The Boy Aviators in Africa Part 22

In scrambling up the tree he had ripped off the skin bag and his store of Arab cartridges, none too many, lay on the ground at the foot of the tree. When this intelligence was communicated to the tribesmen clinging in the other trees they held a shouted consultation the result of which was that, to the boys' amazement, one of them deliberately dropped to the ground and attracting the elephant's attention began to run him in circles. Now as the man could run fast and from time to time another took his place and the elephant had to use a lot of effort in turning corners, it soon became evident that the big pachyderm was tiring of the exercise.

It was evidently the intention of the natives to run him out and then spear him to death--but an unexpected happening put an end to this method of elephant hunting. One of the men who was worrying the great animal, much after the manner of a bull-fighter, suddenly caught his foot on a root and fell headlong. A shout went up as the others realized that he was doomed to almost certain death. Billy and Lathrop averted their eyes. It was terrible to have to sit there powerless and watch the sacrifice.

But even as they listened with sickened ears for the death-cry of the unfortunate victim and whilst the elephant's trumpet of triumph was still resounding, one of the flying men dropped, knife in hand, from his tree on to the monster's back.

He landed right behind the great creature's ears and as the animal threw back his trunk to whisk him off and annihilate him be plunged his weapon through the soft folds of skin at the base of the huge skull clear down into the brain.

It was a mortal wound.

As the elephant stopped short in his charge and began to stagger in his death throes the Flying Man slipped to the ground and picked up his comrade, who had swooned from terror.

Ten minutes later the great rogue elephant was beyond all further mischief and the boys joined as heartily as any of the others in congratulating the brave man whose unparalleled feat of heroism had saved his comrade's life.

The man's name was Aga, and the boys had reason later on to remember him for another deed which affected them even more nearly than the slaying of the elephant.

CHAPTER XVIII

A LINK FROM THE PAST

On their triumphal return to the cliff with the tusks of the slain elephant as trophies of the hunt a strange spectacle met the boys'

eyes. Cl.u.s.tered about a sort of altar, which they had not noticed before, was a group of the cliff-dwellers who seemed to be deeply interested in something that was going forward. A loud sound of chanting and intoning of what seemed to be a solemn ritual was the first inkling the boys had of what was going on.

On joining the throng the lads found that it was some sort of a religious ceremony that was being proceeded with. A group of men in white flowing robes and high conical hats--decorated with mystic symbols worked out in precious stones that looked like rubies and emeralds, though of such size that this seemed scarcely credible--were walking round and round the altar in a sort of what the irreverent Billy termed "a cakewalk." Pausing at each corner and revolving slowly, three times they intoned the weird chant.

Suddenly the music took on a louder tone arid several men with clashing cymbals joined in. The auditors, too, fell flat on their faces and Billy and Lathrop, on the former's suggestion, did the same.

"Not to do as the others are doing might cost us our heads," sagely remarked the diplomatic Billy, "and I need mine in my business."

Whatever the nature of the ceremony, it was now evidently approaching a climax. The chanting grew louder and more furious and the cymbal players clashed their huge metal instruments together with a deafening clangor. Suddenly, from the pa.s.sage from which the galleries branched off, there appeared six men clad in robes of flaming scarlet and conical caps of the same color.

They formed an escort to a pitiable figure.

That of a white bearded man who was bent with years and whose eyes gazed vacantly about him as he stumbled along between the red-robed dignitaries. But it was not his age and not his feebleness that made the boys' hearts beat quicker and caused a galvanic shock to shoot through them.

The man was white.

There was no doubt about it. In spite of his sun-browned skin and the barbarous ornaments that covered him, the figure in the center of the red-robed group was a Caucasian--perhaps an American--a fellow countryman.

And now the boys noticed with a shudder that in the hands of each of the red-robed men was a knife of some sort of stone--perhaps flint.

These cruel looking weapons they brandished as they slowly paced forward in time to the chanting.

