Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

26 Adventure sharp lines of gleaming white, where the bigger rollers from the heaving sea tumbled in and broke in showers of foam that caught the rays of the moonlight and tossed them up to him in his dizzy aerie three thousand feet above. He watched them languidly < as he flew. His eyes were focused upon nothing in par- ticular, nor was his mind fixed upon the scene below. He was thinking of the other scene of the early evening when he had rushed from his tent in response to Phil Conway’s cry for help. Gradually, however, his thoughts were forced away from his problems to the dis- tant objects upon which his eyes had been bent. Subconsciously, he had become aware that there was something there that did not belong there, that a thin line of white bee tween the white lines of the breakers must be made by some force that was not of na- ture, not of the night, not of that lonely and forbidding shore. Abruptly, his attention became fixed sole- ly upon it. It was a sharp thin line; the head of it appeared to be cutting rapidly southward, in the direction of his own flight, while the tail seemed to broaden out and then die away. Even while he was ponder- ing over it, the head swung in a gleaming curve to the east; midway between the two lines of breakers on the inlet it cut straight, ran out for half a mile into the open ocean and then swung south again, following the ~ contour of the coast. “‘A speed boat!’ he exclaimed under his breath. “By the Lord! A speed boat and making down toward our camp.” He swung his machine sharply about and headed back until his practised eye told him that his distance was correct. He wanted to swoop down in a silent volplane, with motor cut off and, as he mentally measured the angle between him and the boat, he nodded in satisfaction. Again he swerved, coming about once “more into his original course facing the boat and then, shoving his wheel forward, he dived into his best gliding angle and opened his switch. The silence that followed the stopping of the thundering Gnome seemed to accentuate the shriek of the air as he tore through it, his wires and struts cutting into it at nearly two miles a minute. But he knew that the sound would be unheard by the men in the speeding boat below. Down to a thousand feet he plunged and then leveled out a moment for a closer in- spection of the craft he was following. The roar of the big motor that drove her reas- sured him. No one aboard her could hear him even with his own Gnome reverberating at full speed. Diving again before losing too much headway, he swung back away from the boat, taking a final look as his swoop carried him into a more favorable position. The lines about his mouth tightened. ~ “T believe it’s the same boat,” he mut- tered. “Going back for another attack on the camp.’ His glide had carried him far to the north of the craft he was watching. Once more he closed his switch and, as the motor i ed, climbed again in a wide sweep. Ahead of him he could plainly see the moon on the waters of the inlet that led to the cove into which Caprice had been haul- ed. The thin line of the speed boat’s wake was nearing it and he watched intently to see if it would swing in. But he uttered an exclamation of amazement when, instead, he saw it curve still farther off shore as it neared, its course taking it a good mile from the coast. “Huh!” he grunted. “I see your game, my fine fellows. Getting away off so that we won’t hear your motor. Then you'll probably land below and sneak up on us along the shore. All right; I ‘ll stay up here until I see you leave again.” He circled once more so that his speed would not take him ahead of the launch and against the moonlight where his machine would be plainly visible to any of the men who might happen to glance up. Headed south again, he caught the glint of her wake just off the inlet. “Now you'll swing in,” he muttered with a grim smile at this odd game of hide-and- seek. “You'll swing in and land on the point—why, what the——” He straightened up in his seat for the craft, instead of swinging in as he had anti- cipated, passed at full speed beyond the in- let and maintained its southward course fol- lowing the coast below. “Well, Ill be !? he exclaimed. Then with a sudden realization of what it might mean, he added, ‘“‘By Jove, I’m in luck. I'll bet those fellows are going to their own camp—the one they fled to after my shot scared them away from ours.” He made another circle as he drew too comicbooks Eo