Читать книгу The Air Patrol - George Herbert Ely - Страница 8

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During the next three weeks the younger Appletons were fully occupied in studying the working of the mine. Dressed in calico overalls they penetrated into the torch-lit galleries and watched the miners at their work. They saw the process of crushing the ore, but Mr. Appleton's operations went little further, for owing to his distance from civilisation and the limited space at his disposal, he left the final stages of purification to be performed in India. The boys were rather curious to know why the colours of the stains upon the clothing of the two bands of miners differed, but they forbore to question their uncle, guessing that he would tell them all in good time, and would meanwhile be pleased by their showing patience. In this they were right. Mr. Appleton had no wish to keep any secrets from them; he was only waiting until he had learnt something of the characters of the two young fellows, whom he had not seen for several years, and at no time had had many opportunities of studying.

They both soon showed their bents. In the evenings, when work was done, there was little to occupy them. Mr. Appleton's books were few; they were mainly books on mining and grammars and dictionaries of the local dialects. Robert seized on the former; Lawrence devoted himself to the latter; and their uncle was very well pleased, for each of these studies would prove useful. Their recreations were for the present confined to an occasional game of chess or cards, a still rarer shooting expedition in the hills, and the reading of the rather dilapidated magazines which had come at odd times from India and home. Lawrence missed his cricket, and Bob his golf; but in spite of what Mr. Appleton had said about the impossibility of using the aeroplane when it should arrive, they both looked forward privately to trying their wings by and by.

Lawrence soon became popular with the natives. He had a turn for languages, and managed to pick up quickly a little Turki and scraps of the other tongues spoken by the very mixed crowd that constituted the mining staff. Robert had not the same quickness in learning languages, but he made himself useful on the engineering side. He had been accustomed to spend part of his holidays in the engine shops of the father of one of his schoolfellows, and found his experience valuable. Once, for instance, when there was a breakdown of the somewhat crazy engine that worked the stamping presses, he was able to make the necessary repairs more quickly than Mr. Appleton himself, or the regular engine man, could have done. Mr. Appleton was a very good prospector and an all-round man in general, but he had no particular gift in the direction of mechanics, while the engine man had picked up from his master all he knew. He was a Gurkha, a short, compact little fellow, of hard muscles and a very quick intelligence. His race is more accustomed to military service than to machinery, and Fazl, as this man was named, had never seen a steam engine before he came to the mine. Mr. Appleton had found him wandering half starved in Turkestan two seasons before, and out of sheer kindness of heart put him on as cleaner. Some time after, the Mohammedan Bengali who had hitherto driven the engine asked leave to go home and bury his grandmother, and Fazl was promoted to his place. The Bengali, of course, never returned, and Fazl was still engine man.

One evening after supper Mr. Appleton said--

"Don't get your books yet, boys; I want to show you something."

He placed a Bunsen burner on the table, and brought a blowpipe and a piece of charcoal from a cupboard. Then he took from his pocket a small lump of ore, which he laid on the charcoal with a little powdered carbonate of soda, and proceeded to treat in the Bunsen flame. The boys watched his experiment curiously. After a time they saw a bright bead form itself on the surface of the ore. Mr. Appleton laid down the blowpipe.

"What do you make of that?" he said.

"Is it tin?" asked Robert.

"Well, I have known school-boys call it 'tin' in the shape of sixpenny bits. It is silver. Now I'll let you into my secret. The ore obtained from the farther gallery, and dumped down into that very convenient cavity, contains almost pure silver; there's method in my madness, you see. Nobody knows it but yourselves; though I can't say what some of the men may suspect. I don't attempt to work it for the simple reason that I don't want the news to get about. If it became generally known that I have struck silver, somebody might put in a claim to this neglected region, and I should either have to decamp or be in constant fear of attack. As it is, I think I am pretty secure; and when I have got a sufficient quantity of the ore I shall close down, dismiss the men, and carry the stuff to India."

"But isn't there silver also in the other gallery?" asked Bob.

"No. The two metals, so far as I can discover, lie in parallel vertical streaks, with a band of quartz between them, and the men who are working at the copper know nothing of the silver a few feet away. You see now the reason why I keep the Kalmucks and the Pathans apart. The Kalmucks work the copper; they belong more or less to the neighbourhood; but the Pathans come from far distant parts, and if they should discover that their ore is silver, they are not at all so likely as the Kalmucks to bring unwelcome visitors upon me. I confess I was a little uneasy when I heard the explanation of that scrimmage we happened upon as we rode down. I wondered whether Nurla Bai's presence in the Pathan section was due to some suspicion of the truth. But he has given no more trouble, and I hope that I was wrong."

"He's a sulky beggar," said Lawrence. "I can't get a word out of him, and I don't like those ugly eyes of his."

