He walked slowly back toward their camp.
“Since that’s settled,” he thought to himself, “it’s time I was trying something else. I’ll get at it at once.”
Arrived at camp, he cut open one of the large sacks of rice and poured a quart of it in an aluminum kettle. Placing the kettle in the bottom of the canvas boat, he shoved off and was soon at the door of the cabin on the “Dust Eater.”
For a moment he paused to gaze about him. He had never seen anything quite like the night that lay spread out before him. The moon, a great, yellow ball, hung high in the heavens; the sea, now calm, lay sparkling in the moonlight, while the palms shot skyward, a blue-black fringe on the garment of night.
He had little time for such reveries, however. There was work to be done.
Once inside the cabin, he took up a trapdoor in its floor and, from the space beneath, drew out a strange circular arrangement. To this he attached wires running from a line of batteries hung securely against the walls. He next poured his quart of rice into a small hopper at the top of the circular mechanism. There came a snap-snap as he threw in a switch. A whirling grinding sound followed. Presently, from a small tube, there began to pour forth a white powder, finer than the finest flour. This he caught in the kettle.
“Ought to work,” he mumbled, as the white pile in the bottom of the kettle grew to a sizable cone.
When the machine gave forth a strange new sound, as of a feed-mill running empty, he snapped off the switch.
“Now we’ll see,” he murmured.
Taking up the kettleful of white dust, he walked back to the fuel tank of the plane, and, with the aid of a funnel, poured in the powder. After screwing on the top, he went back to his old place at the wheel.