Chick sent over the flash-rocket that signalized their approach.
The vessel’s searchlight leaped to life, probed for and touched their wings, darting swiftly aside to avoid blinding the pilot.
The liner came on at full speed. Don dropped the nose, cut the gun and approached at an angle calculated to bring down the amphibian to the water at a point near, to one side of, and just ahead of the course the liner pursued.
The vessel’s lights looked beautiful, seen from the air. Chick and Garry thrilled to the wonderful spectacle. Don’s elation came more from the precision movements with which the mail pouches, buoyed with a self-igniting water flare on the buoy, went over side in the glare of the liner’s searchlight.
Calculated with skill, favored by good control, Don’s line of descent set the amphibian’s pontoons on the fairly smooth sea in a line that sent the liner sweeping by his wingtip with not a dozen yards to spare.
Tossing by in her wake, the buoyed pouches, accentuated by their marking light, were in a direct line with the airplane’s course.
Garry motioned to Chick.
His part was to clamber to the strut, cling to a bracing wire, catch up the light buoy.
Garry’s office was that of observer, to align Don’s maneuvers with Chick’s activity. Don had done well, so far: Garry would give him all the aid he could to complete the maneuver.
Seeing them safely past, though shaken by the ship’s turbulent wake, the man at the searchlight swung it onto their tail, to give Chick all the light possible.