TO THE RESCUE
"Since you are one of the Wiljohn men," said Huntley, "I'll turn you
over to the Colonel for further directions. He's handling our aviation
fleet with a master hand."
When Hal came face to face with his friend farther down the street of
the City of Tents, he was shocked to see how broken and feeble Colonel
Wiljohn had become. In six days he had aged a score of years.
"Hal, Hal--we've needed you."
"I came as soon as I heard, sir."
"Might have known you would." Hal could feel the tremble of the
Colonel's arm as it lay across his shoulder. Then the tremble steadied,
and the Colonel went on in a firm voice, "Well, we've work a-plenty for
you to do. I'll be showing you the ropes."
It was a marvelous organization that Hal Dane slipped into. He became a
cog in a huge, efficient machine.
Over night almost, this flood had come.
Over night, also, America organized to save the people in the flood
path.
When this appalling disaster broke, the American Red Cross moved
swiftly. At Troja, Alabama, was set up a special Flood Relief
Headquarters. Here quickly came the key men of the Red Cross staff from
all neighboring states. To work in liaison, there came also officers of
the Army, Navy, Public Health Service, Coast Guard, Department of
Agriculture, Veterans' Bureau and the railroads which served the flooded
area. It was an effective relief force, equal to any war-time
organization.
It was a war these men were fighting--a war against a treacherous,
rolling, yellow flood.
From all over the Union came shipments of food, clothing, tents,
medicine. There were garments to fit any size refugee, from an infant on
up. There were specially prepared tin cases of food, all ready to be
dropped down by airplane to hill-top refugees, or those marooned on
drifting houses, so as to keep life in their bodies till boats could
haul them off to safety.
Hal was surprised to see in the midst of a supply train standing out in
the railroad yard, a long box car bearing in big letters this striking
sign: "Extra Airplane Parts. Rush to Three-River Flood District."
"The airplane is showing the world what it can do in times of trouble,"
said Colonel Wiljohn, noticing Hal's excited gaze upon the portable
aircraft shop on the side track. "Aviators are the eyes of the Rescue
Program, boy; scout planes fly this blasted flood day and night,
reporting refugees, their exact location, and the best way to reach
them. See, here come some results now." He motioned out towards the
water.
A square-nosed old river steamer was pushing in before her a barge
loaded with the pitiful, shabby furnishings of many a humble plantation
tenant home. Over bundles of bedding, the dogs and children crawled;
amid piles of rickety furniture, tin tubs and hastily gathered utensils
and tools, the family mules and cows were tethered. On the decks of the
steamer, itself, huddled half a hundred cold, wet, hungry refugees. The
boat was a weather-beaten old side-wheeler, clumsy and creaking. But to
those refugees, just snatched from the jaws of death, she probably
seemed the finest ship afloat.
Planes came in, other planes took off--an endless chain of scouts.
Hal was aching to be out on the work.
"Aviators have to be the ears as well as the eyes in this flood
fighting," went on Colonel Wiljohn, "I'm expecting great things of even
this dog plane you've brought down, but we've got to get radio equipment
installed on it before you take it out on the job. Radio is our
time-saver. You can wireless a message in one-twentieth of the time it
would take you to zoom back and forth delivering reports by word of
mouth. There's an extra seaplane here, already radio-equipped. You can
take that out."
"Any kind will do," said Hal, "just let me get my hands on the stick and
be off."
"I'm changing one group of men to another section," went on Colonel
Wiljohn, "and the work I want you to do today is scout-flying in a
ten-mile radius over the flood country below the forks of the Pea River
and the Choctawhatchee. You'll have to locate the forks by chart, that
section's been under water a week. And Hal, search every creek that
leads in--I--I'm depending on you more than any of the others--to
find--" The Colonel turned away suddenly.
Hal felt a quick sting behind his eyelids. He choked till he could
hardly give his answer. Without having actually said so, the Colonel, he
knew, was giving him the patrol of the district Jacky was lost in. If
only he could find Jacky!
