CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BOY AVIATORS TRAPPED.
The trail on which Frank and Harry found themselves wound irregularly through dense groves of wild fig, orange, custard apple and palmetto trees, through which from time to time they could catch glimpses of the dark, monotonous brown sea of the Everglades stretching away into the remote distance. They plodded along it not speaking a word, through undergrowth that at times brushed their arms, crackling in an annoying fashion to anyone who wanted his advance to be unheralded. The growth was as dry as tinder and Frank could not help thinking to himself that a fire once started among it would rage through the forest as if it had been soaked with kerosene.
Suddenly, and without a moment’s warning, Frank tripped and fell flat on his face, his rifle shooting out of his hands and falling with a loud crash on the hard-baked ground. This was bad enough in itself but there was a worse shock in store for the boys.
A moment’s glance sufficed to show them that a wire had been stretched across the trail at this point and that, as Frank’s foot struck it and he tripped, a loud, clanging alarm-bell began to sound and by the loudness of its uproarious clangor, it could not be more than a few paces from where they then were.
“Quick, Harry! Run for your life!” said Frank, in a low, tense voice, scrambling to his feet.
“We have struck an alarm wire and in a minute we shall have a dozen men on our track.”
Stumbling along the rough path the boys began to make the best speed they could over its uneven surface. But the tough journey they had made through the muddy trail among the saw-grass, and the fact that they had not eaten for some hours and were feeling somewhat faint, made a fast speed impossible.
They had not gone more than a few hundred yards when Harry gave a gasp and pressed his hand to his side.
“What is it, Harry?” asked Frank, through his parched lips.
“Keep on, Frank,” gasped the younger boy, “you can make it if you hurry. I’m tuckered out.”
“Come, make an effort, you’ve got to,” said Frank sternly, realizing that now was no time to sympathize with his younger brother, although he hated to use the sharp tone he thought it expedient to assume.
The younger boy rose to his feet. Pluckily he staggered on a few steps but sank to the ground again, overcome with the pain of the sharp “stitch” in his side.
“Go on, Frank,” he whispered in a faint voice, “you go on. I’ll get through somehow,” he added bravely, with a pitiful effort at a confident smile.
“As if I’d leave you,” said Frank, indignantly, “can’t you run another foot, old boy?”
“No, I really can’t, Frank,” gasped Harry, “I couldn’t move if I was to be killed the next minute.”
“Then I’ll have to carry you,” decided Frank, “I’ve done it when you were a little fellow, and I guess I can manage it now. Put your arms round my neck—so. Now then.”
With his added burden Frank struggled gamely on, though every step was telling heavily on him.
If they could only reach the little glade of cabbage palms, there was a pile of rocks there, he recollected, behind which they could hide. Speed meant everything, and pressing his lips together determinedly, Frank swore to himself that he would make the rocks or die.
And somehow by a supreme effort of will, he made them. Though how he managed that last sickening effort of half dragging and half carrying his inanimate burden across the little grove he never recollected.
But he made it and, having scrambled up the rough crevices in the pile of stone in which he hoped to find a safe asylum, he dragged his half-fainting brother into position beside him.
And now he could hear far back in the brush loud shouts and orders coming thick and fast. What a fool he had been not to realize that men engaged on such a hazardous enterprise as were the bogus manufacturers of Chapinite would have more cunning than to leave their retreat unguarded by alarm appliances. If only he had watched the trail more carefully.
But it was too late for vain regrets now; they would have to trust to luck to avoid detection for, judging by the noise and the number of different voices, the search for the invaders was to be a hot one. The young leader tried grittily to choke back the great, panting gasps in which his breath came after his exertions. But he might as well have attempted to stop a cataract, as to check his sobbing respiration. To him his deep breaths sounded as loud as the reports of minute guns.
And now a fresh peril made itself manifest. A deep baying sound arose far up the trail, which Frank recognized, with a violent throb of the heart, as the sound of bloodhounds, giving tongue on the scent. Their discovery was inevitable.
