When later on Perk announced that he could just make out some city far off on the right, Jack pronounced it to undoubtedly be Georgetown, which lay at the junction of the Pedee and the Little Pedee.
They had flown directly over the same city on their previous trip, showing how far west of their original course they were now working.
“We’re going to patrol this region most carefully, partner,” Jack told his best pal, who as usual was handling the binoculars to the best advantage, and calling out any discovery worth while, so as to keep his mate posted. “It has all the earmarks to make it a dandy hidingplace, where these sinister operations could be pulled off, day or night, and no one the wiser. What easier than for a sea-going plane to swoop over or around Georgetown, coming from some unknown point east, and then vanishing in the distance, still going west? Get that, don’t you, Wally?”
“Sounds all to the good with me, suh,” the other told him, nodding as he spoke. “I’m atryin’ to make aout some queer things daown there; but it’s all sech a scramble I jest caint do much. Mebbe if we dropped a bit things’d seem different like.”
“I’m going further west, so as to cover the ground,” Jack informed him, as though his immediate plans were made up, and he did not care to change; “but later on in the day I reckon we’ll be back this way, and possibly make camp for the night. I’d like to find out what sort of doings are taking place nights in this section; chances are we’ll pick up some interesting points before striking Charleston again.”
“Which same’d please me a heap, Mister,” quoth Perk; who was by now beginning to grow a little weary of what he termed “inaction;” and sighing for more strenuous times to come along, when there would be some real thrills experienced.
At noon they partook of a “snack,” devouring a few sandwiches, so as to take off the sharp edge of their appetites; Perk apologizing to himself for eating so scantily.
“If so be we’re agwine to dine ashore alongside a gen-u-ine campfire,” he went on in his whimsical fashion, “I wanter be in prime condition to do justice to the grub I’m meanin’ to sling up fo’ jest two gents, known to weuns as Mr. Rodman Warrington, an’ er—Wally Corkendall, of Birmin’ham, suh. So take things easy, an’ jest forget haow yeou’re still hungry, ole man; it’s on’y what that lecturer says is a figment o’ the imagination, an’ so you’re not a bit half starved.”
When about the middle of the afternoon they again arrived in the neighborhood of the sector which had appealed to them both as well worth paying particular attention to, Jack signified that he was meaning to do something in the line of lowering their ceiling, and finding out whether there was a chance of their making a successful drop upon the waters of that queer bayou, alongside of which ran a swift and mysterious looking river he figured might be the Waccamaw.
Closer scrutiny convinced both of them that so far as their settling down on the surface of the lonely bayou was concerned, nothing could be seen that would interfere with such an arrangement.