“Have we escaped from them?” Mrs. Gonzalas asked.
“I’m trying to find out. Do you hear them?” She listened earnestly endeavoring to help.
“A rushing noise, maybe like we make with our wires,” she suggested.
“As if it comes from lower.” They sat quietly and then Jim picked up the sound but he calculated that it was an echo from below and that might be started from their own plane. He maneuvered with the air currents, which were rushing and rolling the mist, and managed to sail forward, then he continued the glide. They had settled fifteen hundred feet, and there was still no sign of a break.
“If they come up—” Arto spoke softly through the mouthpiece and Jim pressed it closer to his ear, “could we use the guns?”
“You might get a chance. Are you a good shot?”
“Crack,” Arto answered. “Pedro, too, he is—very better—good.”
“They want to know if you are afraid,” Jim told her, so she raised her head a bit and spoke into the mouthpiece.
“I am not afraid for I pray the Mother of God for her protection. Mio! You and Arto are safe?”
They answered in Spanish, and she smiled with satisfaction, then the conversation was stopped abruptly by the sputter and roar of a motor which seemed close at the left and above them.
He opened his own motor and shot up, climbing steadily until he was four thousand feet higher, and there he came out above the clouds. Here he shut off the engine and gliding quietly, listening to the commotion made by the machines below. Before they slipped down to the cloud ceiling, Jim started the motor again and soared along in exactly the opposite direction from their course. In this way the Flying Buddy hoped to rid himself of Cardow and his gang. Just beneath them the clouds were rolling, some of them with light tips made silver by the moon which had come out like a beautiful glowing ball that dimmed the stars. Mrs. Gonzalas gazed about her with lips parted in awe and wonder, and she even ventured to peep over the side at the marvelous panorama. Occasionally they passed open places and could see the sleeping globe with here and there a few feeble lights about a building or on a road winding through the mountains. The scene was so vast and wonderful that it seemed more like an amazing dream than anything real.