There was an exclamation of delight from Kyle and the professor half started from his chair when they grasped Captain Kane’s meaning.

“Surely, Frank, you’re not in earnest!” Professor Bruce blurted out.

“Never more so in my life,” replied the captain, as he glanced with a smile from one to the other.

“But—but it’s never been done,” stammered the professor, fairly taken off his feet by the daring of the scheme.

“All the more reason it should be done.” was the calm reply. “There’s got to be a first time for everything, and why shouldn’t we be the pioneers?”

“Oh, it will be just great, Uncle Frank!” cried Kyle, almost dancing in his excitement.

“How can an automobile get through a pathless desert of sand?” objected Professor Bruce. “You couldn’t get power enough to drive it along.”

“That’s true of the ordinary machine,” conceded the captain. “But I saw something in the town to-day that has set me thinking. I’m going to make a thorough study of it to-morrow, and then we’ll talk it over. Let’s defer the matter till then. You and Kyle come with me. Then we’ll know better what we are talking about, and can go into the matter thoroughly.”

This was agreed on, though Kyle was consumed with curiosity and would gladly have stayed up half the night to learn more of what his adventurous uncle had in mind.

Even when the morning dawned, however, he had to restrain his impatience for a while, as the captain’s first task was to set whatever agencies he could in motion to bring about the release of Mr. Allison from captivity, if he should still be alive.

Captain Kane went first to the representative of the French Government and laid the matter before him. That official was polite and sympathetic, but not encouraging. The Hoggar Plateau was a long way off, and the difficulties of the task seemed to him almost insuperable. He had only a slender garrison to support his authority, and at the moment could not spare a sufficient number of men to make the search. He promised, however, to communicate with his Government, and perhaps some way could be found to send out an expedition.

From the French Residency, the captain went to the telegraph office and sent a long dispatch to the American representative at Algiers, laying before him all he knew of the mishap of his countryman and urging energetic action in his behalf. He asked that a reply should be sent to him at the earliest possible moment.

For the moment, this was all that could be done, and the captain returned to the hotel for his companions.

“Not much hope from any of these sources, I’m afraid,” he remarked to Professor Bruce and Kyle, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow and dropped into a chair on the veranda. “They would like to help if they could, but their resources in this out-of-the-way place are inadequate. Moreover, their hands are so tied with red tape that months probably would pass before they got started, if they started at all. I guess whatever’s done we’ll have to do ourselves. But now come along, before it gets too hot.”

Just as they were getting ready to go, Teddy came along and received a cordial greeting from all of them.

“Can Teddy come with us?” asked Kyle eagerly.

“Sure thing,” replied the captain, with a genial smile that warmed Teddy’s heart. “He’s one of the family now, you know, until we find his father.”

There was plenty of interest in the little town on the fringe of the desert to keep the boys in a state of keen interest and animation. Even to Teddy, to whom it was familiar, there was something new all the time to see and learn.

Except in the French quarter, there were no paved streets. The roads were winding and narrow, so narrow in places that it was impossible for a vehicle to get through.

“It would be easy for Teddy or me to leap from a housetop on one side of the street to one on the opposite side,” observed Kyle, standing in the street and looking up.

“Don’t try it, though,” laughed his Uncle Amos.

The houses were mostly made of mud, baked to the consistency of stone under the scorching heat of the African sun. The interiors, they could see as they passed, were dark and small.

“Many of these have no windows, and all the light they get comes through the door!” exclaimed Kyle.

“The lack of windows is not due to poverty or indifference, but because the light that would stream in would make the rooms intolerably hot,” explained Teddy.

Groups of Arab children played about the doors, apparently oblivious of the heat. Men, in garments that had once been white, went to and fro in the street on their daily avocations. Others idled their time away in the coffee houses with which the town was liberally provided. Women, their faces veiled, passed along, coming from or going to market. Now and then a camel, groaning and grumbling under his load, went by, his driver walking alongside. There was no hurry or bustle, as in an American or European city.

“If time were money, these fellows would all be millionaires,” Kyle remarked, with a laugh, to Teddy.

There were few shops in the ordinary sense of the word, except some kept by foreign residents. Little strings of shacks without doors extended along the business streets, with the goods displayed where all could see and handle them. Behind the piles of merchandise, the owners sat on cushions and smoked placidly as though they cared little whether they sold or not. But when a sale seemed to be in prospect, they woke speedily to life, and then ensued a scene of haggling and bargaining in which voices rose to screams, and it seemed as though a violent quarrel were going on.

“There won’t be any bloodshed,” remarked Teddy, grinning, as Kyle looked apprehensively at an unusually turbulent scene. “They’re the best friends in the world. That’s just their way of doing business. The shopkeeper asks five times as much as he expects to get. The customer offers one fifth of what he expects he’ll have to pay. One keeps going lower and the other higher until they finally reach a figure that suits them both. It’s all in the game.”

Before long the Americans reached the French Residency, which comprised a large area of ground about the handsome building over which floated the flag of France.

