As for Bob, it would be hard to describe the chaos of his thoughts. He had never quite despaired of being saved by his friends, yet when once his captors had reached and entered their mountain country he had realized that nothing less than a miracle could save him. Practising at arms day after day with trainers, cooped at other times in the gladiators’ quarters deep beneath the great stone pile of the Coliseum, he had seen no possible way of escaping. Heart and brain had turned sick at the thought of giving up his life to make holiday for semi-savages.
One of his trainers he had bribed with the gift of his gold watch to bring him the coils of wire and the collapsible standards for setting up the antenna. This same trainer had erected the antenna amid the tiers of empty seats, which would not be occupied until the Sacrificial Games and so, finally, Bob had managed to get his little radio set to working.
Only very faintly had he heard the messages sent out by the boys from Korakum, and numbers of the words could not be heard, try as he might to tune up. The trainer, receiving his bribe, had shown no further interest in the radio, the use of which was altogether unknown to him. As for the other prisoners, Negroes of various tribes, they were either sunk in apathy and paid Bob no attention, or else out of some vague notion of respect for the white man kept their distance.
Thus Bob was not spied upon nor reported. And, faint though the words he did hear, yet he understood enough to realize an effort to rescue him by airplane was to be made that afternoon.
How he had seized the opportunity is known.
As, flying over the rugged mountain country, they whirled back toward Korakum, Roy Stone bethought him of Jack. Thereupon he opened communication, and Bob himself announced to his other chum the tale of his own rescue.
From Jack the party in the plane learned that the attack on Korakum via the subterranean river had begun fifteen minutes before, and was proceeding fiercely so far as Jack could tell from the distant sounds of rifle fire. His anxiety regarding the fate of his father and of the small band of Athensian rebels and Arabs communicated itself to them.
Instead of flying straight out to the desert and landing, it was decided to follow a route which would bring them over the scene of conflict, if for no other reason than to learn how affairs progressed. Should the revolutionists be forced to flee, it would not be safe for the airplane to land on the desert near the Great Road, inasmuch as, with damaged wheels, it would not be able to re-ascend and would be captured, even if they escaped.
Besides, as Roy Stone pointed out, there was the bare possibility that they might be able to render help. Four gas bombs remained. If the Janissaries had managed to effect a landing and were in considerable force, dropping of the gas bombs amongst them would wreak havoc.
Accordingly, under Amrath’s guidance, Frank altered his course and presently, after scaling the mountain range blocking the upper end of Korakum valley, dropped down spiralling above the plain.
Amrath had glasses to his eyes and was studying the scene below. Evidently, the fight had gone against the revolutionists. No longer did they hold the earth works at the tunnel mouth, although heaps of bodies entangled among the stakes in the river and lying thick along the river bank and up to the top of the ramparts showed they had wreaked deadly execution before retiring.
Retiring now they were, however, but in good order. The horses of the revolutionists and the camels of Mr. Hampton and his party had been brought up in readiness for a quick retreat, and mounted upon them the defenders were fleeing down the valley, well in advance of the Janissaries. The latter, afoot, were rapidly being outdistanced.
That there had been losses amongst the defenders was only too sadly apparent. Of the gallant little band of eighteen, ten Athensians and Mr. Hampton, Ali and their six Arabs, only a dozen were left. But Amrath’s glasses showed him bundles being borne away with them by the living, and he knew them for the bodies of those who either had been wounded or slain. Perhaps, they had only been wounded.
Where the walls of the pass through which ran the Great Road out from ancient Korakum to the desert drew close together, the revolutionists, anticipating the necessity for falling back in case of attack, had thrown up a strong barricade across the pass from wall to wall. For this they were making and even as he watched, Amrath saw them pass in single file through a breach left for that purpose. He knew that they would drop into place a sheath of timbers and prepare for a final stand.
Rapidly the result of his observations were communicated to his companions, and Roy Stone radioed them to Jack. The latter was wild with anxiety for his father, and announced he would take his rifle and go to the barricade to offer his assistance. He explained a messenger had left for the other pass on receipt of the warning from the airplane of impending attack, but that so far help had not arrived.
