CHAPTER XXI
STROUP’S INSTRUCTIONS
“How comes it that Jimmie and Kit are lost in the air?” asked Havens, as, accompanied by the sheriff and the forest ranger, Gilmore, the boys walked away from the jail.
“It’s the most unaccountable thing!” Ben exclaimed almost impatiently. “We left Jimmie to watch the machines while we slept, and the first thing we knew he was up in the air, and Kit with him.”
“He may have returned to the camp by this time,” suggested Havens.
“If he has, I hope he’ll guard the Louise better than we guarded the Bertha!” Carl put in.
“What happened to the Bertha?” the millionaire asked.
Then Ben told the story of the visit of the Chinaman who had wasted their gasoline and eaten their provisions so ravenously. He also told the story of the landing on the summit, and of the visit of the two Japs in the Ann. Havens looked grave.
“Those Japs,” he exclaimed, “must have come directly on from New York to Monterey. They are well-known East Side crooks, and are using their old tactics here.”
“Well, they probably went away after Phillips and Mendoza in that limping old machine,” Carl said. “They can’t go far.”
Gilmore and Sheriff Chase, who had listened intently to the conversation, now began asking questions.
“You spoke of a Chinaman coming to your tent,” Gilmore began, “as if Mr. Havens already knew of the existence of such a party. What about that? When and where did you first see this Chinaman?” he added turning to Ben. “Tell me all about it.”
At this time the little party was directly in front of the hotel where Stroup had exhibited his muscular ability. As Ben explained about the first stopping-place, the two beacons, the schooner, the caves, and the swarm of Celestials, Gilmore drew him into the hotel and into the smoking room. Here he seated the entire party notwithstanding the frowns of the clerk, and closed and locked the door.
“Do you know,” he asked, after a moment’s thought, “that you boys have made a discovery which is likely to bring you a large amount of money?”
“I guess they can use it, all right,” laughed Havens. “They want a new flying machine every time they see a new model!”
“Tell us about it?” asked Ben eagerly.
“Well,” Gilmore went on, “we have been after those Chink smugglers a long time. The beacons have been observed night after night, and schooners have long been known to visit Monterey bay during the dark hours, but,” he went on, “we have searched the coast for a hundred miles and never found anything like the canyon you blundered into the first night of your arrival.”
“And we found it in the dark!” laughed Carl.
“Cheer up!” exclaimed Gilmore. “My men couldn’t find it in the day-time.”
“Well, you know where to get the Chinks now!” the sheriff broke in.
“But how about this Chink we were talking about?” asked Ben. “We found him tied up like a side roast of beef. We turned him loose, of course, and then he comes and serves us a dirty trick like that!”
Gilmore sat back in his chair and laughed heartily.
“That Chinaman,” he said after a time, “is not a Chinaman at all! That’s Sloan, the Washington secret service man!”
“But he looks like a Chink!” insisted Carl.
“Certainly,” answered Gilmore. “That’s why he has been assigned to this class of work.”
“Can he talk like a Chink?” asked Ben.
“As natural as life!” was the reply.
“Well, he don’t know much English,” grinned Ben, “if you leave it to me. All he said was ‘Savvy you, alle same’ and ‘No can do!’”
Again Gilmore broke into a roar of laughter.
“That’s one of his old tricks,” he said. “He’s so stuck on his make-up and his pidgin English that he seeks to keep up the deception when there’s no need of it.”
“Then we ought to know why they tied him up!” Ben declared.
“It’s easy enough to guess,” Gilmore answered. “He tried to play in with the crowd of smugglers and Chinks, and was detected and tied up.”
This from the sheriff, who was making notes in a memorandum book as the talk went on:
“It’s a wonder they didn’t kill him!”
“They probably would have killed him in a very short time,” Gilmore replied to the sheriff, “if the boys hadn’t put in an appearance.”
“Then we saved one life, anyway!” laughed Carl.
“But why did he come and waste our gasoline?” demanded Ben.
“I can’t answer that,” replied Gilmore. “You probably will see him before you get out of the country, and then you can get the explanation from him. He’ll tell you, easy enough.”
“I think I can give a pretty good guess at it right now,” the sheriff broke in. “Sloan possibly had his own idea as to what the boys were here for, and that idea was undoubtedly incorrect.”
