The Flying Machine Boys in the Wilds

CHAPTER XVII.
THE LOST TELEGRAMS

On the morning following the departure of Sam and the boys, Mr. Havens was awakened by laughing voices in the corridor outside his door. His first impression was that Sam and Jimmie had returned from their midnight excursion in the Ann. He arose and, after dressing hastily, opened the door, thinking that the adventures of the night must have been very amusing indeed to leave such a hang-over of merriment for the morning.

When he saw Ben and Glenn standing in the hall he confessed to a feeling of disappointment, but invited the lads inside without showing it.

“You are out early,” he said as the boys, still laughing, dropped into chairs. “What’s the occasion of the comedy?”

“We’ve been out to the field,” replied Ben, “and we’re laughing to think how Carl bested Sam and Jimmie last night.”

“What about it?” asked the millionaire.

“Why,” Ben continued, “it seems that Sam and Jimmie planned a moonlight ride in the Ann all by themselves. Carl got next to their scheme and bounced into the seat with Jimmie just as the machine swung into the air. I’ll bet Jimmie was good and provoked about that!”

“What time did the Ann return?” asked Havens.

“Return?” repeated Ben. “She hasn’t returned yet.”

The millionaire turned from the mirror in which he was completing the details of his toilet and faced the boys with a startled look in his eyes. The boys ceased laughing and regarded him curiously.

“Are you sure the boys haven’t returned?” Mr. Havens asked.

“Anyhow,” Glenn replied, “the Ann hasn’t come back!”

“Did they tell you where they were going?” asked Ben.

“They did not,” was the reply. “Sam said that he thought he might be able to pick up valuable information and asked for the use of the Ann and the company of Jimmie. That’s all he said to me concerning the moonlight ride he proposed.”

In bringing his mind back to the conversation with Sam on the previous night, Mr. Havens could not avoid a feeling of anxiety as he considered the significant words of the young man and the information concerning the sealed letter to be opened only in case of his death. He said nothing of this to the boys, however, but continued the conversation as if no apprehension dwelt in his mind regarding the safety of the lads.

“If they only went out for a short ride by moonlight,” Glenn suggested, in a moment, “they ought to have returned before daylight.”

“You can never tell what scrape that boy Jimmie will get into!” laughed Ben. “He’s the hoodoo of the party and the mascot combined! He gets us into all kinds of scrapes, but he usually makes good by getting us out of the scrapes we get ourselves into.”

“Oh, they’ll be back directly,” the millionaire remarked, although deep down in his consciousness was a growing belief that something serious had happened to the lads.

He, however, did his best to conceal the anxiety he felt from Ben and his companion.

Directly the three went down to breakfast together, and while the meal was in progress a report came from the field where the machines had been left that numerous telegrams addressed to Mr. Havens had been delivered there. The millionaire looked puzzled at the information.

“I left positive orders at the telegraph office,” he said, “to have all my messages delivered here. Did one of the men out there receipt for them? If so, perhaps one of you boys would better chase out and bring them in,” he added turning to his companions at the table.

The messenger replied that the messages had been receipted for, and that he had offered to bring them in, but that the man in charge had refused to turn them over to him. He seemed annoyed at the fact.

“All right,” Mr. Havens replied, “Ben will go out to the field with you and bring the messages in. And,” he added, as the messenger turned away, “kindly notify me the instant the Ann arrives.”

The messenger bowed and started away, accompanied by Ben.

“I don’t understand about the telegrams having been sent to the field,” Mr. Havens went on, as the two left the breakfast table and sauntered into the lobby of the hotel. “I left positive instructions with Mr. Mellen to have all messages delivered here. I also left instructions with the clerk to send any messages to my room, no matter what time they came. The instructions were very explicit.”

“Oh, you know how things get balled up in telegraph offices, and messenger offices, and post-offices!” grinned Glenn. “Probably Mr. Mellen left the office early in the evening, and the man in charge got lazy, or indifferent, or forgetful, and sent the messages to the wrong place.”

While the two talked together, Mr. Mellen strolled into the hotel and approached the corner of the lobby where they sat.

“Good-morning!” he said taking a chair at their side. “Anything new concerning the southern trip?”