“Tell the fellows at the barricade to keep up their courage,” was Stone’s last message to Jack, before the latter abandoned the radio station. “Tell them to watch. I’m going to drop our gas bombs among the Janissaries. They’re marching bunched up and we ought to put a lot of them to sleep. Although we saw only three boatloads on their way here, there must have been a lot more, because there’s a thousand at least on the march below us. Well, here goes.”
Jack did not stay to hear Roy Stone’s closing words, however, for at the report of the danger to the revolutionists he was off to see about his father, and Roy spoke to the empty air.
Frank swooped low above the close-packed mass of the Janissaries, streaming down the Great Road. High in the air he shut off his engine, and not many had warning of his approach. Even those who did merely gaped at the strange and terrifying sight instead of scattering.
Straight down the line of the Great Road flew Frank, and in succession Roy Stone released and dropped the gas bombs. Into the crowded ranks they fell. Not one missed the road. And, as they struck, the clouds of vapor were released.
The airplane passed on and Frank, switching on the engine, mounted and then turned to go back over their course and observe what effect their bombs had caused.
Deadly, indeed, the execution wrought. Where a few minutes before the Great Road had been alive with marching men, now it was a chaos of writhing forms strangling in the powerful fumes. Many already lay still. Ahead and behind the main body, others fled, stumbling, falling, rising, dashing on, to get away from the unseen enemy that had laid their comrades low. To either side fled still others.
Although Roy Stone had assured him in advance that the gas was not fatal in its effects, the spectacle caused Frank to experience a sickish feeling. How terrible it was, he thought, that men should thus be struck down in masses. Even the fact that the Janissaries were atrociously brutal, and richly deserved the worst of fates, was no comfort.
Abruptly, he turned and started to mount into the air, heading for the desert. As they passed high above the barricade, Amrath through his glasses could see the defenders busied closing the breach and preparing for a last desperate stand. Not yet were they aware of what had occurred in the valley, for the scene was hidden from them. A little figure, speeding up the Great Road, was seen and was presumed to be that of Jack. Well, he would let the defenders know in a moment that the airplane had done its part, and that an attack in force from the Janissaries need not be looked for, at least not for some time to come.
Now for a landing. Emerging from the pass, Frank mounted high and then, with engine shut off, began to descend on a long gradual slide, intending to pancake at the end and to drop as lightly as possible. With the wheels torn loose, as they suspected, any other method of alighting would be impossible. They would be shaken up, but would have to brace themselves for the shock and take things as easily as possible.
While they were still in the air, they saw in the distance dashing along the base of the Great Mountain Wall, a score of mounted revolutionists, followed by a considerable number afoot, and knew that aid for the defenders of the barricade was on the way. Well, thanks to Roy Stone’s gas bombs, the effects of which had incapacitated a large portion of the Janissaries, the re-inforcements would be in time.
In fact, sweeping into the valley of Korakum, they would be able to turn the tables on the enemy. These thoughts rushed through the minds of all, as Amrath communicated the meaning of the tiny figures which, as he alone carried glasses, were plainest to him.
Then came the pancake, and the final drop. But in the end the plane received little damage nor were its occupants much thrown about. The carriage holding the wheels, torn loose in front when the wheels scraped the upper edge of the Coliseum’s tiers of seats, was still firmly fastened at the rear. Thus, the wheels hung slantwise. Had Frank, ignorant of what had occurred, attempted the usual landing, the results would have been disastrous. But by pancaking and dropping, the wheels were pushed up against the bottom of the plane and held firmly in place, instead of being torn entirely from the fastenings.
The result was that the plane, although racketted about a bit, suffered no more than in a bumpy landing, and came to rest without burying nose or wings in the sand as had been feared would be the case.
All climbed stiffly out, and the next minute Frank and Bob were hugging each other like a couple of kids, and thumping each other on the back with terrific whacks. In the meantime, Roy Stone and Amrath stood aside, and it was not until Frank and he had pummelled each other to their mutual satisfaction that Bob turned to the aviator.
