From Accra the Flying Fortress took off with all gas tanks full. Nine hundred miles across the Gulf of Guinea she roared to Libreville, where the Fighting French made up her depleted fuel. In the air again, she swept in a few hours over the vast territory that took H. M. Stanley years to explore. Twice she crossed the mighty Congo River. Then the five-hundred-mile expanse of Lake Tanganyika lay below.
“Watch out for elephants and giraffes, boys,” came the Old Man’s humorous drawl. “This is the country all the animal crackers come from. I’ll take Rosy down low enough so that you can see them.”
There was a general laugh, but as Captain O’Grady nosed his ship down to a thousand feet the crew really started to look. Perhaps the Old Man wasn’t kidding after all.
The dense masses of green forest broke up into small patches. Lush grazing lands appeared, with here and there a clump of trees. Farther on stretched a dry plain, spotted with the green of an occasional water hole. As they neared one of these, Barry Blake gave a shout.
“There are your elephants, Captain!” he exclaimed. “We interrupted their drink. I see a bunch of ostriches on the run, too—”
“Ostriches—ha, ha!” Tex O’Grady chuckled. “We’re not that near to Australia, Bub. Those long-necked critters you see are giraffes. Want me to prove it to you?”
He shoved the stick forward. As the giant plane dipped down to within two hundred feet of them, the frightened giraffes scattered like sheep. Barry could see their long, pathetic necks swaying like masts as they turned this way or that. Seconds later the herd was far behind.
“When we reach Australia, Lieutenant,” Curly Levitt’s voice murmured in the headphones, “I’ll buy you a beautiful, big picture book, and you can learn that G stands for Giraffe, and E for Elephant and M for the little Monkey who didn’t know which was which.”
A howl of merriment from the others who were listening in made Barry’s ears tingle.
“Okay, okay, I asked for it!” he admitted ruefully; and for the next hour he felt like a high school kid who has pulled the prize “boner” of the week in class.