Then the horrible truth swept over Hal Dane. He was flying the flood! These ugly waters covered no natural sea bed, but swirled sullenly above the homes, the villages, the cities of the southern section of a whole state.
All landmarks had been blotted out, but the aviator got his bearings by compass, and studied the map he drew from his pocket. This must be it, the country drained in normal times by the three rivers, the Conecuh, the Pea and the Choctawhatchee. But now the waters followed no separate river beds down to the sea. Instead they had burst all bounds and covered the face of the land.
He drifted down until he hovered at only a hundred feet of altitude. From this height he could clearly vision the astounding panorama of watery waste.
Spires of churches and here and there taller buildings in a group showing partly above water told that here lay some town. Straight lanes of water between the tops of forest trees meant that beneath the flood a highway ran. Borne on the yellow tide of the foul, swirling sea were the dead and swollen bodies of mules, hogs, horses and cows. Mingling with these were houses swept from their foundations and drifting with the current.
At intervals, he would catch sight of some hill or some turtle-backed Indian mound on whose crest was huddled a village of tents—frail shelters for the refugees fleeing from the wild onrush of the flood.
Was Jacky Wiljohn found and safe within one of those tents, or was the little fellow still out on some half-flooded land ridge or marooned in some drifting building?
Now that he had come and seen for himself, Hal Dane realized for the first time the awful magnitude of this peace-time tragedy. Here was a disaster that equaled pestilence and battle in its devastation. He had read of these things—but seeing them was different, more awful.
Fog and storm had drifted Hal somewhat off his course. He consulted his compass, took his bearings again, and decided that he must be to the west of Troja, the hill city on the edge of the flood where were situated the Red Cross headquarters.
He whirled the nose of his plane into the east. A little later he caught sight of what he knew must be his destination. Below him lay a little city whose outskirts were lapped by the sullen yellow waters. Up in the heights a whole new city section had been developed with its streets lined by rows of little army tents. Some seaplanes lay at rest in a sheltered bay of flood water. Out on a stretch of meadow army planes were roped to stakes, tails to the wind.
Hal circled about the field a few times until he could pick a good landing spot. Then he cut his motor dead and began to drop. With outspread rotor blades acting like a parachute, the curious sky boat with its short stiff side wings, drifted straightly, gently down towards earth.