CHAPTER I

Down the Embankment

“The last one in is a Chinaman!” cried Don Sturdy, as he ran from a tent
toward the bank of a creek, closely followed by two companions.

This was a stigma not to be borne without a strenuous struggle to avert
it, and a spirited race ensued over the hundred yards of green turf that
had to be covered before the creek was reached.

Don reached the bank first, and, pausing just long enough to get his
balance, lifted his hands over his head and dived into the cool waters.
Before he came up again, Teddy Allison had followed him, and an instant
later there was a third splash, and Fred Turner had joined the other
two.

Don shook the water from his eyes and looked mischievously at Fred.

“Don’t know that I ought to bathe in the same water with a Chink,” he
said grinning.

“We ought to keep a good distance between us and the Yellow Peril,”
declared Teddy.

“How about the red peril?” Fred came back at Teddy, looking
significantly at the lad’s mop of flaming red hair that had won him the
nickname of “Brick.”

“Guess that will hold you for a while, Brick,” laughed Don, as he struck
out downstream.

The three boys were all good swimmers, and they enjoyed themselves to
the full for an hour or more, practicing fancy strokes and dives, the
coolness of the water having an added charm because of its contrast with
the sweltering heat of the day.

“If we’d only had something of this kind in the Sahara Desert, eh,
Brick?” suggested Don.

“’Twould have been just what the doctor ordered,” agreed Brick. “Or in
the Egyptian desert, either. One was about as hot as the other.”

“I’d have been willing to stand either of them, if I could have been
where you fellows have been and seen what you’ve seen,” remarked Fred.

“Still,” he added cheerily, “I’ve got no kick coming when I think of the
difference between me now and what I was a year ago. If anybody had told
me then that instead of being a cripple I’d be standing on two good legs
and able to run races with you fellows, I’d have thought he was just
kidding me along. And I owe it all to you, Don.”

“To my Uncle Amos, you mean,” declared Don. “He was the hero in that
matter. He was the one who found the drug that cured you.”

“But you were the one that got him to do it,” persisted Fred. “I tell
you, fellows, that since that time it’s been like living in another
world.”

The boys sported about a little longer in the water and quitted it with
reluctance. They had a good rubdown in their tent, slipped into their
street clothes, and then, immensely refreshed, threw themselves down in
the shade of a great elm tree.

“Gee!” remarked Don, “Uncle Frank has all the luck.”

“What do you mean?” asked Teddy lazily. “Somebody remember him in his
will, or what?”

“He’s going on an expedition to the North Pole,” answered Don enviously.

“What?” exclaimed Fred.

“Sounds mighty good to me in this hot weather,” said Teddy. “I’d like to
be there at this minute throwing snowballs at the Eskimos. But what’s he
going up there for?”

“He’s heard of a new species of polar bear to be found up that way,” Don
replied; “and he’s been commissioned by a zoölogical society to get some
specimens, if he can.”

“He can, if any one can,” declared Teddy emphatically. “If the bears
hear that he’s coming they’ll take to their holes. I guess that’s the
only kind of big game left in the world that he hasn’t taken a shot at.
Grizzlies, tigers, lions, elephants—isn’t he ever going to get enough?”

“It’s a mighty risky voyage,” put in Fred. “I hope his ship doesn’t get
stuck in the ice.”

“No danger of that, I guess,” rejoined Don, “seeing that he’s going in
an airship.”

There was an exclamation of amazement from both his hearers.

“You mean an airplane?” asked Teddy.

“No,” replied Don. “In a big dirigible, like that one that came sailing
over here the other day, the one shaped like a big cigar that shone like
silver in the sun.”

“Going to sail in a ship like that to the North Pole?” exclaimed Fred.
“how does he know he can? It’s never been done.”

“That doesn’t say it can’t be done,” was the reply. “There’s got to be a
first time for everything. Uncle Frank seems to be pretty certain that
the _Red Monarch_—that’s the name of the airship—can get there all
right.”

“I didn’t know he owned an airship,” said Teddy.

“He doesn’t,” replied Don, with a smile. “He’s just going as a passenger
with an expedition that’s flying to the North Pole.”

“What are they going there for?” asked Fred. “I thought the Pole had
already been discovered by Peary.”

“So it has,” said Don. “But all that Peary did was to find the spot,
mark it, and then hike back as fast as he could to his ship, so as to
save himself from freezing or starving to death. But there’s a vast
amount of territory in the neighborhood of the Pole, hundreds and
thousands of miles of it, that nobody knows anything about. No one knows
how much of it is land and how much is water. There may be lands rich in
silver and gold, and even with all kinds of strange bird and animal and
plant life.

“At any rate, a big scientific society wants to find out all about it,
and so they’ve equipped a big airship and are sending it up there. Uncle
Frank heard about it and arranged to go along. Of course, they were only
too glad to have him, because of his strength and courage and his
reputation as a hunter and explorer.”

“Oh, how I’d like to go with him!” exclaimed Teddy.

“Not a chance in the world, old boy,” said Don. “Unless,” he added, with
a grin, “you do the stowaway act, as you did when you went to Egypt.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t work twice,” replied Teddy. “But I’d give
everything I’ve got to be able to go along.”