“Not a thing!” replied Mr. Havens. “Sam went out in the Ann, for a short run last night, and we’re only waiting for his return in order to continue our journey. We expect to be away by noon.”

“I hope I shall hear from you often,” the manager said.

“By the way,” the millionaire remarked, “what about the telegrams which were sent out to the field last night?”

“No telegrams for you were sent out to the field last night!” was the reply. “The telegrams directed to you are now at the hotel desk, unless you have called for them.”

“But a messenger from the field reports that several telegrams for me were received there. I don’t understand this at all.”

“They certainly did not come from our office!” was the reply.

The millionaire arose hastily and approached the desk just as the clerk was drawing a number of telegrams from his letter-box.

“I left orders to have these taken to your room as soon as they arrived,” the clerk explained, “but it seems that the night man chucked them into your letter-box and forgot all about them.”

Mr. Havens took the telegrams into his hand and returned to the corner of the lobby where he had been seated with Mellen and Glenn.

“There seems to be a hoodoo in the air concerning my telegrams,” he said with a smile, as he began opening the envelopes. “The messages which came last night were not delivered to my room, but were left lying in my letter-box until just now. In future, please instruct your messengers,” he said to the manager, “to bring my telegrams directly to my room—that is,” he added, “if I remain in town and any more telegrams are received for me.”

“I’ll see that you get them directly they are received,” replied the manager, impatiently. “If the hotel clerk objects to the boy going to your room in the night-time, I’ll tell him to draw a gun on him!” he added with a laugh. “Are the delayed telegrams important ones?”

“They are in code!” replied the millionaire. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go to my room and get the code sheet.”

Mr. Havens disappeared up the elevator, and Mellen and Glenn talked of aviation, and canoeing, and base-ball, and the dozen and one things in which men and boys are interested, for half an hour. Then the millionaire appeared in the lobby beckoning them toward the elevator.

Mr. Mellen observed that the millionaire was greatly excited as he motioned them into his suite of rooms and pointed to chairs. The telegrams which he had received were lying open on a table near the window and the code sheet and code translations were not far away.

Before the millionaire could open the conversation Ben came bounding into the room without knocking. His face was flushed with running, and his breath came in short gasps. As he turned to close the door he shook a clenched fist threateningly in the direction of the elevator.

“That fool operator,” he declared, “left me standing in the corridor below while he took one of the maids up to the ’steenth floor, and I ran all the way up the stairs! I’ll get him good sometime!”

“Did you bring the telegrams?” asked the millionaire with a smile.

“Say, look here!” Ben exclaimed dropping into a chair beside the table. “I’d like to know what’s coming off!”

Mr. Havens and his companions regarded the boy critically for a moment and then the millionaire asked:

“What’s broke loose now?”

“Well,” Ben went on, “I went out to the field and the man there said he’d get the telegrams in a minute. I stood around looking over the Louise and Bertha, and asking questions about what Sam said when he went away on the Ann, until I got tired of waiting, then I chased up to where this fellow stood and he said he’d go right off and get the messages.”

“Why didn’t you hand him one?” laughed Glenn.

“I wanted to,” Ben answered. “If I’d had him down in the old seventeenth ward in the little old city of New York, I’d have set the bunch on him. Well, after a while, he poked away to the little shelter-tent the men put up to sleep in last night and rustled around among the straw and blankets and came back and said he couldn’t find the messages.”

The millionaire and the manager exchanged significant glances.

“He told me,” Ben went on, “that the telegrams had been receipted for and hidden under a blanket, to be delivered early in the morning. Said he guessed some one must have stolen them, or mislaid them, but didn’t seem to think the matter very important.”

The millionaire pointed to the open messages lying on the table.

“How many telegrams came for me last night?” he asked.

“Eight,” was the reply.

“And there are eight here,” the millionaire went on.

“And that means–”

“And that means,” the millionaire said, interrupting the manager, “that the telegrams delivered on the field last night were either duplicates of these cipher despatches or fake messages!”

“That’s just what I was going to remark,” said Mellen.

“Has the Ann returned?” asked Glenn of Ben.

“Not yet,” was the reply.

“Suppose we take one of the other machines and go up and look for her?”

