Round the World in Seven Days

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE RESCUE

  Smith had taken no account of the time he had lost, first by thestorm, then by the overhauling of the engine; but, little or much, itincreased the peril of his father, and lessened his own chance ofaccomplishing what he had set out to do. When an engine is alwaysrunning at full speed, time lost can only be made up by reducing thelength of stoppages, and Smith felt even this to be almost out of thequestion. As soon as he was once more afloat, he thought his best planwas to make for the coast again, and follow this without attempting tocross the mountains.

  The storm had ceased; the engine was working smoothly, and, steeringsouth-east, Smith in a few minutes found himself again in theneighbourhood of Port Moresby. Again he ran down the coast, but whenabout half-way between the port and the extreme south-east corner ofthe island he espied a gap in the mountain chain and sped through it,almost exactly on the ten-degree line. He had to rise to aconsiderable height, and was for some moments troubled by the massesof snow-white cumulose clouds that lay beneath him, cutting off allview of the ground. The vast expanse of cloud lay dazzling white inthe sunlight, with peaks and crags such as he imagined Alpine summitsmust show. But though it appeared to be perfectly still, every now andthen he saw small jets of mist shoot upward, like water from a geyser,and at such times the vertical currents affected the elevation of theaeroplane. He soon crossed this cloudy sea, however, and in a fewhours reached the north-east coast of New Guinea, and knew thatnothing but an island-spangled sea separated him from his destination.

  About noon he came in sight of the mountains of Vanguna Island to theeast of New Georgia. Ysabel Island lay beyond this, running fromnorth-west to south-east. His intention was to round Cape Prieto, thesouth-eastern extremity of it, and search the eastern shore northward.In another hour he saw Russell Island, a green gem in the oceansouthward, and beyond this, to the south-east, the peaks ofGuadalcanar. Another twenty minutes brought him abreast of FloridaIsland, and he was heading up the Indispensable Strait, with ThousandShips Bay and the lofty peaks at the southern end of Ysabel lying onhis left hand.

  All at once Rodier descried a cloud of smoke on the horizon far up thestrait. Lifting his binocular, he shouted excitedly--

  "It is a gunboat, mister. She flies the British flag."

  "We've beaten her!" cried Smith.

  He was divided between pleasure at his success, and sorrow that thecastaways were as yet unrelieved, for he could not doubt that thegunboat was the same that had been dispatched from Brisbane to theirassistance. Before many minutes had elapsed he had overtaken thevessel. Slowing down and wheeling overhead, he saw that the aeroplanewas the object of wondering interest on the crowded deck.

  "Ahoy, there! Who are you?" he shouted through his megaphone.

  "Gunboat _Frobisher_, Captain Warren," came the reply. "Who are you?"

  "Aeroplane without a name, Lieutenant Smith of H.M.S. _Imperturbable_,bound for Ysabel Island to relieve Lieutenant Underhill."

  "The dickens! That's my job! Where do you hail from?"

  "From London, sir. I'm afraid I've beaten you by a neck."

  "Great Scott! Is this the Admiralty's latest?"

  "Not official, sir; I'm here in a private capacity. My father's amongthe wrecked party. I'm on leave."

  "So it seems. When are you due back?"

  "On Friday morning."

  "I'm sorry for you, then. But, goodness alive! when did you start? Thewreck was only reported four days ago."

  "Started Friday morning, sir."

  "Gammon!"

  "Rasher to you, sir."

  "You haven't lost much time, at any rate. What's your speed?"

  "About a hundred and ninety. Whereabouts was the wreck, sir?"

  "A hundred miles or so up the coast, according to the men ofUnderhill's party with me."

  "Then I'll bid you good-bye for the present. I'll tell him you'recoming."

  "Hope you'll find him alive."

  Waving a good-bye, Smith flew on at full speed. For twenty minutes hedid not attempt to follow the indentations of the coast, but set acourse parallel with its general trend. Then, however, he steered sothat, without actually tracing every curve of the shore, he was ableto survey it pretty closely. By dead reckoning and the assistance ofhis chart he was able to check from minute to minute his approximateposition.

