Jack’s first inclination was to decide the other must be one of those dudish young chaps who sometimes drift into the ranks of flying men. Not at all weak or yellow when occasion arose to prove their stamina, but so constituted by nature that they can “carry on” and yet show little signs of the ordinary pilot’s addiction to dirt.

He stepped toward the other, leaving to Perk the job of finding some means for securing the end of the rope, possibly to a stake driven into the sand or perhaps to the nearby wreck of the Stinson-Detroiter ship.

“Seems that you’ve had a little mishap, stranger,” Jack remarked with one of his pleasant smiles that always won him friends wherever he went. “If we can be of any assistance just call on us. It’s a part of our creed, you know, for air pilots to stand by one another in difficulty. Perhaps your boat may not be so badly smashed but what we can knock it into shape and get it up out of this queer old hole.”

He saw the boy drop the look of anxiety that had marked his face and even allow his features to relax in a smile.

“I don’t know how I can thank you for saying that—I am so eager to get out of this scrape, the worst that ever happened to me, but then I am something of a greenhorn pilot as yet, though even that fact couldn’t keep me from trying my wings. I must get out of this and be on my way again.”

And even as he listened to those pleading words, Jack realized that the pilot of the crashed Stinson-Detroiter plane was a girl!

XV
THE HAND OF FATE

It was a surprising discovery that Jack had just made, but after all not so very wonderful. In these modern days a multitude of daring girls and young women were becoming air minded and filled with the ambition to become pilots. The fascination of such a life appealed to them with irresistible force so that already some of them had made a most creditable showing in the annals of aviation.

For one thing the fact that the one he had offered to help had turned out to be a girl gave Jack a twinge—he realized that more than ever he and Perk would be obliged to “stick around,” and endeavor to overcome her difficulties, if the disabilities of the wrecked plane could in any way be remedied.

That was apt to mean a further delay in their work, a serious handicap, since already too much time had passed if there remained any further hope of finding poor Buddy Warner.