“Are you predicting more trouble? Hasn’t enough happened to us already?”
“I don’t know. But something tells me not to throw it away. I feel queer; it might be my imagination, but it is true just the same.”
“All right; do anything you like with it. But we will take it out of the ship this very minute; and the other things, too. We cannot be bothered with useless baggage.”
They unlashed and unloaded the boxes. Then they ate a light lunch.
“We can hide everything in one of the smaller caves,” Ted decided. “No one will go prowling around in any of them. And if—I almost said when—we need the things we shall know where to find them.”
When they had disposed of the packages they prepared to depart. It was mid-afternoon and they must lose no more time in returning to the field. The colonel, no doubt, was anxious about them already.
In order to take off properly they were compelled to head toward the great wall because a current of air came from that direction. But the distance was sufficient to enable them to clear it by an ample margin. They also wanted to circle above the valley a few times for a farewell glimpse of the hiding-place of the last of the once powerful Incan nation, for soon they should leave it, never to return.
With a steadily increasing roar of the engine the ship raced over the ground, and when it had gained enough headway Stanley pulled back the stick and the plane leaped into the air. In a moment they had cleared the wall by a hundred feet. Now they were skimming above the depression concealing the Inca’s stronghold.
Ted leaned out over the rim of the gunpit in order to have a good view of the fleeting ground below them. There was the river down which Moses had steered their plunging canoe to safety on the night of their escape, spread across patches of velvet green; stone huts that looked like toy blocks were scattered over the barren places, some in rows, others in groups and villages. People, terrified by the monster thundering over their heads, were scurrying to cover behind stone walls and into doorways. Far, far in the distance was a great city; Ted recognized it as the Patallacta, or City on the Hill, where they had first met Huayna Capac, the old king. Nearer was another collection of buildings covering a large territory; that was the City of Gold, with its palaces, gardens, and the great temple of the sun. Ted remembered it, too, only too well, for it was there they had been tried and condemned because of Quizquiz’s treachery. But they had escaped, thanks to Moses! And here they were again, safe, high in the air, out of reach of their enemy.
Without warning there came a few loud explosions from the exhausts, the engine hesitated, picked up again for a moment, slowed down, faltered, and stopped. Stanley realized immediately that the fuel in the main tank was exhausted, so he quickly shut off the feed-valve and turned on the supply from the second reservoir, after which he dived at a steep angle, so that the rush of air might spin the propeller and thus crank the engine. But the expected roar did not come. Apparently the gasolene did not flow, for while the propeller was turning, there was only the coughing sound of a dead engine. He looked at the indicator in alarm; the tank was full, there was no mistake about that.