“I’ve got it now!” cried Carl. “I know all about it!”
“You’re the wise boy!” laughed Ben. “Go on and tell it.”
“Why, don’t you see,” Carl went on, “Sloan suspected us of coming here to butt in on his game with the smugglers? He saw us in the cavern, and of course believed that we were there working for the immense rewards offered for the criminals. He wanted to head us off!”
“That may be right,” replied Gilmore. “The fellow is mercenary enough, when it comes down to cases. Well,” the forest ranger went on, “what else could the fellow think? He saw you there in the cave, and knew that you knew the use it was being put to. The only way that he could figure it out was that you were there to interfere with a game which he had almost won by playing a lone hand.”
“And so he dumped our gasoline to keep us from flying back to the canyon or flying over to Monterey to tell what we’d discovered!” suggested Carl.
“That is undoubtedly correct,” Gilmore admitted, “and if the Louise had been there, he doubtless would have crippled her, too.”
“And now,” laughed Havens, “that you have the whole thing settled, without Sloan knowing anything about it, perhaps we’d better go somewhere and have dinner, or supper, or whatever you may call it.”
“We probably can’t get anything here at this time of day,” the sheriff interposed, “but I know of a restaurant down the street where we can get anything from a lobster to an elephant’s ear.”
“I don’t care about spending any money in this place, anyway,” said Havens. “Say, Sheriff,” he went on, “I want to leave with you a little present for your new deputy Stroup. Will you deliver it to him just as I hand it to you without one word of explanation?”
“Surely,” replied the official.
Havens took a note-book from his pocket, tore out a blank leaf, wrote three words on it and signed his name. Then he took a bank-note of the denomination of one thousand dollars from his pocket, folded it up in the paper, stuffed the whole into a hotel envelope which he sealed and passed it over to the sheriff, who took it with evident amazement.
“You don’t do things by halves,” the official observed.
“I try to do things according to my means,” replied Havens. “I should have missed a lot of satisfaction this morning if Stroup hadn’t shown up with his capable fists!”
“What did you write on the sheet of paper?” asked Carl.
Havens looked at the sheriff and the forest ranger with a smile.
“You won’t arrest me for inciting a riot, will you?” he asked.
“You’ve already paid too many fines in this town,” laughed the sheriff.
“Well, under promise of immunity, then,” Havens went on, “the words were ‘Hit him again.’ How does that strike you?”
“If you had showed the paper to me before you sealed it up,” the sheriff laughed, “I would have added my name to yours at the bottom of the instructions.”
“Do you really think he will hit him again?” asked Carl.
“Hit him again?” repeated the sheriff, “He’ll hit the clerk, and the ex-deputy, and the house detective, until he drives them out of town, and pay his fine out of the thousand dollars.”
“Don’t you let him do that,” advised Havens. “If he just gives each of them a good licking once, that’ll be sufficient. There are too many fresh hotel clerks and deputy sheriffs in the world, also house detectives, and if he reduced the list by three, that’ll be enough.”
“Holy Smoke!” shouted Carl rising to his feet and making for the door. “Are we going to talk here all day without anything to eat?”
“I’m so empty right now,” Ben decided, “that you could hold a Salvation Army meeting in my system. Where’s this restaurant where you can get an elephant’s ear?”
“I’ll lead you to it,” laughed the sheriff, “and while we’re eating, we can lay plans for the capture of that gang of smugglers.”
“We didn’t come here after smugglers,” suggested Ben.
“Not so you could notice it,” Carl went on. “We came here to find the burglars of the Buyers’ Bank in New York. We haven’t found them yet.”
“But we know pretty well where they are,” Ben insisted. “Kit saw Phillips in the woods this morning, dressed in a ranger’s uniform.”
The story of the bear was new to Havens and the officers, and they enjoyed its relation immensely. Both boys smacked their lips at thought of the bear steak they didn’t get.
“We can get the outlaws with little trouble now,” Gilmore said, after a moment’s reflection. “I’ve got men enough in this vicinity to put a line all around the hills. So long as we know they are here, we are all right.”
“After we eat dinner,” Ben suggested, “perhaps we’d better go back to the green bowl and look up Jimmie and Kit. There’s no knowing what they may have discovered during the day.”
“That’s the idea!” exclaimed Havens. “And now for a good feed.”
