The other smiled “Fun? Fun you will get all right if you should ever fall into the hands of the bandit tribes that infest the sands. I know them. During the war I was handled rather roughly by them in France, although I was no enemy of theirs. They had been forced into the fight and they wanted to be savage. And they knew how. You talk about the Turk. He was nothing compared to them. At least the Turk was fighting for his country--these just fought for the sake of killing. They would have put an end to me, had not help come in time.” “All right! We can talk matters over tomorrow. Let’s find a hotel, if there is one, where we can get a bite to eat. I’m starving.” The pilot rejoined, “All right, so am I.” The aeroplane had landed but a short distance from the city and it had already attracted a host of bewildered people. They had never seen an aeroplane before, so on they came, old and young, black and white, to examine the strange monster from the sky. No less strange to them appeared the two men who had come with it. In language unknown to Carl, they pointed from the machine to the men, showing plainly their awe and fear. A French army officer came up to Carl and questioned him as to the accident, but Carl could only refer him to the pilot, who had returned to the wrecked machine, the motley mob scattering to all sides at his approach. After the pilot had secured all that was likely to fall prey to the thieving fingers of the crowd--the Arabs and their kin are born thieves--he and Carl set out for the hotel to which the officer had directed them. As they approached the hotel, the proprietor, a shifty-looking Arabian-Jew, stepped out to greet them with a great show of welcome and a greater anticipation of gain. Carl had learned from his pilot that caravans left very seldom and at irregular intervals for the north, because of the unexplored conditions of the desert and of the still greater danger of being beset by the roaming bands of bandits, who ever lay in wait for caravans of merchants. He came to the conclusion, therefore, after studying his maps, that he had best secure an automobile to take him to Bammurka, from which point he could take the railroad to St. Louis or Dakar on the Atlantic coast. From there he could get passage to New York, while his pilot could easily return by water to Algeria. This meant a tedious journey of some five hundred miles, by automobile, down the Niger and Joliba rivers, but it appeared the most feasible plan. He questioned the hotel keeper as to the prospects of securing an automobile and to his regret was told that such a thing was out of the question. There were a few automobiles to be sure, but there was not enough gasoline in Timbuktoo at that time to last half the trip. In fact every one of the machines was useless because of this scarcity of fuel. Carl recalled, too, that they had been forced to land the aeroplane because the gasoline supply was getting low.