"I'm watching him," said Mr. Appleton. "He works well, and has a great influence with the other Kalmucks. He's certainly far and away more intelligent, and he has brought in a good many labourers. In fact, I had to put a stop to his recruiting. I wanted to keep the Kalmucks pretty equal in number to the Pathans, but, as you see, they already outnumber them by more than two to one. One great nuisance is their possession of firearms. I tried to induce them to hand them over when I engaged them, but in these regions the hillmen are as tenacious of their guns as our sailors are of their knives. Without my police Pathans and Kalmucks would be at each other's throats."

A few days after this conversation, the caravan which the boys had for some time been expecting arrived. It was larger than that which had accompanied them, and Mr. Appleton threw up his hands with a dismay that was not wholly feigned when he saw how many additional mules had been required for the transport of the aeroplane.

"You said two or three," he remarked to Bob as the laden beasts defiled along the path; "but I'm sure there are seven or eight more than my stuff needed."

"I expect it's the petrol," said Bob humbly.

"You didn't mention petrol."

"No; but of course we couldn't work the engine without it, and I left word to send up a good quantity. I didn't suppose you had any on the spot."

"And wasn't there a single sensible creature to tell you that you can't go skylarking with an aeroplane in the Hindu Kush? Whoever sold you the petrol must have laughed in his sleeve."

"He seemed uncommon glad to sell it, anyway," said Bob, a trifle nettled.

"Of course he was. There are no end of sharks always on the watch for a griffin. He sold the petrol, and he sold you. And the expense of it! D'you know how much it costs to bring a mule from India here?"

"You can dock it out of my screw," growled Bob.

"And money absolutely flung away. You have seen for yourself that there's no level space hereabout for running off. And even supposing you could use the thing, it would be madness to do so. You'd be bound to come to grief; all flying men do sooner or later, and at the best you might find yourself landed thirty or forty miles away, with nothing but peaks and precipices between you and home. There are no repairing shops to fall back upon; no garages 'open day and night,' or anything of that sort. In short----"

"Don't rub it in, Uncle," said Lawrence. "The thing's here now, and we've got to make the best of it. Come on, Bob; let's go and look after the unloading; those fellows are sure to smash something."

The mules were led across the drawbridge to the west side of the gorge, and the separate parts of the machine were stacked near the dwelling house until a new shed could be constructed.

"What on earth we're to do with the petrol I don't know," said Mr. Appleton. "We daren't have it within reach of the native workmen. They're as careless as they are inquisitive, and we don't want a flare up."

"Isn't there room for the cans in the dynamite shed?" asked Lawrence.

The explosive was kept in a specially devised cache. The space between the house and the cliff was boarded in. A doorway led from the house into this space, which was divided by a partition, in which another door opened into a kind of strong room excavated in the hill side. There was room for the cans beside the boxes of dynamite.

"I shan't sleep at night now that we've got two explosives at our doors," said Mr. Appleton.

"Why didn't you store the stuff farther from the house?" asked Bob.

"Well, as a matter of fact wherever it was stored in the neighbourhood of the mine the result would be pretty much the same if it exploded. The best chance of safety was to have it under lock and key where nobody could get at it but myself. In for a penny, in for a pound. Trundle your cans through: if I'm not a false prophet they'll stay there until doomsday untouched."

When the boys entered the dark chamber between the house and the cliff, following Mr. Appleton, who carried an electric lamp, Bob uttered a sudden exclamation.

"I say, hanged if there isn't a machine gun!"

He pointed to a corner of the room, where the muzzle of the gun protruded from a nest of boxes.

"A very neat little machine," said Mr. Appleton. "I got it as a precaution against a second raid, and the difficulty of smuggling it through turned my surviving hairs grey. It came in parts among some engine fittings; the invoices are very interesting! A clear case of gun running, of course; but there was no other way; the government would never have allowed it to pass complete. Nobody here knows of it but you; I put it together myself; and if you know anything about such things, Bob, I'll be glad if you'll overhaul it one of these days, and see if my amateurish efforts have been successful. Some of those boxes contain ammunition: smuggled in as dynamite. Now stack your cans, and when you've finished bring me the key. I'll have duplicates cut for you."

Later in the day the boys had a consultation.

"It's no good putting the aeroplane together until we've found a starting-place," said Lawrence.

"I know. I've looked all about, and can't find one. It's pretty rotten, and the old man is so ratty about it that I almost wish we'd never brought the thing."

"Oh, he'll come round. I bet you what you like that he'll be as keen as mustard if we can only get the thing going. We'll go out exploring; we're sure to hit on some place by and by."

They spent the spare time of two or three days in ranging up and down stream in search of a suitable starting-place. Every morning at breakfast Mr. Appleton dropped some quizzing remark that sorely tried Bob's temper. "How's the white elephant?" he would say; or "When is the ascent to take place?" Meanwhile the dismembered aeroplane lay under tarpaulin at the side of the house, and the Babu irritated Bob by kind enquiries.