Captain Kane led the way to a section of the compound where, under the shade of a large roof, stood a number of what looked at a distance like ordinary automobiles.

“There, Amos, are the cars with which, if I’m any prophet, we’re going to cross the desert to the Hoggar Plateau,” he said to the professor, as he came to a stand before three cars that were a little apart from the rest.

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the professor, as he took a startled look at them. “Do you call those automobiles? If so, they’re the queerest I ever saw.”

“Look at the back wheels!” blurted out Kyle. “Why, they can’t touch the sand at all with that long band of rubber in the way.”

“That’s just where their merit lies,” replied the smiling captain, hugely enjoying the wonderment of his companions. “If the wheels traveled on the sand, they’d sink in where the sand was soft. The sand would slip and shift under the wheels, and it would also clog the engine. Then, too, there are miles of sharp stones that would pierce an ordinary tire. So the Frenchman who made these cars took a leaf from the tanks in the war and put on this caterpillar tread. In other words, the car keeps laying down in front of it an endless roll of carpet, and the wheels roll on this carpet instead of on the sand. Come close and get a good look at it.”

They crowded around the nearest of the three cars, and examined it with the keenest interest. The wheels in the rear gave place to rollers. These were covered with a continuous band of rubber and canvas, which made a tough and supple flooring on which the car could travel. This increased the traction surface and obviated the possibility of the car’s sinking into the sand. The car, on these caterpillar rollers, did not really roll, but crept along without jerks. The engine was of forty horsepower.

“What time can a car like that make, do you suppose?” asked the professor.

“From forty-five to fifty-five miles an hour,” answered the captain.

“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Teddy. “That’s pretty fast traveling.”

“Yes,” agreed the captain with a smile. “And there’ll be no traffic policemen to hold you up for speeding; you can let the car out for all you are worth.”

“There may be others far more dangerous than traffic cops to hold us up, though,” put in the professor dryly. “Tuaregs, for instance.”

“Yes,” admitted the captain. “But that’s another story. I guess we’d be able to give a good account of ourselves, as far as those fellows are concerned.”

“Suppose we ran out of gas?” put in Kyle.

“I think we can guard against that,” was the reply. “Each of these cars has a barrel in the back that will carry two hundred gallons of gasoline. Then, too, I understand that the French Government, with a view of doing some time just what we propose to do, has established stations about 700 miles apart along the route we’re going to traverse, and that these are amply supplied. I guess we’ll have no trouble on that score.”

“How do these machines happen to be in this out of the way corner of the world, anyway?” asked the professor, in some curiosity.

“They’re the first consignment of a lot. Others are to follow,” explained Captain Kane. “These were sent to try them out as a mode of desert travel and see how they worked. The man in charge told me that he and his mechanics had been trying them out for a month past on desert trips of one or two hundred miles at a time, and that they had fulfilled all expectations. The trial tests are over, and these are for sale. The price is reasonable, and we can swing the deal with the funds we have on hand, if we decide that we’ll make the venture.”

“It is decided, as far as I am concerned,” said the professor calmly.

“What?” cried the captain, scarcely daring to believe his ears, for he had not dreamed of so easy a victory and had steeled himself for an argument.

“You heard me,” replied the professor, with a smile.

“Good for your sporting blood, Amos!” exclaimed the captain jubilantly, while Kyle and Teddy hugged each other and fairly danced with glee. “Here comes the man now who has these cars in charge. Let’s clinch the thing at once.”

The two men advanced to meet a lithe, bronzed man who was coming toward them, and immediately engaged him in an earnest conversation.

The boys, left to themselves for a time, examined the cars with the keenest zest and animation.

“I hope they let me drive one of them!” exclaimed Kyle.

“Do you know how to drive?” asked Teddy.

“Sure thing,” returned Kyle. “At home I spent most of my spare time about our garage, and our chauffeur taught me about all there was to know about a car. I’ve helped him take one apart and put it together again until I knew it like a book. Of course, I was too young to get a license to drive, but when we’ve been out on lonely country roads, I’ve been allowed to take the wheel and learn all about running it. Both my uncles are experts in handling a car, so without any extra help at all we could handle these three machines.”

“Will you teach me?” asked Teddy eagerly.

“Of course, I will, Teddy.”

“Call me Brick,” said Teddy. “That’s the name all the fellows at home used to call me, I suppose on account of the color of my mop. Somehow it sounds more natural and homelike. It reminds me of America.”

“All right,” replied Kyle, with a laugh, “Brick it is, then. And you certainly were a perfect brick the way you stood off those two rascals yesterday.”

“That’s funny!” exclaimed Brick, with a sudden start.

“What’s funny?” asked Kyle, in some surprise, as he looked about him.

“That you should be speaking of those thieves at just the moment they turned up,” answered Brick. “There they go now!” and he pointed to two figures hastily disappearing around a corner of the compound.

[Chapter 06 Maze: Help Kyle Escape]