“Can you handle your revolver, Harry?” he asked of his younger brother, who was now somewhat recovered, thanks to the shade and the rest he had had.
“Yes, Frank,” whispered Harry, hoarsely, and then the next minute, noticing Frank’s troubled face, as the baying grew louder and nearer, “you needn’t tell me, old fellow, what that means—it’s bloodhounds.”
Frank nodded gravely.
“I’m afraid our chances of seeing the Golden Eagle II and our comrades are about nil,” he said.
The other boy did not reply. He was listening to the sounds of the dogs baying and the savage human shouts that grew momentarily nearer.
“Don’t use the revolvers unless you have to,” whispered Frank, whose wind was now returning,—“but the first dog that comes over the top of the rock—knife him.”
Harry nodded and drew his heavy hunting-knife from its case. Frank did the same.
“Now we are ready for all comers,” said Harry, with a wan smile, gripping the horn handle of his blade with a determined grip.
They had not long to wait. From their nest in the rocks they saw the first dog, a huge, bristly-haired Cuban bloodhound, with heavy hackles and blood-shot eyes, come bounding into the clearing, sniffing the ground and from time to time throwing his head into the air with a loud ringing bay that chilled the blood.
The animal was followed by half a dozen others of his own breed. Without a moment’s hesitation they made straight across the glade and for the rocks. The first one scrambled up with difficulty, and as his dripping fangs showed over the top of the rampart of rock, Frank’s arm shot out and he fell back with a choking growl—dead.
The next of the savage beasts fell before Harry’s knife, a great gaping wound in its throat; but after that the boys were no match for the four huge beasts that fell on them at once. Frank felt the teeth of one brute grip him through his stout khaki clothes while he had his hands on the throat of another, choking its life out. Harry had plunged his knife into another and was turning desperately on its mate when there was a sudden interruption of the impending tragedy.
A sharp, clear whistle rang through the clearing and the survivors of the brutes that had attacked the boys limped dispiritedly away from them and shuffled in the direction from which the summons had proceeded. From their eyrie in the rocks the boys saw two dozen or more small yellow men, in white duck jackets and trousers, with yellow straw slippers on their feet, rush into the glen followed by a tall man in a sort of undress naval uniform. He it was who had given the whistle. He gave an evil laugh as he saw the wounded, exhausted animals come shuffling toward him, their tails between their legs.
“They are in the rocks yonder, boys. Surround them!” he ordered in a sharp, harsh voice. “They shall pay dearly for each of my beauties they have killed.”
One of the little brown men, who wore a red band about his arm and seemed to be a leader among them, shouted some sharp orders to his fellow countrymen and they spread about the rocks in a circle. The first impulse of the boys had been to run for it but they realized, even as the thought entered their minds, that it would be useless in their exhausted condition to try to make their escape. Each of their opponents was armed and while they also carried weapons, still they could only have stood off an attack for a few minutes.
With a shout the little brown men rushed at the Boy Aviators as they stood side by side, but they hesitated and fell back as Frank and his brother aimed their revolvers.
“I do not want to take human life,” cried Frank, “but the first one of you that lays a hand on us I’ll shoot him.”
“Very fine talk,” sneered the big white man, striding up, “but there are twelve of us here.”
“Yes,” replied Frank, undaunted, and tapping the magazine of his revolver, “and there are twice twelve here and they all come out at once.”
The big man paused a minute and bit his lip. For a minute he seemed about to give orders to his followers to fire on the boys and shoot them down where they stood. He evidently thought better of his intention later, however, for he said, with a change of voice from his original harsh, rasping tone.
“There are several things I want to talk to you about, Frank Chester—you see I know you and your brother Harry—will you give up your weapons and agree to accompany me to my camp if on my part I give my word not to harm you?”
Frank realized in that instant that the man who faced him was Captain Mortimer Bellman, the renegade American officer, and he also weighed and recognized the value of a pledge from such a man; but they were in position where there was nothing to be gained by fighting and in which much benefit might accrue to them from temporizing—so:
“Yes,” he said, “we will go with you.”