had not faded out on the twilight sky, before, through the jungle at
the foot of the Moon Mountains, a strange figure pushed its way. It
was Sikaso, but a changed Sikaso from the agile muscular black who
had wielded his axe with such terrible effect at the fight of the
evening before. His ebony body was cut and scarred with the signs
of his battle with the thorns and saw-bladed grasses of the dense
forest, across which he had cut in desperate haste, scorning all
paths in order to warn the Boy Aviators and their chum Ben of the
rapid approach of Muley-Hassan. With that strange instinct that
white men in Africa recognize in certain of the natives as a sixth
sense, the giant black had read in a fire kindled after the battle,
that the boys were at that moment in the Moon Mountains, and had at
once set out--exhausted as he was--at top speed on the long journey.
Only a man of his adamantine strength could have endured the
hardships and it had fatigued even his iron frame, as was evident by
his stumbling footsteps as he made his way up the side of the
mountain--pausing from time to time as if to listen to the
whisperings of his mysterious instinct.

Billy and Lathrop, half inclined to accuse the old black in their
minds of base desertion, did him a gross injustice. After he had
seen the two boys taken prisoners, the old warrior had realized that
he could be of far more use to them at liberty than he would be if
made captive by Muley-Hassan. Indeed there was no doubt in his own
mind that the Arab would put him to death instantly if he ever got
his hands on him. He had therefore built a fetish fire and in it
had made out distinctly Frank and Harry and Ben in their air-ship,
encamped on the mountain-side, and had set out without delay at the
peculiar jog-trot by which the native bush-runners can cover daily
as much ground, and more, than a horse.