CHAPTER XXII
ABOVE THE CLOUDS
Mr. Griggs, the American consul at Aden, proved an affable, pleasantentertainer. His little wife was also very genial and painstaking fortheir comforts, declaring at their protests that she was doing no morefor them than she had done for the other flyers when they came through,a short time before. The couple had two children, a boy and a girl,and both of these plied the boys with innumerable questions about theirjourney, expressing the greatest interest and excitement when theyworked out of Paul the story of the adventure with the gorilla andpython.
After the meal, which was very appetizing and refreshing, they spent ashort time preparing their reports to the _Daily Independent_, and thenaccompanied their host to the post-office, where the letter and roll offilms were mailed. At the telegraph office they received a pleasantsurprise in the shape of a message from Mr. Giddings, which statedtheir reports were coming in to the newspaper all right, and that thegreatest interest was being manifested in them by the world in generaland by New York people in particular.
"Whatever you do, don't let the other crew beat you," were hisconcluding words. "I have ordered the helium shipped to Nukahiva byfast steamer."
"That's good news," said John, with satisfaction, referring to thehelium, and the others accorded with him.
They dispatched a telegram to Mr. Giddings, and then started out to buysome fruit and other foods. As they went along the narrow, crookingstreet upon which they had been walking they met so many Arabs withsmall sprays of dark-green leaves which they put in their mouths andchewed, that their curiosity was aroused, and Bob asked Mr. Griggs whatthe leaves were.
"Those are the leaves of the khat bush," was the response. "You musthave passed numerous plantations of such bushes up on the hillsides asyou flew over into the basin here. The Yemen Arabs like to chew theleaves so well that they have all of the passion for them that a toperhas for whiskey, and they will spend their last rupee for a smallbundle."
"Does this chewing of the leaves intoxicate them?" asked John.
"Oh, no; the leaves are quite harmless. But they do produce astrangely exhilarating effect upon those who chew them. If you ask aYemen Arab what he chews the leaves for, he will invariably look at youwith astonishment and tell you that he forgets all his troubles, seesthe most beautiful of fairies and the richest rose-gardens of Allah,and lives in a new world."
"Do they go to the fields after it themselves?" inquired Tom.
"Not at all," said Mr. Griggs; "the khat is brought into town everymorning about eleven o'clock by long caravans of camels which proceedfrom the khat farms along the mountain slopes. Long before thesecamels appear in the valley, with a bundle of khat swung on each sideof the beasts, messengers on fleeter camels have brought the tidings ofapproach. From the shelters of the shops, so silent except just now,cheerful cries break out; the streets are filled with Arabs who singjoyfully; tikka gharries rattle madly by, whips waving and turbansawry; there are flashes of color from rich men's gowns and the soundsof their clicking oryx-hide sandals as they rapidly strike the stonypavements; there is a continual blunt clatter from the tom-toms in thehands of long-gowned fellows. They are all going to the market wherethe khat will soon arrive, each one anxious to have first choice andget the best bargain. There they will bicker with the khat traders foran hour sometimes, then in will come the despised hadjis, the vendersof firewood, who will buy up for a few pice the scraps which remain."
This was all very interesting to the flyers, but it was high time tohurry back and resume their flight; so, restraining their impulse toask more questions or investigate the attractions of the town, theybought their supplies, and returned with the American minister to thelanding-field.
Ten minutes later the Sky-Bird was mounting easily up into the sky,viewed by hundreds of shouting Arabs. It was good-bye to Persia now.
Looking at his watch, Paul, at the throttle, saw that it wasnine-fifty. They were leaving Aden only fifty minutes behind schedule.That was not at all bad; but it was not pleasant to think that theirrivals were still ahead of them. And two hours was a pretty stiff lead.
They were not long in passing over the hills to the south, and thenheaded eastward out over the elongated gulf. Looking back, John sawthe sandhills by the sea glistening in the bright sunlight like moundsof gold-dust. Every leaf and stem in the scrub stood out in black andsilver filigree; and euphorbias and adeniums, gouty and pompous abovethe lower growths, seemed like fantasies of gray on a Japanese screencovered with cerulean velvet. It was their last sight of Persia, andone not soon to be forgotten.
