“We will have to risk something. We will never——”
He was stopped by a giant cylinder being catapulted out of one of the dark tubes, and flashing away into space. They stood staring for fifteen minutes, and another cylinder followed. Then the hum of the machinery quieted down. Epworth drew out his watch. “It has been just ninety minutes since the first cylinder was fired,” he asserted. “The second the cylinder goes into space the men below get awful busy loading another. They are—yes, I really believe that they are systematically shooting something into space.”
“Are they crazy?” Joan looked around apprehensively. “I would rather run into a nest of robbers than a camp of crazy people.”
“We will try to get down there, and get away without being seen. Around the side of the cliff I see a place where it will be possible to slip down without hurting ourselves, although it is steep.”
“I don’t like the looks of things down there,” his sister objected. “Look at that ugly giant!”
She gave Epworth the field glasses, and pointed to a certain man. He was a great giant, long-bearded, hairy, and powerful. He was viciously whipping a smaller man while four men held the small man a prisoner with his face to the wall of a big corrugated iron building.
“Slave drivers,” Epworth observed sharply, his mouth twitching angrily. “I wonder if the little fellow can be Billy?”
Joan shuddered. She was thinking of the gallant young aviator flying away into the night to give himself voluntarily into captivity for the sake of the men who employed him—a captivity that at present looked as if it was the most vicious of all tyranny.
“We’ve got to get away, and send help,” she whispered fiercely. “This racket must be cleaned out if it takes the entire United States army.”
“The United States army cannot come into this country. It is foreign soil. The easiest thing to do is to steal the plane.”