“Same here,” chimed in Fred wistfully.

“Don’t you think you could work it, Don?” urged Teddy. “Your Uncle Frank
would do anything in the world for you, if you’d ask him.”

“I’ve already asked him for myself,” replied Don. “You don’t think I’d
let a chance like that go by without trying for it, do you? But there
was nothing doing. The airship can carry only a limited number—about
thirty or so, I think is the figure—and Uncle Frank says that the list
is all made up. So that’s that, bad luck to it.”

“Look at this pair of peaches coming along,” Teddy interjected.

They looked in the direction indicated by his glance and saw two figures
advancing along the road that ran almost parallel to the creek, but at
some little distance from it.

One was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, as nearly as they could
judge, rather dissipated looking, with pasty complexion and eyes set
closely together. He was of heavy build, but the heaviness suggested
flabbiness rather than hard muscle. A cigarette hung loosely between his
lips, and his walk was a combination of a shuffle and a swagger.

His companion was a man of, perhaps, thirty years, of dark complexion,
with a hatchet face, receding chin and furtive eyes. There were evil
markings on his face that told of loose living. He was dressed in flashy
raiment, and a big stone, either real or paste, gleamed in his tie while
another glittered in a ring on his little finger.

They were by no means an attractive pair, as they sauntered along,
engaged so earnestly in conversation that they did not seem to notice
the presence of the trio on the bank of the creek.

“This is a mighty hick town,” the boys heard the man say to his
companion. “It ought to be easy to pull off almost anything in a burg
like this.”

“Just a bunch of rubes,” the boy answered, with a sneer on his weak
face. “The kind that fall for gold bricks and who would buy Central Park
or the Brooklyn Bridge if any bunco man offered to sell them for ten
dollars apiece. It’s a sin and a shame to do anything to them. They’re
too easy.”

They passed on, and the boys looked at each other with grins on their
faces.

“Cheap sports from the city,” remarked Brick. “Wonder what they’re doing
up here? Do you know either one of them, Don?”

“Never saw them before,” replied Don. “And I’m not especially anxious to
see either of them again. I shouldn’t wonder if they’re up to mischief
of some kind.”

“I’ll bet the man is a tough customer,” surmised Fred. “Did you see the
peculiar walk he had? It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d done the lockstep
some time.”

“And did you hear what he said about pulling off something?” asked
Teddy.

“Oh, well, that may have been just brag to impress the boy who was with
him,” remarked Don. “That fellow was listening to him as though he were
the real thing. And you could see by his talk that he was trying to be
just as tough and ‘wise’ as the man himself.”

The three chums soon dismissed the fellows from mind and chatted of
other things. Don, at last, looked at his watch and sat up with a start.

“Didn’t think it was so late,” he remarked. “I’ll have to be getting a
move on me. I have to go on an errand to Mr. Thompson, about a little
business matter for Uncle Frank, and I promised Uncle Amos that, later
on, I’d help him get up the catalogue of those minerals of his.”

“Some little busy bee,” remarked Teddy, grinning. “On a hot afternoon
like this, I’d rather be a drone.”

“That’s the easiest thing you do,” retorted Don. “All right, then, you
stay here and chin with Fred. I’ll just run over to Thompson’s and stop
for you on the way back.”

Mr. Thompson was the lawyer who transacted all of Captain Sturdy’s legal
business, and on this occasion he was preparing some papers for his
client’s signature, so that Don had to wait a little longer than he had
expected.

To save time on his way back to Teddy and Fred, Don took a short cut
that led over some rough ground and across a little gully at the foot of
a hill.

The gully was only five or six feet deep, and Don, in his hurry, instead
of scrambling down the side, leaped down as he reached the brink.

At the instant he did so, he saw below him the man and boy to whom his
attention had been drawn earlier in the afternoon. But it was too late,
and though he tried to change the direction of his jump even while he
was in the air, he could not help bumping heavily against the boy and
sending him sprawling to the ground, knocking from his hand a sandwich
he had been munching.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” cried Don, as he rushed toward the lad to help him
up.

But the boy kicked at him in rage, and his face was livid as he
scrambled to his feet.

“What do you mean by that, you clumsy clown?” he shouted. “You ought to
have a good clip in the jaw for that.”

“Sure he ought,” growled his companion. “Why don’t you hand him one,
Jake? Show him where he get’s off.”

The blood rushed to Don’s face, but he tried to keep his temper.

“I told you I was sorry,” he said. “You can surely see it was an
accident. I didn’t know you were there. I ought to have looked before I
jumped.”

“A lot of good that does me,” howled the boy. “You’ve spoiled my
sandwich and you’ve made me scrape my shins. I ought to take it out of
your hide.”

“Atta boy,” encouraged his companion. “Show him that it doesn’t pay to
monkey with fellows like us. We’re nobody’s meat.”

The boy picked up the sandwich and hurled it at Don’s head. Don dodged
and threw himself into a position of defense as both of the strangers
advanced toward him with their fists clenched.