Where was the seaplane? Would it climb above the murk, glide straight through it and down, swerve and glide—or dive out and risk leveling off and setting down just beneath the bank so that its rapidly coming folds, and the silent sea would make a safe and comfortable concealment?
Slowly, almost in a “graveyard” glide, so flat was the descent, to hold flying speed and stay as high as they could, their airplane moved along. They listened.
Only the raucous cry of a seagull cut into that chill silence!
The fog kept its secrets.
“This can’t last long, for us,” thought Larry. “We’ll be down to the water before we know it!”
Much the same idea made Dick peer anxiously over the cowling.
“They must be listening for us, in the seaplane,” Sandy decided. “I know there was a pilot and the man who got the life preserver. I wish I could have gotten a good look at either one, but the pilot had goggles and his helmet to hide his face and the other man had his back turned to us. Where can they be? What are they doing?”
They could not wait for the answer.
Through a thin cleft in the heavy mist, not far below them the dark outlines of eel-grass, flanking two sides of a channel in the swampy shore line stood out, for an instant, clear and menacing.
“Jeff!” warned Sandy.