With the breeze from the new direction, as they steadily got closer to the end of the island, coming over a spot where a break in the cloud showed brown-yellow sand and rushing white surf beyond the wide level beach, Sandy’s alert eyes caught sight of something for an instant. Prodding Jeff, he indicated the object.
As Jeff swooped lower, inspecting, Dick caught a good glimpse of the tilted, quiet focus of Sandy’s gesture.
“There’s the amphibian,” Dick muttered. “Stranded—cracked up, maybe. But—if we could get down and land, we could use her, two of us could, to go to the swamp and see what’s there—before anybody else gets to the life preserver the jewels must have been tied to.”
He passed forward, through Sandy, a note.
Jeff agreed, made his bank and turn, as Sandy saw the drift of a plume of smoke on the horizon, to get into the wind.
Coming back, dropped low, Jeff scanned the beach.
“It looks safe for a landing—pretty solid beach,” Larry concluded, and evidently Jeff felt the same way for he climbed in his turning bank, got the wind right and came down, using his engine with partly opened throttle to help him settle gradually until the landing wheels touched when the tail dropped smartly, the gun was cut, and the sand, fairly level and reasonably well-packed, dragged them to a stop.
Hurriedly the youthful Sky Patrol tumbled onto the sand, digging cotton plugs out of their ears now that the roar of the motor no longer made them essential.
“It’s the amphibian, and no mistake!” Larry cried, running down the beach toward the titled craft.
“If she isn’t damaged,” he told Dick, “you and Jeff, or Jeff and I could fly to the swamp in her.”