Flying the Coast Skyways. Jack Ralston's Swift Patrol

“No danger of that happening, old scout!” snapped Jack; “but I’ll veer off to starboard a bit, to make doubly sure against a possible collision. Strike up our cabin light, boy, so’s to put them on their guard.”

Of course they could not catch the slightest sound to corroborate their opinion, since their own ship was making so much racket. The light came closer and closer; at the same time Jack felt positive the other aerial craft must be following his own tactics looking to safety, and steering somewhat to the right, as discretion demanded.

Perk had snatched up a kerosene lantern and hastily lighted the wick. This he now moved up and down; then swung the same completely around his head, as though he thus meant to give the other pilot a signal in the line of fellowship and aerial courtesy.

Thus the two ships passed not three hundred feet apart, yet only vaguely seen by watchful eyes. Then they were swallowed up in the gloom of the night, the moon being under a passing cloud at the time.

“Fancy aour meetin’ in space,” Perk was saying, as though rather awed by such a circumstance; “it couldn’t happen again in a month o’ blue moons, aour comin’ to grips thisaway, with millions o’ miles all ’raound us, an’ nawthin’ but chance to guide both pilots.”

“You’re on the wrong track again, partner,” Jack hastened to tell him. “Chance had little to do with this meeting; but that chain of brilliant flash beacons was wholly responsible. Just like two trains passing on a double-track railroad line – both airships were following the same marked course, and couldn’t hardly miss meeting each other. In these latter days flying has become so systematized that the element of chance has been almost wholly eliminated from the game.”

That remark kept Perk silent for some little time, the subject thus brought up was so vast, so filled with tremendous possibilities, he found himself wrestling with it as the minutes crept on.

So, too the night was passing by degrees, with their reliable Fokker keeping steadily on its way, putting miles after miles in their wake. Perk found himself growing more and more anxious for the first streak of coming dawn to show itself far off in the east, where the sun must be climbing toward the unseen horizon, and daylight making ready to disperse the cohorts of night.

Still it was always possible for him to make out the next beacon, with the aid of his binoculars, if he happened to be using them, as was often the case.

An hour and more after their “rubbing elbows” (as Perk termed it,) with the south-bound air-mail plane, once more Perk caught a suggestive beam of light ahead that told of yet another aircraft afloat, and advancing swiftly toward them, only at a much lower altitude.

“Naow I wonder who that guy kin be,” he mused, while watching the light grow steadily larger. “Some kinder big ship in the bargain; but hardly one o’ the mail line, ’cause they doant run ’em in doubles the same way. Hi! there, partner, we got a second neighbor, agoin’ to pass under us in a minit er so. Jest a bit to the left – no danger o’ bangin’ noses this time, seems like. Gettin’ to be thickly populated, as the ole pioneer settler said when a new fambly moved in ’baout ten mile off. Mebbe we’ll live to see the day when the air o’ night’ll be studded with movin’ lights thick as the stars be – looks thataways to me, anyhaow.”

Again he signaled his good wishes with his lantern, showing as much glee as a schoolboy whirling around his first fire spitting Roman candle, on the night of the Glorious Fourth.

“Gee whiz! looky, partner – they’re answerin’ me, as shore’s yeou’re born! This is gettin’ somewhere, I’d say; an’ I’d give thirty cents to know who that guy might be.”

“Just as well there’s no way to exchange cards,” sensible Jack told the excited one. “Never forget for a minute, partner, who and what we are; and how it’s a prime part of this business to keep our light hidden under a bushel right along. Others flying for sport, or carrying on in commerce, may get a thrill from exchanging names, and hobnobbing with each other; but all that stuff is strictly taboo with men of the Secret Service.”

“Squelched again!” Perk told himself, with one of his chuckles; “an’ jest as always happens, Jack, he’s in the right – I’m forgettin’ most too often what goes to make up a successful officer of the Government, ’specially in aour line o’ trade. Guess – I mean I reckons as haow I’ll have to subside, and take it aout in thinkin’.”

