I looked at him in amazement, saying:
“Have you gone crazy, then?”
Again he laughed, quite gleefully.
“I don’t wonder you suspect my sanity,” he answered; “but the truth is that I had forgotten all about a certain important shipment of mine that is now in the hold of this ship and may be of great help to us in our present emergency. However,” he added, more soberly, “the thing was intended for a far different purpose.”
“A shipment? What is it?” I inquired.
“Why, nothing more nor less than one of those new fashioned biplanes. I bought one of the latest improved Antoinettes when I went over to Paris, during the time father was purchasing the arms in Australia. He sent me there on some banking business, you know, and I naturally took in the aviation exhibition. It did not take me long to decide that a biplane would be of great assistance to the revolution and I induced the great Bleriot himself to teach me how to work it. Before I left Paris I could manage the thing beautifully, and I’ve made a good many successful flights. It is all packed in three cases, with bands of red paint around them so they can be identified from the arms, and I have many extra parts in separate cases. It must seem queer to you to realize I have a flying machine in this out-of-the-way place—where we’re shipwrecked on a savage island.”
“It is strange,” I admitted.
“The Antoinette would make even you fellows stare, I guess,” continued Alfonso.
“Oh, as for that,” said Joe, “both Sam and I have done some aërial stunts in our time, and made some pretty long flights. But a biplane’s a new invention to us.”
“It occurred to me that I could put the machine together here on deck,” announced Alfonso, “and make a trip over the forest to the Pearl City. I won’t land there, of course, but I’ll circle around and find out what we want to know, and then come back again. What do you think?” he asked a little anxiously.