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number of trips to land the entire party in the valley beyond the barrier; all will
depend, of course, upon what my first reconnaissance reveals."
That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona's towering barrier.
"You see now," remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan the summit
thousands of feet above us, "how futile it would have been to waste our time in
working out details of a plan to surmount those." And he jerked his thumb
toward the cliffs. "It would take weeks, possibly months, to construct a ladder to
the top. I had no conception of their formidable height. Our mortar would not
carry a line halfway to the crest of the lowest point. There is no use discussing
any plan other than the hydro-aeroplane. We'll find the beach and get busy."
Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could discern surf
about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all saw the line of breakers broken
by a long sweep of rolling surf upon a narrow beach. The launch was lowered,
and five of us made a landing, getting a good ducking in the ice-cold waters in the
doing of it; but we were rewarded by the finding of the clean-picked bones of what
might have been the skeleton of a high order of ape or a very low order of man,
lying close to the base of the cliff. Billings was satisfied, as were the rest of us,
that this was the beach mentioned by Bowen, and we further found that there
was ample room to assemble the sea-plane.
Billings, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting, with the result that
before mid-afternoon we had landed all the large boxes marked "H" upon the
beach, and were busily engaged in opening them. Two days later the plane was
assembled and tuned. We loaded tackles and ropes, water, food and ammunition
in it, and then we each implored Billings to let us be the one to accompany him.
But he would take no one. That was Billings; if there was any especially difficult
or dangerous work to be done, that one man could do, Billings always did it
himself. If he needed assistance, he never called for volunteers--just selected
the man or men he considered best qualified for the duty. He said that he
considered the principles underlying all volunteer service fundamentally wrong,
and that it seemed to him that calling for volunteers reflected upon the courage
and loyalty of the entire command.
We rolled the plane down to the water's edge, and Billings mounted the pilot's
seat. There was a moment's delay as he assured himself that he had everything
necessary. Jimmy Hollis went over his armament and ammunition to see that
nothing had been omitted. Besides pistol and rifle, there was the machine-gun
mounted in front of him on the plane, and ammunition for all three. Bowen's
account of the terrors of Caspak had impressed us all with the necessity for
proper means of defense.
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