“Haven’t had much chance for personal conversation with you up there in the plane, Stone,” he said, as he wrung the other’s hand. “But I want to tell you—Oh, shucks, what’s the use? I can’t sling language much. Only, I will say I never got more benefit out of a fight in my life than out of that one with you in the cave back in Old Mexico.”
Roy Stone grinned through the sun-wrinkles about his eyes. He knew Bob’s reference was to the affray between the two parties in the lonely mountains of Old Sonora, when the boys were striving to rescue Mr. Hampton from the hands of the Mexican rebels. At that time, as recorded in “The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border,” Stone had been in the rebel forces. But later he changed his allegiance, and warm, indeed, had been the friendship between him and the boys, particularly between him and Bob, who had been his own individual opponent in the fight in the cave.
“You like fighting so much,” said Stone, “that it’s a wonder you consented to let us take you away from the Coliseum back there in Athensi.”
Bob shook his head and threw up his hands.
“A fellow can get too much of any good thing,” he said. “Well, let’s snap into it and go back to this place where our friends are fighting. Maybe we can help a little. But first I’m going to leave this hardware here.”
Whereupon he stripped off the various pieces of heavy armor and tossed them into the pit of the airplane, standing revealed in nothing but a G string—a superb figure who caused Amrath, for one, to draw in a breath of admiration.
“Monsieur would have been a hard man to beat in the Sacrificial Games,” he said in French.
“Aw, forget it,” said Bob. “Come on. Got to give Jack and Mr. Hampton a hand.”
In advance of the mounted re-inforcements from the other pass, which still were some distance in the rear, the four adventurers entered the Great Road and started at a trot up the gradual ascent, Bob in the lead.
“Don’t hear any firing yet, do you?” he shouted over his shoulder to the others. “You fellows have got revolvers, but I’m going to hop ahead and root for one in the luggage.”
Frank had explained about the grove where their own party was encamped and where the radio had been set up. It was here Bob intended to look for his automatic, which he had not taken with him when departing from the distant oasis on that memorable ostrich hunt.
“Not much use this, unless at close quarters,” he called, waving a short, heavy sword of hard wood—a dummy weapon which he had been using against a trainer when rescued from the Coliseum. “Might brain a man with it, but that’s all.”
With a farewell wave of the wooden sword, Bob’s naked figure drew away from the others. It was late afternoon, and the Great Road already lay in the shadow cast by the western wall of the pass. Hot though it was, the relief from the heat of the desert was instantaneous, and the others felt it at once and began to increase their speed.
As they passed abreast of the grove, Bob emerged, flourishing his automatic, the dummy sword left behind. As he fell in beside them he cried with a grin:
“Well, I’m all dressed up now.”
Despite their labored breathing, the others could not restrain a laugh at the ridiculous idea of a naked man considering himself dressed with a revolver.
After all, their services were not needed. When they arrived at the barricade, they found the defenders still awaiting the attack which had failed to materialize. Jack’s earlier arrival with Roy Stone’s message that he intended to drop gas bombs in the midst of the Janissaries had given them the solution of the mystery, and the explanation of the fliers regarding the damage wrought was greeted with delight.
The little band had suffered slightly by comparison with the terrible execution they had worked among the Janissaries at the tunnel exit of the subterranean river. Yet their losses had been severe enough. Lieutenant Horeb and one of his men had been killed; Akmet, two other Arabs, and three revolutionists had suffered dangerous, though not fatal, injuries, and not one had escaped without some slight wound.
To the boys the fact that Mr. Hampton, praised by all for covering the retreat with his repeater, had come through safely with no more than a flesh wound in the calf of his right leg, was a matter for the greatest thankfulness. As the three of them foregathered with Mr. Hampton and Roy Stone, a little to one side of the main group, the thought occurred to all that they had reason, indeed, for gratitude at having passed practically unscathed through their numerous and deadly perils.
Mr. Hampton, who was not given to outward religious manifestations, said simply:
“Almighty Providence has looked after us all, fellows, and we mustn’t forget to give thanks.”
And for a moment, each bowed his head and voiced the thankfulness in his heart in his own way.
A clatter of approaching hoofs rang in the road, and up dashed the score of hard-riding horsemen from the other pass, for whom Jepthah had despatched the messenger.
