CHAPTER I.
THE BOYS START FOR THE TROPICS.
It was a bitter evening in late December. Up and down the East Rivertugs nosed their way through the winter twilight’s gloom, shoulderingaside as they snorted along big drifting cakes of ice.
At her pier, a short distance below the Brooklyn Bridge, the steamer_Aztec_, of the _Central American Trading Company’s_ line had just blowna long, ear-piercing blast—the signal that in half-an-hour she wouldcast off her lines. In the shrill summons there was a note ofimpatience; as if the ship was herself as eager as her fortunatepassengers to be off for the regions of sunshine and out of the miseryof the New York winter.
The _Aztec_ had been due to sail at noon that day, as the Blue Peterfloating at her mainmast head had signified. Here it was, however, agood hour since the towering mass of skyscrapers on the opposite side ofthe river had blossomed, as if by magic, into a jewel-spangled mountainof light and her steam winches were still clanking and the ’longshoremen, under the direction of the screech of the boss stevedore’s whistle,as hard at work as ever. No wonder her passengers fretted at the delay.
Not the least eager among them to see the ship’s restraining lines castoff were Frank and Harry Chester, known to the public, through thesomewhat hysterical pæans of the Daily Press and the rather moredignified, but not less enthusiastic articles of the technical andscientific reviews, as the BOY AVIATORS. It was an hour since they hadbade their mother and an enthusiastic delegation of boy and girl friendsgood-bye.
Side by side the youths paced the deck muffled in huge overcoats andsurveying anxiously, as from time to time they approached the forwardend of the promenade deck, a lofty pile of boxes that contained thevarious sections of their aeroplane the _Golden Eagle_ which had madethe sensation of the year in aviation circles.
Ever since the _Golden Eagle_, a biplane of novel construction, hadcarried off from all competitors the $10,000 prize for a sustainedflight offered by J. Henry Gage, the millionaire aeronaut at the WhitePlains Aerodrome, the boys had become as well-known figures in New Yorklife as any of the air prize contestants during the Hudson-FultonExhibition. Frank, the eldest, was sixteen. A well-grown,clean-lived-looking boy with clear blue eyes and a fearless expression.His brother, a year younger, was as wholesome appearing and almost astall, but he had a more rollicking cast in his face than his graverbrother Frank, whose equal he was, however, in skill, coolness anddaring in the trying environment of the treacherous currents of theupper air.
With the exception of a brief interval for lunch the two boys had amusedthemselves since noon by watching the, to them novel, scene of franticactivity on the wharf. The ships of the _Central American Trading Co._had a reputation for getting away on time and the delay had grated oneverybody’s nerves from the _Aztec’s_ captain’s to the old wharfinger’s;in the case of the latter indeed, he had attempted to chastise, a shorttime before, an adventurous newsboy who had ventured on the pier to sellhis afternoon papers. Frank had intervened for the ragged littlescarecrow and the boys had purchased several copies of his wares. Theyhad a startling interest for the boys which they had not suspected. Inhuge type it was announced in all, that the long threatened revolutionin Nicaragua had at last broken out with a vengeance, and seemed likelyto run like wildfire from one end of the turbulent republic to theother. Troops were in the field on both sides—so the despatch said—andthe insurgents were loudly boasting of their determination to march onand capture Managua, the capital, and overthrow the government ofPresident Zelaya. Practically every town in the country had been wellposted with the manifesto of the reactionaries, and had taken the moveas being one in the right direction.
In the news that the revolution, the storm clouds of which had long beenominously rumbling had actually broken out, the boys had an intense andvital interest. Their father’s banana plantation, one of the largest andbest known in Central America, lay inland about twenty miles fromGreytown, a seacoast town, on the San Juan River. The boys were on theirway there after a long and trying season of flights and adulation torest up and continue, in the quiet they had hoped to find there, aseries of experiments in aviation which had already made them among themost famous graduates the Agassiz High School on Washington Heights hadturned out in its years of existence. Already in their flights at WhitePlains, and later during the Hudson-Fulton celebration, the boys hadearned, and earned well, laurels that many an older experimenter inaviation might have worn with content, but they were intent on yetfurther distinction. Already they had given several trials to a wirelesstelegraph appliance for attachment to aeroplanes and the _Golden Eagle_in some private flights had had this apparatus in use. The results hadbeen encouraging in the extreme. With the use of a greater liftingsurface the boys felt that they would be justified in adding to theweight the aeroplane could lift and that this weight would be in form ofadditional power batteries for the wireless outfit both had agreed. Inthe boxes piled on the foredeck they had indeed a supply of balloonsilk, canvas, wire, spruce stretchers and aluminum frames which theyintended to put into use as soon as they should reach Nicaragua in thefurtherance of their experiments. The conquest of the air both inaviation and communication was the lofty goal the boys had setthemselves.