"Will tender plant suffer, sir?" he asked one morning, when a sprinkling of snow lay upon the ground.

"What do you mean?" said Bob.

"Packages were marked 'fragile with care,' sir, and having been myself once fragile, delicate infant, sir, I have fellow feeling, that makes me wondrous kind."

"Well, be kind enough to shut up," said Bob.

At length, after much searching, they discovered a spot which, so far as space was concerned, promised the solution of their difficulty. About a hundred yards up stream, at a somewhat higher level than the ledge upon which the mine buildings were situated, there was a similar ledge of about the same extent and on the same side of the gorge. But it was very difficult of access. It could not be approached from the mine, owing to the sheer wall of cliff that separated the two ledges. Nor could it be gained by bridging the river, for not only was the stream at this point much broader than lower down, but there was no rock in mid-channel that would serve as support. After a good deal of cogitation, Bob hit upon a plan which he determined to attempt.

On the way up, their caravan had crossed a stream by means of a bridge constructed on the cantilever principle, as is common in that country. It occurred to Bob that there was a possibility of constructing a walk along the face of the cliff on the same principle.

"It will be a series of bridges made of overlapping planks," he said to Lawrence when explaining his idea. "There's plenty of timber in the shed."

"Which Uncle won't allow to be used."

"I'll talk him over."

"But I don't see how you're going to manage it. There are no supports."

"They are easily managed. All we've got to do to is drive beams into the rock, say twenty feet apart."

"Exactly; but how are you going to make holes in the rock? There's nothing to stand on, and we can't rig up scaffolding from the bottom of the river."

"I think we can do it all the same. What we have to do is to go to the extreme edge of the ledge of the silver mine, bore a couple of holes in the rock level with our heads, and drive in poles strong enough to support a swinging platform. You've seen house painters use them on house fronts at home. We can extend that with some planks, and so reach a position where similar holes can be bored a little farther away, and so on until we reach the farther ledge. A couple of stout miners on the platform can easily bore the holes, level with it, that we require for the larger beams, and when they are placed it will be a comparatively simple matter to lay planks upon them, and carry our cantilever walk the whole way. We can use the upper poles too: connect them by a rope, which we can cling to as we push the parts of the machine along on trolleys."

"It will take a very long time," said Lawrence dubiously.

"Not so long as you think if we can only persuade the old man to let us have a couple of men to work at it continuously. I'll tackle him to-night after supper when he's comfortably settled with a cigar."

Mr. Appleton happened to be in a very amiable mood when Bob broached the subject, and though he uttered doleful warnings and foretold broken limbs, and declared that he washed his hands of all responsibility, he told the boys that they might do as they pleased. Next day they invited volunteers from among the Kalmuck miners, and were somewhat surprised when Nurla Bai was the first to offer his services, explaining that he was an expert in carpentry. Taking this as a sign of grace, Bob engaged the man, and told him to choose his own assistant. Nurla at once suggested a dwarfish man named Tchigin, a thick-set, muscular fellow with a huge head covered with jet-black hair. Mr. Appleton called him Black Jack. They began work, and Bob was well pleased with their industry and skill. Before night there was a row of half-a-dozen of the smaller poles in position, and all was ready for the drilling of the larger hole for the first of the stout beams that were to support the wooden path.

On the subsequent days, with the number of workers increased to six, the work was carried on even more rapidly. The greatest difficulty encountered was a bend in the cliff a few yards before it opened out on to the ledge on which the aeroplane was to be put together. It cost a good deal of labour to shape the planks to the curve, and to fix the beams; and the boys regarded it as a further disadvantage that the ledge would be out of sight from the mine. Not that they could suppose that the aeroplane, when set up in its hangar there, would be in any danger of molestation, for the only approach was from the Pathan compound, and Mr. Appleton thought that the Pathans might be trusted. But they would have preferred that their flying machine should always be in sight. However, there came a time when they were very thankful for the projecting corner of the cliff which had given them so much extra toil.

Their proceedings naturally caused a good deal of curiosity and excitement among the miners and the domestic staff. No one was more deeply interested than Ditta Lal, who numbered among his many accomplishments a smattering of theoretical engineering picked up in the course of his studies at Calcutta University. He talked very learnedly of strains and stresses, and often laid before the boys scraps of paper on which he had worked out magnificent calculations and drawn elaborate diagrams for their guidance. This amused them at first, but it became rather exasperating as the work progressed. He had a formula for everything; taught them exactly, to the fraction of an inch, how far the timbers should project from the ends of those supporting them, and what strain each portion of the structure could bear. As the successive bridges were completed, he proved, as he supposed, the accuracy of his calculations by venturing his own portly person upon them, at first with some timidity, but with more and more confidence as time went on. Mr. Appleton, on the other hand, watched the work from the security of the compound until it passed from sight round the shoulder of the cliff.

