Chapter XVII: The Spots of Light

Professor Felix Bounderby and Fritz Henselman were sitting bolt upright, their backs against a tall white rock, which at a distance resembled the white wall of a tent.

They were asleep and snoring at a terrific rate, in spite of the fact that the morning was well advanced.

The reason for their somnolence was that the fatigues of the previous day had been unusually wearing, and its excitements had kept them up until a very late hour of the night.

Buffalo Bill, who had risen early, had walked away some distance, and was searching again for the tracks he had failed to find the evening before.

One thing pleased him. During the night the peculiar condition of the atmosphere had passed away, so that the sun, which rose red in the eastern sky, was, an hour afterward, shining with a clear, white light.

Knowing now which direction was the east, he had a knowledge of the points of the compass, even though his magnetic needle still pointed obstinately to the hill of magnetic iron.

The scout was returning from a vain search for tracks, when he came in sight of Bounderby and Henselman sitting against the white rock.

Suddenly Bounderby snorted, twisted uneasily, and opened his eyes; but he closed them again, and began once more to snore.

A little later Henselman gave a similar snort, and slapped at his face as if a mosquito tickled it. A moment afterward he slapped again, so energetically that he was half aroused from his sleep. Then he tumbled forward on his knees, and put up his hands in supplication.

“Yaw!” he gurgled. “Blease, Misder Robber, ton’d shood me! Keep dose bull’s-eye lighd oudt uff my faces! Keep it oudt! Take my moneys, but ton’d shood me!”

Bounderby uttered a little squall, and sat up, and, hearing and seeing Fritz Henselman making that ridiculous appeal, he stared.

“Henselman,” he said, with a superior air, “kindly tell me what you are doing?”

Henselman opened his eyes, with a gurgling snort, stared around, and then gazed at Professor Felix Bounderby. His face had a look of blank foolishness.

“Yaw!” he gasped. “Dere vos no robber going to shood me, eh?”

“Of course not, Henselman! What put such a ridiculous notion into your head?”

“Unt nopody tidn’t t’row der light uff a pull’s-eye landern in my faces?”

“Certainly not, Henselman! Don’t be ridiculous. It was the sun shining in your face. See, the sun shines! I myself felt that light in my face; but it was the sunshine, and it awoke me. Thank Heaven for the glorious sunshine again, Henselman!”

The German still stared around. “But, brofessor,” he objected, “de sun iss not shining so dat it can hid us in de faces! De sun shines pehint dis rock. It coult nod haf peen der sunshine hid me der faces in. Nein!”

Bounderby stared, too, when he made that discovery.

“I must have dreamed that the sunshine struck me with blinding force in the face. It is such a change from yesterday that it had that effect. Henselman, that is the solution. Always remember that every phenomenon of nature has a perfectly reasonable and sensible solution.”

“You mean I treamed dot a man mit a pull’s-eye landern vos shining de lighd uff id in my faces?”

“Yes. Certainly. That is the true explanation. We both dreamed——”

But he stopped with a gurgling snort and tumbled back against the white rock.

“Brofessor, vot——”

Then Henselman uttered a cry, like the squeal of a stuck pig, and also tumbled back against the rock. He put his hand up to his face.

“Yiminy Gristmas! I am treaming again, ven I am avake unt my eyes iss vide open. I am treaming dot de sunshine iss hidding my face in. Yaw!”

A spot of brilliant white light flickered and wavered over his hand-covered face, flitted as a white dot on the white rock, and then smote the professor once more, causing him to howl again and fall back.

Professor Felix Bounderby rolled to one side to get away from that blinding spot of light, and Fritz Henselman rolled in the opposite direction. Both stared at it, as it flickered on the rock. Then it was gone.

“I am treaming, brofessor, dot de sunshine is hidding de rock, also, it iss hidding my face in! Unt id vas hidding you, too, alretty. Vat iss? I am treaming it mit my eyes vide open!”

“This is singular! This is very singular!”

Professor Felix Bounderby uncoiled his long frame and got on his feet, as he made this admission. He stared at the sky and saw that the sun was not in a position to throw spots of light on the rock at that point.