“The revolution has really started at last, old boy—hurray!” shoutedHarry, throwing his arm in boyish enthusiasm about his staid brotherFrank, as both boys eagerly assimilated the news.
“I say, Frank,” he continued eagerly, “it’s always been our contentionthat an aeroplane capable of invariable command by its operator would beof immense value in warfare. What a chance to prove it! Three cheers forthe _Golden Eagle_.” In his excitement Harry pulled his soft cap fromhis head and waved it enthusiastically.
Frank, however, seemed to view the situation more gravely than hislight-hearted brother. As has been said, Frank, while but little olderin point of years possessed a temperament diametrically opposed to themercurial nature of his younger brother. He weighed things, and indeedin the construction of the _Golden Eagle_, while Harry had suggested allthe brilliant imaginative points, it had been the solid practical Frankwho had really figured out the abstruse details of the wonder-ship’sstructure.
Despite this difference of temperament—in fact Harry often said, “IfFrank wasn’t so clever and I wasn’t so optimistic we’d never have gotanywhere,”—in spite of this contrast between the two there was a deepundercurrent of brotherly love and both possessed to the highest degreethe manly courage and grit which had tided them over many a discouragingmoment. Nor in the full tide of their success, when people turned on thestreet to point them out, were either of the boys at all aboverecognizing their old playfellows and schoolmates as has been known tobe the case, it is said, with other successful boys—and men.
“I don’t know, Harry,” replied Frank at length to his brother’senthusiastic reception of the news of the rebellion, “there are twosides to every question.”
“Yes, but Frank, think,” protested Harry, “we shall have a chance to seea real skirmish if only they keep at it long enough. Confound itthough,” he added with an expression of keen regret, “the paper saysit’s another ‘comic opera revolution.’”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Harry,” replied Frank, seriously. “Whenfather was north last he told us, if you recollect, that a CentralAmerican revolution was not by any means a picnic. In the battle inwhich the United States of Colombia drove the Venezuelans from theirterritory, for instance, there were ten thousand dead left on thefield.”
Frank halted under one of the wire-screened lights screwed into thebulkhead beside which they had been pacing to let the light of theincandescent stream brighter upon his paper. He scanned the page withrapid eye and suddenly looked up with an exclamation that made Harrycry:
“What’s the trouble, Frank?”
“Well, it looks as if on the day we are sailing for Nicaragua that thatcountry is monopolizing the news to the exclusion of the
important factthat ‘The Boy Aviators’”—he broke off with a laugh.
“Hear! hear,” exclaimed Harry, striking a pose.
“—I say,” continued Frank, “that it seems as we haven’t a look in anymore. The country for which we are bound has the floor. Listen—”
Holding the paper high beneath the light, Frank read the following itemwhich under a great wood-type scare-head occupied most of the front pagespace not given over to the announcement of the revolution.
NICARAGUAN MYSTERIOUSLY STRANGLED. ROBBERY NOT MOTIVE; BUT ROOM IN HOTEL IS RANSACKED BY HIS SLAYERS.
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DR. RAMON MONEAGUE, OF CITY OF RIVAS, IS DONE TO DEATH IN M—— HOTEL ON WEST 14TH STREET.
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POLICE HAVE NO CLUES. BUT LOOK FOR TWO-FINGERED MAN.
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CORONER SAYS MAN OF GREAT STRENGTH DID THE DEED.
“Almost as big a head as they gave us when we won the prize,” laughedHarry. “Newspaper head I mean.”