  He had passed Mount Gaillard, and saw, some miles to the north, theremarkable saddle shape of Mount Mahaga. Then he made a bee-line forFulakora Point. Rounding this, his course was to the north-west. Thecoast was steep and precipitous; here and there were reefs, over whichthe sea broke in white upward cascades, and he was at no loss tounderstand how even the most skilfully navigated vessel might easilycome to grief. About forty miles from the extremity of the island heflew over an immense lagoon, extending for several miles betweenYsabel Island and a series of islets and reefs lying off the shore.From this point the sea was dotted with islets so numerous that it wasimpossible, at his high speed, to identify them. But he recognized thedeep indentation of Marcella Bay, confirming his observation by theconspicuous wooded islet rising some hundred feet from the sea at itsnorthern arm. He knew that the scene of the wreck must be within a fewmiles of this point, and reduced his speed so that he might scan thesea for any sign of the _Albatross_.

  For some time he flew up and down, but failed to distinguish abattered hull, a funnel, or any remnant of the vessel. It was plainthat she had been entirely broken up. This was perplexing. He wonderedhow he was to discover the party, if they were yet alive. The islanditself appeared, from his position off the shore, to be animpenetrable mass of forest. Flying in a little nearer, and goingdead slow, Rodier presently caught sight of a square fenced enclosurewithin a few yards of the edge of the cliff. Smith steered directlyover it, descending to a height of about fifty feet, and then saw inthe middle of the space a long piece of navy tarpaulin, severalbiscuit tins, a hammer, two or three hatchets, and other objects,which only white men could have placed there. It flashed upon him in amoment that the shipwrecked party had encamped here. But there was nota human being in sight, and he felt a stabbing conviction that he hadcome too late.

  Sick at heart, he made up his mind to descend and examine the placeand its surroundings more closely. There was plenty of room for theaeroplane within the enclosure. Coming to the ground, he stepped, withRodier, out of the car, each carrying his revolver. Now he saw, inaddition to the articles before mentioned, a good number of arrows atvarious points, a few broken spears, a tomahawk of a rude kind. Hereand there, on the barricade and below it, there were dark stains.These signs only increased his anxiety, but at the same time awakenedwonder. Why had the party left their fort? It seemed scarcely likelythat they had been overpowered in an assault, for there were no marksof a struggle within the barricade, and if the savages had succeededin an attack they would certainly have appropriated all that theycould lay hands on; even the most trivial objects would be precious tounsophisticated children of nature. Rodier suggested that thecastaways had been taken off by some passing vessel, and Smith,catching at the hope, was beginning to accept this view, when, liftingthe tarpaulin, he found beneath it the papers of the _Albatross_, somenotebooks filled with jottings in his father's spidery handwriting,and a few small cases that contained bits of rock, fossils, and otherspecimens dear to the geologist, each labelled with the name of theplace where it had been found.

  Smith was now thoroughly alarmed. He knew that his father, if he hadquitted the place voluntarily, would never have left behind thesefruits of his labours. Yet why was the fort deserted?

  "Ah, bah! They have gone foraging," said Rodier, unwittingly hittingon the truth.

  "But they would never leave the place unguarded," replied Smith. "Thesavages certainly attacked them; look at the arrows and spears. ButMr. Underhill would not have yielded without fighting; yet there areno dead bodies, not even the cut-up earth there would be if they hadhad a tussle. I can't account for it any way."

  "Well, m
ister, we better look them up."

  "In the aeroplane, you mean?"

  "Yes. They must be here, in this island, or not here. In theaeroplane we search all over."

  "It will be like looking for rabbits in bracken," said Smith, pointingto the forest. "Still, we must try."

  He sat down on a biscuit tin to think over the position and evolve aplan. A random search might be mere waste of time. Starting with theassumption that the castaways were still on the island, he said tohimself that they must have left the fort voluntarily, or there wouldcertainly be signs of a struggle. That they had left no one on guardseemed to show that they were in no alarm, otherwise they would havecarried their belongings with them. His father, he knew, would notabandon his note-books and specimens. Was it possible that they weremaking reprisals on the enemy who had previously attacked them? Buteven in this case they would hardly have left their fort whollyundefended, unless in the heat of victory they had rushed out inheadlong pursuit, a rash movement which a naval officer would hardlycountenance. Besides, they were but ill-provided with arms. Had theybeen enticed forth by the savages? In that case the savages wouldsurely have plundered the camp, unless--and now his thought and hispulse quickened--unless there had not yet been time. Perhaps they hadonly recently left the place. Then they could not be far away, and ifthey had yielded to allurement there might still be time to savethem. He started up, and told Rodier, who had begun his customary taskof cleaning the engine, the conclusion to which he had come.

  "We will ascend at once," he said, "and scour the neighbourhood. Theforest is thick, but perhaps there are clear spaces in it. Let us loseno time."