Before the meal at the restaurant was finished an interruption which materially changed the plans of the whole party, took place. It was Sloan, the secret service man, who blundered into the party with a broken head who sidetracked the old plans.
CHAPTER XXII
UNDER THE MOONLIGHT
“Now there goes the loss of a lot of endeavor!” Jimmie exclaimed, as the Louise lifted into the air.
“What’s the answer?” asked Kit with a grin.
“Do you know who’s aboard of that machine?” Jimmie demanded in a sarcastic tone.
“Two outlaws who’re carrying away our good bear meat!” replied Kit.
“And do you know who’s doing the aviation stunt?” continued Jimmie.
“Answer in two weeks!” replied the boy with a snicker.
“Well, I’ll tell you who it is,” almost shouted Jimmie. “It’s probably that blond brute we spent so much time amusing to-day.”
“How do you know that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” asked Kit.
“Didn’t we see his machine staggering over the summit some time ago?” demanded Jimmie. “You know we did.”
“But that was a long ways from here,” Kit advised.
“Oh, what’s the use?” exclaimed Jimmie. “His machine fluttered down into some hole not far away from here, and he saw our fire and came forward to get something to eat.”
“I half believe you’re right,” Kit admitted.
“Of course, I’m right!” insisted Jimmie. “The blond brute is the only aviator in this section that I know of who would have taken the outlaws away. That’s the duck, all right.”
“Then we lose?” asked Kit.
“We lose if the outlaws are sharp enough to get away before morning,” Jimmie went on. “They certainly know now what we’re here for.”
“Yes, and the information we’ve been trying to keep from them all this time is now in their possession,” added Jimmie in a disgusted tone.
“It’s a good thing they didn’t have it before they left us asleep in the shelter tent,” Kit suggested.
“Why do you say that?” asked Jimmie.
“Because, if they had known, we wouldn’t be here now.”
“What next?” asked Kit in a minute. “What are we going to do about it? We ought to do something right away.”
“I suggest,” Jimmie answered, “that we take our searchlights and our guns and go out and find that third machine.”
“And chase up the outlaws?” demanded Kit.
“That’s the idea,” Jimmie answered.
“Chase the Louise in that slow old ice wagon that we went by this afternoon like it was anchored?” demanded the boy.
“The machine is all right if properly handled,” Jimmie insisted.
“But you saw how it staggered around the summit,” argued Kit. “I don’t want to trust my bones in any such old contraption.”
“It’s oranges to oats,” Jimmie exclaimed, “that a new spark plug will put that machine in pretty good shape. Of course we can’t hope to keep up with the Louise on a long chase, but I don’t believe there’ll be any long chase to-night. The outlaws will settle down in some nook and remain there until morning. All we’ll have to do to-night will be to locate them. We ought to be able to do that.”
“Say,” said Kit with a grin, “I wish you’d find an air boat somewhere and row me back to Robinson’s barn. I used to have a good flop now and then when I lived there, but since I’ve been with you boys, it’s been a night and day job.”
“You’re getting fat over it,” Jimmie insisted.
“Sailing up in the air after a bunch like that won’t put fat on any one’s ribs,” Kit continued. “They’ll see our lights, and we might as well try to sleuth out a moonshiner with a brass band.”
“Come on, you little monkey,” urged Jimmie. “We’ll go and find the machine anyhow. We’ll see what shape she’s in before we decide.”
Throwing more wood on the fire in order to illuminate the bowl as much as possible, the boys started away. Before they had proceeded far a glimmer of light in a thicket almost at the lip of the bowl attracted their attention. It was a very brilliant light, but seemed to be shining through a small aperture.
“Acetylene!” exclaimed Jimmie as the boys drew nearer. “That’s the acetylene lamp on that old machine. Our blond friend forgot to turn it off. Now wasn’t that kind of him!”
“I guess he was about all in,” Kit advised. “We gave him a mighty swift chase, and he seems to have kept in the air a long time after we quit. They probably fed him up on some of our good provisions so he felt better before he went away.”
“Of course they did!” laughed Jimmie. “Did you notice how those fellows laid into our bread and butter?”
Jimmie began a systematic examination of the machine. He found the gasoline tanks nearly full, which indicated that the blond aviator had traveled to some filling station after the conclusion of the race.
So far as Jimmie could see, the aeroplane was in perfect condition except that the spark plugs were badly worn and cracked.