“I wish you’d be serious, Harry,” said Frank, though he couldn’t helpsmiling at his brother’s high flow of spirits. “This is really veryinteresting. Listen:”
“The body of a man about forty-five or possibly fifty years old wasdiscovered this afternoon in an upper floor bedroom of the M—— Hotel onWest Fourteenth Street. A brief scrutiny established that the man, whohad registered at the hotel a few hours before as Dr. Ramon Moneague ofRivas, Nicaragua, had been strangled to death with exceptionalbrutality. He had been dead only about an hour when the body wasdiscovered by a chambermaid who found the door unlocked.
“Whatever may have been the object of the murder it was not robbery, as,although the dead man’s trunk and suit-case had been ransacked and moneylay scattered about the room, his watch and valuable diamond pin andrings had not been disturbed.
“Whoever strangled Dr. Moneague to death he was no weakling. BothCoroners, Physician Schenck and the detectives who swarmed on the sceneare agreed upon this. The marks of the murderer’s fingers are clearlyimpressed upon both sides of the dead man’s throat.
“Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the case, and one which may leadto the slayer’s speedy detection, is the fact that his right hand hadonly two fingers. The police and the coroner’s physician and the coronerhimself came to this conclusion after a brief examination of the markson the throat. On the left side of the larynx where the murderer’s righthand must have pressed the breath out of the Nicaraguan there is ahiatus between the mark made by the thumb and first finger of the righthand, indicating clearly to the minds of the authorities that the manwho killed Dr. Moneague is minus the middle and index fingers of hisright hand.
“Every available detective at headquarters and from the differentprecincts have been put upon the case and every employee of the hotelconnected with it even in the remotest way examined closely. No resulthas developed to date however. The clerk of the hotel admits that he waschatting with a friend most of the morning and after he had assigned Dr.Moneague to a room, and it might have been possible for a stranger toslip in and up the stairs without his noticing it.”
“There,” concluded Frank, throwing the paper into a scupper, “how’s thatfor a ringtailed roarer of a sensation?”
“It seems queer——” began Harry, but the sudden deafening roar of the_Aztec’s_ whistle cut him short. His words were drowned in the racket.It was her farewell blast this time. As the sound died away, echoing ina ringing note on the skyscrapers opposite, the boys felt a suddentrembling beneath their feet.
Far down in the engine-room the force was tuning her up for her long runwhich would begin in a few minutes now. Already a couple of tugs thathad been hanging alongside since noon had wakened up and now made fastlines thrown from the _Aztec’s_ lofty counter to their towing bitts. Itwas their job to pull her stern first out into the stream where thecurrent of the ebb-tide would swing her head to the south.
“All clear there for’ard?” it was the bearded muffled-up skipperbellowing through a megaphone from the bridge, where the equallyswaddled pilot stood beside him.
“We’re off at last, Frank old boy,” said Harry jubilantly as what seemeda silence compared to the racket of hoisting in the last of the cargofell over the wharf.
Anything Frank might have had to reply was cut short by a hoarse echo ofthe skippers hail, it came from the bow.
“All go—o—ne for’ard, sir.”
The officer in charge of casting off the bow lines waved his hand and aquartermaster at the stern wigwagged to the tugs to go as far as theyliked.
“All go—o—ne aft,” suddenly came another roar from that quarter as thetug’s screws began to churn up the water. The hawsers tightened and the_Aztec_ began to glide slowly backward into the stream.
At that moment from far down the wharf, there came a loud hail.
“Stop the ship—twenty dollars if I make the ship.”
A loud yell of derision was the reply from several steerage passengersclustered in the bow of the _Aztec_.
“Hold on, there,” suddenly roared the same vigilant old wharfinger whohad earlier in the day shown such a respect for discipline that he hadshooed the newsboy off the wharf, “hold on there.”
The boys heard coming up the wharf the staccato rattle of a taxicabrunning at top speed.
The two sailors in charge of the gangplank were at that moment castingit loose and lowering it to the wharf. They hesitated as they heard thefrantic cries of the old wharfinger.
“Let go, there. Do you want to carry something away,” yelled the secondofficer, as he saw the gangplank under the impetus of the ship beingcrushed against the stanchions of the wharf.
The taxicab dashed up abreast of the landward end of the imperilledgangway. Out of it shot a man whom the boys, in the blue-white glare ofthe arc-lights on the pier, noticed wore a short, black beard croppedVan Dyke fashion, and whose form was enveloped in a heavy fur overcoatwith a deep astrachan collar.
