Eagles of the Sky: or, With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes

“She’s amovin’ okay, old hoss!” gasped Perk who had been doing considerable straining, anxious to display his ability as a mudhook lifter. “A few more good pulls an’ we’ll have the old gink where we want it.”

The task being completed, the sloop began to move backward, very much like those fiddler crabs Perk had watched retreating before his attack on one of the sandy Florida beaches.

“Looks like I’d better go aboard our ship and get away from here before anything happens to disable a wing,” Jack hastened to remark, sensing possible trouble which would be in the nature of a serious calamity just then.

“Go to it then, matey,” Perk told him, light-heartedly enough, “I’m ready to do my stuff as a half-cooked engineer. Don’t worry a bit about my gettin’ there with both feet if the bally motor only holds together. Don’t like its looks any too much, but then Lady Luck seems to be givin’ us a heap o’ favors, so we’re goin’ to finish after the Garrison style–heavy on the home stretch.”

Before Perk reached the last word his chum had gained his seat in the cubbyhole of the amphibian, and almost immediately called out:

“Cut that rope and let me get away, partner–hurry up before I get another and harder bump!”

Ten seconds afterward the airship was entirely free from contact with the drifting sloop. Then came the roar of the motor showing that Jack had given her the gun. Instantly there was a forward movement of the amphibian, which increased rapidly until it was rushing along with great speed presently lifting its nose toward the heavens and leaving the rolling surface of the gulf, soared aloft in repeated circles.

Perk, after seeing that his pal was well on his way, turned his attention to his own job. He had no particular trouble in coaxing the engine to start, although it did considerable “grunting” as though its joints might be rusty and in need of lubricating oil, thus telling that the late skipper had allowed his engineer to neglect his duties in a climate where the salt in the air always rusted the inside of gun barrels, machinery of all descriptions, and in many ways played havoc with exposed metal parts.

However, after the engine got well warmed up it began to work more smoothly so that Perk lost some of his first anxiety.

“Goin’ to get along okay I guess,” he assured himself and then, keeping the prow of his vessel headed due south, he found time to try and discover where Jack and his soaring crate might be.

The engine was a gas motor and well supplied with an abundance of fuel, since the winds on their recent voyage around the Florida Keys must have been favorable as a whole and with the motive power idle there had been no drain on the gas.

Perk was feeling prime at that particular moment in his checkered career. It afforded him much pride to thus be in sole charge of a captured rum-runner with a cargo of contraband aboard. Then, too, all doubts concerning his ability to serve as an engineer were already dissipated for the sloop was making fair time and carried a bone in her teeth, as the white lines of foam running out on either side attested.

Perk was softly singing to himself some marine ditty he had picked up in the course of his adventurous life afloat and ashore and which had for a title “Rolling Down to Old Mohea”–it thrilled him to the core to feel that he was luckily able to afford Jack just the assistance the other required so as to perfect his plan of campaign.

Now he believed he could glimpse the amphibian overhead–yes, the moon, poking her nose out from behind a bank of clouds, allowed him to make certain–Jack had swung back and was circling, so as to keep the sloop within range of his vision.

“Just like a guardeen angel,” mused the enraptured Perk, standing at his post and sending frequent curious as well as proud glances aloft, “as he told me he meant to be. Say, ain’t this simply great stuff we’ve struck?–never felt so joyous in all my life as when I smashed them two tear-bombs down on the deck here an’ busted up that fightin’ mob. Zowie! how quick they got a move on, every single man but the one lone dickey we found knocked out down below-stairs. Ev’rything movin’ along like silk–who cares whether school keeps or not, with us boys on the top wave o’ success.”

Then he concluded to stop premature boasting, knowing very well that as in a game of baseball nothing is settled until the last man has been put out.

So the voyage down the coast continued steadily enough, the minutes running along into hours, with faithful Perk keeping steadfastly at his new job.

From time to time he would find the plane hovering directly over his head, and was able to catch certain signals which he could understand because of a previous arrangement he and Jack had.

Although the moving sloop was not over a mile or so from the shore line, it was next to impossible for Perk to catch a fleeting glimpse of land, so as to get his bearings.

