“White-handed, shouldn’t it be?” Dories inquired, her fears lessened by Nann’s evident delight in something she believed she had discovered.
When Miss Moore’s breakfast had been served, the girls, wishing to tidy up the cabin, set to work with a will. Nann was sweeping the porch and Dories was dusting and straightening the living-room when a queer humming noise was heard in the distance. “Dori,” Nann called, “come out here a moment. Can’t you hear a strange buzzing noise? It sounds as though it were high up in the air. What can it be?”
The other girl appeared in the open doorway and they both listened intently.
“Maybe it’s a flock of geese going south for the winter,” Dories ventured, but her friend shook her head. “That noise is coming nearer. Not going farther away,” she said. The buzzing and whizzing sounds increased with great rapidity. Springing down the steps, Nann exclaimed, “Whatever is making that commotion, is now right over our heads.”
Dories bounded to her friend’s side and they both gazed into the gleaming blue sky with shaded eyes.
“There it is!” Nann cried excitedly. “Why, of course, it’s an airplane! We should have guessed that right away. I wonder where it is going to land. There’s nothing but marsh and water around here besides this narrow strip of beach.”
“Oh, look! look!” This from Dories. “It’s dropping right down into the ocean and so it must be one of those combination air and sea planes.”
“Unless it has broken a wing and is falling,” Nann suggested. The airplane, nose downward, had seemed verily to plunge into the sea.
“Let’s run to the Point o’ Rocks.” Dories started as she spoke and Nann, throwing down the broom, raced after her. It was hard to go very rapidly where the sand was deep and dry, and so by the time they had climbed up on the highest boulder out on the rocky point, there was no sign whatever of the airplane either sailing safely on the water nor lying on the shore disabled.
“Hmm! That certainly is puzzling,” Nann said as she half closed her eyes in meditative thought. “Now, where can that huge thing have gone that it has disappeared so entirely?”