“Can we use them?” asked Kit. “The spark plugs, I mean.”
“They’re no good,” replied Jimmie, “but we’ve got plenty at the camp. Ben wanted to keep them stored in the boxes under the seats, but I sneaked some out when we landed in the green bowl and put them away by the pile of tenting. Good thing I did, too.”
“If you hadn’t, they would be on board the Louise right now,” Kit said, “and we would be without any.”
“You chase back to camp and bring the plugs,” Jimmie directed, “and I’ll stay here and look the machine over once more. Hurry back, for we want to get up in the air in time to see the lights of the Louise.”
“They must be pretty far away by this time,” suggested Kit.
“Yes, we can go up far enough to see for fifty miles on each side!” Jimmie said. “They can’t be fifty miles away by this time.”
Kit hastened away to the camp, and soon returned with the spark plugs. In a very short time the machine was pulled out of the little depression in which the wheels lay and drawn down to a level which would permit of a flight. It was by no means as large as either the Louise or the Bertha but a strong aeroplane for all that.
“Now,” Jimmie suggested. “We ought to go and see if there’s anything left to eat here, and take it away with us if there is.”
“You can’t get the smell of that bear steak out of your nostrils, can you?” laughed Kit.
“But just think who gave it to us?” Jimmie grinned.
After packing away provisions enough for a meal or two the boys put the machine into the air and lifted slowly out of the bowl.
The air was comparatively still, and a mass of clouds hung low over the mountains. Looking out into the darkness, the boys could see no sign of light anywhere. Their own lights were sheltered as much as possible, but they knew that they might be seen a great distance. Kit proposed putting out the acetylene lights entirely, but Jimmie insisted that it was so dark they might bump into a mountain without seeing it!
“Much good that short space of light would do us,” Kit replied. “We’d be into the rocks almost before the light struck them.”
“Then we’ll go slower and higher up,” Jimmie declared.
The machine continued to rise until a faint radiance began to seep through the heavy clouds with which the boys were surrounded. In another minute the stars shone down upon them, and the field of mist lay far below.
Jimmie had frequently looked out upon such scenes before, but to Kit it was all very wonderful. The clouds below looked like waves rolling and tossing on a summer sea. As far as the eye could reach there were only the white undulations which shut out the light of the stars from below.
The boys were going very slowly now, lifting with every yard traveled and watching intently for the lights of the Louise.
Presently they came to a break in the field of clouds below and looked down upon the surging waters of the Pacific ocean. They had no idea that they were so far to the west, but Jimmie took advantage of the incident to look down upon the southern promontory off which the schooner had stood on the previous night.
The beacon was still there and the schooner was still there. In a moment the clouds closed in again and the boys moved away to the east.
The boys circled about for an hour or more, and then, weary of remaining so long in one position, dropped down to a peak which, far above the clouds, glimmered in the light of the rising moon.
“We can see from here just as well as from the seats,” Kit suggested, “and we may as well get all the rest we can.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Jimmie answered, “that we ought to go to the south, but I’m going to break this for once and stay right here. We’re not far from the home of the smugglers, and, on the theory that thieves flock together, our outlaws ought to be in the vicinity.”
“That suits me,” Kit answered. “I’m dead tired.”
“If we hadn’t gone to sleep to-night,” mourned Jimmie, “We wouldn’t be here now. That nap just spoiled everything.”
“What could we have done if we had remained awake?” Kit demanded. “When that blond brute arrived, we’d have got our heads knocked off and that’s about all.”
“In just a little while now,” Jimmie declared, “I’m going to trail over to Monterey and see if I can find any trace of Mr. Havens or the boys. It’s just rotten the way Ben and Carl are staying away!”
As soon as the boy finished speaking, Kit grabbed him by the arm and pointed to the west.
“There’s your light!” he said.
The light referred to sat on a peak some distance to the west, very near to the sheer descent into the Pacific, in fact, and was slightly lower than the one upon which the boys had rested. It was, however, above the clouds and the moon, pushing her way through the mists, shone full upon the shining planes of a flying machine.
Only one artificial light was in sight, and that appeared to come from the aeroplane lamp stationed just above the seats.
“That’s the Louise, all right enough!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Now I wonder what they are staying there for! It seems to me that they ought to be getting out of this country just as fast as gasoline can carry them.”
