There was considerable excitement in camp just about that time, although to be sure Perk was showing most of the same.
The fog was in retreat after all those tantalizing hours of holding the fort—there could no longer be any doubt concerning this fact. He could even see how it was being blown off toward the north by increasing puffs of agitated air; and meanwhile that line of pearly hue in the east was widening by spasms, until faint touches of rosy light painted the skyline as with the brush of a magician artist.
Perk had adjusted their useful ear-phones, for he felt confident they would want to exchange congratulations, in that the long and tedious night had finally come to an end, with what promised to become a “dandy” day opening up before them.
Jack laughed to himself when he actually caught his relieved brother pilot humming a fragment of a little popular love-song they had been hearing several times of late in the “talkies” they patronized when in old San Diego; and which evidently had been echoing in Perk’s brain ever since; though if accused of “getting soft” the other would most certainly have indignantly denied the fact, and vowed he had never had a best girl—or any species of girl—in his whole natural life.
So things continued to brighten more and more, with Perk straining his vision from time to time in order to be the first to discover “land ahead,”—in other words sight the far-distant earth below them.
It came at last, after he had thus stared as much as half a dozen times; and he had the proud satisfaction of informing his comrade of the interesting fact. There was a vein of triumph in Perk’s voice; one would easily think he must be a modern Columbus announcing the discovery of a new world; and yet it had only been one solitary night since last they were in touch with their old friend terra firma—solid ground.
Just the same that had proven to be such a memorable night, so filled with thrills, and accumulated anxieties, so gloomy in the midst of the greatest fog pack in history, that really Perk might be excused for showing undue jubilation over this, their ultimate deliverance.
“Hully gee! partner!” he called out suddenly; “I kin see it, that’s right; an’ say, she sure does look good to me.”
“Meaning the earth, I reckon, eh, Perk?”
“Nawthin’ less, buddy—fog’s a climbin’ aout like hot cakes—soon wont be a single wisp left, I take it. But gee! what a pictur’ it makes—never did set my lamps on sech turrible stuff afore—looks like Ole Nature had busted loose in tryin’ to pile up rocks as big as skyscrapers in little Ole New York, some o’ ’em as big as the highest hill in the Catskills. What a place—what a place, I’d say agin.”