They had walked over the half mile of ice-covered beach to the foot of the mountain and had turned back when Speed, stopping dead in his tracks, exclaimed:
“Listen!”
Mary, listening with all her ears, at last caught a faint drumming sound.
“An airplane!” she looked at Speed.
“Sure is! In such a place and such a time! Mountain there. Sea over there! All I can say is, I wish them a happy landing.”
For a full quarter hour, all unmindful of the cold, of the dinner that awaited, and of the glowing Christmas tree, they stood there listening to the drone of the motor that now rose in volume and now faded away.
“They’re lost,” was Speed’s decision. “Looking for a landing.” Once, when the echo of the motor’s roar was thrown back as from the mountain, he gripped the girl’s arm hard. What was he waiting for? A crash? It did not come. Instead, the motor sounded out a mad burst of speed, then began again that slow droning.
“Well,” Speed shuddered, “they know where the mountain is now.”
“Listen!” a moment later he gripped her arm once more. “They—they’re going to try for a landing. Who knows where? We’d better—”
If he had any notion of flight, it was futile, for at that instant, far down the line, not twenty yards from the schoolhouse, a gray mass emerged from the snow-fog.