Part 19 (2/2)

”I say, Billy,” whispered Lathrop suddenly, as, after eating the stew, they watched the hunters piling their belongings into their canoes, ”you don't suppose they mean to fatten us up to eat us, do you?”

”Well, we can't starve even if that is the reason,” replied the practical Billy, ”but so far they seem friendly enough. They have not even taken my rifle away.”

”That looks encouraging, certainly,” replied Lathrop; ”if only we knew where Frank and Harry and good old Ben were we might find this all very interesting, as it is though--”

”We've got to make the best of it,” chimed in Billy, ”come on. See old job-lots is signing to us to come down and get in a canoe.”

”Whatever they mean to do with us they seem determined to make us comfortable,” remarked Billy, as the boys took their seats in a canoe in which skins had been piled to make an easy seat.

For most of that afternoon they paddled steadily up the brown river, the savages singing from time to time an unending sort of chant, that sounded like nothing so much as a continuous repet.i.tion of:

”I-told-you-so. I-told-you-so. I--told-YOU-SO.”

”Hum,” commented Billy, ”if anyone had told me so I'd have stayed in New York.”

At length after what seemed endless hours of paddling and chanting the river took an abrupt turn and the boys found themselves at the foot of a steep cliff that towered up, it seemed, for six hundred feet at least. It was formed of black basalt and was crowned with a fringe of contrasting vegetation, but the most remarkable thing about it was that its surface was literally honeycombed with small holes from which, as the canoe cortege drew up, innumerable heads were poked.

An astonis.h.i.+ng thing, however, about the men who scrutinized the lads from their lofty watch-towers, was that they were several degrees lighter in complexion than the boatmen and almost as white as the boys in fact. Their features, too, were different. As the boys looked in wonderment at this extraordinary dwelling-place and its equally strange inhabitants, Billy gave an excited shout:

”Great jumping horn-toads, look at that!”

One of the light-colored men had emerged from his, hole and with as little concern as if he were taking a walk had suddenly launched himself into s.p.a.ce. But instead of falling to the ground or into the river, as the boys had fully expected to see him do, he floated gracefully to the opposite bank of the river with as little effort as a settling bird.

”Good land of hot-cakes, Lathrop, do you realize where we are?”

almost shrieked the excited Billy.

”In the village of the Flying Men,” stammered Lathrop, as, one after another, the inhabitants of the rock holes dropped from their aeries and floated groundwards. As the boys watched they saw distinctly that each man, from his wrist to his side, was possessed of a sort of leathery fiber like that of bat's swing, and that as their arms were of unusual length this fiber supported them in their downward flights like a parachute.

”I'll never call any one a liar again as long as I live,” choked out Billy, as one after another these strange beings gathered in a chattering group on the river bank.

”But they can't fly upward,” exclaimed Lathrop, pointing eagerly to where some of the gliders, having swum the river, were nimbly clambering up a gra.s.s rope-ladder to their homes.

”Oh, gee! if I only had a camera,” groaned Billy.

”It will be no use telling anyone about this even if we do get out of here, they'll say that we have had a rarebit dream.”

”That's so,” a.s.sented Lathrop, ”and honestly, Billy, are you sure we are awake?”

”Sure,” replied the reporter giving himself a vicious pinch, and exclaiming ”Ouch!”

But there was no time to talk further. Their guide now came up to them and jumping into their canoe paddled them to where the end of the rope-ladder dangled in the stream. He pointed upward for them to ascend. But Billy's curiosity would not let him mount before he had asked a question.

”Who are these people?” he asked in, for him, an awed tone.

”Very old-time people,” rejoined their guide. ”We hunt for them, work for them. They the same as fetish.”'

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