“We’ll discuss that later on, boys,” the millionaire interrupted.

“I would give a considerable to know,” the manager observed, in a moment, “just who handled the messages which were left at the hotel counter last night. And I’m going to do my best to find out!” he added.

“That ought to be a perfectly simple matter,” suggested Mr. Havens.

“In New York, yes! In Quito, no!” answered the manager. “A good many of the natives who are in clerical positions here are crooked enough to live in a corkscrew. They’ll do almost anything for money.”

“That’s the idea I had already formed of the people,” Ben cut in.

“Besides,” the manager continued, “the chances are that the night clerk tumbled down on a sofa somewhere in the lobby and slept most of the night, leaving bell-boys and subordinates to run the hotel.”

“In that event,” Mr. Havens said, “the telegrams might have been handled by half a dozen different people.”

“I’m afraid so!” replied the manager.

“But the code!” suggested Ben. “They couldn’t read them!”

“But they might copy them for some one who could!” argued the manager. “And the copies might have been sent out to the field for the express purpose of having them stolen,” he went on with an anxious look on his face. “Are they very important?” he asked of the millionaire.

“Very much so,” was the answer. “In fact, they are code copies of private papers taken from deposit box A, showing the plans made in New York for the South American aeroplane journey.”

“And showing stops and places to look through and all that?” asked Ben. “If that’s the kind of information the telegrams contained, I guess the Redfern bunch in this vicinity are pretty well posted about this time!”

“I’m afraid so,” the millionaire replied gloomily. “Well,” he continued in a moment, “we may as well get ready for our journey. I remember now,” he said casually, “that Sam said last night that we ought to proceed on our way without reference to him this morning. His idea then was that we would come up with him somewhere between Quito and Lake Titicaca. So we may as well be moving, and leave the investigation of the fraudulent or copied telegrams to Mr. Mellen.”

“Funny thing for them to go chasing off in that way!” declared Ben.

But no one guessed the future as the aeroplanes started southward!

CHAPTER XVIII.
JIMMIE’S AWFUL HUNGER

“You say,” Sam asked, as Pedro crouched in the corner of the temple where the old fountain basin had been, “that the Indians will never actually attack the temple?”

“They never have,” replied Pedro, his teeth chattering in terror. “Since I have been stationed here to feed and care for the wild animals in captivity, I have known them to utter threats, but until to-night, so far as I know, none of them ever placed a foot on the temple steps.”

“They did it to-night, all right!” Jimmie declared.

“Felix could tell us about that if they had left enough of his frame to utter a sound!” Carl put in.

The boys were both weak from loss of blood, but their injuries were not of a character to render them incapable of moving about.

“What I’m afraid of,” Pedro went on, “is that they’ll surround the temple and try to starve us into submission.”

“Jerusalem!” cried Jimmie. “That doesn’t sound good to me. I’m so hungry now I could eat one of those jaguars raw!”

“But they are not fit to eat!” exclaimed Pedro.

“They wanted to eat us, didn’t they?” demanded Jimmie. “I guess turn and turn about is fair play!”

“Is there no secret way out of this place?” asked Sam, as the howls of the savages became more imperative.

Pedro shook his head doubtfully. There were rumors, he said, of secret passages, but he had never been able to discover them. For his own part, he did not believe they existed.

“What sort of a hole is that den the jaguars came out of?” asked Jimmie. “It looks like it might extend a long way into the earth.”

“No,” answered Pedro, “it is only a subterranean room, used a thousand years ago by the priests who performed at the broken altar you see beyond the fountain. When the Gringoes came with their proposition to hold wild animals here until they could be taken out to Caxamarca, and thence down the railroad to the coast, they examined the walls of the chamber closely, but found no opening by which the wild beasts might escape. Therefore, I say, there is no passage leading from that chamber.”

“From the looks of things,” Carl said, glancing out at the Indians, now swarming by the score on the level plateau between the front of the ruined temple and the lake, “we’ll have plenty of time to investigate this old temple before we get out of it.”

“How are we going to investigate anything when we’re hungry?” demanded Jimmie. “I can’t even think when I’m hungry.”

