The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the Insurgents

by John Henry Goldfrap

Throwing off the blanket that had been thrown over him, the boy,—still so weak that his knees seemed to have developed strange sort of hinges and his head reeled,—felt his way along by the rough walls of the dwelling to the door. Harry and Billy, already recovered from their experience, were seated outside the place, which Frank now saw, was dug out in the face of a steep cliff, on a bench also cut out of a kind of soft sandstone. The boys jumped up with a loud “Whoop,” when they saw Frank, and throwing their arms round him, escorted him to the bench and dragged him down by their sides.

“This is our rescuer, Frank;” announced Harry gratefully, indicating a thick-set, sinewy man, burned almost to the color of the cliffs round about by exposure. Frank recognized the hair-fringed face,—almost monkey-like,—with its kindly eyes as the same that he had seen peering over the edge of the shaft as he had looked up, as he thought to take a good-bye to life. The figure of the man who had saved their lives was no less remarkable than his face. He wore rough rawhide sandals and his clothes were shaggy garments, apparently contrived from deerskins. His hat was an ingenious plaited arrangement of manacca palm leaves.

Frank gazed about him in amazement at the place in which he found himself after the first words of gratitude had been exchanged. It was a cliff-rimmed basin possibly two miles in circumference thickly wooded toward one end, but in the portion in which they were seated, bare and sterile as the Treasure Cliff. The steep walls, however, were pierced with numerous openings, some square and some oblong. The honeycomb of ancient cliff dwellings was joined by steep flights of wide steps cut out of the living rock.

After Frank had eaten a good portion of broth out of the earthen pot, he was prepared to hear the story of their rescue and the no less remarkable narrative of their savior. It appeared that late in the afternoon before that man in the deerskin garments had seen Frank’s smoke signal curling up from the mouth of the shaft, which lay about half-a-mile away. He had at once hastened over and gazed down at the first white face he had seen in two long years.

At first he was so startled that he could not believe that the lads lying apparently dead at the bottom of the tunnel were human beings as, for a reason which will be given later, he believed that the other end of the tunnel was impossible of entrance or exit. After the first few minutes of stunned surprise, however, he realized that they were real boys and in sore need of help.

He hastened at once to the burrow that he had selected as his dwelling and secured a long rawhide rope for which he had never imagined he would have any use again. Fastening this to a bush near the top of the shaft, he had hastily secured a bowl of water and some food and after letting these articles down carefully, one at a time, he had lowered himself. After the first application of water to their parched lips the boys recovered their senses and strength rapidly—that is, all but Frank, who for a time they feared was past recovery. Their rescuer, after the boys were sufficiently recovered to be able to stand up and eat some of the stewed, dried deer’s flesh and roasted bread-fruit he had lowered into the shaft, then clambered up on his rawhide rope. The next to reach the surface was Billy with the aid of the man above pulling with all his muscular might.

The rope was then lowered again to Harry who attached it beneath Frank’s armpits, padding it where it came in contact with his body, with their soft felt hats. Harry then clambered up and then all three laid on to the rope and hoisted the senseless Frank to the surface.

“How long ago was this?” asked Frank, who had no idea what day it might be.

“Two days,” was Harry’s astonishing reply.

It was then the turn of the man who had come to their aid in the nick of time to tell his story. His name was Ben Stubbs, and before he became a castaway under as strange circumstances as ever befell a man, he had been a sailor before the mast. He had quit the sea when on the west coast of Guatemala to become a mahogany hunter. From this he had drifted into prospecting for gold in Central America, and about two years before, while sojourning with a band of wandering Nicaragua Indians, had cured the cacique of the tribe of a deadly fever. In return they had confided to him the secret of a legendary basin, high in the mountains worked at one time, so they told it, “by old, old people who were here long before us, when the land was young,” meaning, as Ben realized, the Toltecs.