“This is a natural phenomenon which I must investigate, Henselman,” he said. “I must add it to the notes for that lecture on ‘Peculiar Life in a Wild Region.’ The sun throws spots of light on the face of a white rock, when, according to all the known laws of light, it is not able to do so. This is worthy of special investigation.”

He took out his eyeglasses, hooked them over his nose, and stared hard at the rock where he had seen the moving light spots. Nothing of the kind showed there now.

The German had risen, or, rather, had rolled, to his feet, and he, too, was inspecting the white face of rock.

“By yiminy, id puzzle me alretty!” he admitted. “Maybe dis rock is vat you call dransparent, so dot de lighd uff de sun can shood t’rough id. Nein?”

“Impossible, Henselman. We are here in the presence of one of nature’s great mysteries. If we can elucidate it, fame may be ours. I shall add the discovery to those notes on my lecture on——”

He stopped. Buffalo Bill was coming up briskly, and the professor became aware of the fact.

“Welcome!” he said. “Mr. Cody, we have here a strange thing. Though the sun is behind this rock, yet white spots of light from it strike with a dancing effect on this side of the rock. I have wondered if there can be extra brilliant points of light in the sun, the opposite of sun spots in effect, which would produce anything like that? There would need to be some reflecting surface, however, and——”

The dancing spots came again, flickering in a queer and irregular way over the rock.

The scout saw them for the first time. He watched them, as they flashed and flickered for nearly a minute, then they were gone.

“Every phenomenon of nature has a perfectly natural solution, Cody, if it can be known,” said the amazed Bounderby.

“Very true, professor,” the scout answered. “In this instance, the explanation isn’t far to seek. Those are telegraphic spots of light from a heliographic instrument.”

They came again, and the scout stared at them. He was reading them:

“‘We are at the red bluff. Join us at once. She is still missing and we need you.’”

The spots disappeared.

Buffalo Bill repeated to Bounderby and Henselman what he had read.

“Over in the hills, there, at a point where its mirrors catch the sunlight, is a heliograph instrument. By means of it a message was flashed on that white rock, the flashes representing in their duration the dots and dashes of the Morse telegraphic code. Fortunately, I learned the code, and have practiced it enough to be able to read those flashes.”

“Yaw! Dot iss a telegraph?”

“It is a sunlight telegraph. The light of the sun falls on its mirrors, and is then reflected, or thrown, to this spot.”

The flashes were reappearing, and again the scout studied them.

“The same message again,” he said.

“But who is sending that message?” said Bounderby, who was so puzzled he took off his tall hat and scratched his bald head.

“I don’t know,” the scout was forced to admit. “Perhaps they think they know us. They call for help. And they speak of a missing girl. It must be the girl whose tracks we followed, and who you thought had been carried off by an orang-utan.”

“This—is—remarkable!” said Bounderby. “Remarkable!”

“The sender of that message and his instrument must be in that direction!” said the scout. “The light could not well be flashed to this spot from any other direction. Over there must be the red bluff mentioned in the message. The way to clear up this mystery is to go there and find the sender of the message. Perhaps we will in that way get more speedily on the tracks of the girl and the wild creature that carried her away.”

“We supposed, Cody, that we were the only people in this forsaken country,” said Bounderby, still scratching his bald head. “It appears we were mistaken. That young lady must have belonged to the party which is trying to signal us. But why are they trying to signal us? It can’t be that they know us.”

“The way to find out is to go over there, and I’m ready to start at once.”

“Cody, we are with you! Henselman, get the hand bag. I am feeling a bit hungry, but we can eat something as we go on. Yes, Cody, this is important. The spots were not thrown directly from the sun, but by a heliograph! I must put that in the notes for my lecture. Cody, we are ready to start at once. This is certainly a remarkable adventure.”

They had not had breakfast, yet they set out, heading in what the scout was sure was the right course, Bounderby gnawing at some meat as they pressed on, and Henselman sweating and puffing under the weight of the hand bag, which was made heavy by many specimens of rocks and ores.

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