“Take away Jimmie’s appetite,” grinned Carl, “and there wouldn’t be enough left of him to fill an ounce bottle!”

Pedro still sat in the basin of the old fountain, rocking his body back and forth and wailing in a mixture of Spanish and English that he was the most unfortunate man who ever drew the breath of life.

“The animal industry,” he wailed, “is ruined. No more will the hunters of wild beasts bring them to this place for safe keeping. No more will the Indians assist in their capture. No more will the gold of the Gringo kiss my palm. The ships came out of the sky and brought ruin. Right the Indians are when they declare that the men who fly bring only disease and disaster!” he continued, with an angry glance directed at the boys.

“Cheer up!” laughed Jimmie. “Cheer up, old top, and remember that the worst is yet to come! Say!” the boy added in a moment. “How would it do to step out to the entrance and shoot a couple of those noisy savages?”

“I never learned how to shoot with an empty gun!” Carl said scornfully.

“How many cartridges have you in your gun?” asked Jimmie of Sam.

“About six,” was the reply. “I used two out of the clip on the jaguars and two were fired on the ride to Quito.”

“And that’s all the ammunition we’ve got, is it?” demanded Carl.

“That’s all we’ve got here!” answered Sam. “There’s plenty more at the machine if the Indians haven’t taken possession of it.”

“Little good that does us!” growled Jimmie.

“You couldn’t eat ’em!” laughed Carl.

“But I’ll tell you what I could do!” insisted Jimmie. “If we had plenty of ammunition, I could make a sneak outside and bring in game enough to keep us eating for a month.”

“You know what always happens to you when you go out after something to eat!” laughed Carl. “You always get into trouble!”

“But I always get back, don’t I?” demanded Jimmie. “I guess the time will come, before long, when you’ll be glad to see me starting out for some kind of game! We’re not going to remain quietly here and starve.”

“That looks like going out hunting,” said Sam, pointing to the savages outside. “Those fellows might have something to say about it.”

It was now broad daylight. The early sunshine lay like a mist of gold over the tops of the distant peaks, and birds were cutting the clear, sweet air with their sharp cries. Many of the Indians outside being sun worshipers, the boys saw them still on their knees with hands and face uplifted to the sunrise.

The air in the valley was growing warmer every minute. By noon, when the sun would look almost vertically down, it promised to be very hot, as the mountains shut out the breeze.

“I don’t think it will be necessary to look for game,” Sam went on in a moment, “for the reason that the Louise and Bertha, ought to be here soon after sunset. It may possibly take them a little longer than that to cover the distance, as they do not sail so fast as the Ann, but at least they should be here before to-morrow morning. Then you’ll see the savages scatter!” he added with a smile. “And you’ll see Jimmie eat, too!”

“Don’t mention it!” cried the boy.

“Yes,” Carl suggested, “but won’t Mr. Havens and the boys remain in Quito two or three days waiting for us to come back?”

“I think not,” was the reply. “I arranged with Mr. Havens to pick us up somewhere between Quito and Lake Titicaca in case we did not return before morning. I have an idea that they’ll start out sometime during the forenoon—say ten o’clock—and reach this point, at the latest, by midnight.”

“They can’t begin to sail as fast as we did!” suggested Carl.

“If they make forty miles an hour,” Sam explained, “and stop only three or four times to rest, they can get here before midnight, all right!”

“Gee! That’s a long time to go without eating!” cried Jimmie. “And, even at that,” he went on in a moment, “they may shoot over us like a couple of express trains, and go on south without ever knowing we are here.”

Sam turned to Pedro with an inquiring look on his face.

“Where is Miguel?” he asked.

Pedro shook his head mournfully.

“Gone!” he said.

“Well, then,” Sam went on, “what about the red and blue lights? Can you stage that little drama for us to-night?”

“What is stage?” demanded Pedro. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Chestnuts!” exclaimed Jimmie impatiently. “He wants to know if you can work the lights as Miguel did. He wants to know if you can keep the lights burning to-night in order to attract the attention of people who are coming to drive the Indians away. Do you get it?”

Pedro’s face brightened perceptibly.

