back    contents    forward

{{frabfp085.png}} || eagles of the sky ||

descriptions, and in many ways played havoc
with exposed metal parts.

However, after the engine got well warmed
up it began to work more smoothly so that Perk
lost some of his first anxiety.

ocr>   "Coin' to get along okay I guess," he assured
fix>   "Goin' to get along okay I guess," he assured
himself and then, keeping the prow of his vessel
headed due south, he found time to try and discover
ocr>   where J'ack and his soaring crate might be.
fix>   where Jack and his soaring crate might be.

The engine was a gas motor and well supplied
with an abundance of fuel, since the winds on
their recent voyage around the Florida Keys
must have been favorable as a whole and with
the motive power idle there had been no drain
on the gas.

Perk was feeling prime at that particular moment
in his checkered career. It afforded him
much pride to thus be in sole charge of a captured
rum-runner with a cargo of contraband
aboard. Then, too, all doubts concerning his
ability to serve as an engineer were already dissipated
for the sloop was making fair time and
carried a bone in her teeth, as the white lines of
foam running out on either side attested.

Perk was softly singing to himself some
marine ditty he had picked up in the course of
his adventurous life afloat and ashore and which
had for a title "Rolling Down to Old Mohea"--it
thrilled him to the core to feel that he was

[[85]]

back    contents    forward