As he spoke he slipped under the tent-flap closely followed by Billy who, plucky as he was, couldn’t suppress a slight groan at the pain his wounded head and rope-grazed joints gave him as he moved.
A second later both boys were in the dark shadows of the clump of trees and in comparative safety. That is they were safe till the sentry looked in the tent again and discovered that his prisoner had vanished, a fact they both fully realized.
“We’ll have to sacrifice caution to speed,” counseled Frank, gliding swiftly along with wonderful speed and making very little noise. Poor Billy with his hurts and stiffness did not make such good progress.
“Come on, Billy,” whispered Frank grabbing him by the arm, and half dragging him along, “it won’t be long now.”
“I don’t think I can last much longer, Frank,” groaned Billy. “You’d better get out and leave me here. I don’t suppose they’ll dare to do anything much to me.”
“They won’t, eh?” returned Frank, “well you don’t know as much of these people as I do. No, Billy, we’ll stand or fall together. Come on, buck up, and in a few minutes we’ll be safe in the good old Golden Eagle.”
Frank’s words and his bold determined manner had the effect he intended. Billy put on a stiff upper lip and a few minutes later they emerged into the moonlight at the edge of the clearing. Frank fumbled in the bosom of his shirt for the signal light as they cautiously crept across the brilliantly moonlit patch in which Frank and Billy both felt that they must be as conspicuous objects as a pair of bull elephants.
When he found the tiny flash-light with which he was to give the signal to Harry in the Golden Eagle, that both boys could now see hovering above them, Frank pressed the button twice. Harry, scanning the ground below him anxiously, saw the tiny flashes instantly and with a feeling of relief, that, so far, the enterprise was going well. The boy set the downward planes of the Golden Eagle and muffled down the engine for the peril-filled descent.
Crouching in the brush Frank and Billy, one of them at least with a queer, sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach—watched the great aeroplane swoop down on them like a bird of prey. It was small wonder that they felt apprehensive. What they had to do was to grasp the end of a swinging rope-ladder as, for but the fraction of a minute, it brushed by them—yet neither of them dared entertain the thought of missing it. To do so would have been to unnerve them when they most needed every ounce of presence of mind and cool calculation they could muster.
“Now!” cried Frank suddenly as the air-craft’s black shadow enveloped them.