“Yeah, that’s right for you, old hoss,” Perk readily agreed. “Me, I once got a collar bone smashed that way. No harm in our makin’ a few swings around these diggin’s ’fore we put out for Orleans. That fire keeps burnin’ like things they got sprinkled right well with the juice when the tank blew up. Go to it, Jack, just as you please, never mindin’ a few squeals from a hard-boiled guy like Perk Perkiser.”
“I’m going to shut down on the engine, and take a little glide, so we can pick up anything like a yell,” announced the pilot a minute later.
“Go to it—duck then, boy!” snapped Perk, as he temporarily relieved himself of his ear-phones in order to catch anything bordering on a shout from the ground below.
The simple expedient was carried out successfully, and when once again they leveled out, to continue circling, Jack asked eagerly:
“Get anything, Perk?”
“Not a bleat, partner,” replied the other, who had hurriedly held his earphones in position so as to cover the emergency.
“Sorry for that, but we’ll try a couple more times before calling it all off,” suggested Jack, who could be more or less persistent when the occasion arose for such action, though never carrying it so far as to be reckless.
So a dozen seconds or so afterwards he again gave warning that it was time for another drop of a few hundred feet—not that they meant to take any chances by getting too close to the unknown terrain lying in the pitch blackness under the flying ship; but simply to be able to listen with the horrid clamor of the bustling engine momentarily stilled.
No better success followed this second maneuvre—all was deathly silent around, above, below, as though never a solitary living human being existed within miles of the spot where the destruction of the Ryan monoplane had taken place.
“We’ll give a third and last try,” was Jack’s announced decision, to which Perk added: