“Search me—I’m not wet nurse to every bum pilot Martinengo hires,” Bill shot back carelessly. “If that’s all, I reckon I’ll say bye-bye and shove off. The big boss doesn’t pay me to argue with slave drivers.”
“Is that so?” snapped Weed. “Well, let me tell you, young feller, that I’m boss of this camp. What I say here goes!”
“Good!” said Bill. “That’s just what I’m going to do now!”
He cast off the lines that moored the plane to the dock. Then he sprang aboard and slid the cabin door shut and locked it amid a torrent of abuse from the camp boss.
Without a word to the grinning men seated in the cabin, he went forward and into the pilot’s cockpit shutting this door after him as well. With a wink at Osceola he slipped into his seat behind the wheel and after giving the plane’s three engines a short test, he let in his clutch.
The big ship, which had been slowly drifting away from the dock and the irate Mr. Weed, began to gather headway. Bill taxied her round in a wide half circle until he got her head into the light wind with a long stretch of open lagoon ahead. A slight widening of the throttle sent the big bus hurtling down the straight-away. Then Bill jerked her onto the step and a moment or two later she was in the air.
Bill climbed until the altimeter on the instrument board marked four thousand feet. Then he leveled off and after a slight bank to port, headed the big amphibian due east. Flying conditions were excellent. A light wind blew out of the southeast, but the air was smooth, without a ripple. A cloudless sky of light blue dipped to a sharply defined horizon; and near the rim of the inverted bowl the pale green of the Everglades contrasted with the darker foliage of the cypress swamps. Here and there and everywhere, lakes, lagoons and wandering streams sparkled and danced in the sun glare like uncut brilliants on a bed of green velvet.
With his free hand, Bill unhooked a headphone set from the side of his seat and adjusted it. At the same time he motioned Osceola to don the set at the other end of the cord.
“So far, so good,” he spoke into the transmitter which hung on his chest. “I don’t think we’ll have trouble with our passengers for a while yet, anyway. They seem to have no suspicion but what we are Martinengo’s pilots.”
“But you do expect trouble?”