Frank looked at his watch. It was half-past nine.
"We cannot be more than a hundred miles now from the foot of the range," he said, "and I suppose we have plenty of time. We might as well drop and get them as let some native tribe have the find and then get skinned out of them by an Arab trader."
As he spoke the boy set the planes for descending and the Golden Eagle settled down—after a few minutes rapid falling—fairly in the center of the clearing. It was almost a fairylike spot. On every side it was hedged in by the densest jungle vegetation, the solid walls being broken here and there by elephant paths leading off into the green tangle.
The little glade in which the Golden Eagle had settled was covered with short, yellow grass and had been trampled almost bare of vegetation, apparently by the gambols of countless generations of elephants.
"This must be one of the elephant playgrounds I have read about," exclaimed Harry, looking about him.
"No doubt it is," replied Frank. "But look at those tusks, why there's ivory enough there alone to give us all a nice wad of pocket money."
Ben Stubbs, with one of the small axes, at once set about hacking out the dead elephant's huge tusks and a long job it was. Finally, however, he managed to cut them free and clear and the boys loaded them into the aeroplane.
"Now we are all ready for a fresh start," said Frank as they clambered in after him and settled down in their places; but a startling interruption occurred.
With a wild yell, that struck a sudden chill to the heart of every one of the little group, a band of beings that at first sight looked like nothing so much as huge gorillas, burst from the forest on every side.
Their heads were misshapen and flat and their protruding lips were daubed with white and red clay which gave them a ghastly unearthly look. From their ears hung huge ivory pendants. They carried elephant skin shields and were armed with spears and bow and arrows. As if they did not consider themselves sufficiently hideous, several of the tribe had cut their faces in long stripes and the hardly healed scars of these wounds rendered their already sinister faces terrifying indeed.