Perk was certain they must have long since passed over the eastern extremity of Georgia, and were even then swinging along with South Carolina soil beneath them. Yes, and he began to figure that he could detect the faintest possible rim of light commencing to show up far off to the east, as though dawn could not be far away.

“Huh! aint agoin’ to be many more o’ them bully flash beacons lightin’ us on aour course,” he was telling himself. “Chances air we’ll be bustlin’ over aour objective right soon; when it’s goodbye to the air-mail route, an’ us a turnin’ aour noses near due south, headin’ fo’ Charleston on the seaboard, when the real fun is slated to begin. Caint come any too quick fo’ a boob that answers to the name o’ Gabe Perkiser. Yeah! that line is gettin’ some broader, right along, which tells the story as plain as print.”

Shortly afterwards he picked up a myriad of gleaming lights, that proclaimed the presence of a city of some magnitude; evidently the first sector of their flight had been reached, with a change in their course indicated.

CHAPTER IX

When the Dawn Came

“Kinder looks like we’d hit civilization again, eh, ole hoss?”

With the dawn coming along thus high up above the surface of the earth, it was still night down below, save where numerous electric lights, on the streets, and along the railroad lines, especially within the limits of the yards, dispelled the shadows. Some of these were continually shifting; and since Jack had dropped down latterly until they were not more than five hundred feet above the level ground, only for their hearing being overwhelmed by the noise of their own speeding ship, they might have easily heard the puffing of switching engines, together with the rumble of many freight cars, possibly the loud whistles of some factory warning its employees it was time for them to be thinking of getting their breakfast, preparatory to another long spell in the cotton mills, or other places of labor.

“Here’s Greenville, where we strike off on our own,” Jack announced, as he made a right turn, and depending entirely upon the needle of the compass, took up a new line of flight – no signalling for switches, puffing of a steam engine for a start, nothing save a turn of the wrist; and without the least friction the airship was heading in the direction of Charleston, still far distant as the crow flies.

The lights began to grow dim in their rear, and before long the last vestige of the bustling South Carolina city faded out of sight.

But undoubtedly the dawn was steadily advancing, so that already Perk had been able to get fugitive glimpses of the ground they were so steadily passing over. He knew he would be feeling better when able to watch the panorama spread out like a vast chart under the swiftly speeding air craft, with towns, villages, and hamlets following in each other’s train; the country itself dotted with innumerable cabins occupied by negro workers of the wide stretching plantations, where cotton, corn, and perhaps tobacco, would appear to be the staple crops harvested.

It was indeed worth while watching when daylight came upon the surface of the earth, and the sun could be seen in all his glory by those who had the privilege of an elevated observatory.

Perk settled himself down for a period of “loafing,” having no particular duties needing attention. His main thought was concerned with the fact that they were swiftly passing over South Carolina, and getting closer to their main objective, where the remainder of their orders would be handed over to them as per prearranged agreement.

He indulged in numerous speculations as to just when and how Jack would make his attack upon the entrenched forces of the defiant clique, latterly giving Uncle Sam so much bother; and persisting in their thus far successful smashing of the patrol boat blockade along the coast, through the agency of numerous swift air smuggling craft – how many there might be Perk had no knowledge.

Well, just wait until he and his best pal got fairly started in the good work, and possibly some of those defiant pilots would be numbered among the “has beens,” having mysteriously vanished from the ken of their fellow law-breakers.

“I shore doant want to brag,” Perk told himself, as modestly as he could find the heart to be; “but jest the same I been along with Jack more’n a few times, when we run up agin sech gay birds; an’ it was allers the same ole story over an’ over agin. Right naow a good many cells in Atlanta, Leavenworth, an’ a few more penitentiaries air filled by lads what reckoned nawthin’ could beat ’em at their pet game; yet there they be, behind stone walls, an’ nary one chanct in a thousand to break away. Huh! hope hist’ry repeats in this new adventure we’re right naow embarkin’ on, that’s all.”

Such confidence in a comrade bordered on the sublime, yet according to his light Perk felt he was justified in believing Jack to be at the head of his class – without a peer, yet modest withal, shrinking from praise, and content to let the heroes of unsurpassed air flights, as well as all manner of broken records for speed, endurance, and like exploits, bask in the spotlight, while he was satisfied to do his full duty, and afterwards remain unknown to fame.

