The Air Patrol: A Story of the North-west Frontier

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH

  THE AEROPLANE ARRIVES

  During the next three weeks the younger Appletons were fully occupied instudying the working of the mine. Dressed in calico overalls theypenetrated into the torch-lit galleries and watched the miners at theirwork. They saw the process of crushing the ore, but Mr. Appleton'soperations went little further, for owing to his distance fromcivilisation and the limited space at his disposal, he left the finalstages of purification to be performed in India. The boys were rathercurious to know why the colours of the stains upon the clothing of thetwo bands of miners differed, but they forbore to question their uncle,guessing that he would tell them all in good time, and would meanwhilebe pleased by their showing patience. In this they were right. Mr.Appleton had no wish to keep any secrets from them; he was only waitinguntil he had learnt something of the characters of the two youngfellows, whom he had not seen for several years, and at no time had hadmany opportunities of studying.

  They both soon showed their bents. In the evenings, when work was done,there was little to occupy them. Mr. Appleton's books were few; theywere mainly books on mining and grammars and dictionaries of the localdialects. Robert seized on the former; Lawrence devoted himself to thelatter; and their uncle was very well pleased, for each of these studieswould prove useful. Their recreations were for the present confined toan occasional game of chess or cards, a still rarer shooting expeditionin the hills, and the reading of the rather dilapidated magazines whichhad come at odd times from India and home. Lawrence missed his cricket,and Bob his golf; but in spite of what Mr. Appleton had said about theimpossibility of using the aeroplane when it should arrive, they bothlooked forward privately to trying their wings by and by.

  Lawrence soon became popular with the natives. He had a turn forlanguages, and managed to pick up quickly a little Turki and scraps ofthe other tongues spoken by the very mixed crowd that constituted themining staff. Robert had not the same quickness in learning languages,but he made himself useful on the engineering side. He had beenaccustomed to spend part of his holidays in the engine shops of thefather of one of his schoolfellows, and found his experience valuable.Once, for instance, when there was a breakdown of the somewhat crazyengine that worked the stamping presses, he was able to make thenecessary repairs more quickly than Mr. Appleton himself, or the regularengine man, could have done. Mr. Appleton was a very good prospectorand an all-round man in general, but he had no particular gift in thedirection of mechanics, while the engine man had picked up from hismaster all he knew. He was a Gurkha, a short, compact little fellow, ofhard muscles and a very quick intelligence. His race is more accustomedto military service than to machinery, and Fazl, as this man was named,had never seen a steam engine before he came to the mine. Mr. Appletonhad found him wandering half starved in Turkestan two seasons before,and out of sheer kindness of heart put him on as cleaner. Some timeafter, the Mohammedan Bengali who had hitherto driven the engine askedleave to go home and bury his grandmother, and Fazl was promoted to hisplace. The Bengali, of course, never returned, and Fazl was still engineman.

  One evening after supper Mr. Appleton said--

  "Don't get your books yet, boys; I want to show you something."

  He placed a Bunsen burner on the table, and brought a blowpipe and apiece of charcoal from a cupboard. Then he took from his pocket a smalllump of ore, which he laid on the charcoal with a little powderedcarbonate of soda, and proceeded to treat in the Bunsen flame. The boyswatched his experiment curiously. After a time they saw a bright beadform itself on the surface of the ore. Mr. Appleton laid down theblowpipe.

  "What do you make of that?" he said.

  "Is it tin?" asked Robert.

  "Well, I have known school-boys call it 'tin' in the shape of sixpennybits. It is silver. Now I'll let you into my secret. The ore obtainedfrom the farther gallery, and dumped down into that very convenientcavity, contains almost pure silver; there's method in my madness, yousee. Nobody knows it but yourselves; though I can't say what some ofthe men may suspect. I don't attempt to work it for the simple reasonthat I don't want the news to get about. If it became generally knownthat I have struck silver, somebody might put in a claim to thisneglected region, and I should either have to decamp or be in constantfear of attack. As it is, I think I am pretty secure; and when I havegot a sufficient quantity of the ore I shall close down, dismiss themen, and carry the stuff to India."