A few moments later, Hal had become one of the many aviators whose
planes circled over the heaving waste of flood waters. At low altitude
roared these scout planes. Keen-eyed as hawks, the flying men sought
continually for groups marooned on ridges or housetops. In answer to
their radio messages flung into the ether, the rescue steamers churned
far and wide across the yellow tide, hauling bargeloads of silent,
stupefied people snatched from their perilous retreats. As the work went
on, most of the hill-top islands were cleared of their refugees, but out
of creeks and bayous, shackly old buildings swept from their
foundations, and burdened with pitiable human freight, continued to
drift down with the flood current. Scout planes flew low over these
floating derelicts. It would be haggard faces at a window, or a scream;
or, sometimes it would be a quavery old voice singing a hymn that told
rescuers that here was human freight drifting down to death.
At the beginning of the flood, each drifting house was, mayhap, searched
a dozen times by various boat crews--no crew knowing that already others
had been there before them. Time was lost that could have been put to
other needs. To avoid this, it was finally agreed that when a house was
once searched a red flag, made of calico salvaged from a half-submerged
dry goods store, should be nailed to its gable.
Hal saw some pitiful sights during his day's work. Up Jardin Bayou he
found five negroes on the roof of a tottering barn, the building ready
to collapse and float off. When Hal dropped them bread from the
emergency box in his cockpit, they hardly had strength to hold it and
eat it. They had been without food for days, and were so weak that when
the rescue boat came they had to be lifted off into it.
Some of the refugees that Hal radioed word back about were the
four-footed kind. All through the flooded district, hundreds of mules
and cattle were marooned on ridges and mounds. These hungry ones soon
cleaned their tiny islands of every vestige of grass, moss and twigs.
After that, they looked starvation in the face. Hal saw one hungry old
horse, marooned on a bare little mound, who had the courage to plunge
into the roaring flood, swim a hundred yards to a leafy tree that lifted
its head above the yellow torrent, eat what waving green he could from
it, then go struggling back to his mound. Such a courageous one deserved
to be rescued. A radio message brought a barge to gather him up with a
herd of other animals stranded on a ridge farther up.
Midday came and passed. The hours wore on into the afternoon. The night
of flying across half a continent, combined with the strain of the work
he was at now, began to tell on Hal's strength. His head was whirling
and his aching muscles were in rebellion against the will that drove
them on.
Then in an instant, a glimpse of a something lodged in the branches of a
drifting tree spurred him on to fresh endeavors, cleared his brain of
fatigue clouds. Hal was miles from headquarters, skimming above a
section which had been cleared of refugees earlier in the day. And now
into his line of vision there came drifting a tree, now and again
submerging to the pull of the currents, and bearing caught in its
branches a tiny figure.
Mechanically, his fingers tapped out location and a call for help. Then
Hal began to maneuver his seaplane for a landing in these troubled
waters. Assistance he knew would come quickly, but perhaps not quick
enough in this case. If the plunging tree raft with its lone little
passenger was swept into the eddies just beyond it would be the end.
Hal brought his plane to water as close to the forest derelict as he
dared. He stood, braced himself strongly, and hurled a coil of rope. It
hissed through the air and fell over the leafy drift. At the first throw
he caught only some twigs that the rope knotted about and he had to jerk
it free. The next cast, however, fell over the body of the child, and by
expert jockeying was finally tightened about the shoulders. A moment
later Hal had drawn the slight burden to the edge of the seaplane and
gotten it aboard. Like a great bird the aircraft zoomed up and sped back
towards camp.
As Hal landed and came up from the improvised wharf bearing the child in
his arms, it was pitiful to watch hope blaze in Colonel Wiljohn's
eyes--then as quickly die, for the child was not Jacky Wiljohn.
But he was someone's darling. At the end of a long line of refugees
waiting before the open-air kitchen for their tin pannikins to be filled
with the steaming food, stood a haggard woman who seemed to have no
interest in food or anything else. With a sudden scream, this one darted
out of line, crying, "Renee! Renee! My lost child!" as she gathered the
little boy into her arms.
