Pete Deveaux sauntered over to the crew of the Sky-Bird II.
"Well, fellows," he said, with the sneer which seemed to be on his leathery countenance most of the time, "I notice you got in a little ahead of us. Congratulations! I suppose you're tickled to death."
"We're not quite that far gone; just a little bit alive," grinned Tom Meeks. "What made your crew so slow, Deveaux? Did you get wet in that rain last night and have to stop off and dry out your clothes?"
"Aw, cut it out; talk sense!" snarled the French flyer. He turned on his heel, fearing more of Tom's sharp thrusts if he lingered longer, and shot back: "You guys will have another laugh coming one of these days, mark my words!" With that he rejoined his companions.
Not at all worried at such a prophecy, our friends secured a native boy to guide them into the town, a quarter of a mile distant, leaving their airplane under guard of two Chinese out in the open, the field boasting no such thing as a hangar. At the little telegraph office of the town, John dispatched their report to the Daily Independent, also mailed at the local postoffice the promised films of the encounter with the condors.
They then purchased some breakfast and began to look about them. While it was still early, the narrow streets were quite well crowded with people, so much so that it looked to the visitors as if the inhabitants never slept. What they saw almost made them rub their eyes to make sure they were not in Asia instead of South America. There were dozens of almond-eyed Chinese within sight, dozens of black Hindoos in turbans and flowing garments, dozens of Parsees wearing long black coats and hats like inverted coal-scuttles; to say nothing of numerous Portuguese and English, the latter mostly merchants and plantation owners.
The roofs of the buildings were slanting, with wooden or galvanized iron walls. Some of the more important of them, such as stores, warehouses, government buildings, etc., were quite large, and stood upon piles to keep them out of the way of floods which often sweep the lowlands in the rainy season. In many of the streets ran canals, which their small guide told them, in pidgeon-English, were drains for the floods. And he also said that the long embankments which the boys saw stretching along the sea front were dykes built at great expense by the sugar planters to keep these same floods from washing the rich soil of their fields out into the ocean.
After purchasing some fresh fruit and groceries for their aerial larder, the little party betook themselves back to the landing-field, on the way passing numbers of pretty little houses which stood in the midst of beautiful gardens filled with tropical plants.
As they neared the field, they saw that quite a crowd had collected since their departure. Pushing their way through the concourse about their own airplane, they were surprised to find Pete Deveaux and Chuck Crossman just jumping down from the wings. These flyers hurried away through a gap in the circle of onlookers toward their own machine before our friends could accost them.
The Sky-Bird crew were considerably put out at noting this situation, for they had particularly told the Chinese guards to let no one meddle with the Sky-Bird. The Celestials were squatting unconcernedly upon the ground, one on either side of the airplane, as John rushed up and said to one of them; "Didn't I tell you not to let any strangers around this machine?"