The launch, too, was missing!
With a cry of rage Ben Stubbs shook his fist down the river.
"I see it all, boys," he exclaimed. "The old scallywag drugged us—doped us—that's why we feel so badly and—"
"Howling bob-cats! I'll bet he's stolen a march on us and got away with the ivory,"—this was Billy.
There was a rush for the spot in which the precious stuff had been cached.
A few broken tusks lay there.
But of the great hoard that the Boy Aviators had worked so faithfully to salvage not a vestige remained.
"Bilked, by the great hornspoon!" yelled Ben.
"But not beaten yet," was Frank's calm rejoinder. "Come on, boys, we've got to be stirring. Barr's got a long start of us, but we'll get him yet. Ben, you and Sikaso will take one of the Arabs' canoes—the ones they left at the river bank when they started after us—Harry, Billy, Lathrop and I will fly to the coast in the Golden Eagle II. We've just enough gasoline."
"All right, sir," said Ben, touching his forelock with an old sailor trick—a token of respect involuntarily forced from him by Frank's manly promptitude in taking the bull by the horns, "We're with you to the last ditch, the top of the main-top gallant, the bottom of the deep-blue sea, or the ends of the earth."