  "But isn't there silver also in the other gallery?" asked Bob.

  "No. The two metals, so far as I can discover, lie in parallel verticalstreaks, with a band of quartz between them, and the men who are workingat the copper know nothing of the silver a few feet away. You see nowthe reason why I keep the Kalmucks and the Pathans apart. The Kalmuckswork the copper; they belong more or less to the neighbourhood; but thePathans come from far distant parts, and if they should discover thattheir ore is silver, they are not at all so likely as the Kalmucks tobring unwelcome visitors upon me. I confess I was a little uneasy whenI heard the explanation of that scrimmage we happened upon as we rodedown. I wondered whether Nurla Bai's presence in the Pathan section wasdue to some suspicion of the truth. But he has given no more trouble,and I hope that I was wrong."

  "He's a sulky beggar," said Lawrence. "I can't get a word out of him,and I don't like those ugly eyes of his."

  "I'm watching him," said Mr. Appleton. "He works well, and has a greatinfluence with the other Kalmucks. He's certainly far and away moreintelligent, and he has brought in a good many labourers. In fact, Ihad to put a stop to his recruiting. I wanted to keep the Kalmuckspretty equal in number to the Pathans, but, as you see, they alreadyoutnumber them by more than two to one. One great nuisance is theirpossession of firearms. I tried to induce them to hand them over when Iengaged them, but in these regions the hillmen are as tenacious of theirguns as our sailors are of their knives. Without my police Pathans andKalmucks would be at each other's throats."

  A few days after this conversation, the caravan which the boys had forsome time been expecting arrived. It was larger than that which hadaccompanied them, and Mr. Appleton threw up his hands with a dismay thatwas not wholly feigned when he saw how many additional mules had beenrequired for the transport of the aeroplane.

  "You said two or three," he remarked to Bob as the laden beasts defiledalong the path; "but I'm sure there are seven or eight more than mystuff needed."

  "I expect it's the petrol," said Bob humbly.

  "You didn't mention petrol."

  "No; but of course we couldn't work the engine without it, and I leftword to send up a good quantity. I didn't suppose you had any on thespot."

  "And wasn't there a single sensible creature to tell you that you can'tgo skylarking with an aeroplane in the Hindu Kush? Whoever sold you thepetrol must have laughed in his sleeve."

  "He seemed uncommon glad to sell it, anyway," said Bob, a triflenettled.

  "Of course he was. There are no end of sharks always on the watch for agriffin. He sold the petrol, and he sold you. And the expense of it!D'you know how much it costs to bring a mule from India here?"

  "You can dock it out of my screw," growled Bob.

  "And money absolutely flung away. You have seen for yourself thatthere's no level space hereabout for running off. And even supposingyou could use the thing, it would be madness to do so. You'd be boundto come to grief; all flying men do sooner or later, and at the best youmight find yourself landed thirty or forty miles away, with nothing butpeaks and precipices between you and home. There are no repairing shopsto fall back upon; no garages 'open day and night,' or anything of thatsort. In short----"

  "Don't rub it in, Uncle," said Lawrence. "The thing's here now, andwe've got to make the best of it. Come on, Bob; let's go and look afterthe unloading; those fellows are sure to smash something."

  The mules were led across the drawbridge to the west side of the gorge,and the separa
te parts of the machine were stacked near the dwellinghouse until a new shed could be constructed.

  "What on earth we're to do with the petrol I don't know," said Mr.Appleton. "We daren't have it within reach of the native workmen.They're as careless as they are inquisitive, and we don't want a flareup."

  "Isn't there room for the cans in the dynamite shed?" asked Lawrence.

  The explosive was kept in a specially devised cache. The space betweenthe house and the cliff was boarded in. A doorway led from the houseinto this space, which was divided by a partition, in which another dooropened into a kind of strong room excavated in the hill side. There wasroom for the cans beside the boxes of dynamite.

  "I shan't sleep at night now that we've got two explosives at ourdoors," said Mr. Appleton.

