A handsome, well-formed and athletic young girl, about eighteen years old, crawled out of the tail of the fuselage, and dropped into the aviator’s seat by his side.
“H-how did you get here?” Epworth blustered. “What do you mean by butting in on a dangerous mission like this? How did you find out that I was going to make this trip? Now I will have to turn around and take you back. If you were not my sister I’d slam you overboard.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t throw me overboard. If you did that you wouldn’t have a little sister to fuss about. As to all those other questions—come at me easy. Put them one at a time. But before you begin to propound them get into some kind of action. Go down a thousand feet. You are too high in the air.”
This was good sense, and Epworth nose-dived immediately. When he straightened out on the thousand foot line he leveled his nose northward into a vast encircling movement.
“You needn’t go any further north,” Joan remarked casually. “I see your three little old red lights out toward the west.”
Epworth heaved a sigh of relief; and then turned angrily on his sister.
“Now talk up. You have balled things up terribly. When daylight comes I will have to signal Billy to go back so that I can take you back home. You are set for college, young lady, and it is nearing the opening of the year.”
“I am not going back. My brother is out here on a life and death mission, my uncle stands to go broke if this mission fails, and I’m going to help. Get that, Mister Bossy.”
“But you can’t go, Joan. This task may take me to the North Pole, or to some island in the South Pacific, or to Siam.”
“I am going with you or I am going to jump over the side of this plane into the ocean.”