A condensed account of events was given their leader, a lean hard-bitten man older than the majority of the young revolutionists whom, the boys later learned was Maspah, a nobleman whose gorge had risen at the terrible punishment meted out by the Oligarchy to those earlier exiles who had shown kindness to Professor Souchard and aided his return to civilization, and who forthwith had fled to join the little outlaw bands which finally concentrated at Korakum under Captain Amanassar and launched the revolution.
His eyes gleamed when he was told of the demoralization wrought among the Janissaries by the dropping of the gas bombs. While waiting the arrival of the footmen, peasants armed with bows and arrows and numbering 200, he had the breach re-opened to admit the passage of his horsemen.
In the meantime, too, scouts were sent ahead with glasses furnished by Amrath and Mr. Hampton, who had worn his in a case slung over his shoulder, to mount into the tops of a grove of date palms just beyond the mouth of the pass and inspect the valley. They returned presently with word that in the distance, where the gas bombs had fallen, the Great Road was still littered with men, but that to the left of this spot, in the cleared space in front of the ruins of the ancient temple, where the revolutionists had been accustomed to hold their meetings, officers were re-assembling the scattered Janissaries not struck down by the gas. A considerable number, perhaps four or five hundred, were collecting.
Lieutenant Maspah looked thoughtful.
“They will be better armed than we,” he said. “Yet we have thirty horsemen, which gives us a big advantage and if we strike at once we shall have the advantage of surprise, while if we delay they will recover from their demoralization. Ah, here come the footmen,” he added. “I shall attack at once.”
Only four of the camels of the Hampton party had been brought in, the others having lumbered away to their grazing grounds in a distant portion of the valley when their masters had been wounded. Akmet and his two companions had been carried to the barricade on the camels of their comrades. But from mounting these four camels, Ali and his remaining Arabs could not be dissuaded. Their blood was up and they wanted a hand in the last phase of the battle.
This left no mounts for the boys and Roy Stone, which caused Bob, who wanted to “take a crack” at the bloody rascals, as he expressed it, to grumble exceedingly. Mr. Hampton, however, was pleased that it should be so, as he felt the lives of all had been risked sufficiently. Besides, he had undertaken to look after the wounded, who as yet lay on the roadside in the shadow of the western wall, and he needed aid to transport them to the shade of their own camp in the grove where, with medical instruments and drugs, he could make shift to probe wounds, extract bullets, bandage and do his best to ease pain.
“The four of you,” he said to his son and Frank, Bob and Roy, “can do vastly more good helping me than out there in Korakum. We need litters to move these fellows to the grove, so hurry back, cut down some of those young trees coming up in the brush, and then return. Make your best speed, too. I’ll go along and get out my supplies and have everything ready to do what I can when you bring me the wounded.”
An hour later, word arrived by messenger sent back by Amrath, who knew Mr. Hampton would be anxious to hear the result of the battle, that the Janissaries had put up only a feeble resistance in their demoralized state and that, after being badly cut up by the horsemen, they had surrendered. A little later Ali and his Arabs returned, unwounded, swaggering a bit, and gave them a lurid account of the fight.
After all these events culminating in the rescue of Bob and the disastrous rout of the Janissaries at Korakum, Mr. Hampton decided instead of returning to civilization without having accomplished his main objective—namely, the exploration of the ruins of Korakum and the gaining of entrance to Athensi—to stay and await the result of the revolution.
The Korakum expedition had been timed by the Oligarchs to coincide with an attack in force launched through the mountains against Captain Amanassar’s main body of revolutionists in the field. There, too, the Janissaries had been unsuccessful. Though not beaten so decisively as at Korakum, they had been unable to penetrate the strong position held by the rebels and, sullen and alarmed at the unexpected strength of the opposition, they had fallen back to the shelter of the walls of Athensi.
In their retreat they carried off all the livestock for miles from the country between Captain Amanassar and the city, stripping the poor peasants of everything, and herding the young men into the city while leaving the children and the old people to live as best they might.