“Five dollars a piece to you fellows if I make the ship,” he shouted tothe men holding the gangplank in place. Already the wood was beginningto crumple as the moving ship jammed it against the edge of thestanchion.
The stranger made a wild leap as he spoke, was up the runway in twobounds, it seemed, and clutched the lower rail of the main deck bulwarksjust as the two men holding the crackling gangway up, dropped it in fearof the wrath of their superior officer. The man in the fur coat diveddown in his pocket and fished out a yellow-backed ten-dollar bill.
“Divide it,” he said in a slightly foreign accent. Suddenly he whirledround on his heel. The old wharfinger was bellowing from the wharf thatthe man in the fur coat would have to wireless his address and hisbaggage would be forwarded. There were several pieces of it on the taxi.A steamer trunk, two suit-cases and a big Saratoga. These, however,seemed to give the new addition to the _Aztec_ ship’s company noconcern.
“My bag. My black bag,” he fairly shrieked, running forward along thedeck to a spot opposite where the wharfinger and the taxi-cabby stood.
“My black bag. Throw me my black bag,” he repeated.
With trembling fingers he managed to get out a bill from his wallet. Hewrapped it round a magazine he carried with a rubber-band which hadconfined his bill roll.
“This is yours,” he shouted, holding the bill-wrapped magazine high, sothat the taxi-cabby could see it. “Throw me the black bag.”
The taxi-cabby, like most of his kind, was not averse to making a tip.
He dived swiftly into his cab and emerged with a small black grip, notmuch bigger than a lady’s satchel, bound at the corners with silver. Itwas a time for quick action. By this time the sharp cutwater of the_Az
tec’s_ bow was at the end of the wharf. In another moment she clearedit. The tide caught her and majestically she swung round into midstream,while the tugs lugged her stern inshore.
The chauffeur poised himself on the stringpiece at the extreme outer endof the wharf.
“Chuck me the money first,” he shouted at the gesticulating figure onthe _Aztec_, “I might miss your blooming boat.”
The magazine whizzed through the air and landed almost at his feet,carrying with it the bill. The taxi-cabby, satisfied that all wasship-shape, bent his back for a second like a baseball pitcher.
“I used to twirl ’em,” he said to the wharfinger, as with a supremeeffort, he impelled the black bag from his hand. There was a good thirtyfeet of water between the end of the wharf and the _Aztec_ by this time,but the taxi-cabby’s old time training availed him. It was a squarethrow. The stranger with a strange guttural cry of relief caught hisprecious black bag and tucked it hurriedly into the voluminous innerpocket of his fur coat.
“He must have diamonds in it at least,” exclaimed Harry, with a laugh.Both boys, with the rest of the passengers, had been watching the scenewith interest, as well they might. As for the man in the fur coat hisinterested scrutiny was directed with an almost fierce intensity to thepile of blue oblong cases on the fore deck, all neatly labeled in bigwhite letters:
HANDLE WITH CARE. AIRSHIP “_GOLDEN EAGLE_.” F. and H. CHESTER, GREYTOWN, NICARAGUA.
The man in the fur coat seemed fascinated by the boxes and the letteringon them. From his expression, as a great bunch light placed on theforedeck for the convenience of the men readjusting the hastily ladencargo, fell upon him, one would have said he was startled. Had anyonebeen near enough or interested enough they might also have seen his lipsmove.
“Well, he wants to know our bag of tricks again when he sees them,”remarked Harry, as the boys with a keen appetite, and no dread of seasickness to come, turned to obey the dinner-gong.
With frequent hoarse blasts of her strong-lunged siren the belated_Aztec_ passed down the bay through the narrows and into the AmbroseChannel. A short time after the cabin passengers had concluded theirdinner the pilot took his leave. From his dancing cockleshell of a doryalongside he hoarsely shouted up to the bridge far above him:
“Good-bye, good luck.”
Then he was rowed off into the darkness to toss about till the steampilot-boat _New York_ should happen along and pick him up with hersearchlight.
“Good-bye, old New York!” cried both boys, seized with a common instinctand a most unmanly catch at their throats at the same instant. From thechart house above them eight bells rang out. Already the _Aztec_ wasbeginning to lift with the long Atlantic swell. The Boy Aviators’ voyagetoward the unknown had begun.
The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the Insurgents Page 2