Jack apparently still had a little fear lest something his best pal managed to do, when off his guard, might throw all their labors into the discard. On this account, and because they were now bearing down close to an important point in their schedule, he took occasion to once more delicately hint along such lines.

“For perhaps the last time, partner,” he went on to say, soberly; “we’ve both got to get a firm grip on ourselves, and try to actually live the parts we’re about to play. Let’s consider we’re actors, with a critical audience in front, watching closely to see if we leave any break back of which our real character may be seen.”

“Huh! I like thataway o’ puttin’ it, Big Boss,” snorted Perk, without the slightest hesitation; although he must have suspected that Jack was trying to impress this point particularly on his, Perk’s mind – “I’ll try my darnedest to keep athinkin’ a thousand eyes and ears they be on to me, searchin’ fo’ some knothole in the fence to peep through, an’ gimme the laugh straight. Go on an’ say some more ’long them lines, buddy – I kin stand it okay.”

“An actor to be a success must have the power, the ability to throw off his own ways and character, to assume whatever queer quirks marking the role of the person he is pretending to be. Try and forget you were Yankee born, and swap places with a son of Dixie, filled with veneration for those heroes in gray, soldiers of Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and all the other leaders of the sacred Lost Cause. You can do it, I’m dead certain, if you keep your mind steadfastly on that business alone, and forget a lot of other less essential matters.”

“Shore I kin, an’ I mean to, partner – yeou wait up an’ see haow I’ll pull the wool over their eyes – I’m Wally Corkendall, an’ I was borned an’ brought up in Birmin’ham, where them bully stories o’ the colored folks that make yeou laugh like fun keep acomin’ from right along. Yessuh! I done tole yeou I may be a man o’ the world; but Dixie is my dwellin’-place, Birmin’ham my ole hometown.”

So Jack let it go at that, and indulged in the hope his pal would not fall down in a pinch – it meant a matter of life and death with them, in view of the desperate type of men with whom they would soon be at close grips.

CHAPTER X

Ready to Strike

Up to then everything had been comparatively simple; but the worst was yet to come. They could not do more than guess as to the nature of the dangers and difficulties lying in ambush to trip them up. For aught they knew long weeks, crowded with perils and narrow escapes, would be their portion; with the crowning possibility of final disaster hanging over their heads day and night.

It was this uncertainty that made their job all the more attractive and thrilling to the comrades – in particular to Perk, whose restless soul seemed never to be content to loll in idleness and safety; but yearned to meet up with all manner of weird scrapes, that for the time being satisfied the burning desire of his feverish blood.

Perhaps that was his heritage, coming down from those ancestors who settled in New England, at the time America was a British colony; and when dread of Indian massacres kept every one’s blood keyed up to the extreme; then again it might be Perk got it from his contact with the front line trenches in the Great War, where he may have been gassed, wounded, and lived the horrible existence that so many of our gallant boys did in the fierce battles of the Argonne – himself, he never bothered his head to figure out whence the feeling came – he only knew he had it, and fairly reveled in what he was pleased to term action; but which really stood for deadly peril.

It can thus be seen how Perk was making his life work along the right line for one of his disposition; since it would be difficult indeed to mention any other vocation where a man would do his daily stunt face to face with some calamity.

He continued to look down at the checkerboard below, admiring this, grunting his disgust at another spectacle, and many times glancing impatiently at his wrist-watch, as though he could thus hasten the hour and minute when they would be landing at their present destination.

Jack, on his part, while carrying out his ordinary duties as pilot, was running over in his active mind the various duties that must await their reaching the landing field in Charleston.

First, after seeing their ship safely stowed away in a convenient hangar – where it would stay until needed again, if ever – he must call at the post office for any letters that might have been sent on – under his assumed name, of course; after which it would be his business to drop in upon the Government agent, from whom he would receive further secret instructions, as well as every scrap of information possible, such as would be of assistance in laying out and following up their plan of action.

