and again when the vessel gave a sickening “duck,” he righted her in the nick of time with a skilful adjustment of his planes and compensating balances. Neither boy spoke – indeed, in the roar of the elements that now surrounded them, it would have been difficult to hear. Crash followed crash so swiftly that like the lightning display it seemed all blended into one long horrible glare and uproar. Still, mercifully, it had not rained.

Harry crawled forward after a time from his seat by the engine and shouted in Frank’s ear:

“Where are we now?”

“Driving due east, I should judge.”

“Have you any hope that we can make a landing?”

Frank shook his head.

“Not in this.”

“Then there is only one thing to be done?”

“Yes.”

“Keep on driving her?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Good Lord!” thought Harry, “if the gasolene would hold out we’d land in Europe.”

The above conversation was not carried on in consecutive order as reported. The exigencies of guiding the craft, and the noise of the storm, made that an impossibility. Fragmentary sentences were all the boys could exchange, but they understood one another so well that with them a word meant as much as a whole sentence.

On and on drove the plunging craft and still the accident both boys had feared – the short circuiting of the engine – had not occurred. Could it be that they were going to weather it after all? Wild as the thought appeared, it put new heart into them.

“Do you know where we are?” asked Harry, clinging to the forward rail of the pilot-house.

“Not the slightest idea,” was the reply, “but I should say we cannot be far from the sea.”

The sea! The realization of this new peril sent a chill of terror through both boys. Once blown out to sea and they would stand not a chance of rescue.

“Hadn’t we better chance it and drop where we are?” asked Harry at length.

Frank shook a negative response.

“It would mean certain death – we should be dashed to pieces,” he said; “if we keep on we’ve got a fighting chance.”

As they were urged along before the storm Harry opened the trap in the pilot-house floor and peered through. By the blue illumination of the constant lightning display, he could see that they were still driving over the tree-tops. They were then still over solid land.

There was not a light to be seen, however, and wherever they were, they had been driven out of the civilized part of Nicaragua it seemed. The boys’ hearts sank as they gazed at the character of the country over which they were racing along. As Frank had said, there was not a chance for them to land there. They might ride the storm out if they kept on going – that was all they could do.

Once Frank entertained a desperate thought of heading the ship about, but as he put the helm over she gave such a frightful yaw that both boys thought the minute was their last. The Golden Eagle plunged down in a sickening swerve till it seemed that she could never right herself. Frantically Frank, although he could hardly keep his feet on the inclined pilot-house floor, which was pitched over at an angle of forty-five degrees, fought to bring her back on an even keel with one hand, while he clung to the pilot-house rail with the other.

After what had seemed an eternity of suspense the craft answered her helm and regulating planes and regained her balance. The scare the boys had received, though, prevented them from trying any more experiments. Thoroughly exhausted Frank at last relinquished the wheel to Harry, at the latter’s earnest solicitation. As the boys changed places the ship, none too steady under the conditions, gave a lurch to port that threw Frank from his feet and sent him crashing against the left-hand rail of the pilot-house. The force of the impact of his body snapped off the stanchions that supported the canvas screening round the pilot-box and he would have shot over the edge into countless feet of space if Harry had not grasped him and hauled him back to safety. Frank thanked him with a look. It was no time for words.

“Hark,” suddenly cried Frank, as there came a lull in the storm, “what is that?”

Below them both boys could hear a long, booming sound.

“It’s the surf breaking on the beach!” groaned Frank, “only Providence can save us now.”

How much longer they drove on above the sea, they had no means of reckoning, even if they had cared to. Their only hope was in daylight when there was a chance that some ship might see them and pick them up. Harry sat grimly at the wheel, keeping the creaking ship dead before the wind, which had now increased.

“It’s not much use,” he shouted to Frank, who lay on the pilot-house floor so as to keep the center of equilibrium as low as possible, “but we might as well stick to it as long as the engine does.”

Frank nodded and shouted back his favorite “While there’s life there’s hope.”

Suddenly, while an unusually prolonged and vivid flash enveloped the Golden Eagle and showed a wild sea leaping hungrily below her, Harry gave a loud shout:

“Frank, Frank,” he yelled, “look there!”

He pointed a little to the north of the direction the Golden Eagle was taking, or rather being driven, which, though the boys did not know it, was due east.

The elder brother raised his head above the pilot-house railing but the flash that illumined the object that caused Harry’s exclamation had died out.

“It was a steamer and she’ll pass right below us,” roared Harry.

“How can we attract their attention,” shouted back Frank.

“There’s one chance in a thousand and we’ll take it,” was the response of the youth at the wheel.

“Send out a wireless call.”

Frank leaped to the sending apparatus of the Golden Eagle’s wireless plant. To his delirious delight it was working perfectly despite the ship’s buffeting.

Even as he stripped off the cover, and lowered the ground rope which was interwoven with strands of phosphor bronze wire, though, he realized what a long chance it was they were taking. The steamer was nearer by this time. They could in fact see her lights below them; but she seemed a small craft, as well as they in their frenzied excitement at the sudden vision of hope that flamed up in them, could make out. It was unlikely she carried wireless. But, as Harry had said, it was one chance in a thousand. With a fervent prayer that it might be that ten hundredth chance, Frank sent the spark flashing and leaping across the crackling gap.