It was far into the afternoon when Hal paused at the kitchen grounds for
a hasty lunch, his first bite since the morning soup. He began to
realize how weary he was, for his hand was trembling as he picked up the
big mug of steaming coffee.
Radio kept even a rescue camp in touch with world news. As Hal revived
his drooping spirits with a good, thick hot beef sandwich, he heard men
discussing word that had just come in concerning the two flyers, Lang
and Munger, who had crossed the continent in their planes, preparatory
to undertaking the great Pacific non-stop flight. On all sides, argument
waxed hot over this coming event. Wasn't there enough land-flying to
keep men busy without all this running into needless danger trying to
fly over the frozen poles and the oceans? And yet, so ran the other side
of the argument, think of the future of aviation, the real service these
pioneer flights were doing, the huge money prizes, the glory!
After the meal, the flyers that had been out on flood patrol were
snatching a little rest.
A dreadful restlessness urged Hal Dane back into his scout plane. A new
savage energy drove him with the feeling that he must work till he
dropped. He must be too tired to think. Thoughts were dangerous. The
news that already at Oakland airport, across the bay from San Francisco,
planes were lining up to compete in the Pacific race, stirred him
terribly, shook the iron control that he had fought to preserve.
As soon as weather conditions permitted, a dozen planes would be off on
the great flight--and his plane would not be among them!
The time for the splendid Onheim Safety Device Contest was looming even
nearer. Just a few days to that date now.
Prizes could come and prizes could go, but under the strain of combing
the torrent-washed land for the lost Jacky Wiljohn, neither Hal nor the
Colonel could have time for thoughts of contests. At least, Hal would
not let his thoughts dwell on the great chance he'd have to miss. Right
now was a time of testing out a character, if not of testing out a ship
for a prize.
Grimly, Hal forced the tremble out of his hands on the controls, and
turned the nose of his plane out over the rolling ochre-colored waste of
flood waters.
He had come perhaps ten miles from Troja when, out of the wide, flooding
mouth of a tributary creek, he saw a roof top come drifting into the
main rush of the torrent. Hal flew low, noting it expectantly--any drift
from the creek bottoms might contain those he sought. His sharp eyes
soon showed him, though, that this derelict had already been searched.
The strip of weather-stained red calico nailed to the gable told him
that much. But while he still hovered near with engine muffled to its
softest, his ear seemed to catch a scream--a woman's scream from within
the drifting house.
The flapping bit of red calico signaled, "No occupant--searchers have
been here."
That one long-drawn wail still echoing in Hal's brain, though, must mean
that some victim of the flood was housed within. There was the chance
that a refugee from floating logs, or a tree top, had but lately managed
to crawl aboard the half-submerged dwelling.
Hal noted well the location and the type of house this drifter was, but
instead of radioing for help, he shot back to Troja in his plane. At the
camp, he sought out Colonel Wiljohn and told him of the case. All he had
to go on was the fact that this old dwelling had drifted in from the
creek bottoms, and that the sound of a woman's scream had seemed to come
from it. Frail grounds for hoping that here might be Jacky Wiljohn's
mother and the boy himself. But Colonel Wiljohn squared back his
shoulders; he became all fire and energy in his preparations. A launch
was got ready, blankets, hot soup in thermos bottles, axes to break any
barriers, ropes.
In short order the boat shot out across the waters, leaving a froth of
yellow foam in its wake.
When the drifting, two-story dwelling was sighted, the pilot cut in
close and maneuvered until he got his craft alongside one of the
windows.
Hal was the first man to scramble from the boat to the window ledge that
was now just a few inches above the roaring yellow torrent. As he flung
a leg over the sill and slid down into the room, a scream, like that
first he had heard, greeted him--only terrifically loud, a wild demoniac
scream, followed by a coughing, snarling roar.
As Hal focused the electric torch on the corner whence came the sound,
the beam blazed upon the wide-set eyes, the tense, crouched body of a
great panther.