It pleased Jack to know how every detail was being carried out with the prime motive of abject secrecy – for instance, he had been instructed never to call at the office of the revenue official, since spies might have it under surveillance, and hold such a swell caller under suspicion – on the contrary the gentleman’s private residence had been mentioned as the place of meeting; and the secret cipher of the Department must be invariably used should an exchange of letters become necessary.

He was to call at the house in the capacity of a distant relative of Mr. Casper Herriott in the city while en route to other places along the Atlantic seaboard, especially in the way of shooting grounds; he being a famous sportsman – Perk was not only his dependable pilot, but a skillful guide as well, fully acquainted with most of the sporting grounds of the great sounds and bays along North and South Carolina shores.

Jack found himself smiling to remember how his companion had at one time delicately hinted that since the Government had been so kind as to supply them with all manner of lovely guns, ammunition, and even shooting clothes and tempting high leather boots, all costing rafts of money, it might be possible for them to better carry out their assumed characters by indulging in a little foray among the canvasback ducks, mallards, and even wild geese – also remarking how it would be much too bad if, having been given the name, they might not also grab a handful of the game!

Already had Jack commenced to take copious notes, mental, as well as written down in his new notebook – in the secret code of course – and he expected to add copiously to this record after he had interviewed Mr. Herriott, and drank in all that gentleman would have to tell him.

Besides that he would try to paint a complete chart on his mind, covering the lay of the land along the coast, its innumerable indentations covering the shores of the great Sounds, Albemarle, Pamlico and others – also that section of swamps and morasses lying further south, where he already strongly suspected the main part of their work awaited them.

Already he had pored for hours over the Government Geographical Coast Survey charts, which, with others were contained in the waterproof case aboard the ship, and had proven their worth on a number of previous occasions; but as he could not hope to always have these at hand for reference, Jack meant to carry along a mental picture of the entire region, a feat impossible, save to him whom the gods had favored with a wonderfully retentive memory, made next to perfect from long practice.

Up to then the most that Jack knew in connection with his work was that it must mean the shattering of a gigantic conspiracy, backed by a number of wealthy but unscrupulous citizens; who probably depended upon some real or fancied “pull” to get them through in safety if they were ever indicted, which they had every reason was next to impossible.

The scope of this league, Jack also understood, was almost boundless – all manner of efforts were being put into practice daily, in order to cheat Uncle Sam out of his “rake-off” upon various dutiable foreign goods – diamonds, other precious stones on which the Treasury Department levied high sums when imported openly; rich laces; high priced Cuban cigars, and a multitude of similar goods mostly small in bulk, that could be easily transported undetected aboard swift airplanes, making secret landings amidst the almost untrodden wilds of that eastern shore!

Then there must be a continuation of the old smuggling game – that of fetching cargoes of the finest wet goods obtainable at some station of the West Indies; only the landing places had been transferred from the vicinity of Tampa and Miami, when those ports were too heavily policed to admit of taking the desperate chances involved; and were now transplanted to South Carolina territory, where they seemed to be working without the slightest molestation, with a daily flood of stuff being safely landed.

It was hinted that this powerful rival of the Government was going even a step farther – carrying undesirable aliens from Cuba across to the land they were so eager to reach, that they paid enormous sums for the privilege of being flown across the stretch of salt water – these were not only Chinamen, but Italians as well, criminals who had been chased from their own country by the alert Fascist authorities as enemies of the realm, and saw in rich America the Mecca where they could soon acquire great wealth at easy pickings by eventually becoming beer barons, racketeers, and the like; after passing through a brief school course as ordinary bootleggers, and hi-jackers.

“Some job, believe me!” Jack summed up his reflections by saying, drawing in a long breath at the same time; and then following it all up with a laugh, as though even such a monumental task failed to dismay him.

“Cap, I kinder reckon we’re right smart near Charleston, to jedge from thet bank o’ smoke lying on ahead. I been keepin’ tabs o’ the miles we left behind us, an’ it shore do tally with the distance marked on yeour map.”