  "Why didn't you store the stuff farther from the house?" asked Bob.

  "Well, as a matter of fact wherever it was stored in the neighbourhoodof the mine the result would be pretty much the same if it exploded. Thebest chance of safety was to have it under lock and key where nobodycould get at it but myself. In for a penny, in for a pound. Trundleyour cans through: if I'm not a false prophet they'll stay there untildoomsday untouched."

  When the boys entered the dark chamber between the house and the cliff,following Mr. Appleton, who carried an electric lamp, Bob uttered asudden exclamation.

  "I say, hanged if there isn't a machine gun!"

  He pointed to a corner of the room, where the muzzle of the gunprotruded from a nest of boxes.

  "A very neat little machine," said Mr. Appleton. "I got it as aprecaution against a second raid, and the difficulty of smuggling itthrough turned my surviving hairs grey. It came in parts among someengine fittings; the invoices are very interesting! A clear case of gunrunning, of course; but there was no other way; the government wouldnever have allowed it to pass complete. Nobody here knows of it butyou; I put it together myself; and if you know anything about suchthings, Bob, I'll be glad if you'll overhaul it one of these days, andsee if my amateurish efforts have been successful. Some of those boxescontain ammunition: smuggled in as dynamite. Now stack your cans, andwhen you've finished bring me the key. I'll have duplicates cut foryou."

  Later in the day the boys had a consultation.

  "It's no good putting the aeroplane together until we've found astarting-place," said Lawrence.

  "I know. I've looked all about, and can't find one. It's prettyrotten, and the old man is so ratty about it that I almost wish we'dnever brought the thing."

  "Oh, he'll come round. I bet you what you like that he'll be as keen asmustard if we can only get the thing going. We'll go out exploring;we're sure to hit on some place by and by."

  They spent the spare time of two or three days in ranging up and downstream in search of a suitable starting-place. Every morning atbreakfast Mr. Appleton dropped some quizzing remark that sorely triedBob's temper. "How's the white elephant?" he would say; or "When is theascent to take place?" Meanwhile the dismembered aeroplane lay undertarpaulin at the side of the house, and the Babu irritated Bob by kindenquiries.

  "Will tender plant suffer, sir?" he asked one morning, when a sprinklingof snow lay upon the ground.

  "What do you mean?" said Bob.

  "Packages were marked 'fragile with care,' sir, and having been myselfonce fragile, delicate infant, sir, I have fellow feeling, that makes mewondrous kind."

  "Well, be kind enough to shut up," said Bob.

  At length, after much searching, they discovered a spot which, so far asspace was concerned, promised the solution of their difficulty. About ahundred yards up stream, at a somewhat higher level than the ledge uponwhich the mine buildings were situated, there was a similar ledge ofabout the same extent and on the same side of the gorge. But it wasvery difficult of access. It could not be approached from the mine,owing to the sheer wall of cliff that separated the two ledges. Norcould it be gained by bridging the river, for not only was the stream atthis point much broader than lower down, but there was no rock inmid-channel that would serve as support. After a good deal ofcogitation, Bob hit upon a plan which he determined to attempt.

  On the way up, their caravan had crossed a stream by means of a bridgeconstructed on the cantilever principle, as is common in that country.It occurred to Bob that there was a possibility of constructing a walkalong the face of the cliff on the same principle.

  "It will be a series of bridges made of overlapping planks," he said toLawrence when explaining his idea. "There's plenty of timber in theshed."

  "Which Uncle won't allow to be used."

  "I'll talk him over."

  "But I don't see how you're going to manage it. There are no supports."

  "They are easily managed. All we've got to do to is drive beams intothe rock, say twenty feet apart."

  "Exactly; but how are you going to make holes in the rock? There'snothing to stand on, and we can't rig up scaffolding from the bottom ofthe river."

