Panama’s eyes grew wide and questioning and his face turned a chalk white at this revelation.
“Elinor—you’re—you’re telling me the truth?”
“I’ve never been more honest in my life,” she insisted. “That boy thinks the sun rises and sets upon you. He would have rather sacrificed his very life than cause you one single moment of pain. Now he’s gone—perhaps dying in the impenetrable swamps of the jungle. Can’t you do something? Don’t you see what it all means to me?”
Unable to turn back the rising emotions within her, the girl gave vent to her feelings, suddenly overcome with tears of abject helplessness and despair.
Panama gazed at her silently for one brief moment, then putting on his helmet, turned about and walked with brisk determination toward his plane.
CHAPTER XVIII
A week had passed without a single sign of Lefty, Steve or the missing plane.
Every pilot had taken a hand in the search for the lost Marines but each in turn finally gave up the hunt in despair as a hopeless task.
The only man who remained on the blind trail without a single lead was Panama, who, with silent doggedness, flew over the jungle, through swamp lands and across mountain tops night and day, grimly determined to bring back his men dead or alive.
In a malaria-filled swamp, just behind the tall mountain range that looked down upon the corral on the opposite side where the brave company of Marines had met Sandino’s men seven days before, what was once an airplane rested in an upright position with more than two feet of its nose imbedded in the mud.