which lay about two points west of north. The boy calculated that
this direction would bring them within a few miles at any rate of
the cache. To find it they would have to trust to persistence and a
modicum of luck.

Old Sikaso, who had, of course, never seen anything even remotely
resembling an aeroplane, stood apart from the excited group
clustered about the big craft and gazed at it with astonishment, not
unmixed with awe. The other Kroomen--the packers and camp-workers,
however, gathered close about the machine and the boys had a lot of
trouble keeping their busy fingers from unscrewing nuts and
loosening turnbuckles.

"Anything more like a pack of monkeys on a picnic I never saw,"
exclaimed Billy as for the twentieth time he chased a long, skinny
native away from the propellers, where he would have assuredly been
decapitated if he had remained till the engine was started.

A few turns with the clutch thrown out showed the engine was running
as true as on the day the Golden Eagle made her trial trip. The
muffler was cut out and the effect of the wide-open exhaust on the
Kroomen was magical. Within a second from the time that Harry threw
in the switch and the gatling gun uproar of the exhaust made itself
manifest, not a solitary one was to be seen. From the greenery of
the jungle that rimmed the clearing, however, their frightened faces
could be seen peering, like some strange sort of fruit among the
tropical growth. Only old Sikaso stood his ground.

But even that stolid old warrior grasped his great war-axe a little
tighter and stood erect as if about to face an unknown enemy as jets