“There certainly must be some big towns in this region,” argued Henri, thinking of the railway they had seen, “and I’ll warrant we can get a tank supply with the exercise of a little nerve and diplomacy.”
“That is just what you will have to use, and, I might say, all you have to use to get it,” put in Billy. “You and I haven’t a red cent between us, and I doubt if our friends here transferred their gold and silver to the new, or, rather, old clothes they are wearing.”
“We didn’t,” exclaimed Macauley, “but I could tell you to whose clothes the few shillings we carried were transferred: Abou, peace be with him—not.”
“Yet we have Billy’s watch,” advanced Henri, with a grin; “heirloom though it is, the sacrifice must be made.”
The Bangor boy cast a rebuking glance at his chum, for that battered “turnip” had outworn long-continued fun-making, as well as any value for exchange it had ever possessed.
“What’s that saying, Billy, that you sprung on us the other day, ‘luck is stuck on the efficient,’ or something like that? Maybe it will work if you hustle right on the petrol trail.”
Canby was the speaker, and he owed Billy one for the way the latter had laughed when Macauley and himself made their début as Turks.
Seeing that he was getting the worst of it, Billy crossed in with:
“Too much talk; we’d better be pulling out.”
There was no dissent to this, and after Macauley and Canby had appropriated and filled two of the goatskin water pouches, the aviation party took to the air.