  "I think we can do it all the same. What we have to do is to go to theextreme edge of the ledge of the silver mine, bore a couple of holes inthe rock level with our heads, and drive in poles strong enough tosupport a swinging platform. You've seen house painters use them onhouse fronts at home. We can extend that with some planks, and so reacha position where similar holes can be bored a little farther away, andso on until we reach the farther ledge. A couple of stout miners on theplatform can easily bore the holes, level with it, that we require forthe larger beams, and when they are placed it will be a comparativelysimple matter to lay planks upon them, and carry our cantilever walk thewhole way. We can use the upper poles too: connect them by a rope,which we can cling to as we push the parts of the machine along ontrolleys."

  "It will take a very long time," said Lawrence dubiously.

  "Not so long as you think if we can only persuade the old man to let ushave a couple of men to work at it continuously. I'll tackle himto-night after supper when he's comfortably settled with a cigar."

  Mr. Appleton happened to be in a very amiable mood when Bob broached thesubject, and though he uttered doleful warnings and foretold brokenlimbs, and declared that he washed his hands of all responsibility, hetold the boys that they might do as they pleased. Next day they invitedvolunteers from among the Kalmuck miners, and were somewhat surprisedwhen Nurla Bai was the first to offer his services, explaining that hewas an expert in carpentry. Taking this as a sign of grace, Bob engagedthe man, and told him to choose his own assistant. Nurla at oncesuggested a dwarfish man named Tchigin, a thick-set, muscular fellowwith a huge head covered with jet-black hair. Mr. Appleton called himBlack Jack. They began work, and Bob was well pleased with theirindustry and skill. Before night there was a row of half-a-dozen of thesmaller poles in position, and all was ready for the drilling of thelarger hole for the first of the stout beams that were to support thewooden path.

  On the subsequent days, with the number of workers increased to six, thework was carried on even more rapidly. The greatest difficultyencountered was a bend in the cliff a few yards before it opened out onto the ledge on which the aeroplane was to be put together. It cost agood deal of labour to shape the planks to the curve, and to fix thebeams; and the boys regarded it as a further disadvantage that the ledgewould be out of sight from the mine. Not that they could suppose thatthe aeroplane, when set up in its hangar there, would be in any dangerof molestation, for the only approach was from the Pathan compound, andMr. Appleton thought that the Pathans might be trusted. But they wouldhave preferred that their flying machine should always be in sight.However, there came a time when they were very thankful for theprojecting corner of the cliff which had given them so much extra toil.

  Their proceedings naturally caused a good deal of curiosity andexcitement among the miners and the domestic staff. No one was moredeeply interested than Ditta Lal, who numbered among his manyaccomplishments a smattering of theoretical engineering picked up in thecourse of his studies at Calcutta Universit
y. He talked very learnedlyof strains and stresses, and often laid before the boys scraps of paperon which he had worked out magnificent calculations and drawn elaboratediagrams for their guidance. This amused them at first, but it becamerather exasperating as the work progressed. He had a formula foreverything; taught them exactly, to the fraction of an inch, how far thetimbers should project from the ends of those supporting them, and whatstrain each portion of the structure could bear. As the successivebridges were completed, he proved, as he supposed, the accuracy of hiscalculations by venturing his own portly person upon them, at first withsome timidity, but with more and more confidence as time went on. Mr.Appleton, on the other hand, watched the work from the security of thecompound until it passed from sight round the shoulder of the cliff.

  "You're a heap braver than I am," he said once to Ditta Lal. "Iwouldn't trust myself on the thing for a pension, and you're heavier bythree or four stone."

  "Ah, sir, conscience makes cowards of us all," replied the Babu; "bywhich I understand immortal bard to mean, ignorance makes you funky.With my knowledge of science, imbibed from fostering breast of AlmaMater, Calcutta University--of which, as you are aware, I have honour tobe B.A.--I know to a T exact weight planks will support, all worked outby stunning formulae, sir. Knowledge is power, sir."

  "Well, if you quote proverbs at me, I'll give you one: 'A littleknowledge is a dangerous thing.'"

