Perk was still glueing his eyes on the several figures now racing madly in their general direction, and waving their arms wildly; no doubt they had started to shout in addition, but the descending air mail crate was making more or less racket, which, added to by their own motor’s thunder, prevented any one from hearing what they may have been whooping.
Perk was trembling with an excess of emotion—evidently they had just escaped “by the skin of their teeth,” for he felt certain he could distinguish the uniforms of the police in the little bunch of runners.
“Played your hand just a mite too late, gents!” Perk was whooping as he in turn waved a mocking adieu backward; “thought you’d ketch a weasel asleep, I guess, but not so easy, you gate crashers. Wow! here we go spinnin’ along like the wind, and it’s goodnight to the bunch. Huh! shootin’ at us, air you—jest awastin’ ammunition, that’s all, boys. Go ’way back an’ sit down.”
Then Jack lifted her in an upward fling, and they were off like a startled hawk!
CHAPTER XIV
SKIRTING THE GULF
There was some shooting going on back there, for although of course the watchful Perk failed to catch the sound of discharges of guns, he did see flash after flash, proclaiming that the police, under the impression that important criminals were beating them to it, wished to show their warlike spirit by such a bombardment.
If the flying missiles came anywhere near the ascending plane that fact was not manifest to the two occupants of the cockpit; their movements must have been too speedy for such an attack to be successful and almost immediately they had risen beyond the danger line.
Perk was feeling vastly relieved, for it would have been a bad beginning of their special mission were they detained for days in the Southern city, while the agents of the great counterfeit league held the upper hand.
He could see with the last glimpse he had of the aviation field that all this lively accompaniment to their take-off had created considerable excitement—people were running back and forth, like milling cattle when stampeded in a furious thunder storm and Perk even fancied there was some sort of a movement as though a ship would be sent after them in pursuit.
That troubled him not a bit, because already they were leaving the field far in their wake, and would really be lost in the gathering shadows of coming night before any pursuit plane left the ground.