  They dragged the aeroplane to the inner extremity of the enclosure,turned it round, and started it towards the sea. In less than a minuteit was two hundred feet in the air. Then Smith wheeled round andsteered across the camp, intending to take that as a centre, andstrike out along successive radii, so that in the course of an hour ortwo, even at moderate speed, he would have searched a considerableextent of country in the shape of a fan. It was a question how far heshould proceed in one direction, but relying on his idea that theevacuation of the camp could only recently have taken place, heresolved to content himself at first with a distance of about tenmiles.

  Having risen to a height of about three hundred feet, he found that hecommanded a view of many miles of the country. Far to the south werethe mountains; all around was forest, broken here and there by patchesof open rocky ground. Beneath him the trees were so densely packedthat a whole army might have been encamped among them without givinga sign of its presence. He sped in a straight line west-north-west ofthe fort, at a speed of between forty and fifty miles an hour; to gofaster would have rendered careful exploration of the countrydifficult. Having completed ten miles without passing over a singlespot of clear ground, he flew about five miles due west, then turnedthe machine and steered back towards the fort along the next imaginaryradius of his circle. He had arranged that Rodier should scan thecountry to the left while he himself kept as good a look-out to theright as was possible when he had engine and compass to attend to.They had not flown far on this backward journey when Rodier, who wasusing his binocular, shouted that he saw, on a headland far to theleft, what appeared to be a native village. Smith instantly steeredtowards it. It was the first evidence of human habitation they had asyet come across, and even at the risk of losing his bearings he mustexamine it. He could now afford to go at full speed, and a few minutesbrought him above the village, which was a collection of rude hutsperched on a steep headland overlooking the sea, and defended on itsinland and less precipitous side by barriers of stakes. The noise madeby the engine as the aeroplane swept down towards the village firstdrew all the inhabitants from their huts into the open enclosure, andthen sent them scampering back with shrieks of alarm as they saw thestrange object in the air. A glance sufficed to assure Smith, as hewheeled round the village, that it contained no white men, unless theyhad been taken inside the huts, which was unlikely. Without loss oftime he steered as nearly as he could towards the point at which hehad diverged from his settled course, and returned to the camp,pausing once to examine a small tract where the trees were somewhatthinner, allowing him to see the ground beneath.

  Once more he started, steering now in a more westerly direction. Therewere several clear spaces along this radius, and Smith flew over themslowly, more than once wheeling about to make sure that his eyes hadmissed nothing. But at these times he saw no human beings, nothing butthe wild animals of the forest, huge pigs being diminished to the sizeof rabbits, and dingoes to the size of mice. These scurried away whenthey heard the noise of the engine, and Smith hovered around for atime to see if the flight of the animals attracted the attention ofmen, but in vain.

  Having again covered ten miles, as nearly as he could judge, he swunground to the southwest. A minute or two later he came to the largestopen space he had yet seen, clear of undergrowth as well as of trees.There were no huts upon it, and at first he saw no sign of men; butall at once Rodier cried that there was a ladder against one of thetrees on the farther side of the clearing. Flying towards it, anddescending until the aeroplane was level with the tree-top, Smith wasamazed to see a brown woman, with a brown baby under her arm,scuttling down the ladder towards the ground. At the same time hebecame aware that there were ladders against many of the trees in theneighbourhood, and women and children were descending by them, showingall the marks of terror. He had come upon a collection of the curioustree-houses, sixty or seventy feet from the ground, which some of theislanders inhabit. The terrified people when they reached the groundfled into the forest. There was no man among them, which led Smith tosuspect that the men were either hunting for food, or were perhapsfighting with the castaways. Instead of returning directly to thecamp, therefore, he pursued his flight across the forest in the samedirection in which the startled natives had run. Now for the firsttime he wished that he could have had a silent engine, for then hisears might have given the information which failed his eyes. Though heflew to and fro for some time in the vicinity of the tree-houses, hediscovered no other break in the forest; and the impossibility ofknowing what was going on beneath that vast screen of foliage beganto affect him with hopelessness of success.

  He wished it were possible to descend in the clearing, and continuehis search on the ground. The appearance of the aeroplane was soterrifying to the islanders that he need fear no opposition to hislanding. But the idea occurred to him only to be at once dismissed.When once among the trees, away from the aeroplane, he would be nolonger sacrosanct. Those islanders who had actually witnessed hisdescent might fear him as a denizen of the sky; but any others thatmet him in the forest would not be restrained by superstitious fearfrom, treating him as an enemy. Further, having once involved himselfin the obscure and pathless depths of the forest, he might wander forhours, or even days, without finding the aeroplane. It was animpossible course of action. Hopeless as he was becoming, he felt thathe could do nothing better than persevere as he had begun; after all,he had as yet covered only a small wedge of the segment he hadproposed to himself.

  But he now found himself in a difficulty. In the excitement of hisrecent discovery he had neglected to keep a watch upon the compass,and he was now at a loss to know the precise direction in which tosteer. He must certainly go to the east, but he could not tell whetherhe was north or south of the camp. It occurred to him that by risingto a greater height he might probably be able to descry the camp, sohe planed upwards until he attained an altitude of nearly two thousandfeet, Rodier searching the country seawards through his binocular.

  "I see it!" he cried at length, adding, as Smith began to steertowards it, "Wait a minute, mister; I see all the country better here;I can pick out the clearings, though they are only dark blots; but yetI can do it."

  He swept the country for miles around. Beyond the forest, far to thewest, there were stretches of rugged uplands, bare of vegetation. Itwas not at all likely that the Englishmen had gone so far
from theircamp, whether willingly or unwillingly. To the east and south-eaststretched the sea, and Rodier declared that he saw, an immense wayoff, the smoke of a steamer, no doubt the gunboat. Lowering the glassto scan the nearer prospect, he suddenly gave a lusty shout.

  "I see smoke, mister; a quite little smoke, as of a cigarette."

  "Where?" asked Smith eagerly.

  "South-east of us, in the forest, about five or six miles off."

  "We'll go and see what it comes from."

  Smith scarcely dared to hope that the discovery of the smoke would beof any assistance to him. But it was the first indication of a campwithin the forest, whether of the islanders or of his friends, and hecould not neglect to investigate it. The aeroplane flew along at thespeed of a swallow. In little more than three minutes it reached thetwine of smoke. Checking the engine, Smith wheeled the aeroplane rounduntil it passed slowly over an extensive gap in the forest. He lookeddown. The smoke rose from a fire in the midst of the clearing. At alittle distance from it there was a throng of islanders, gazing upawe-struck at the strange apparition whose approach had been heraldedfrom afar, and which now circled above them, making terrifying noises.

  But Smith was not interested in the islanders. He peered among themand around for white men. He felt a shock of bitter disappointment;all the upturned faces were brown. But the movement of the aeroplanebrought him to the verge of the forest, and then Rodier gave a shoutof delight.

  "There they are! There they are, mister!" he cried, pointing obliquelydownwards.

  Smith looked over. In the shade at the foot of the trees he saw anumber of men bound each to a trunk. Their faces, directed upwards,were too darkly shadowed for him to distinguish their race; but theywere clothed. Beyond doubt they were the castaways.

  In a moment he determined what to do. While the aeroplane circledslowly above their heads the islanders would feel no more than aweand wonder. They huddled together like a flock of sheep in athunderstorm, probably not as yet connecting the aerial visitant withtheir prisoners. What was required was to scatter them, suddenly, in away that would smite them with terror, and cause them to flee withoutthought of the captives helpless against the trees.

  Smith sailed away eastward, disappearing from their sight. He had madea quick mental calculation of the extent of the clearing. Rising tothe height of about three hundred feet above the ground, while stillout of sight he suddenly stopped the engine and warped the planes fora dive. The aeroplane descended rapidly, grazed the tops of the trees,and then, more slowly, swept, silently, in a gentle curve towards thethrong of men, who were chattering about the mysterious sky visitor.When they caught sight of it they were struck dumb, and for a fewmoments seemed to be fixed to the ground with amazement. Then, as itcame directly towards them, and Smith set the noisy propellers inmotion, they uttered shrieks of dismay and terror, and fled like haresinto the forest.

  Some of them started too late. Smith, being now near the ground, setthe engine going at low speed, overtook a group of the islandersbefore they reached shelter, and with a touch of the aeroplaneflung them violently on their faces. He then wheeled round, and roseonce more into the air in order to effect a complete descent. Theprostrate natives lay for some time in a paralysis of fear; butfinding that they were unhurt, and that the monster had withdrawn fromthem, they picked themselves up, and ran to overtake their friends,leaving the space clear.

  In another minute Smith had brought the aeroplane safely to theground. Rodier and he sprang out and ran towards the bound figures.

  "It's Charley!" called a voice, in tones wherein surprise and joy wereblended.

  And then the sailormen, famished and feeble as they were, broke forthin hoarse cheers and incoherent shouts, which died away in sobs.