Landing, they stepped out of the plane on shaky legs and felt surprised that no one seemed pleased to see them. Even Dee and Eddie looked at them more calmly than they felt the occasion warranted.
But they had no time to strut. Nodding to Dee and Eddie, Ernest hopped into his seat after a critical look over his engine, and the boys crowded down in the observer’s place. This time they were not accompanied by any student planes and after they reached the treetops Ernest asked: “Which way, boys? Have you any choice?”
“Over the hills!” shouted Dee, and Ernest turned the plane toward the mountains.
As they swept toward them, Dee, gazing down, was startled to notice what looked like the caricature of a human face against the wall of rock. Two trees bent over like bushy eyebrows, a dark smear made the nose, and a pile of stones a grinning mouth. Eddie saw it too.
“See that face?” he shouted to Ernest.
He nodded. “I have seen it often,” he said. “It is funny about that. You can only see it from two places. One is where we saw it a moment ago, up in the air, and there is one place you can see it from the camp.”
“Is it a cave?” asked Eddie,
“No, there is just a slit in the rock there. I suppose a thin man could squeeze through, but no one has tried it. It doesn’t look worth while. I was all excited the first time I saw it and hunted it up, but it is nothing at all. Just a funny coincidence.”
“I thought I saw something white sticking out of the cleft place; the nose, I mean,” said Dee.
Ernest shook his head. “A ray of light striking on a spur of the rock,” he explained. “There is never anyone up there except when the men from the cantonment go up, and they seldom go as far as that. No, there is nothing interesting about the place except what you see up here. And as I told you, you can only get the face from one place.”