“Huh!” he told himself at one time after he had received instructions to draw a bit further toward the open gulf, as he was approaching some point of land jutting into the water, and thus making a shoal possibly covered with coon-oysters, on which he was apt to pull up hurriedly with disastrous results, “this here is like flyin’ blind at a five thousand-foot ceilin’,–Jack, he c’n see the land by usin’ the night glasses, so it’s a good thing I c’n get tips from him right along. Gee! this sure is gettin’ some monotonous, keepin’ this old motor hummin’ when it’s on the blink so bad. Must be a wheen past midnight, I’d say, an’ we ought to be clost to them Ten Thousand Islands by now.”

He had been keeping close watch on the stars and although making no claims to being a first-class woodsman, Perk could tell the time of night by the heavenly bodies setting one after another, which would account for his late confident assertion that morning could not be so very far distant.

Once only during all this time did Perk happen to see a far distant light out at sea. It interested him more or less and naturally caused him to speculate as to whether it might have any connection with the great game in which he and Jack were now engaged. Everything he had ever heard or read connected with the Mexican Gulf seemed to pass in review through his active mind–there was a halo of romance hovering about that historical sheet of salt water and while Perk was not much given to flights of fancy, he found himself picturing some of the thrilling scenes he had recently read about, after learning that the next locality in which he and Jack would play their adventurous part was along the Florida Gulf Coast.

Then he suddenly found himself listening intently, for above the pounding of the old motor, with an occasional “miss” to break the monotony, he fancied he had caught the signal Jack was to give him when the time arrived for making a turn toward the coast.

“Bully boy, Jack!” Perk cried out when he found that he had not been deceived. “I’ll be right pleased to drop this tiresome job an’ think myself some lucky to miss havin’ the tub run on a reef, or the bally motor kickin’ off an’ quittin’ cold. Yes, an’ there’s what looks like a bunch o’ cabbage palms stickin’ their tops against the sky-line. Better slow up, Perk, old scout, afore you hit some stump or get aground off shore.”

So he throttled the motor a bit and fairly crept along. He even found himself wishing he had fixed things so that the prisoner might stand by with a sounding pole in the bow of the sloop to sing out the depth and give warning of sudden shallows but it was too late now to attempt such a thing, even if he had dared take the chance of the fellow jumping overboard and either drowning or getting ashore to give warning as to the menace hovering above the operations of the far-flung smuggler combine.

But fortune was still kind and presently Perk found himself softly gliding past the outermost mangrove islands. Here, he remembered, it was his duty to come about and lay to until Jack could drop down and taxi over to where the sloop lay so as to consider their further plans in the coming dawn.

CHAPTER X

TAMPA BOUND

“Congrats, Perk,” said Jack, as soon as he came close enough, “you did the thing up in first-class shape. If all other jobs went back on you I reckon you could get your papers along the engineering line. A bit tired in the bargain I take it, partner?”

“Lay off on that stuff, matey,” replied the other, scornfully, “me, I never get what you’d call tired, but jest the same I’m right glad it’s all over an’ the rotten crate didn’t get sunk out there–hate to lose all this bottled juice we come by in such a queer way. Climb aboard, Jack, an’ let’s have a little talk-fest while we rest up.”

“Later on I’d be glad to do that,” he was told. “We’d be wise to push further in among these islands before morning comes along if any sponger or fisherman happened to glimpse this pair of odd sea and air craft he’d spread the story far and wide and get us in Dutch. I’ll fasten a tow line on to the ship here, if you’ll toss me a coil and taxi away back where there wouldn’t be one chance in a thousand of our being seen.”

“I get you, buddy,” Perk hastened to say, as he made ready to toss the bight of stout rope to his waiting chum, “and it’s all to the good with me. Dandy luck we’ve been havin’ for a fact, on’y hope it keeps on that way to the finish line. Here you are, Boss!”

After Jack had made the small hawser fast he started the taxi stunt and presently they were moving past the outlying clumps of mangroves with never a bit of trouble. Perk made himself comfortable by throwing his really fatigued form flat on the deck and stretching his muscles to the limit.

This continued for some little time until finally Jack shut off his power and came alongside, ready to climb aboard the sloop.

