“Oh! Always!”
Jeanne was thinking, “What’s he got on his mind now?”
The captain said no more. A moment later opportunity for talk was gone, the motor was roaring. They were away.
Racing down the bay they rose in the air, circled over the tree tops, circled once again, then shot away above the smoke-whitened island.
Had it not been for the fear in Jeanne’s heart regarding the safety of her good pal, she would have enjoyed this to the full. Here they passed over the glorious blue of the bay and there the dark green of island forest. Here all was blotted out by billowing white clouds and there was dense black smoke, edged by flames that appeared to reach for them.
“How terrible to fall into a burning forest from the air,” she thought with a shudder.
Then she saw something that set her pulling at the pilot’s shoulder. “There!” she screamed. “There they are!” She pointed straight down.
Little room was left for doubt. In a field of dark green a white spot stood out plainly and beside it two dark ones. The white spot would be Florence in slacks and a white blouse, the other two Mike and Tony.
They circled low. Jeanne saw those below wave white handkerchiefs.
Once again the plane shot upward. Three times the pilot circled the spot. Three times Jeanne’s keen eyes sought for a possible way out and three times she failed. It seemed to her that her friends were completely encircled by flames, that the wall of fire from the west was closing in and that nothing could save them. Involuntarily she pressed Plumdum to her breast.