“Oh! But we can’t.” Mary’s plane was circling slowly now.
“Of course we couldn’t go on,” she told herself. “Not even if Sparky insisted.”
Through her racing mind whirled memories of other days, those bad days of winter convoy in America. There had been only twenty-five of them, twenty-five WAFS, and so much work to do. Always, on her return from a long, hard trip, muddy, chilled through and half-starved, if he chanced to be in, she had found Sparky waiting in his car to whisk her away to her barracks and after that to a glorious hot meal. “Thick, juicy steaks, French fries, lemon pie, and barrels of hot coffee,” she whispered.
And now Sparky was down there below her in his disabled plane waiting, waiting for the last darting spot to glide from those huts into the bush that lay beyond. No, they could not go on. “Not even for the secret—” she spoke aloud, then checked herself just in time.
“He can’t climb,” she said to Janet. “He can only circle. And if his other motor quits he may go crashing straight down!”
“There!” Janet breathed. “Now there’s no one!”
“Yes, just one more.”
A very small black spot, moving, oh, so slowly, went weaving this way, then that, toward the forest.
“A child!” Mary exclaimed. “How Sparky would hate hitting a child!”
“Now!” Janet breathed.