This same employer, the Globe, late in 1910, provided additional opportunity for adventure when the editor advised him he was to be assigned overseas to cover a story in the then virtually unheard of city of Timbuktu. Carl, not being sure if this was a practical joke or not, went at once to his cartoonist friend Davenport and told him the good news. It was then he learned that Timbuktu was in the grips of the bubonic plague and no one else would accept the assignment. He set sail with a group of Catholic missionaries assigned to provide medical aid. The group sailed first to England and then to Africa's west coast. The final leg of the trip overland was completed by camel caravan.