"Yeah, maybe!" he murmured. "But I'm going to make sure just the same!"
"What did you say, Dave?" Freddy Farmer cried out in a voice of alarm.
"I didn't say a thing," Dave grunted, and tightened his hold on the controls. "Just thinking a little out loud. Shut up, little man, or you'll make me rock the boat."
Freddy Farmer caught his breath as though he were about to speak. Instead, though, he said nothing. He simply leaned farther forward in his seat. Dave caught the movement out the corner of his eye, and grinned, tight-lipped. Freddy had sighted the mountain peak, but realized that he had seen it and was trying to slide by on the left. So the English youth had snapped his lips shut so as not to give Colonel Welsh a slight case of heart failure. Good old Freddy. Always knew when to open his mouth, and when to keep mum.
Perhaps it was six seconds, but it seemed like six thousand years to Dave before the slightly darker shadow that was the mountain peak slid past the tip of the right wing and disappeared behind. The instant it was gone from view he whipped on the switches, caught both engines, and fed them high test gas at full throttle. The roar of the engines breaking into life was a sound akin to worlds crashing into each other. Yet at the same time it was a welcome sound to Dave's ears, and to Freddy Farmer's too. But what filled their hearts with an even greater happiness was the Lockheed climbing upward to a safe altitude above the mountain range. The instant he was well clear, Dave swung the plane onto its westerly course again, and relaxed in the seat.
"Top-hole, Dave," Freddy Farmer said quietly. "A very pukka bit of flying, that."
"Thanks," Dave replied. "We got away with it okay. But I'd hate like heck to have to do it every day. You spotted that mountain peak, didn't you?"
"Quite," the English youth murmured. "But I thought it best to keep my mouth shut. Realized that you knew what you were doing. And besides, no sense in—"
"No sense in giving this old dodo grey hairs, eh?" Colonel Welsh spoke up with a chuckle. "Well, it was nice of both of you, but I saw it, too. The only reason I didn't speak, though, was because my tongue was frozen stiff. As you say, Dawson, I'd hate to have that sort of thing for a daily diet. Very sweet flying, though, very sweet."
"We could have made it sweeter if this plane had been armed," Dave grunted, and stared at the black sky ahead. "That tramp certainly had his nerve jumping on us. Wonder who the heck he could be. Sure you haven't any ideas, Colonel?"