“Berry well, massas,” said Quatty, highly offended, “I ’spose ah don’ know nuffin’ but what an ig’nant sabage knows.”
To make a landing Frank swung the aeroplane in a long descending arc till he was a few feet above the tops of the outermost of the trees that fringed the clearing then he raised the planes slightly and the Golden Eagle II glided to the earth in a long, slow sweep. The engines had of course been cut out as the descent began and she settled as easily as a bird alighting.
With mosquito netting brought for the purpose the sides of the pilot-house were at once enclosed, for although it was still daylight, the tiny pests that make life miserable on the edges of the ’glades had begun to appear in armies. Strange to say, in the ’glades themselves there are hardly any mosquitoes, but on its borders they swarm in great numbers.
Quatty built a smudge of green wood and leaves before he set about getting supper and in this way the worst of the visitation was alleviated.
The boys watched with some interest while Quatty built his fire. He had lived so long with the Seminoles that he built it in the way the Indians have adopted from time immemorial. First he made a big ring of dry sticks and twigs, the largest on the outside and the small dry ones in the center. He lighted it in the center with his old flint and steel and then having made a rack out of a stick of green wood, placed across two forked upright ones, he pushed the larger timbers from the outside to the center as occasion required.
After a hearty meal of stewed preserved meat made into a delectable stew with dessicated vegetables and canned corn, followed by stewed evaporated fruit washed down by boiling tea, the boys and Quatty retired to the mosquito-barred pilot-house of the Golden Eagle II, where Quatty lighted his pipe “jes’ ter plague dem mosquitoes outside,” he explained, and the boys talked over future plans. After a short time, however, weariness after the energetic day they had put in completely overcame them and they stretched out on the transoms. In a few minutes sleep closed their eyes and the only sound that disturbed the deep silence in the cypress belt was the loud snoring of Quatty and the rhythmical croaking of the frogs and tree lizards in the swamp.
Toward midnight Frank could not judge how long he had been asleep, it seemed to him five minutes, as a matter of fact it was as many hours, when he was awakened with a start to hear a stealthy tread a few feet away from the aeroplane.
“Who’s there?” he shouted.
The minute his voice rang out the footsteps retreated as stealthily as they had approached.
In this lonely untraveled spot who could it be?