“What foolishness!” she whispered. “Lie down, you ghosts.” But they would not. They continued to haunt her.
She gave herself over to glimpses of the desert and the night. There was a glorious moon. The desert beneath her was full of haunting shadows. For the most part they were shadows of sandy hills, but at times they loomed dark and large.
“Oases,” she told herself. “Wonder if friend or foe live here—” Sparky had told her that this night they were to fly over dangerous country. Little pockets of enemy resistance here had not been crushed. She was to keep a sharp lookout and if she sighted a plane, was to call him at once.
“We can outclimb and outfly most enemy fighters,” he had said. “But we must not let them get the drop on us.”
So, with eyes and ears alert, she rode on through the night.
All went well. She called Sparky in three hours. He scolded her for waiting so long.
“It was the spell of the desert at night,” she told him. “Seems as if I could fly on and on forever. And just think! We may never pass this way again!”
“Life is like that, so why bother?” was the reply. She went back for her turn at resting, but did not sleep.
Was it the spell of the desert night that kept her awake? Who can say? At least she did not sleep, just lay there, wrapped in her robe, staring into the darkness, listening to the roar of the motors and thinking, thinking.
Her father was somewhere in Africa. She knew that and no more. It would seem strange to pass over him in the night and not to see him at all. Yet, that might happen. There was no time for looking around, no time for anything. They must go on and on.