The orders were brief and to the point. Hemingwood was to make a mosaic of the Salters River between the villages of Laport and Herkimer. That would be about thirty miles, Hemingwood reflected. The mosaic was to include all the territory for five miles on each side of the river. Three hundred square miles, which was several days’ work. It was for the use of the geological survey, according to the order, and was to be accomplished without delay.
Hemingwood was delighted. He was whistling cheerfully as he made off to interview Apperson and get things in readiness for a week’s stay in the wilderness.
He found Sergeant Apperson, his chief non-com, in the photo hut. Apperson was a gray-haired veteran who was as reliable as a tax collector and knew more about cameras than the inventors thereof. Anything from a pocket machine to a motion picture outfit was in his professional bailiwick. He was a wiry, weather-beaten little Scotchman who retained a trace of the brogue of his youth.
“We’ll have oor base oot yonder, no doot?” he queried. “We’ll be ready in the mornin’, sir-r-r!”
The invaluable Apperson was likewise an excellent mechanic in addition to his other praiseworthy talents, so Hemingwood told him to have the ship warmed and ready by six in the morning. Whereupon he dismissed everything from his mind. Apperson never failed.
CHAPTER II
At precisely six-forty-five next morning Hemingwood was commencing to look for the Salters River, which was his principal landmark to aid in finding East Point. For a half hour he had been flying over the mountains. As far as the eye could see, even from the airy perch of three thousand feet, low rolling, heavily wooded hills rolled away to the skyline. It was not difficult to believe the bloody history of those thousands of acres of unkempt wilderness as one looked down on the grim fastnesses which hid in their depths a strange breed who lived and fought and died in a shadowed, primitive world of their own. George himself had had a sample of the suspicious mountain people when he had been forced to land in the hills a few months before.
Another flyer would have been taut with the strain of flying continuously over a wilderness which presented no possible landing field. The failure of two or three cylinders of the twelve-cylinder, four hundred and fifty horsepower Liberty meant crashing into the trees at seventy miles an hour. But no worry bothered George Arlington Hemingwood. His untroubled eyes scanned the glistening instruments, and he enjoyed the ride. He couldn’t be worried until disaster actually overtook him. The specially built ship, carrying a hundred and thirty-five gallons of gas, roared along over the mountains at a hundred miles an hour. To offset the extra weight of gas, oil, and electric cameras, it was streamlined to the last possible degree, and it was a tribute to Apperson’s loving care down to the last turnbuckle glistening in the morning sun.