Our friends now settled down for a long hop, for they would have to flyall day and all night before reaching Colombo.
After a while they sighted Socotra, the little isle off the coast ofCape Guardafui, from whence comes most of the world's supply offrankincense; then leaving its rocky shores behind them they cutstraight across the Persian Sea, braving whatever tropical storm mightarise.
All that day they swept over the blue waters of this great body,frequently seeing ships below and sometimes small islands. Towardnight they ran into such hard headwinds that Bob went up higher. Heclimbed steadily until the Sky-Bird had attained an altitude of ninethousand feet. Here, as expected, they found the winds much lessforceful, but the sea was blotted out entirely by the clouds throughwhich they had passed in the process of rising and which now laybetween.
Indeed, these clouds resembled a billowy ocean of white foam inthemselves, or a landscape covered with hills and valleys of snow. Therounded cloud contours could easily be likened to the domes ofsnow-covered mountains. It was really difficult to conceive that thatamorphous expanse was not actually solid. Here and there flocculenttowers and summits heaved up, piled like mighty snow dumps, topplingand crushing into one another, as the breezes stirred them.
Then there were tiny wisps of cloud, more delicate and frail thanfeathers or the down of a dandelion-blow. Chasms hundreds of feetdeep, sheer columns, and banks, extended almost beyond eye-reach.Between the flyers and the sun stretched isolated towers of cumulus,cast up as if erupted by the chaos below. The sunlight, filteringthrough this or that gossamer bulk, was scattered into everyconceivable shade and monotone. And around the margins of the heavingbillows the sun's rays played unhampered, unrestricted, outlining allwith edgings of the purest silver.
The scene was one of such extravagance that the brain was staggeredwith what the eye tried to register. Below the aviators, the shadow oftheir machine pursued them on white film like a grotesque gray bird ofsome supernatural region. The shadow followed tirelessly, gaining asthe hour of noon approached, gaining still as afternoon began togather, swell, and wane; and always it skipped from crest to crest downthere just below, jumping gulfs like a bewitched phantom.
It was so cold at this height that the aviators had to put on theirheaviest garments, and they were content to open the windows only aslight way for ventilation.
When darkness fell, they were still flying high, though at reducedspeed, as John was afraid that a rate too much over schedule mightcause them to overrun their destination before daylight could discloseits outlines to them. Every half-hour the pilot's helper checked uptheir position on the chart. Had this not been done from the verystart of the trip, they never could have struck their ports with theaccuracy they did, and disaster would have been the result, if notdeath to the crew.
As it was, they had taken every precaution they could. When they hadcrossed the Atlantic they had been careful to inflate the four spareinner tubes of their landing wheels, as these would make capitallife-preservers in case the flyers were thrown into the sea; and one ofthe last things they did before leaving Aden was to see that the tubeswere still inflated.
The long night passed with considerable anxiety on the part of Tom andJohn, but when dawn finally broke they felt like uttering a "hurrah,"and called Paul and Bob up from their sleep to witness the cheeringsight ahead of them.
At a distance
of what must have been close to fifty miles, was a whitepatch in a haziness of green plain surrounded by hills and lowmountains. The land itself was encircled by the sea, and when they sawa great peninsula spreading away to the northward, they knew that theisland was Ceylon, and the other land the peninsula of Hindustan.
Somewhat off their course, they wheeled a little north. Soon detailsbecame apparent in the island. The white patch grew, developing into aconsiderable town--Colombo.
They swept up and around it, then settled, and climbed stiffly out ofthe Sky-Bird not twenty yards from another airplane, about which fourmen in flying-suits had been working. These fellows looked toward thenew arrivals scowlingly.
But our flyers, overjoyed to think they had caught the _Clarion's_crew, only smiled back indulgently.