“With the airport so handy, nobody would store a helicopter anywhere in a mucky swamp,” he decided. “It must have been a compulsory landing.”
With the lights of Coney Island, far to the right, and of Long Beach, and the Rockaways showing their Summer activities more nearly under the trucks, Don nosed out over the sea.
There he opened the throttle almost full-gun.
They must meet the liner as far out as possible. The fuel supply had been calculated to take them a hundred and thirty miles out and back with the essential safety reserve; Don had a notion to stretch that distance a trifle, because every mile the airplane saved the ship before the return would mean that much more rapidity in bringing in the mail.
Many ships came up over the horizon, were passed, and receded behind the tail.
Chick’s sharp eyes first discerned the special signal carried for the occasion by the liner they sought to meet.
“Good work,” Garry commended as Chick poked him three times and indicated the tiny trio of white lights set above a blue one on the masthead of the approaching boat, just coming up, it seemed, over the horizon line.
He gave Don the position. The youthful pilot shifted rudder and altered the course somewhat, gunning up to full speed.
“We will meet her ten miles further out then we expected to,” he murmured, pleased. That would mean faster time back for ten miles more of the distance from shore, and ten miles at their speed as contrasted to ten miles at the liner’s best, compensated for the difference in rapidity of flight between the Dragonfly and the faster Dart that could not make the flight.
They bade fair to establish a mail ship-to-shore record.