Joe is carried off.
chapter 36
Hordes on the horizon—a band of Arabs—the chase—it’s him!—fall from a horse—the throttled Arab—a bullet from Kennedy—stratagem—airlift—Joe safe.
When Kennedy went back on the lookout in the front of the gondola, he kept a very careful eye on the horizon.
After a while he turned to the doctor and said:
“If I’m not mistaken, that’s a band of men or animals on the move out there; you still can’t see ’em clearly. Anyhow they’re causing quite a commotion, because they’re kicking up a cloud of dust.”
“Could it be another contrary wind,” Samuel said, “a twister coming to drive us back to the north?”
He stood up and examined the horizon.
“I doubt it, Samuel,” Kennedy replied. “It’s a herd of gazelle or wild oxen.”
“Maybe, Dick; but those hordes are at least nine or ten miles away, and speaking for myself, I can’t identify a thing, not even with a spyglass.”
“Anyhow I won’t let ’em out of my sight; they’re up to something unusual, and it has me stumped; at times you’d think they were on horseback doing field exercises. By George, that’s it! They really are horsemen! Look!”
The doctor carefully studied the figures in question.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “It’s a detachment of Arabs or Tibbous; they’re hurrying in the same direction we are; but we’re faster and we’ll easily gain on them. In half an hour they’ll be in view, and we’ll see what we’re up against.”
Kennedy had grabbed his spyglass again and was carefully eyeing them. The body of horsemen grew more visible; some of them had separated from the rest.
“Apparently they’re doing a field exercise,” Kennedy went on, “or it’s a hunting party. You’d think those fellows were chasing something down. I’d really like to find out what.”
“Patience, Dick. If they continue heading that way, we’ll overtake them shortly and leave them far behind; we’re doing twenty miles per hour, and no horse can keep up that kind of pace.”
Kennedy stayed on the lookout, and a few minutes later he said:
“They’re Arabs charging at top speed. I can make ’em out perfectly. There are about fifty. I can see their burnooses1 billowing in the wind. It’s a field exercise; their commander’s a hundred paces out in front, and they’re rushing to close ranks.”
“Whoever they are, Dick, they aren’t a concern, and I’ll go higher when we need to.”
“Hold on! Hold on a second, Samuel!” After looking again, Dick added, “That’s odd. There’s something that puzzles me; from the way they’re forcing the pace, from their ragged formation, those Arabs seem more like they’re chasing him than following him.”
“You’re certain of that, Dick?”
“No question. I’m absolutely right! It’s a hunt—a manhunt! That’s not their commander out in front, it’s somebody on the run.”
“On the run?” Samuel said excitedly.
“Yes!”
“Let’s keep him in sight and see what happens.”
The balloon promptly gained three or four miles on the horsemen, even though they were moving with phenomenal speed.
“Samuel! Samuel!” Kennedy exclaimed in a trembling voice.
“What’s the matter, Dick?”
“Am I hallucinating? Is this possible?”
“What do you mean?”
“Hold on.”
And the hunter quickly wiped the lenses in his spyglass, then took another look.
“Well?” the doctor asked.
“It’s him, Samuel!”
“Him?” the doctor exclaimed.
That him said it all! There was no need to supply a name!
“He’s on horseback! Barely a hundred paces ahead of his enemies! He’s running from ’em!”
“It’s Joe all right!” the doctor said, turning white.
“He’s too busy running to see us!”
“He’ll see us,” Fergusson replied, cutting back the flame in his burner.
“How?”
“In five minutes we’ll be fifty feet off the ground; in fifteen we’ll be right above him.”
“We need to alert him with a gunshot!”
“No! He can’t come back toward us, they’ll cut him off.”
“What should we do?”
“Wait.”
“Wait! What about those Arabs?”
“We’ll overtake them! We’ll pass them by! We aren’t two miles behind, and so long as Joe’s horse still holds up—”2
“Good God!” Kennedy interrupted.
“What’s wrong?”
Kennedy had let out a despairing yell as Joe hurtled to the ground. His horse had just collapsed, apparently spent.
