The Motor Rangers' Cloud Cruiser

  CHAPTER XXII.

  A SERIOUS ACCIDENT.

  Shortly after the battle with the condors, the professor announcedthat, inasmuch as they were passing above a favorable landing place, heintended to make a landing. The spot selected was an open space besidea fairly large river, the glint of which could be plainly seen like aglittering ribbon beneath them.

  Preparations for a landing were at once begun, and the _Discoverer_commenced nestling down toward the earth. The professor announced thatthe first task of the evening would be to replenish the supply of gasin the bag from the hydrogen tanks.

  The anchorage was made without a hitch, and the _Discoverer_ moored assecurely as before; but in view of their experience of the nightbefore, the travelers decided to have everything ready to “slip andrun” in case the unpleasant experience was repeated.

  As soon as the dirigible was secured, the task of adding to herdepleted gas supply was begun. Two of the cylinders were dragged fromtheir resting place and deposited on the ground, while the filling tubewas made ready.

  The _Discoverer_ was anchored almost on the banks of the stream, arapid one, with a rocky bottom and steep banks. While the others wereworking about the _Discoverer_, Ding-dong Bell set himself to examiningthe gas cylinders.

  They were about ten feet long and very slender in proportion to theirlength. They were heavy, too, as the tremendous pressure within themmade it necessary to construct them of the thickest and strongeststeel,—the very finest grade obtainable, in fact.

  Ding-dong, with his natural curiosity, started lifting one, and foundthat to raise one end was all he could manage, and that only by dint ofpuffing and blowing.

  Joe Hartley, looking around from his work on the filling tube at whichhe was assisting Nat and the professor, noticed what his chum was up to.

  “Say, put that down! You’re not strong enough to lift it,” he jeered.“Those things aren’t for kids to monkey with.”

  “They’re not, eh?” puffed Ding-dong valiantly, “I’ll soon show you.”

  With a supreme effort he managed to raise the cylinder and move it ashort distance.

  “Here, stop that!” shouted the professor as he espied what the boy wasdoing. “Don’t you know those things are dangerous unless handledcarefully? They’ll go off like a bomb under a sudden shock.”

  “That one must have got a sudden shock when it saw Ding-dong,” scoffedJoe. “Most people do.”

  It was too much for Ding-dong. He set down the cylinder and made a jumptoward his tormentor. In doing so, his foot struck the cylinder which,as it happened, was only just balanced on the steepish slope leadingdown to the precipitous river bank.

  The gas container began rolling downward. The professor gave a shout.

  “Stop it! Stop it! Don’t let it fall over the river bank or——”

  Before he could complete the sentence, Ding-dong was valiantly offafter the rolling cylinder. He grasped it, but its weight and thevelocity it had attained, caused it to evade him, and while he fellsprawling in an effort to regain his balance, the cylinder bounded ontoward the brink of the steep river bank.

  “Down on your faces! Down on your faces! Everybody!” fairly roared theprofessor.

  They all obeyed blindly, not sensing the utility of the order, butrealizing its urgency in the tones of the professor’s voice.

  The cylinder gave a leap as it struck a stone, and then bounded overthe edge of the river bank.

  Bo-oo-oo-oo-m!

  An explosion that shook the ground followed almost instantly. From thebed of the river a geyser of mud and water and rocks spouted up,showering everything for a radius of several yards. The explosion theprofessor had dreaded had taken place; but, by a miracle, no one washurt. No doubt the fact that the detonation took place below the riverbank accounted for this fact.

  But the lecture that Ding-dong received! And he admitted that hedeserved it.

  “If you ever catch me mo-mo-monkeying with that h-h-high-diddle-diddleg-g-g-gas again you can ber-ber-ber-blow me up with it,” he declared.

  “That ‘high-diddle-diddle gas,’ as you call it, is much too preciousfor that,” said the professor with a laugh he could not restrain, “butI shall adopt other measures.”

  The boys had a good opportunity then to see the destructive forcestored in one of those innocent-looking cylinders. Peering over theriver bank they could see that a great hole had been blown in its bed,and rocks riven and split in every direction.

  “It’s as explosive as dynamite,” exclaimed Nat.

  “It is, indeed,” said the professor. “The condition of that river bedgives mute evidence of that.”

  “Just think what would happen if a spark should ever enter that gas bagof ours,” said Nat, with a slight shudder.

  “We wouldn’t be able to think,” said Joe succinctly.

  “Come, let us get back to work,” suggested the professor, “roll thatgas cylinder closer to the filler tube and we will make theconnections.”

  Gingerly enough, as you may imagine, the lads rolled the cylindertoward the end of the filler tube, which now lay extended on theground. The end of the tube was fitted with a union, which, in turn,was screwed on to the nozzle of the gas cylinder. Then the professorturned on the vapor, of whose power they had just had such a strikingexample.