  "A thousand pardons, sir, and with due respect, you have made a bloomer:misquotation, sir. Divine bard wrote: 'A little _learning_ is adangerous thing;' and I understand him to mean, if even a _little_learning in a man is dangerous to critic who tries to bowl him out, howmuch more dangerous is a fat lot!"

  Mr. Appleton found it necessary at this point to break away, and DittaLal's further exposition was lost.

  One evening, when the work of the bridge makers was nearing completion,the accepted explanation of Pope's line was brought home to the Babu bya rather unpleasant experience. He had walked along the finished portionof the pathway, which consisted of two lines of stout and broad plankssupported by the cantilevers, these resting on the thick beams firmlyembedded in the rock. The workmen on their swinging platform, Nurla Baiand Black Jack, had just laid the planks forming one bridge sectionacross the gap, and were about to knock off work for the day. Ditta Lalwas so eager to prove the soundness of his calculations, and demonstratethe valuable share he believed himself to have had in this engineeringfeat, that he took it into his head to walk across the planks to theother side. He had sufficient caution to hold on to the rope which hadbeen carried along the smaller poles just above the level of his head.

  "Hi, Ditta Lal! Come back!" shouted Bob from behind him. "The planksaren't nailed down yet."

  The Babu halted and looked round with an air of pained astonishment.

  "Sir," he said, "it is as safe as eggs. Planks are held firm by my ownavoirdupois. I have worked it out."

  Still holding the rope with one hand, with the other he drew from hispocket a sheet of paper on which he had made his last calculation.

  "The weight which these planks will tolerate," he continued, "is elevenhundred and eighty-six pounds fifteen point eight ounces gross. Myweight is two hundred and forty-four pounds and a fraction nett, bywhich I mean my own corpus without togs. Q.E.D. Suppose I jump, eventhen energy I develop is innocuous. I demonstrate the quod."

  He replaced the paper in his pocket, took the rope in both hands, andlifting his feet, to the boys' horror came down ponderously on theplanks. The result was alarming. One of the planks was jerked off thebeams on which it rested, and fell with a splash into the swirling riverbelow. The other turned up on its edge; Ditta Lal sought to keep hisfooting, but his feet slid off, the plank fell, and he was left hangingon the rope alone, which sagged deeply under the tremendous strain.

  The boys shivered as they saw the portly man dangling over the river.They expected every moment that the rope would break and plunge him intothe depths, carrying with him the workmen on their platform below. Itseemed impossible to give him any aid, for a gap of sixteen feet, nowunbridged, separated them from him. But luckily there was lying nearthem a plank intended for use farther on. They caught it up, and pushedit within reach of the workmen, who hastily threw it across the gap insuch a way that the Babu could just reach it with his knees.

  The description of his appearance which the boys afterwards gave madetheir uncle laugh heartily.

  "His face was positively green," said Lawrence, "and his eyes wererolling like the eyes of a giant in one of those moving magic lanternslides. He was yelling at the top of his voice--invoking strange godsby the sound of it. When he felt the plank beneath his knees he beganto shuffle along sideways, but away from us instead of towards us; hewas in such an awful state of funk that he didn't know which way he wasgoing. When he got to the beam he threw his legs across it and sat thereshaking, with the rope under his arms. We couldn't get him to budgeeven when we had laid another plank across, so that the way back wasperfectly safe. He looked just like a 'varsity stroke pumped out at theend of a race--bar the complexion, of course. We tried to persuade himto get up and walk back, but he did nothing but shake his head and moan.He wouldn't speak for a bit; at last he said that he must wait tillmorning light. 'Buck up!' I said: 'make an effort!' but he only rolledhis eyes and groaned and sighed. You can't do anything with a chumplike that."

  Ditta Lal indeed refused all entreaties, and kept his perch through thecold night. Lawrence sent him a bowl of soup, but he declined tounwreathe his arms from the rope. Only when, early next day, the plankshad been firmly nailed to their supports did he allow himself to bewheeled in a trolley--for his limbs were numbed and useless--back to themine. For the rest of the day he was not seen. For a week he avoidedthe boys, and made no more calculations except the elementary additionand subtraction of his store book-keeping.