“I feel certain you’re okay when you mention that same, matey,” Jack assured the other; which commendatory remark caused Perk to look as pleased as a child when handed an all-day lollypop to suck on.

“Hot-diggetty-dig! it makes me happy to know as haow the waitin’ game’s ’baout all in naow, an’ we’re agwine – haow’s that, buddy – to jump into action, and then more action. Me, I’m some hungry, partner; but mebbe it aint wise to take a snack when we’re so clost to aour airport, with a landin’ comin’ along soon, an’ real restaurant eats aloomin’ up in the bargain.”

“Try to hold your horses for half an hour or more, and I promise that you’ll be filled up to the limit, regardless of expense. And now begin to live, breathe, and act as a Dixie bred man would do, ready to knock anybody flat who’d be so brash as to say one insulting word about your native Southland.”

“The finest country God ever did make, barrin’ none, suh; and don’t yeou forgit it; but I kin see the airport a’ready, partner, off to the left a bit.”

CHAPTER XI

Where War Once Broke Out

Shortly afterwards the two adventurers found themselves looking down at as entrancing an air picture as it would be possible to conceive; with Charleston Harbor stretching out to its furtherest extent before them.

“See that island over yonder, partner,” said the admiring Perk, pointing as he spoke; “I kinder – reckons naow as haow that might be where ole Fort Sumter stood, durin’ the war ’tween the States – yeou knows weuns daown hyah allers speaks o’ that little flareup that way, ’stead o’ callin’ it the Civil War.”

“So I understood, Wally, and I’m glad to find out you’re so well posted on such facts, as it strengthens your position considerably. When you’re in Dixie it’s just as well to follow the crowd, and do as all true Southerners do.”

It was a charming morning, the air “salubrious,” as Perk said more than once, and everything seemed favorable to the success of their great undertaking – as far as they had gone, which was not anything to boast of.

Perk had already pointed out the landing field they were aiming to patronize, and of course the pilot circled the stretch several times, as he began to lose his altitude.

There was but little wind, and that favorable for making a successful landing. Then, too, a number of men had started to run toward the spot where indications pointed to their touching the ground, so they would not lack for any assistance required.

But Jack swung a trifle, and made contact shortly ahead of the foremost runner; the gliding, bumping ship gradually came to a complete stop, and both of them had hopped out of their cabin by the time several runners, breathing heavily from their exertions, reached the spot.

Jack was as suave and smiling as ever, a faculty that always made him “hail fellow well met” with most people. He picked out a party bearing the appearance of one in authority, and who, seeing his friendly nod, hastened up, holding out his hand with real Southern warmth.

“Welcome to Charleston, suh,” he observed as they clasped hands, evidently understanding that the new arrival was not familiar with the ground, being apparently a stranger to the airport; which in itself was nothing remarkable in these days of fast increasing aviation strides, with new people coming and going on the up-to-date airways almost every day.

“My name is Warrington, and I am from New York City, down here for the shore shooting. This is my pilot and guide, Wally Corkendall, from Birmingham, Alabama. I wish to set my Fokker in a safe hangar for an indefinite space of time, for we shall have to make use of an amphibian during our month of sport, as it will be necessary to make many a night’s camp on the waters of your wonderful bays and rivers. Would you kindly put me in touch with the party who has charge of such arrangements; I should expect to pay a week in advance and continue the same during the time of my stay.”

That could be easily arranged, since it happened he himself was in charge of all such matters, the gentleman courteously informed his new guest; apparently sizing Jack up as a young man of wealth, willing to pay the price, no matter how much it cost, in order to enjoy himself to the utmost.

So the ship was properly housed, and Jack took pains to observe a lock on the doors, for which one of two keys was handed to him later on, after he had stepped over to the office, and finished arrangements by paying the sum agreed upon.

“Anything we can do to help make your stay in our city pleasant, suh, you can depend on it we shall be only too delighted to do,” said the gentleman, as the taxi which he had ordered came along, to take them to the hotel he had recommended as a quiet restful place, with a genuine old-fashioned Southern table known far and wide by travelers, and now being patronized by many air-minded tourists.