"Wall," said the old adventurer, "I don't know as how I think that kind of excitement is as beneficial fer the health as the rest cure."
Meanwhile the Golden Eagle, plowing through the clear African air at fifty miles an hour, rapidly drew nearer and nearer to the mysterious Moon Mountains.
As they neared the range the extraordinary character of it was revealed more and more clearly. Seamed with deep gloomy abysses and almost bare of vegetation, except a few scanty groves of palms and the hardier tropical trees, they seemed indeed fitted to be the theater of dark mysteries and the haunt of savage tribes.
"Well," exclaimed Harry, as he scrutinized the strange mountain mass through the glasses, "I should say that if those Winged Men are to be found anywhere, here is where they'd reside."
"I should think they'd use their wings to get out—a nastier looking lot of mountains I never saw," was Ben's reply.
Frank made no comment, but the sinister character of the mountains they were so rapidly approaching impressed itself on his mind nevertheless. Eagerly he scanned the range for the first sign of "The Upturned Face." Harry and Ben, too, gave quite as eager scrutiny toward the discovery of this striking mark of the ivory's hiding-place.
All at once it shot into view with a suddenness that made the boys' beads swim.
It was as clear as daylight. The line of the mountain for which Frank had the Golden Eagle II now directly headed was unmistakably the outline also of a hawk-nosed facet.
If the mountains themselves had an evil, menacing look, the stone face possessed this same quality in an infinitely greater degree.
"Well, if we've got to go looking for ivory right under that face the sooner we find it the better," exclaimed Ben. "I'd hate to be shipmates with the fellow who sat for that portrait."