Mr. Hampton made a trip to Captain Amanassar’s camp, into which the stricken country people from the devastated districts were making their way, and on his return reported many pitiable sights. The rebel leader’s assurance that the fall of Athensi, in view of the two disasters to the arms of its defenders, was inevitable, caused the American to decide to stay.
He was moved by more than an explorer’s interest, moreover. Deeply stirred by the ideals of these young Athensians, sons of a semi-savage race dating from the dawn of time, who were resolved to redeem their country from the rule of the Oligarchs who so long had held it in thrall, he felt that his engineering experience would be valuable in the final siege of the city and that later his knowledge of world affairs would be worth much to Captain Amanassar when the latter and his compatriots came to the point of opening communication with the outside world.
Week by week the lines about Athensi grew tighter, with every sally of the Janissaries repulsed. Reports from friends within the city, where the revolutionists had many adherents, continued to reach the rebel camp, and all were to the effect that famine was beginning to raise its head amid the crowded population.
That great numbers of his countrymen should be starved to death or die of plague, for sickness also broke out in Athensi, was not Captain Amanassar’s object. On several occasions, he made overtures to the Oligarchs looking to the surrender of the city on terms which would spare their lives, but these were all rejected. The rulers of the priest clan could not bring themselves to a realization that at last the power they had exercised through uncounted centuries was seriously threatened, and seemed bent on involving all in ruin rather than continue to live shorn of power. To storm Athensi was an impossibility for Captain Amanassar’s numerous but ill-equipped army, and apparently the only thing to do was to play a waiting game.
Such a course, however, was repugnant to the rebel leader, whose heart bled for the miseries of the cooped-up population, and he sought by every known method of appeal to prevail on those residents who managed to steal out of Athensi and reach his camp, to bring about an uprising in the city which would open its gates to his forces.
At length, when the miseries of the city reached a point too great to be borne any longer, his arguments prevailed. A half dozen of his stoutest-hearted aides entered Athensi with a drove of lean cattle, announcing boldly they had been burned out by the rebels and came to the city for shelter. They disappeared amid the city warrens after being admitted at the great gate, and then scattered to rouse the city to fever pitch.
That night the Janissaries, going to change guard on the walls, were attacked as they passed through the streets, and were driven back to the shelter of the Inner City. The guard at the great gate was surprised and overcome, and the gates opened to admit a force of picked warriors from the rebel ranks, who had stolen up under cover of darkness.
The Janissaries posted on the walls in the vicinity of the gate were overcome, although fighting desperately, and before help could reach them from other parts of the walls, the main force of the rebels, which had moved up by forced marches, entered the city.
Many of the Janissaries were cut down as they fell back to the Inner City, where their heartless comrades refused to open the gates to admit them lest the rebels also force their way in.
Dawn found Athensi in the possession of Captain Amanassar’s forces, with the Inner City beleaguered on every side, and its fall only a matter of time. Three weeks it managed to hold out and then its defenders weak from hunger, were forced to seek unconditional surrender. The Oligarchs were imprisoned to stand trial later for their crimes, and the surviving Janissaries were disarmed and, although their lives were spared, they were put to work as state peons repairing the ravaged countryside.
Bob, Jack, Frank and Roy Stone followed the first wave of the attack into Athensi in a company of 200 rebels commanded by Jepthah. At Bob’s special request, this group made its way through the tumultuous streets to the Coliseum. It was a moonless night, and the great amphitheater lay dark and mysterious outside the walls of the Inner City.
Around those walls raged a furious battle but in the Coliseum itself, which the Janissaries had no idea of defending, all was silent. That is, until the rebels with Bob at their head, clad again in the gladiator’s armor he had worn on being rescued, entered the arena with their wavering torches.
The tumult of the desperate fighting within the city was reduced to a murmur down there, on the sand, at the base of those towering tiers of seats. Yet here, too, it had penetrated and the poor captives, locked in their quarters for the night, and awaiting the coming of the Sacrificial Games, now only a week away, were awake and moving about restlessly.
As the light of the torches fell through the massive bars of the great door set in the solid stone of the wall, and penetrated the interior of the single great room where all the alien gladiators were quartered and where Bob, too, had lived, the poor fellows crowded forward.