“Coming to drive the Indians away?” he repeated. “Yes, I can burn the lights. They shall burn from the going down of the sun. Also,” he added with a hopeful expression on his face, “the Indians may see the lights and disappear again in the forest.”

“Yes, they will!” laughed Carl.

“Let him think so if he wants to,” cautioned Jimmie. “He’ll take better care of the lights if he thinks that will in any way add to the possibility of release. But midnight!” the boy went on. “Think of all that time without anything to eat! Say,” he whispered to Carl, in a soft aside, “if you can get Sam asleep sometime during the day and get the gun away from him, I’m going to make a break for the tall timber and bring in a deer, or a brace of rabbits, or something of that kind. There’s plenty of cooking utensils in that other chamber and plenty of dishes, so we can have a mountain stew with very little trouble if we can only get the meat to put into it.”

“And there’s the stew they left,” suggested Carl.

“Not for me!” Jimmie answered. “I’m not going to take any chances on being poisoned. I’d rather build a fire on that dizzy old hearth they used, and broil a steak from one of the jaguars than eat that stew—or anything they left for that matter.”

“I don’t believe you can get out into the hills,” objected Carl.

“I can try,” Jimmie suggested, “if I can only get that gun away from Sam. He wouldn’t let me go. You know that very well! Look here,” he went on, “suppose I fix up in the long, flowing robe, and dig up the wigs and things Miguel must have worn, and walk in a dignified manner between the ranks of the Indians? What do you know about that?”

“That would probably be all right,” Carl answered, “until you began shooting game, and then they’d just naturally put you into a stew. They know very well that gods in white robes don’t have to kill game in order to sustain life.”

“Oh, why didn’t you let me dream?” demanded Jimmie. “I was just figuring how I could get about four gallons of stew.”

Abandoning the cherished hope of getting out into the forest for the time being, Jimmie now approached Pedro and began asking him questions concerning his own stock of provisions.

“According to your own account,” the boy said, “you’ve been living here right along for some weeks, taking care of the wild animals as the collectors brought them in. Now you must have plenty of provisions stored away somewhere. Dig ’em up!”

Pedro declared that there were no provisions at all about the place, adding that everything had been consumed the previous day except the remnants left in the living chamber. He said, however, that he expected provisions to be brought in by his two companions within two days. In the meantime, he had arranged on such wild game as he could bring down.

Abandoning another hope, Jimmie passed through the narrow passage and into the chamber where he had come so near to death. The round eye of his searchlight revealed the jaguars still lying on the marble floor.

The roof above this chamber appeared to be comparatively whole, yet here and there the warm sunlight streamed in through minute crevices between the slabs. The boy crossed the chamber, not without a little shiver of terror at the thought of the dangers he had met there, and peered into the mouth of the den from which the wild beasts had made their appearance.

The odor emanating from the room beyond was not at all pleasant, but, resolving to see for himself what the place contained, he pushed on and soon stood in a subterranean room hardly more than twelve feet square. There were six steps leading down into the chamber, and these seemed to the boy to be worn and polished smooth as if from long use.

“It’s a bet!” the lad chuckled, as he crawled through the opening and slid cautiously down the steps, “that this stairway was used a hundred times a day while the old priests lived here. In that case,” he argued, “there must have been some reason for constant use of the room. And all this,” he went on, “leads me to the conclusion that the old fellows had a secret way out of the temple and that it opens from this very room.”

While the boy stood at the bottom of the steps flashing his light around the confined space, Carl’s figure appeared into the opening above.

“What have you found?” the latter asked.

“Nothing yet but bad air and stone walls!” replied Jimmie.

“What are you looking for?” was the next question.

“A way out!” answered Jimmie.

Carl came down the steps and the two boys examined the chamber carefully for some evidence of a hidden exit. They were about to abandon the quest when Jimmie struck the handle of his pocket knife, which he had been using in the investigation, against a stone which gave back a hollow sound. Carl rushed to his side instantly.

“Here you are!” Jimmie cried. “There’s a hole back of that stone. If we can only get it out, we’ll kiss the savages ‘good-bye’ and get back to the Ann in quick time.”

The boys pried and pounded at the stone until at last it gave way under pressure and fell backward with a crash.

“There!” Jimmie shouted. “I knew it!”