"You're a heap braver than I am," he said once to Ditta Lal. "I wouldn't trust myself on the thing for a pension, and you're heavier by three or four stone."

"Ah, sir, conscience makes cowards of us all," replied the Babu; "by which I understand immortal bard to mean, ignorance makes you funky. With my knowledge of science, imbibed from fostering breast of Alma Mater, Calcutta University--of which, as you are aware, I have honour to be B.A.--I know to a T exact weight planks will support, all worked out by stunning formulæ, sir. Knowledge is power, sir."

"Well, if you quote proverbs at me, I'll give you one: 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.'"

"A thousand pardons, sir, and with due respect, you have made a bloomer: misquotation, sir. Divine bard wrote: 'A little learning is a dangerous thing;' and I understand him to mean, if even a little learning in a man is dangerous to critic who tries to bowl him out, how much more dangerous is a fat lot!"

Mr. Appleton found it necessary at this point to break away, and Ditta Lal's further exposition was lost.

One evening, when the work of the bridge makers was nearing completion, the accepted explanation of Pope's line was brought home to the Babu by a rather unpleasant experience. He had walked along the finished portion of the pathway, which consisted of two lines of stout and broad planks supported by the cantilevers, these resting on the thick beams firmly embedded in the rock. The workmen on their swinging platform, Nurla Bai and Black Jack, had just laid the planks forming one bridge section across the gap, and were about to knock off work for the day. Ditta Lal was so eager to prove the soundness of his calculations, and demonstrate the valuable share he believed himself to have had in this engineering feat, that he took it into his head to walk across the planks to the other side. He had sufficient caution to hold on to the rope which had been carried along the smaller poles just above the level of his head.

"Hi, Ditta Lal! Come back!" shouted Bob from behind him. "The planks aren't nailed down yet."

The Babu halted and looked round with an air of pained astonishment.

"Sir," he said, "it is as safe as eggs. Planks are held firm by my own avoirdupois. I have worked it out."

Still holding the rope with one hand, with the other he drew from his pocket a sheet of paper on which he had made his last calculation.

"The weight which these planks will tolerate," he continued, "is eleven hundred and eighty-six pounds fifteen point eight ounces gross. My weight is two hundred and forty-four pounds and a fraction nett, by which I mean my own corpus without togs. Q.E.D. Suppose I jump, even then energy I develop is innocuous. I demonstrate the quod."

He replaced the paper in his pocket, took the rope in both hands, and lifting his feet, to the boys' horror came down ponderously on the planks. The result was alarming. One of the planks was jerked off the beams on which it rested, and fell with a splash into the swirling river below. The other turned up on its edge; Ditta Lal sought to keep his footing, but his feet slid off, the plank fell, and he was left hanging on the rope alone, which sagged deeply under the tremendous strain.

The boys shivered as they saw the portly man dangling over the river. They expected every moment that the rope would break and plunge him into the depths, carrying with him the workmen on their platform below. It seemed impossible to give him any aid, for a gap of sixteen feet, now unbridged, separated them from him. But luckily there was lying near them a plank intended for use farther on. They caught it up, and pushed it within reach of the workmen, who hastily threw it across the gap in such a way that the Babu could just reach it with his knees.

The description of his appearance which the boys afterwards gave made their uncle laugh heartily.

"His face was positively green," said Lawrence, "and his eyes were rolling like the eyes of a giant in one of those moving magic lantern slides. He was yelling at the top of his voice--invoking strange gods by the sound of it. When he felt the plank beneath his knees he began to shuffle along sideways, but away from us instead of towards us; he was in such an awful state of funk that he didn't know which way he was going. When he got to the beam he threw his legs across it and sat there shaking, with the rope under his arms. We couldn't get him to budge even when we had laid another plank across, so that the way back was perfectly safe. He looked just like a 'varsity stroke pumped out at the end of a race--bar the complexion, of course. We tried to persuade him to get up and walk back, but he did nothing but shake his head and moan. He wouldn't speak for a bit; at last he said that he must wait till morning light. 'Buck up!' I said: 'make an effort!' but he only rolled his eyes and groaned and sighed. You can't do anything with a chump like that."

Ditta Lal indeed refused all entreaties, and kept his perch through the cold night. Lawrence sent him a bowl of soup, but he declined to unwreathe his arms from the rope. Only when, early next day, the planks had been firmly nailed to their supports did he allow himself to be wheeled in a trolley--for his limbs were numbed and useless--back to the mine. For the rest of the day he was not seen. For a week he avoided the boys, and made no more calculations except the elementary addition and subtraction of his store book-keeping.