Adventure Magazine Cover — page 134: what you’re looking at

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132 them. Once more they were the favorites of fortune, dealt good cards and able to play them. They saw no problems ahead now that could not be solved. Once they had been caught napping—now they had learned their lesson. . “Good thing they didn’t use up all their dynamite on the mine,” said Reynolds, “Let’s go outside and see what they did do. Mind, Petrie?” Petrie shook his head and Reynolds went out with Cole, Morbora following. It was clear that in many ways the black thought the whites far inferior to himself, and the attitude with which he regarded their efforts to secure the yellow rock, the delight they had exhibited over the discovery, showed that his conviction of superiority was firmly established. But the sight was a welcome one to their eyes. The sinter had been shattered and splintered by well-placed explosions for re- sults that would have taken them days of labor with tools. Everywhere the stuff showed the rich interlarding of gold. There were some portions disclosed where there was none of it; doubtless there was plenty of the stuff where they would ultimately find more but there was enough in sight to mean thousands of dollars, pounds of it to be picked out like plums from a pudding, virgin gold worth at least eighteen dollars the troy ounce, twelve ounces to the pound—s,760 grains—call it an even two hundred dollars a pound and allow for variant values. With Petrie well again they could surely each manage to tote out twenty pounds apiece—fifteen at the least—three thou- sand dollars worth of the precious stuff— cache the rest and come back for it in the aeroplane as Petrie had suggested. THEY carried back double handfuls of the prime bits into the cave, Mor- bora stalking along, as disdainful as a philosopher of the child tossing up peb- bles, and still manifestly uncomfortable, throwing up his head every little while and moving it about to left and right like a questing hound, staying outside eeain as they went in with their trove. “Brown’s coming round,’ said Petrie. ‘Spoke to me just now. T he chap’s scared silly. Thought I was going to torture him or something. I jollied him and he’s gone to sleep again. What have you got there? _ sand,’ Reynolds said. ~ so much as gasoline, is it? You can get gas Adventure Talk low. No sense in waking him up.” They showed him, spore of the cache, the final cartage. “There must be a plane we can hire some- where,” said Petrie. ‘Buy it, if we have to. It won’t carry all of us, of course. I know something about the general run of ’em, learned it on the other side, but they all vary. The De Haviland’s the one they use in the U. S. transcontinental mail service, weights round five thousand. pounds, carries a pilot and four hundred pounds of mail, flies at an average of about a hundred and ten, eats up twenty gallons of gas an hour and carries seventy-five gallons in its tank. ‘But that’s a four-hundred horse-power mo- tor and the ‘machine’s built. to stand bliz- zards. The bomber type would be best for us, I imagine, if we get any choice. Plenty of machines can carry one passenger and a couple of hundred pounds i in ballast, if they call it ballast. We can’t clean up this gold better than fifty-fifty, I imagine, but a hundred pounds of pure gold, if there is that much, ’ll fix us up nicely for. the first trip.” “There were chaps in Sydney right after the war who were going to start big things in the aeroplane line,” said Reynolds. “Mail and passenger service, new explora- tion of the interior, stunts at outdoor shows and the races and all sorts of things. There must be machines enough and aviators. But it’s a long fly from Sydney up here.” “About fifteen hundred miles—as the crow flies,” said Petrie. .“‘I’m only guessing at that from what I remember of our charts on the sloop. About nine hundred from Brisbane. Wonder if they’d have a plane there?” “It’s not more than about twenty thou- “It ain’t the distance anywhere along the coast. Get it at Towns- ville, Dungeness, Cardwell. Wouldn’t they stare if they saw us taking on gas at Dun- geness to go up river again? That wouldn’t be much of a hop. About a hundred and fifty, eh, Petrie?” “Round that, air route.” “TI vote we keep mighty quiet when we do get back to Dungeness,” suggested Cole. “Let ’em laugh at us and think we’ve come back broke. There’s been one leak. We'll have to keep an eye on Alec Brown. Even if he meant to keep his mouth shut any one could get him off in a corner and extract it. MICLOOOK C@ in