“Wait and see,” advised his chum, “you know the old saying that it’s always darkest just before dawn—we’re due to get a thrill before many more hours. Give Headquarters decent time to cook up a fine fat game for us, a nut to crack that’ll be worth going after. I’ve a few little things on my list that I mean to carry out this morning when I’ll be ready for the call.”
Perk seemed unusually slow that morning, though he did not complain about his lame muscles. Even when Jack asked about it he shrugged and with a grimace remarked indifferently:
“Oh! that’s okay, buddy—turned out to be a false alarm—nothin’ the matter with me, I guess, except I need shakin’ up a wheen.”
“You’ll get all you want of that I reckon before you’re many days older,” Jack told him, “somehow I’ve got a notion we’re going to be sent on a wild goose chase that may cover some thousands of miles and take us into a queer section of country—nothing but a surmise, or what you might call a hunch to back me up in that, remember, but I’ve known a hunch to come true more than a few times.”
“I wonder,” Perk observed dreamily, eyeing his comrade as if he again felt the old suspicion arise with regard to Jack knowing more than he chose to tell just then.
But unseen by either of the two pals, coming events were hurrying along and threatening to speedily engulf them in as dizzy a spin as either had ever encountered in all previous experiences.
It was around eight when they arrived at the flying field, as usual a scene of considerable bustle with ships coming in and departing—air mail carriers, visiting boats taking off in a continuance of their prearranged flights east or west and several heavier bombing planes that were being taken to Los Angeles by naval pilots for some secret purpose of the War Department.
Jack and his pal observed all this with grins of sheer enjoyment, so bred in the bone had their love for their profession grown to be that everything connected with flying drew them as the Polar star does the magnetic needle of a compass.
“Times are getting right lively around these diggin’s,” remarked Perk, with a sparkle in his eyes and enthusiasm in his voice.
“Seems like it,” replied Jack who chanced to be watching a novice just then starting out on what appeared to be his initial solo flight. “That boy shows fair promise of being due to break into the ranks of express pilots after he’s had another hundred miles or so of flying. I like the way he handles himself and the test pilot told me yesterday he was sure to be a comer.”