“Hot-diggetty-dig! that ere smoke cloud sure looks jest like an ole peasoup fog-pack we done got lost in not so far back. By gravy! I doant b’lieve we’ll even git one squint at the pesky city as we fly over the same!”
“I can easily see where I’m bound to have a lot of fun listening to you trying to talk in three different lingoes, all mixed up in one great mess—Yankee, your native brogue; Canadian patios, contracted while with the Northwest Mounted Police; and now a pidgin English, such as a Southern colored boy might use. I only hope such a mixture doesn’t queer the big game we’ve got laid out ahead for us, whatever its nature proves to be.”
“I er-reckons—yeou says I gotter use that word right along naow, ’cause no Alabama white or black boy never does guess anything—I reckons, suh, I’ll git a strangle-holt on the way a gen-u-ine cracker keeps up his end o’ a talkie—given a little time fo’ practice.”
“That begins to sound like the real stuff, comrade,” observed Jack; and despite the clamor of engine exhaust, and whirling propellers both of them were able to hear every word uttered, simply because they were wearing their usual earphone attachments, without which they never made a flight. “I’m beginning to feel encouraged to believe you’ll come through with flying colors. There, we’re directly over Birmingham, and going strong to eastward.”
“Huh! I’m right glad yeou done tole me so, suh,” Perk hastened to reply, doubtless with one of his usual chuckles; “’case all I kin make aout’s a black smudge o’ smoke ahuggin’ the ground, with a few church steeples apokin’ a finger through the same. So, there she lies, my own, my native city! Ain’t it affectin’, though, ole pal, acomin’ back like this, after many years, an’ discoverin’ that same thick smoke fog asettled daown on the dear old place? Gee whiz! I’m jest awonderin’ whether us Southern kids ever did have a gen-u-ine ole swimmin’-hole in them won-derful days, eh, what?”
When they were positively alone, and no danger of crafty eavesdroppers picking up their words, the two cronies were pleased to extract a certain amount of fun out of their assumed characters—for Jack Ralston of course was also sailing under a nom-de-guerre, as well as his best pal—with him the new name was “Rodman Warrington,” and he was supposed to be a rich and eccentric New York City sportsman, weary of the routine of the Carrituck Sound shooting club to which he belonged, and ardently desirous of exploring the various bays, sounds and twisting rivers along the wild coast of North and South Carolina, as well as Georgia.
“To be sure they did, brother,” Jack was saying, reassuringly, in reply to the skeptical question propounded by his running mate; “if you stop and think you’ll remember how every American boy who grew up and amounted to shucks was always getting a great thrill out of memories of such a meeting-place, where all the boys took occasion to show off in doing stunts with a diving board.”
“Say, naow ’at we’ve left dear ole Birmingham in the rear, haow long ’fore we drop daown on Candler Field outside Atlanta?”
“Depends on what time we keep making,” Jack informed him; “we’re speeding along at a hundred-and-twenty clip just now, with only two motors working; and if there was any necessity for fetching it up to an even hundred-and-fifty we could easily enough do the same—and then some. I reckon we’ll come in sight of Candler Field in about an hour-and-a-half—the chart tells me it’s something like one-fifty miles, as the bee flies, between this Southern Pittsburgh and the Capital of Georgia.”
“Meanin’ to stop over in Atlanta long, partner?” demanded Perk; who apparently was not wholly advised of his leader’s plans, as far as they were matured, and as usual “wanted to know.”