Dumpy’s eyes dropped, and he turned toward the door.
“⸺ foolishness to stay at the phone at that,” he mumbled uncertainly. “Wind’s getting worse every minute. Nobody could go anywhere if they had to.”
He went out, and Shag settled down into the chair in front of the desk. The tiny office seemed hardly large enough to contain his huge body. His dull eyes looked into space, and time was non-existent. He had reached the point of physical and mental exhaustion where life itself was merely a bad dream.
He hardly realized that three hours had passed when the shrill of the telephone cut through the howl of the wind. He was a bundle of nerves as he answered its summons.
“Yeah, McMullen flight. Moran. Lieutenant Moran! What the ⸺ does that matter? Kennard’s not here. Who? Crosby? Yeah, go ahead.”
For a moment he listened to the barked sentences coming out of the night. Automatically his mind registered the facts.
Then:
“We’ll see. Try to. ’By.”
He rushed to the door, and out into the darkness. The clouds had broken, but fleets of them hurried across the sky, periodically blotting out the moon. The wind came in great gusts, alternating between comparative quiet and the proportions of a gale. As stark fear gripped him he fought it down, cursing himself for a yellow dog as he ran for Dumpy’s tent.
The fat little flyer was writing a letter. He looked up in startled surprize as Moran burst into the tent.