Sparky Ames
of the
Ferry Command
_Story by_ ROY J. SNELL
_Illustrated by_
ERWIN L. DARWIN
WHITMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
RACINE, WISCONSIN
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Copyright, 1943, by
WHITMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
Printed in U.S.A.
_All names, characters, places, and events in this story
are entirely fictitious_
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Flight of the Lone Star 11
II Savages and the Night 21
III Battling a Spy 35
IV The Big Hop 47
V The Lady in Black 61
VI Mysterious Moslem 72
VII Battling at Close Quarters 84
VIII Desert Battles 95
IX A Roll of Papyrus 109
X Two Can Hide in a Cloud 120
XI The Tumbling Donkey 130
XII Sealed Orders 145
XIII Snake Charmer 157
XIV The Cast Assembles 163
XV Burma Detour 179
XVI “Me Got Machine Gun!” 192
XVII In Swift Pursuit 204
XVIII Where Are They? 215
XIX St. Elmo’s Fire 225
XX Deep Secrets Revealed 235
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ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A Formation of Four-Motored Planes Passed Over 10
The Lone Star Came to Rest at the Foot of the Hill 23
Sparky and Mary Watched the Natives Come Closer 37
“We’ll Have to Go It Alone,” Said Mary 51
Soldiers Greeted Them at the Secret Airfield 65
Mary Found Herself Creating a Sensation 75
Between Him and the Jap Was a Trap-Door 89
“Captain Ramsey, This Is My Daughter, Mary.” 101
The Quiet, Swinging Rhythm Set Her Dreaming 113
The Fighter Planes Guarded Her Air Lane 123
Men Sat Cross-Legged in the Midst of Their Wares 135
“It’s out of a Story Book,” Mary Whispered 141
“I’m Judy Pierce,” Said an Attractive Young Lady 153
She Cornered Sparky for a Private Conference 165
“Nobody Dares Touch a Flying Tiger!” 173
“I’ll Write to Your Mothers,” She Promised 185
A Powerful Plane Swept Down Upon the Field 197
“The Lady in Black Knows the Secret of Our Cargo!” 209
“That Means a Storm!” Sparky Exclaimed 221
Hop Sing’s Report Was Terrifying 231
Endpaper illustration 249
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[Illustration: _A Formation of Four-Motored Planes Passed Over_]
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Sparky Ames
of the
FERRY COMMAND
CHAPTER I
THE FLIGHT OF THE LONE STAR
The air above the Brazilian jungles along the dark waters of the Rio
Branco in northern Brazil was full of sound. The roar and thunder of
many motors beat down upon the sea of waving treetops until it seemed
to stir them into animated life. A formation of great, four-motored
planes was passing over.
Two natives in a small dugout on the river dropped their paddles into
their wooden canoe, then sat staring upward. The river’s current swept
them beneath the branches of a dead mango tree. One of them reached up
to snap off a brittle branch.
Breaking pieces from this branch he placed them, one by one, in the
bottom of the canoe. When there were thirty-eight pieces, he stopped to
sit as if in a trance watching those great, man-made birds go sweeping
on.
Presently his companion grunted, then pointed at the sky upstream. The
first native again looked skyward, then placed two more sticks with the
others, making forty in all. Then he drawled a few native words that in
our language mean:
“One of these big birds is very sick.”
This native was old. He had lived long beneath the overhanging
treetops. He knew the ways of birds and men, but not of airplanes. For
all that, he was right. One of these flying things of metal was sick,
very sick.
Even as he said the words, there came a sudden burst of thunder, and
the larger of the two planes, the one that was not “sick,” a ship so
well formed—sleek and beautiful—that a native’s eyes shone at sight
of it, pulled away from its slow, sick companion and went speeding
along over the forest that lined the downsweep of the river.
“Gone,” said the native. “Now this one will die.” His eyes shone with a
new light. Once on the Rio Negro, he had seen one of these man-made
birds. There had been much on that plane that he had coveted. And now—
These last two planes were not bombers, but transport planes. It was
quite evident that the speeding plane had not deserted its companion,
for, in a short time, it came roaring back and a girl’s voice speaking
into a radio said:
“There’s a rather large clearing about fifty miles down. Think you can
make it?”
