The boy shook his head despairingly, sighed deeply and once more unfolded the small piece of white paper upon which the girl had scribbled: “I’ll miss you—Elinor.”
Once again he read those few lines and the world of happiness they promised if he only dared so much as say the word.
He watched Panama, now skillfully manipulating the plane. A sudden feeling of security and warmth came upon him and he gazed at the man before him with honest gratitude and an undying vow of devotion and friendship upon his lips.
Slowly he folded Elinor’s note and tore it in two, dropping the pieces overboard to be separated and lost forever.
CHAPTER IX
The blazing, tropical sun beat down unmercifully upon the heads of a squad of Marines, under the command of a top sergeant, as they made their way slowly and with uncertainty over an impassable mountain path to the flat, barren valley below.
Dusty, dog-tired and filthy with grime, the worn-out soldiers of the sea struggled along over roughshod ground, dragging two stubborn pack mules behind them. The men were unhappy victims of a powerful sun, casting its dangerous heat waves over their unprotected persons, and a miserable, dirty, unfamiliar country of treacherous, dark-skinned men and cruel mountain passages.
As the squad and their silent, stout and puffing sergeant reached the base of the mountain, one of the men let himself fall against the trunk of a huge palm tree with large, welcome leaves that completely shaded the ground beneath. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small package of tobacco and some cigarette papers, proceeding to roll himself a smoke as the other men sat down beneath the tree, following suit.
“What d’ya guys wanna bet there ain’t no such guy as Sandino?” the Marine leaning against the tree announced. “We’ve been walkin’ all over this gosh-forsaken country for the past three weeks and we ain’t seen nothin’ but bugs, filthy natives and fat, ugly, barefooted women carrying squalling brownskin brats!”
A mean scowl overshadowed the face of the short-winded and wide-of-girth sergeant. “Listen here, shackle-brain, do you think them guys up in Washington would send us all the way down here if there was no lunk like Sandino goin’ around and shootin’ up things?”