All of a sudden he stopped to listen. A low, whispering wail had reached his ear.
“Too late.” His hopes fell. “They’re off.” Yet as he listened the wail died away.
“Probably testing their motors,” he assumed. Once more he crept through the brush. Three times the wail rose and fell, but he pushed straight on until the smoke from a campfire told him he was close to the edge of the tangled mass of palms and tropical brush beside the strangers’ camp.
Choosing a young date palm, whose fronds sprouted close to the ground, he crept to it and crouched there a minute. Rising to his knees, he parted the slender fronds to look away to the sloping rock.
The mysterious plane was some distance away. The two men talked and laughed while they refueled the plane. The language they spoke seemed strange to Jack, though he was too far away to understand what they said, even if they had spoken English.
“Wish I hadn’t come,” he observed. Then, “But I really must know about them. No sense beating about the bush.”
The men ceased laughing. The sound of their words changed. One of them climbed to the plane’s cockpit. The motor howled once more. So loud was its final scream that it hurt Jack’s ears. Then it faded away.
“They’ll be off in a minute,” he breathed, rising to his feet. “It’s now or—”
No. He settled back. The man on the rock hurried away.
“Oh Jerry!” the one in the plane called in perfect English. “Bring an alligator wrench.”