“There’s something exciting going on over there!” Kit exclaimed.
CHAPTER XXIII
A LOOK AT THE BOWL
The interruption which came at the restaurant during the meal Ben and Carl were having with Mr. Havens and the two officers, was, to the boys at least, a most astonishing one.
When Sloan entered the restaurant, his head wrapped in a great bandage, the boys, of course, recognized him as the man who had played the part of a Chinaman so cleverly. After the explanations made by the two officers, Sloan would have been recognized in any event, but the boys would have known him if they had had no information on the subject.
His resemblance to a Chinaman was, indeed, striking. Indeed, it was claimed by many who knew and disliked him that he really was a Chinaman.
As he entered the restaurant Sloan beckoned to Gilmore, and the two conferred together a short time at a separate table.
The boys saw that Gilmore was very much interested in the revelations being made by Sloan, and they also saw that the detective was very weak.
By the time the conference was ended the meal had been completed, and Gilmore returned to his friends while Sloan hastened away in the care of a deputy sheriff who had been summoned to the restaurant.
“This visit appears to make a change of plan necessary,” Gilmore said, as the five walked away from the restaurant. “We have some talking to do, so we may as well go to my office, where we can talk without danger of being overheard.”
All were, of course, very anxious to know the result of the interview between the chief ranger and the detective, but they asked no questions, and Gilmore said nothing until they were seated in the private office of a suite of rooms set aside for the sheriff.
“As you all saw,” Gilmore began, “Sloan is all in. He was attacked by a number of smugglers not very long ago and barely escaped with his life.”
“Served him right!” muttered Ben. “He’s the guy that spilled our gasoline! I wish they’d beaten him up more.”
“Now,” continued Gilmore, “the story told by you boys concerning the smugglers’ headquarters was repeated to me by Sloan with only a few variations. He has located the place where the Chinks are hidden until they can be safely run into the cities, and has spotted several of the leaders, including the captain of one of the schooners which frequently appears off the south beacon.”
“We came pretty near doing all that!” Carl laughed.
“Now, what he wants us to do,” Gilmore continued, “is to station a force of men around a summit from which all that goes on below may be watched. He says that if we reach the place between midnight and morning we will see Chinks rowed ashore from the schooner and passed into the caves the boys penetrated.”
“That listens good to me!” said the sheriff. “I’ve long been aching to get my hands on those smugglers!”
“He says, too,” continued Gilmore, “that large quantities of opium are stored in the caves. He wants me to take a force large enough to surround the whole district and do the job at one blow.”
“Do you think that a good idea?” asked the sheriff.
“I do not!” was Gilmore’s reply. “In the first place, we can’t get men in there to-night. In the next place, if we could, we couldn’t station them without alarming the outlaws.”
“That’s just my idea,” the sheriff said.
“Perhaps,” Mr. Havens suggested, “we might reach that point in the airships. It isn’t a very long journey, according to what Ben says.”
“That’s just what I was about to suggest,” Gilmore explained. “How many people will the two ships you have here carry?”
“They will carry six, on a pinch,” was the reply. “The small persons would, of course, have to travel on the Bertha.”
Havens stepped to the window and looked out.
“We were thinking of looking up Jimmie and Kit,” he said, “but it’s getting dark now, and we never could find them in this tangle of hills unless they were up in the air with lights burning.”
“I’ll tell you what we can do,” Ben observed. “The sheriff and the ranger can go in the Ann with you, Mr. Havens, and Carl and I can switch around over the place where we had our camp and see if there are any signs of the boys.”
“That will do nicely,” Mr. Havens replied.
“Now, see here,” the sheriff interrupted. “There are only two of you boys, both light weights, and the machine, you say, will carry three. Is that right? Why not take Stroup along with us?”
“Sure!” Ben exclaimed. “I’d like to have that fellow go with us. I’ve heard what he did to three people here to-day, and I think he’d prove a pretty good friend in a hot scrap!”
“I’ll send out for him,” the sheriff promised, “and in the meantime, we’ll all keep pretty close in the office.”
“That’s a good idea,” suggested Gilmore. “There’s no knowing how many friends the smugglers have in this town. I would suggest, however,” he went on, “that some one go out and look over the two machines.”