“We’ll tie her up to this nearby clump of mangroves, where you’ll notice there’s a bunch of tall palmetto trees growing, showing there must be ground, such as few of these islands can boast. I’m picking this place especially because those cabbage palms will keep the mast of the sloop from sticking up and betraying its location to any flyer passing over.”

“I’d call that a mighty fine idea, partner,” declared Perk enthusiastically. “Never would athought o’ anything like that myself–my old bean don’t work along them lines I guess. An’ when I’ve done that camouflage act again nobody ain’t agoin’ to spy out a single thing down this-aways. Great work, if I do say it myself, Jack old boy.”

After he had managed to fasten the bow of the sloop to one of the palmetto trees, Jack crawled aboard. He must have also felt more or less tired, after being caged in the small confines of the cockpit so long, for he followed Perk’s example and dropped down on the deck to stretch out while they exchanged opinions.

“None too soon for our safety,” was the first remark Jack made, “see, there in the east the sky has begun to take on a faint rosy tint which means the sun must be making ready to rise.”

“Things are workin’ just lovely for us, I’d mention, old hoss,” suggested Perk, with one of his good-humored chuckles that told how well pleased he must be on account of the many “breaks” that persisted in coming their way. “Let the mornin’ come along when it pleases, it don’t matter a red cent to us back here in this gloomy solitude.”

They started to exchange opinions concerning the remarkable happenings of the night just passed and in this way many things that had not been very clear to Perk were made plain. On his part he was able to offer several suggestions that added to the stock of knowledge Jack already possessed so that it was a mutual affair after all.

“I rather reckon somebody’s going to get a surprise packet when I finish explaining just how this contraband sloop and cargo fell into our hands,” Jack was saying at one time, apparently vastly amused himself. “Fact is, I wouldn’t blame the Commissioner for believing I was drawing the long bow when he hears about those tear-bombs you tossed out that scattered the crowd like I’ve heard you tell a shell used to do when it dropped into a dugout over in the Argonne.”

As they lay there taking things easy, the heavens in the east assumed a most wonderful range of various delicate tints that made even Perk gasp with admiration. Birds started singing, mocking birds and cardinals among others, crows could be heard cawing close by as though there might be a hidden bird roost not far distant. This was corroborated later on when streams of white egrets flew past, scattering to find their morning meal.

So, too, circling buzzards could be seen far above as they searched for signs of a feast in the shape of a dead fish cast ashore on some sandbar or mudbank–a heavy plunge not far away told of a monster alligator that had been lying asleep on some log, taking a dive as he noticed the presence of two-legged human enemies whom he had reason to suspect of designs on his life.

“How about a little grub for a change, partner?” demanded Perk, after they had been talking for quite some time.

“I reckon it wouldn’t come amiss,” admitted Jack; “but if you’ve got any idea of starting a fire and making coffee, better throw that overboard right away, for in the first place you’d find it a hard job to run across any solid ground among all these mangrove islands and then besides it might not be the wisest thing going to send up a column of smoke to attract attention to this quarter. Get that do you, Perk?”

“Y–es,” admitted the other, with a disconsolate shrug of his shoulders as if he had no liking for the scheme being thus tabooed, “s’pose it’s jest like you put it, Jack, though I own up I was hopin’ we might make a pot o’ coffee. Just the same we got plenty o’ fresh water along, even if it is sorter warm an’ coffee’d taste just prime, but I c’n stand anything when necessity drives. So let’s get our teeth in some eats without botherin’ further, ’cause I’m half starved an’ them sandwiches’d go fine.”

Accordingly they started operations, Perk clambering aboard the amphibian to fish out the package of “eats”, he knowing best where it had been secreted on the previous evening after they had supper near this same spot.

As they munched their dry food they continued to talk, finding plenty of subjects bearing on their work that would be the better for further study.

“There’s only one way we can arrange things so as to keep our clutch on the spoils we’ve rustled so far and do our duty according to orders.”

“I kinder guess I c’n smell a rat already, Jack,” chuckled Perk as he wrapped up the remnant of the food supply which he had taken from their main stock–“I’m the goat in the deal–you figger on me stayin’ here in this ’gator hole to stand by the ship an’ knock the block off’n anybody what tries to get away with our property–how’s that for a straight hit square in the bullseye?”