CHAPTER II

ON TO NEW YORK

Joe Duncan looked at his chum Blake Stewart in surprise. Neither knew what to say, and Mr. Duncan seemed so affected by the unexpected news that his son was seriously alarmed.

But Joe was used to meeting emergencies. His work in taking moving pictures had put him in good trim for this. In a moment he had recovered his poise.

“Gone to Africa; eh?” he exclaimed. “Well, I don’t know that Africa is much farther than China, Dad,” and he spoke cheerfully.

“What do you mean, son?”

“I mean that if Jessie has gone to Africa we’ll go there to get her!”

“That’s it!” cried Blake. “The jungles of Africa can’t be much worse than the wild parts of China.”

“But the natives!” exclaimed Mr. Duncan. “This letter says that the African tribes are on the verge of an uprising. If that had been known before Jessie started they would not have let her go. As it is, they have written to her, and the missionaries she is with--a man and his wife--to come back. But it will be some time before they get the letter, for they are far in the interior.”

“Well, don’t worry, Dad,” advised Joe, cheerfully. “We’ll make out all right. We’ll soon start after her and get her away from those natives--if they chance to have her.”

“Do you mean that?” cried Mr. Duncan.

“I sure do, Dad. The jungles of Africa, or the wilds of China--it’s all the same to us; isn’t it, Blake?”

“It sure is. Count me in!”

“And will you come with us?” asked Joe’s father.

“I certainly will!” came the quick answer.

“And we won’t lose any time,” added Joe. “We were going to engage passage to China; it will be just as easy to do so to Africa, though it may take a little longer. Now let’s get back to the boarding house and arrange the details.”

And, while father and son, with the latter’s chum, are on their way back to the fishing hamlet, I will take the opportunity to make my new readers a little better acquainted with Joe and Blake--the moving picture boys--whose adventures they are soon to follow in the “Dark Continent.”

The lads were first told of in the initial volume of this series, entitled “The Movie Boys on Call”; or “Filming the Perils of a great City.” In the beginning Blake Stewart worked for his uncle, Jonathan Haverstraw, in the village of Fayetteburg, in the middle part of New York State. Mr. Haverstraw had a farm, and on an adjoining one, owned by Zachariah Bradley, Joe Duncan worked. Joe thought himself without relatives, since from his earliest days he could remember none.

Owing to the fact that Mr. Bradley found he could no longer pay Joe’s wages, and because Blake’s uncle decided to give up his farm and retire to a home for the aged, the two lads unexpectedly found themselves without positions at the same time, Blake having no other relative than Mr. Haverstraw.

But, just at this time, a Mr. Calvert Hadley came to Fayetteburg with a theatrical company to take some moving pictures. The boys met him, and after some negotiations were engaged by him to go to New York.

There they learned the business and helped Mr. Hadley, who was engaged in getting out a “moving picture newspaper,” showing the perils of the great city, odd scenes and happenings, train wrecks, burning buildings and the like. The boys liked the work very much, though often they were in great danger. They managed to cause the arrest of a reckless autoist who had smashed the carriage of Mrs. Betty Randolph, a Southern lady living in Fayetteburg, and, securing the reward she had offered, Blake and Joe bought moving picture cameras for themselves. Then they went into business on their own account, making all sorts of films to order.

It was while engaged in this work that a strange commission came to them. The second volume of the series, called “The Movie Boys in the Wild West”; or “Stirring Days Among the Cowboys and Indians,” tells of this in detail.

In brief, the boys one day learned that a number of the Moqui and Navajo Indians had left their reservations in Arizona, and had hidden themselves in the desert, there to go through some of their ancient dances and ceremonies.

A certain geographical society was anxious to get a series of films of these ceremonies, and offered a prize for the best ones. Joe and Blake decided to try for it, as did a number of other concerns, including one that was a rival of our heroes.

Before leaving for the West, however, Joe received a strange letter. It intimated that he might find his father, of whose existence he was uncertain. The letter was written by a roving cowboy, and the only clue was that he had been at Big B ranch somewhere in Arizona. He forgot to mention just where.

Full of hope, not only of getting films of the Indians, but of finding Mr. Duncan, Joe and Blake started out. They had many adventures, for the theatrical company went with them, Mr. Ringold, the proprietor, needing some films of the West, with cowboys and Indians. After “filming” a number of Western dramas, Joe and Blake started off to find the hidden Indians. Unexpectedly they located Big B ranch, but the cowboy who had written the letter was gone. However, another cowboy, Hank Selby by name, decided to go with the lads to help find the Indians, for Joe and Blake were tenderfeet.

They located the fanatical Moquis, got the films of the weird dances, were attacked and saved, not only themselves, but their rivals. Joe’s uncle, Bill Duncan, chanced to be one of the United States troopers who drove the Indians back to their reservation.

Joe’s uncle gave news of Joe’s father. The latter, it seems, had been made a widower when the two children--Joe and Jessie--were young. He placed them in the care of a family, and went to the gold fields. When he came back--quite a rich man--the two children had disappeared and he could find no trace of them, as the family he left them with had separated.

Joe’s uncle said the lad’s father was a lighthouse keeper somewhere on the California coast, and, after the Indian pictures had been obtained, Joe decided to look for his parent. Blake offered to accompany him.

The boys thought they would have to say good-bye to their theatrical friends, but Mr. Ringold had long contemplated a series of sea dramas, and, learning that the two lads were going to the coast, he hired them, together with Mr. Hadley, to make the films near the Pacific Ocean.

In the third book of the series, entitled “The Movie Boys and the Wreckers”; or “Facing the Perils of the Deep,” you will find the details of further strange happenings.

Mr. Duncan, so Joe learned, was assistant keeper of a lighthouse near San Diego. Going there with the company, which engaged quarters in the beach settlement of Chester, Joe sought his parent. But, to his surprise, Mr. Duncan had left unexpectedly, and the lightkeeper intimated to Blake, privately, that it was a good thing he had.

Pressed for a reason, the keeper said that detectives had come to arrest Mr. Duncan on a charge of having helped to wreck some vessels by means of false lights on the coast.

How the boys traced the real wreckers and assisted in their capture; how they took part in thrilling sea scenes, and helped make films for the theatrical company, I have set down fully in the book.

Then came the big storm, the wreck of the ship and the saving of the crew. Mr. Duncan was among them, and on the beach his son found him. The two were happy, and Mr. Duncan told of his long search for his children. He had given up hope of ever finding Joe, and was on his way to China to recover his daughter, of whom he had unexpectedly gotten trace, when he was wrecked. Then, after his rescue, he and Joe and Blake decided they would make a further attempt to reach the Flowery Kingdom.

Just a word about the theatrical company. There were the usual number of characters, but the one who caused the most amusement was Mr. Christopher Cutler Piper, who was variously called “C. C.,” or “Gloomy.” The reason for the latter nickname was that he was always predicting direful happenings which never came to pass, or was always looking on the dark side of things. And this in spite of the fact that he was supposed to be the comedian of the company, when not filling other rôles.

The reason he was called C. C. was because he did not like the name Christopher Cutler. He said the boys used to call him “Christopher Custard,” so he used his initials only, and asked others to do the same. He was a source of much amusement to his friends, including the boys.

“And so we are to go to Africa instead of China,” remarked Blake, when he and his chum, with Mr. Duncan, had reached the boarding house.

“So it seems,” spoke Joe. “Just in what part of Africa is Jessie, Dad? Jove! how queer it seems to be using her name just as if I had known her all my life, when, as a matter of fact, I can’t remember her.”

“Why, as nearly as the society in New York can tell,” answered Mr. Duncan, “she is with a Mr. and Mrs. Brown, at a missionary station somewhere near Entebbe, on the upper Victoria Nyanza. It’s in the jungle, far from a white settlement. My poor little girl!”

“Don’t worry, Dad! We’ll find her!” exclaimed Joe.

“Of course we will!” said Blake, with a confidence he did not altogether feel. “I wish we were there now. I’ve always wanted to go to Africa.”

“We’ll have to start from New York,” said Mr. Duncan, who had been looking at maps and steamer routes. “And the sooner we get there the better.”

“We might as well travel with the theatrical crowd,” suggested Blake. “They’ll soon be leaving, and we’ll have company. Besides, Mr. Ringold might decide to get some jungle dramas, and we could film them.”

But the theatrical manager had no such intention.

“I’m going to run a series of city dramas,” he said, when the boys told him the news. “Of course, I’d like to have you make the pictures for me, but if you are going to Africa you can’t. However, Mr. Hadley will do it, and when you come back I may have a new commission for you. I wish you all sorts of luck.”

“They’ll never come back alive,” predicted C. C., in his most gloomy tones, and then he continued to hum a comic song.

“Oh, don’t be so melancholy,” said Miss Lee, one of the actresses.

“Terrible place--African jungle,” went on the comedian. “Fevers, wild animals, wilder natives, snakes, elephants, bugs of all kinds, swamps--ugh! Excuse me!”

“Oh, I guess we can manage,” said Joe, cheerfully.

“If we can’t we’ll send for you,” added Blake, with a laugh.

“Never!” cried C. C. Piper.

The final scenes at the lighthouse were filmed, the boys and their friends packed up, and then, accompanied by the theatrical company, Joe, Blake and Mr. Duncan started for New York, soon to embark for the jungles of Africa.