“The machines are all right,” the sheriff assured the others. “There are six deputies out there now in charge of Stroup, and he sent in a report not long ago. The crowd has been hustled off the field, and everything out there is as quiet as a prohibition convention.”
“What time ought we to start?” asked Ben, like all boys, eager to be away. “I’m actually getting anxious to be off.”
“We can make the distance in half an hour, if we are obliged to,” replied Havens, “unless I’m greatly mistaken in the location of the promontory. So we ought not to leave here until about midnight.”
“It will be dark as a stack of black cats!” exclaimed Carl looking out of the window at the sky.
“There’s plenty of room above the clouds!” smiled Havens.
“Never thought of that!” exclaimed Ben. “We were above the clouds in Mexico once, but that seems a long time ago now.”
“And there will be a moon about midnight, too,” Gilmore explained, “so we can see everything above the clouds quite distinctly.”
“Huh!” grinned Carl, “we can’t look through the clouds at the schooner and the Chinks, can we?”
“Hardly!” laughed Gilmore. “Still, the cloudy night will help us in this way—we can travel above the clouds and not be observed from below. That will help some.”
“And I presume that we can crawl down the incline and get a glimpse of what’s going on below,” the sheriff suggested. “At least, I’m willing to try. The time to make the arrests is right now.”
“Perhaps we ought to start a short time before the Ann leaves the place,” Ben suggested, “because we’ll have quite a few miles farther to travel if we circle over to look after Jimmie and Kit.”
“That’s very true,” Havens replied. “Are you sure that you know where the summit which has been mentioned is?” he added.
“If it’s the summit directly east of the south headland where we saw the light, I know exactly where it is,” answered Ben. “There are two peaks there, and the one to the east and north is a trifle higher than the one referred to now.”
“That’s exactly correct,” announced Gilmore. “The two peaks separate a great chasm in the range which is known as Two Sisters canyon.”
Ben sprang to his feet and drew a bit of white paper from a pocket.
“Look here!” he shouted, “This paper was taken from the monkey-faced man who chased Jimmie up New York bay! The fellow smashed his machine and lay with a broken arm in Robinson’s barn, away back east, until Kit found a doctor to fix him up. This paper, enclosed in an envelope, fell from his pocket when his coat was removed.”
“Read it!” exclaimed Gilmore excitedly.
“It isn’t much to read,” Ben explained. “All it says is: ‘In Two Sisters Canyon’.”
“There you are!” cried Carl, hopping about in his enthusiasm. “That paper makes a date, not for the meeting with the outlaws but for the meeting of the men who traveled from New York to warn them of their danger, and get them out of the country.”
“That’s just the idea!” the sheriff said with a laugh. “Are all your New York boys like these?” he added with a smile turning to Havens.
“I’m afraid not,” was the laughing reply. “The wits of these boys were sharpened in the streets of the East Side.”
Shortly after midnight Ben and Carl, accompanied by Stroup, departed in the Bertha for the valley where the Louise had been left. The clouds were thinning a little, and the darkness was not so intense as it had been earlier in the evening. Stroup knew every inch of the way, and so the machine made good progress until it came over the little green bowl which had been the scene of so many adventures.
“There’s no light there!” Ben said, with a sigh, as they passed the lip of the pit. “I don’t believe there’s any one here.”
“There’s just a little flicker of light,” Stroup declared. “And it looks to me like the embers of a camp-fire.”
“We didn’t have any fire!” Ben explained.
“Then Jimmie and Kit must have returned,” Carl put in. “They may be there yet. Of course we’re going down to see?”
“That’s what we came here for,” Stroup answered. “Only be careful, boy, how you bring her down!”
Ben smiled at the big deputy’s timidity, and brought the machine to within a few feet of the embers which had been left by the fire built to cook the outlaws’ steak.
As Kit and Jimmie had left the camp two or three hours previous in the machine they had repaired, of course no one was seen about the place. Ben and Carl ran eagerly over the surface of the green bowl with their flashlights, but no trace of their chums could be found. Even the shelter tents had been taken away by the boys.
Discouraged at last, the boys returned to the machine, and the three mounted upward through the clouds, now thinning fast. The moon was rising, too, laying a silver floor over the upper surface of the moving clouds.
“Now there’s the peak!” Ben said, pointing. “And there’s an aeroplane on it, too! And also a scrap!”