Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

I te nt eS te PE ge > ig ee Seng f= PS oe Sard aes ~The Secret nothing, and he knew that a captured spy would have short shrift with them. But his first words to her when she re- turned showed him the hopelessness of at- tempting to dissuade her. “Tf I can not go, then you shall not go without me,” she declared positively. vit is absolutely essential that some one go,” he remonstrated. “It seems to me that these people are ready for their final blow before dispersing, and unless they are located tonight, the difficulties of ever find- ing them will be multiplied a thousand times. I must go.” “Ves,” she agreed. “You must. And so must I.” He shrugged at the uselessness of further argument. They bade Carl good-by as he left for the railroad station and then had their own din- ner together. It was a meal filled with de- light for Ward in spite of the grave business that they had in hand. Something in the unconscious suggestion of intimacy in her pose as she faced him across the table, in the atmosphere of lives linked by their daily habits, thrilled him with a sense of what the winning of this woman would mean to him. They left the hotel together as the sun was setting. It was but a short walk to the dock where they had left the tender, and in ten minutes they had landed on the lonely shore of Long Point, where the flying-boat was hauled well up from the water’s edge. “We can not start until dark,” he said. “Tt looks as though conditions would be ideal for our purpose. ‘There are clouds - gathering to obscure the stars and there will be no moon.” She shuddered at his words. “The last time there was a moon—do you remember?” she asked. “Perfectly. Thank Heaven that Sen tions are different now.’ “Yes,” she murmured; “different, oh, so very, very different! How you must have despised me!” “T tried my best to hate you,” he admit- ted frankly, and added with a tremor of deep emotion in his voice, ‘“‘but I could not, even then.” Again she seemed to sense the torrent of passion that he was holding back, for she walked over to the aeroplane. “Ts the machine all ready for its work?” she asked. “Carl can be trusted implicitly,” he re- of Caprice plied, glad that she had once more so gently led him away from dangerous ground. ‘‘We can start in a few minutes now.” He wheeled the machine down to the lap- ping waters, and as the shadows thickened about them and the lights from the village across the cove began to twinkle in the darkness, he helped her into her seat and they were soon afloat. “We are going high,” he warned her. “We must fly at an altitude which will make the sound of the motor inaudible from the ground. We do not want to attract their attention.” “But how can you locate them from such a height?”’ she asked, He explained to her briefly the principles on which machines can be made to volplane without the power of their motors, getting their speed entirely from the force of gravity. : - ae STR S+< - e —~ Poe a ; is Por i ea ‘“‘We can volplane, or glide, at least five times as far as we are high,” he said. “I plan to reach Hackett’s at well over a mile up, cut off the motor and volplane on a long angle toward the spot where I believe they have pitched their camp on the shore of the North Branch. We shall make no sound during this volplane except the - whistling of our wires and the machine it- self as it cuts through the air, but that can not be heard very far. “T believe we shall locate the fire on the first volplane. If not, we will continue to ‘ glide until we are sufficiently far from the camp, start the motor again and climb for another attempt.” He took a final look at the black heavens overhead. “Fine,” he said. “It is as dark as a hat. They could not see us, tonight even if they did happen to hear the motor. We will start now.’ He threw the rear starter over and the big Gnome thundered its response, speeding up at once to the full power of a perfectly working engine. The machine fairly leaped forward over the water. They raised in a shower of phosphorescent spray and climb- ed in a wide circle over the narrow land-spit of Long Point. As they rose farther and farther into the heavens, earth and sea and the waters of the cove melted from their view, all merged together into one great expanse of impene- trable black. From two thousand feet, they seemed to be looking over the very edge of Eomichbooks % (E@) at FB a sad 98 f