"But Billy and Lathrop, Sikaso, tell us quick, were they with Muley-Hassan?"
The black shook his head slowly.
"No see Four-Eyes—no see Red Head," he said sorrowfully.
The last ray of hope concerning the fate of the two young adventurers seemed to have been extinguished.
CHAPTER XVII
THE "ROGUE" ELEPHANT
In the meantime Billy and Lathrop, having been introduced to the chief, were making themselves very much at home in the village or cliff colony of the Flying Men. The morning after the day of their arrival a hunting expedition was organized by their new-found friend and in company with a dozen or more of the Flying Men, and the ordinary natives, who seemed to occupy the position of inferiors to their winged masters, the expedition set out.
They crossed the fields and garden patches that the boys had observed the evening before and, after traversing a few miles of swampy ground overgrown with a tough yellow grass, they plunged into a forest of mahogany and silk cotton trees.
It was while crossing the expanse of yellow grass at Billy performed a feat that caused all of them to hold him as a mighty hunter. They had been pushing their way along a narrow trail with the tops of the vegetation waving a good three feet above their heads, when there was a sudden grunt heard ahead and the noise of great rushing through the wiry grass.