“Your hour will strike in due time, Wally, boy,” said the amused Jack, with a fond look at the excited face of his chum. “You’ve never completely gotten over your boyish ways, brother—anything in the line of excitement, and you fairly itch to be up and doing. I am free to confess, however, that when you do get into a ruction you know how to give a good account of yourself.”
“Thanks, ole hoss, comin’ from sech as yeou that’s the highest kind o’ praise I could ever expect. I sometimes reckon I must abeen in at least one squabble ’fore I was hardly able to toddle ’raound, it comes so nat’ral to me.”
On the following morning their regular routine was again taken up. They flew up the coast, and turned out to sea, Jack wishing to learn whether there was a mother ship lying off the coast, from which all manner of prohibited articles, from aliens, precious stones, narcotics and in great quantity the finest of foreign strong drink, down to the smallest things that had an intrinsic value, were secretly imported into the States minus the heavy duty imposed on their coming.
Once again his hunch proved a true one, for they discovered a squat steamer hovering about twenty-five miles from the coast, with several fast smuggling power-boats alongside; and as Perk reported, a number of men passing weighty sacks over the side of the larger craft.
“No need of our going any closer, partner,” Jack announced, as he banked sharply, and turned the nose of their boat toward the north. “We’ll just knock around for a spell, to experience the sensation of slipping along above the great salty sea, something neither of us have had much experience in doing; and in good time we can pass on down again, so as to cover the ground where we expect to get in our heavy work.”
Which same they did, to their own satisfaction; and much to Jack’s surprise to also discover a second large foreign ship apparently also laden to the gunwales with piles of goods in suspicious looking gunny sacks.
“It seems as though it might be high time something was being done to cut this traffic into ribbons, don’t you think, Wally, boy?” Jack asked, as again he made a steep bank, this time heading into the west, toward the distant streak of land which told of the coast of Virginia.
They struck out for shore, passed as far inland as Jack considered tactful, and through his clever work in piloting the airship actually passed directly over Black Water Bayou.
CHAPTER XXI
A Motor-Truck Caravan
“I say, buddy!”