“The good old plane was equipped for both sending and receiving, and I tell you we patrolled that fourteen miles of flaming forest, sometimes coming so close to the tree tops that we almost seemed to brush them.
“My duty, of course, was to report the progress of the fire. Controlled at one point, it broke out at another, and it was through the messages from my ’plane to the ground set stationed just behind the fire line that the men were moved from one danger point to the next.
“Finally, the fire seeming nearly out along one side of the ridge, I sent the men to fighting it on the other side, where it had been left to rage uncontrolled. No sooner had the men scattered for the danger point than the brooding fire broke out again and it was necessary to recall half the men.
“It was a long fight and a hard one, but with the aid of the blessed old wireless, we finally won out. As a matter of fact, the wireless-equipped airplane has become as necessary to the Forest Service as ships are to the navy.
“In the old days,” he went on, seeing that the boys were still deeply interested, “when they depended upon the ordinary telephone to convey warnings of fires they were surely leaning upon a broken reed.
“Often, just when they needed the means of communication most, the fire would sweep through the woods, destroying trees to which the telephone wires were fastened, and melting the wires themselves. So the eyes of the Forest Service were put out and they were forced to work in the dark.”
“But I should think,” protested Bob, “that there would be times when even wireless would be put out of the job. Suppose the fire were to reach one of the stations equipped with wireless. What then?”
Mr. Bentley laughed as though amused at something.
“I can tell you an interesting incident connected with that,” he said. “And one that shows the pluck and common sense of radio operators in general—don’t think that I’m throwing bouquets at myself, now, for first and last, I am a pilot, even if sometimes I find it necessary to employ radio.
“Well, anyway, this operator that I am speaking of, found himself in a perilous position. A fire had been raging for days, and now it was so close to his station that the station itself was threatened.