  With a hiss and a roar the gas poured through the filler tube into thebag, and several small wrinkles, which had developed in its uppersurface, began to fill out. Two cylinders were emptied before theprofessor and Mr. Tubbs announced that the bag was full enough.

  The evening passed off quietly. As before, the evening meal was eatenon the ground, and the adventurers utilized the cabin of the_Discoverer_ for sleeping quarters. Old Matco, the Indian, shared themeal, but refused to sleep within the cabin. Instead, he rolled himselfup outside, on the substructure, like an animal of some sort. He hadthe true aborigine’s dislike of sleeping under a roof. It savored tohim of a trap possibly.

  The old fellow, now that he had become used to aerial navigation, didnot seem to object to it in the slightest. He rather appeared to likeit, in fact, and took a childish delight in watching the variousoperations that went on on board. It appeared that he had no intentionof detaching himself from the party as yet, and indeed, seemed to havethe liveliest gratitude to them for rescuing him from his unpleasantposition at the end of the swinging rope.

  The professor was of the opinion that Mateo might prove useful to them,so no move was made to urge him to return to his tribe. Indeed, theywere now in the country of another tribe of Indians altogether,—soMatco informed them,—a tribe as warlike and resentful of the intrusionof white men as his own. This was not encouraging news, but theadventurers resolved to make the best of it, and guard againstsurprises by keeping a good watch.

  Nothing occurred during the first part of the night, and when Ding-dongand Joe came on duty at midnight the professor and Nat had nothing toreport.

  “Don’t forget that time you shot at the mule,” warned Nat, addressinghimself to Ding-dong.

  “Oh, no danger of my doing that again,” Ding-dong assured him;“b-b-b-b-besides, they d-d-don’t have mules in this p-p-part of thecountry.”

  “That’s good logic, at all events,” laughed the professor, who hadheard the story of how Ding-dong shot at a mule in mistake for anIndian the night the Motor Rangers camped in the petrified forest inthe Sierras.

  Ding-dong and Joe marched up and down for some time, without anythingoccurring to mar the quiet of the night. But on what was, perhaps, thestuttering lad’s twentieth parade around the dirigible, he heard aqueer, inexplicable sort of noise coming from the river.

  “Indians,” was his first thought. But then:

  “That sounds like somebody snoring, and Indians who were coming toattack us wouldn’t announce their presence like that,” thoughtDing-dong.

  The snoring noise continued. Joe was on the other side of thedirigible, while Ding-dong was on th
e river end of it.

  “It’s a good chance to distinguish myself,” thought the lad, “after themess I made of that gas cylinder this afternoon. I’ll just creep downthere and see what on earth that racket is.”

  He began tiptoeing softly toward the river bank, while the grunting,snoring sound still continued.

  “I do believe it’s some one asleep down there,” exclaimed the lad tohimself. “Maybe I’ll make a prisoner and get even on Joe for laughingat me.”

  His mind full of these visions of glory, Ding-dong at last reached theriver bank. Behind him he could hear Joe softly calling, but he made noanswer.

  “I’m going to investigate this thing alone,” he said to himself.

  Lying flat on his stomach Ding-dong peered cautiously over the bank. Hecould see the gleam of the water about ten feet below him and—what wasthat? Two dark figures, that appeared to have bulk of considerablesize, moving about in the water? One was larger than the other, and itdidn’t take the boy long to make out that whatever the mysteriousobjects were, they were not human beings.

  “Wonder if they’re panthers?” thought the boy with a sudden chill. Butthen he recollected that panthers are not in the habit of prowlingabout in the river bottom.

  “And I never heard of a panther grunting,” considered Ding-dong, “Iguess I’ll just——”

  But what Ding-dong had “just” made up his mind to do was neverrevealed. The bank at the point where he had been leaning over, was cutout beneath by the action of the river, and in scrutinizing the darkobjects he had leaned rather far over.

  Suddenly the bank caved in, and amidst a shower of gravel, rocks andsmall bushes, Ding-dong went rolling down into the river.

  Splash!

  He landed in a deep pool, which, luckily for him, was of sufficientdepth for him to avoid injuring himself. Still clutching his rifle herose to the surface, puffing and blowing, and scrambled out.

  “Well, here’s a fix,” thought Ding-dong, “just like my luck. I’m alwaysgetting in bad.”

  All this time he had quite forgotten about the two dark, movingobjects, to whom he owed his present predicament. But their existencewas rudely recalled to him as, out of the darkness, something rushed athim, snorting loudly and angrily, and advancing like an expresslocomotive.