By way of answer, Barry eased the wheel forward. In a long, flat dive Rosy O’Grady roared down toward the plateau. Moment by moment the tiny squares and oblongs of different colors took the shape of cultivated gardens. Near by appeared a few loaf-shaped native houses.
“There’s your village!” Barry exclaimed. “Looks like a busy place, too. They’re clearing more grassland for garden space, if I’m not mistaken.”
Looking down through the plastiglass of the big bomber’s nose, her crew could distinguish twenty or thirty human figures at one end of the cultivated section. Suddenly the natives stopped gaping at the diving plane. They ran for cover.
“We’re wowing ’em, all right,” whooped Hap Newton. “Just see those grass skirts scatter! You ought to be ashamed of scaring the ladies this way, Barry!”
“They’ll have something to talk about for a month at least,” laughed the Rosy’s skipper, as he pulled back on the wheel. “Are you satisfied with this glimpse you’ve had of native culture, Chick?”
“Not by a long shot!” the homely bombardier replied. “I wish you’d turn back for another look, Barry. There’s something blamed queer about that village. Several things, to be truthful.”
There was a grim note in Chick’s voice that Barry recognized. His bombardier was in deadly earnest.
“Okay,” he said shortly. “Slap on the coal, Hap. We’re going back for another look-see. What was it that struck you as queer, Chick?”
“Since when do men wear grass skirts, or New Guinea women wear their hair clipped short?” Chick responded. “I had a better view here in the nose than the rest of you did. I’ll swear to what I saw. And, while we’re asking questions, will somebody tell me when the natives of this country became market gardeners? There’s enough cultivated land around those dozen thatched huts to supply food for ten villages.... Look down now and tell me what you think of it!”
For wordless moments every man in the cockpit gazed at the orderly patchwork of little fields below. Suddenly Barry grasped the truth.