“He saw us!” the doctor exclaimed. “He waved to us as he got back on his feet!”
“But the Arabs will catch up with him! What’s he waiting for? I say, that took real backbone! Bravo!” the hunter added, beside himself.
After falling, Joe had instantly gotten to his feet just as one of the swiftest horsemen rushed at him; he ducked and dodged, leaped like a panther onto the horse’s rump, grabbed the Arab from behind, throttled him with his wiry, steel-fingered hands, toppled the man onto the sand, and resumed his hair-raising escape.
An immense shout from the Arabs rose into the air; but they were all caught up in the chase and hadn’t spotted the Victoria, which was some 500 paces to the rear and barely thirty feet off the ground; their fastest horsemen weren’t twenty lengths behind the escapee.
One of their lancers had gotten appreciably closer to Joe and was about to run him through, when Kennedy drew a clear, steady bead on the fellow, stopped him cold with a bullet, and knocked him to the earth.
Joe didn’t even look back at the sound. When they saw the Victoria, part of the band pulled up short and fell face down in the dust; the others continued the chase.
“But what’s Joe doing?” Kennedy exclaimed. “He isn’t stopping!”
“He’s doing better than that, Dick; I see what he’s up to! He keeps riding in the same direction as the balloon. He’s counting on us to use our heads! Ah, the gallant lad! We’ll carry him off under the Arabs’ noses! We aren’t more than 200 paces back!”
“What should we do?” Kennedy asked.
“Set your shotgun aside.”
“Right,” the hunter said, putting down his weapon.
“Could you hold 150 pounds of ballast in your arms?”
“Even more.”
“No, that will be enough.”
And the doctor piled bags of sand into Kennedy’s arms.
“Stay in the rear of the gondola and get ready to drop this ballast in one fell swoop. But for God’s sake, don’t do it before I give the word!”
“Relax!”
“Otherwise we’ll let Joe down, and he’ll be done for!”
“You can count on me!”
By then the Victoria was almost directly above that band of horsemen who were so hot on Joe’s heels. In the front of the gondola, the doctor unrolled the ladder, ready to toss it out at the critical moment. Joe had kept a distance of fifty feet between his pursuers and himself. The Victoria overtook them.
“Get ready!” Samuel told Kennedy.
“All set.”
“Joe, save yourself!” the doctor yelled in a ringing voice as he tossed out the ladder, its bottom rungs scraping the ground and stirring up dust.
When the doctor called to him, Joe looked back without reining in his steed; the ladder flopped down next to him, and just as he caught hold of it:
“Drop away,” the doctor snapped to Kennedy.
“Done.”
And relieved of a weight greater than Joe’s, the Victoria climbed 150 feet into the air.
Joe clung tightly to the ladder while it shook and shivered from side to side; gesturing something unprintable to the Arabs, he climbed on board with clownlike agility and joined his companions, who gave him a hearty welcome.
The Arabs let out a howl of surprise and fury. The runaway had just been airlifted out of their clutches, and the Victoria shot off into the distance.
“Master! Mr. Dick!” Joe had said.
And he had fainted dead away in his excitement and exhaustion, while Kennedy yelled in a state of near delirium:
“He’s safe! He’s safe!”
“Of course!” the doctor answered, serenely composed once more.
Joe was nearly naked; his bloody arms and bruised body all testified to what he had suffered. The doctor dressed his wounds and laid him under the tent.
Joe soon recovered from his fainting spell and asked for a glass of brandy, which the doctor felt shouldn’t be denied him, since Joe deserved special treatment and wasn’t just anybody. After downing his drink, he shook hands with his two companions and announced he was ready to tell his story.
But they wouldn’t let him talk, and the gallant lad fell sound asleep again, something he seemed to desperately need.
By then the Victoria had gone off at an angle into the west. Thanks to the efforts of a bit too much wind, she crossed over palm trees bent or uprooted by the storm, then sighted the wilderness of brambles again; and after managing a run of nearly 200 miles in the wake of Joe’s airlift, she crossed over longitude 10° as evening drew on.