It was commencing to grow dusk when they sighted the lights of Yuma, that town on the railroad leading to Los Angeles. Such a thing as a plane flying overhead was so common these modern days as to hardly excite any comment—they came and went, with seldom anything out of the usual taking place although not so very far away, among the mountains, one of the most dreadful of all air tragedies known to the annals of flying had taken place, when the great liner City of San Francisco, lost in a storm, struck head-on against a rocky cliff, shattering the ship and causing the death of every one of those aboard, some seven souls in all.
Now they had left Yuma far in their rear, and Jack was watching to pick up the first flash beacon on the way to the Coast.
The weather continued to favor them, the heavens being almost devoid of any semblance of clouds, and the air quite cool at the height they maintained while heading into the beckoning west.
Over deserts and mountainous stretches they kept swinging along, to the constant accompaniment of the customary chorus of a bustling plane threading the mighty air lanes of the skies. The silvery stars came out in battalions to sprinkle the azure heavens like innumerable bright lanterns, such as could be seen in Old Japan during carnival times.
This was the life, Perk told himself again and again, sitting there after he had munched his scanty portion of their meagre supper, Simeon having again declined to share with them—what air pilot who has tasted of the joys of such hours could ever dream of forsaking his vocation, so long as Fortune allowed him to retain his vision, hearing, and the faculty for guiding an onrushing ship through the realms of unlimited space—not he for one, Perk assured himself, drawing in huge draughts of the clear air, and watching the wonderful beacons as they passed them by, threading the pathway of the stars as it were, straight toward their distant goal.
The night wore on, with the voyagers making splendid progress.
Jack had made no miscalculation when saying he believed they would fetch up at their destination somewhere about the midnight hour; for it still lacked more or less of that time when in the near distance they glimpsed lights telling that the city, and its nearby aviation field, must be close at hand.
Then they found themselves circling over the port, which, just as Jack had fancied would be the case, was lighted most brilliantly. Even as they sighted the field they noted a ship settling down, evidently an air mail plane that had been held up by some dense fog belt which they had fortunately missed.
“Soft snap I’d call it, droppin’ down with all them field lights to show the ground, so a feller c’n see a rock the size o’ a baseball,” was what the tickled Perk was telling himself while Jack was proceeding to make the terminal drop, with several ground attendants hurrying up so as to lend any assistance needed.
He had received his instructions from Jack, and removed the handcuffs from the wrists of the prisoner. There was no necessity for letting everybody know the facts and the sight of a man wearing steel bracelets, and gripped by an attendant never fails to excite keen curiosity with most people and especially would this be the case if he had just come by the air route from some unknown and therefore mysterious quarter.