midnight
This remark , however , was made sotto voce to Lathrop , as Billy really stood in great awe of the six foot-two of ebony flesh and muscle that was Sikaso . But Stubbs was delighted at his selection to accompany the boys in their aerial dash for the ivory cache . He spent half the night by lantern light pottering about the great craft and stocking her up with provisions and equipment for the journey . By the time he had finished it was almost midnight and he turned in to join the boys in the land of dreams where Frank and Harry , and doubtless the others , too , were already busy shooting down Diegos and hippopotami and flitting through the air above the great African forest and performing all sorts of wonderful feats . At dawn everybody was up and about and after farewells had been said the Chester boys and their sturdy old companion clambered into the chassis of their craft . Frank had already laid out his course , which lay about two points west of north . The boy calculated that this direction would bring them within a few miles at any rate of the cache .