They did not know what the tumult in the city and now the arrival of this armed force portended, but Bob was easily recognizable in his armor and made friendly signs indicating he had come to release them. At the same time, men armed with stout axes and wrenching bars attacked the gate. It was stubborn and resisted all assaults a long time but eventually gave way, and then the slaves threw themselves at Bob’s feet and tried to kiss his hands. To these men, most of whom were Negroes, although a few Berbers and Tuaregs were in the number, Bob’s sudden rescue by airplane had appeared as a miracle. And now his return to release them had an even greater effect on their primitive intelligences.
While this was going on Jepthah headed another party which broke down a similar gate on the other side of the arena, behind which were confined the young Athensians destined to fight the slaves in the Sacrificial Games. To one or two of them he was known, and when he spread the word of the success of the revolution the joy of these young fellows, snatched from their families by the Oligarchs to go to death, knew no bounds.
After the final capitulation of the Oligarchy, Mr. Hampton and the members of his party went to live in quarters assigned them in one of the palaces of the Inner City. It was an age-worn stone structure of immensely thick walls, two stories in height, and covering five acres of ground. In it were hundreds of rooms and apartments, sumptuously appointed with many luxuries.
“It’s all right, this business of living in a palace,” said Bob, one day. “Just the same I for one can never accustom myself to living in a tomb. And that’s what this seems like, with its old stone walls and courts and secret passages, and what not.”
With this opinion, Jack and Frank were in hearty agreement. Likewise Roy Stone, who after repairing his airplane had flown it to the plain outside Athensi where it rested now with just sufficient fuel to carry him out of the desert when the time came to depart. Departure, however, he kept putting off from time to time at the insistence of his friends.
Ali and his Arabs continued to stay with Mr. Hampton, the wounded members of the party now fully restored to health.
In the Great Library of Athensi, the biggest building in extent within the Inner City, were found as the revolutionists had predicted many thousands of manuscripts or papyrus rolls written in the ancient mother tongue of Atlantis of which Athensian was a corruption. Few of the young nobles among the revolutionists ever had been within the library before, as the ancients of the Oligarchs had guarded it jealously. They were even more eager than Mr. Hampton to browse, if that word can properly be employed in this connection. But when they came to examining the rolls, they found that it was only with difficulty they could here and there decipher a word.
However, the similarity of languages was such that in time the mother tongue could be learned and the treasured knowledge of this most ancient of libraries in the oldest living city on earth, could be unlocked and given to the world. To the task of learning the language and of putting the library in order, Captain Amanassar who had been elected President of the new republican government, assigned Amonasis, Amrath and two dozen assistants, comprising the best educated of the young revolutionists. Eagerly, they began their task.
At length, with a story that later was to astound not only the scientific world but all civilization, Mr. Hampton, finding his advice no longer was required, decided to depart. They had been absent from home five months. Bob and Frank were overdue for their Senior year at Yale. Mr. Hampton was to be the unofficial representative of the Athensian government to the United States, and was to pave the way for official representatives to be sent to the various world capitals by making public his account of events.
In addition, he was to interest capitalists in developing the resources of the country, and in building a railroad linking up Athensi with the Cape-to-Cairo Railroad.
He promised to return the following year, estimating it would require that length of time at least to perform his various commissions. On his return, the boys planned to accompany him and to build a great radio station at Athensi, which would put the mountain people in touch with all the world.
True to his promise, they did return the following year, carrying to Athensi a great caravan of supplies for the erection of a completely equipped radio sending and receiving station. These supplies were taken up the Niger by boat and finally across the desert by camel.
But after finishing the erection of the station, the three Radio Boys set out on an exploring expedition through the heart of Africa in the interests of a new motion picture producing corporation among the backers of which were both Mr. Temple and Mr. Hampton. And the adventures which befell them upon this 5,000 mile journey through jungle wilds and in coming into contact with savage men and beasts, were numerous and varied.
All will be duly chronicled in “The Radio Boys in Darkest Africa.” Until then, let us bid them good-bye.
THE END.
BY GERALD BRECKENRIDGE
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