But their captive--if he were a captive seemed indifferent to all this. His dull eyes gazed straight ahead of him as if he were hypnotized--or, as was more probable, under the influence of some drug. As the group approached the altar the chanting suddenly stopped and the onlookers rose to their feet. From the altar now arose a thin spiral of smoke, the offspring of a fire kindled by one of the priests.

The sun was just setting and showed like a blood-red ball, through the mist that arose from low-lying garden lands. As its disk touched the horizon the chanting broke out afresh and the red-robed men seizing the old white man as if he were a beast dragged him forward and threw him on the altar.

And now for the first time came to the chums the horrifying realization of what the scene they were witnessing really meant.

The man was about to be sacrificed!

But even as the red-robed men raised their knives in unison and were about to give them the downward lunge that would extinguish the life of their feeble victim--and as the other priests and the audience turning toward the setting sun, chanted louder and more vociferously--a startling interruption occurred.

"By the holy poker you're not going to kill that old man while I can prevent it."

It was Billy Barnes; his face white and his lips set in a thin line of determination.

As he spoke utterly oblivious to the fact that not one of the men could understand him--Lathrop, pale-faced also, stepped forward by his side.

And there stood the two American boys while the auditors--at first dumb with amazement--began to buzz angrily like a nest of disturbed hornets.

One of the white-robed priests gave a sharp order and once more the red-garbed executors raised their knives.

Billy quietly, though his heart was beating almost to suffocation, slipped a cartridge from the recovered bag into his Arab rifle. He leveled it at the red-robed knife wielders.

"The first man that moves I'll shoot!"

Although the words were as unintelligible to the priests and the cliff-dwellers as any that had gone before, the gesture with which Billy raised the rifle to his shoulder and covered the group was eloquent enough. And as it happened, the delay saved the old man's life; for while they hesitated the sun rushed below the horizon and the swift African night fell. A loud groan from the crowd announced that the hour for the culmination of the sacrifice had pa.s.sed and that for the time being the intended victim's life was saved.

But for the boys the situation was serious enough. Powerless to resist such numbers they were seized by scores of the winged men and hustled into the pa.s.sage, which was lit up by blazing torches of the same resinous wood that their guide had used on the first night that they came there. They were hurried along, their feet hardly touching the ground, till they reached one of the diverging galleries. Down this their captors shoved them till they reached a small cubical cell--windowless and without ventilation. Into this they were thrust and a huge stone door that hinged on some contrivance the boys could not understand swung to upon them with a dull bang. But a few minutes later it reopened and another prisoner was thrust in.

It was the aged captive whose life Billy had saved!

This much they saw in the momentary glare of the torches and then as the door closed the darkness--so black that you could feel it--shut down again. But Billy's reportorial curiosity, even in this situation, was still predominant.

"Who are you?" he asked eagerly of the new arrival, whose face he could not see and whose presence he could only guess at by the temporary revelation of the torch-light.

The only answer was a groan; but a few seconds later a voice that sounded strange from long disuse or unaccustomedness to the use of the English language replied:

"I have not heard a white man speak for forty years."

"What?" exclaimed the thunderstruck Billy.

"What I say is true and when you hear my name you will perhaps realize that fact. I am George Desmond the American explorer."

"The George Desmond who was lost in 1870?" cried Billy, almost choking with excitement.

"The same," was the reply in the same rusty voice, "like the sound of a long disused door swinging on its hinges," was the way Billy described it afterward in the article he wrote about the finding of George Desmond.

"But George Desmond was a man of thirty-five!" protested Billy, "when he was lost."

"And I am seventy-five," went on the sad voice in the blackness, "I was captured by the winged men in 1870. I have kept the record of the long years on a notched stick. I never expected to hear the sound of a fellow countryman's voice again."

The poor tired voice broke down, and in the darkness through which they could not see the boys heard the old man weeping.

"Great cats!" groaned Billy to Lathrop, whose hand he held so that they could be near together in the awful blackness, "forty years without seeing a white face--jumping horn-toads, what a fate!"