Bill laughed and picked up a soft helmet.
“Ever been in one?”
“An engine room?”
“Yes.”
“Not yet—and I hope never.”
“I thought so. Well, Mr. Assistant Pilot, get into your seat and look pretty. I’ll do the work. Confound, there goes the buzzer!”
He slipped into his seat and his hand sought the inertia starter. With her multiple engines roaring in deafening crescendo, the Flying Fish leapt through the water and was jerked onto her step, quite as easily as the smallest seaplane. A few seconds later she was in the air, nosing upward into the ether.
Bill ran her up to thirty-five hundred feet, leveled off, did a sharp bank to port, then straightened out once more and spoke to Osceola.
“Some bus! Runs like a ladies’ wristwatch.”
“Aren’t you keeping pretty low?”