“We’ll have to try,” came in a man’s strong, even tone. “We’re on one
motor now. The other is cutting out on me. Can’t tell how soon it will
quit dead.”
“We’ll tag along,” came in the girl’s voice. “If you make it—”
“If we get that far, we’ll try a landing,” was the answer.
“And if anything goes wrong—”
“You’ll fly right on.” The man’s voice was harsh, insistent. “Remember!
Secret—”
“Don’t say it, Sparky!” The girl’s voice rose sharp as an alarmed
bird’s. “Don’t say it!”
“All right! All right!” the man’s voice grumbled into the tropical air.
“Then I won’t say it. All the same—”
“All the same, if you go down there we’re coming right down after you,”
the girl insisted. “You know what our orders were, to fly in pairs. If
one plane is disabled, its mate must go to the rescue. All other planes
must go straight on. We’re on a mission of destruction. That’s all we
know. It’s urgent. We must go through!”
“Okay, sister, that’s why you should fly right on.”
“But we won’t.” The girl spoke quietly. “If you crack up, we’ll be
right down. This ship has control. I can land her on a dime.”
“But don’t forget—”
“I never forget,” the girl snapped. “Now go on down there and try your
luck. It’s all that’s left to do.”
“What’d he mean—secret?” The blonde-haired girl who sat in the
co-pilot seat beside the girl who had carried on that spirited
conversation, drawled, “What secret?”
“Sorry, Janet,” was the slow reply. “You’ve heard of military secrets,
I suppose?”
“For Pete’s sake, Mary Mason! Yes! Of course, I have, but I don’t see—”
“This is one of them.” Mary Mason, the little girl who piloted a big
plane, favored her with a smile.
After that, save for the slow drone of motors, there was quiet in the
cabin, a tense sort of calm, such as comes before a storm. After a time
the blonde-haired Janet said:
“Sparky’s motors didn’t stop all by themselves.”
“Of course they didn’t. Sparky’s too good a pilot for that.”
“He sure is. It’s the work of the enemy. That’s what it is. He knows.
He’s after us, after you and Sparky, Don and me. He’s got us coming
down in a jungle and we’re only just out of good, old U.S.A. And think
of the dizzy miles still ahead of us! And the enemy dogging our luck
all the way!”
“I thought of him before I started,” Mary replied quietly. “Let him do
his worst. We’ll win, you’ll see!”
For the swift, powerful twin-motored transport plane flown by Mary
Mason, the distance to that native clearing on the Rio Branco was just
a jump, but she did not jump. Instead she followed doggedly on behind
her limping companion. And as she followed, she found time to think.
Those were long, long thoughts.
She was a member of the WAFS, Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, this
slender girl with the flashing black eyes and trigger-quick fingers.
For six wintry months she had flown planes from east to west, from
north to south, and all the way back again. Sometimes these planes were
transport planes or bombers with comfortable, heated cabins. More often
they were open-seated trainers or fighters. She flew them in wind,
rain, and snow. Mile after weary mile in lonely solitude she had gone
roaring through the night sky to arrive at last at her destination only
to be ushered aboard an airways plane and hurried back again.
“It was hard,” she said to Janet Janes, her companion.
“Sure it was,” the other girl agreed. “Looks as if this would be
harder.”
“Perhaps,” Mary answered. “But just think! In the past two days it’s
been San Francisco to Denver, to Chicago, to Miami!”
“To Caracas, and then to the heart of a jungle where headhunters beat
on hollow logs inviting their friends to a feast.” Janet laughed in
spite of herself.
“This will be just a pause,” Mary insisted stoutly. “After that it will
be Para, to Dakar in Africa, Dakar to Egypt and the pyramids, Egypt to
Persia—”
“Under the Persian moon,” Janet sang softly.
And then:
“Watch!” Mary exclaimed. “There’s the clearing. Sparky has spotted it.
He’s preparing to circle. He’s going down!”
Suddenly Mary set her motors thundering. After climbing steeply she
leveled off to stare down at the clearing.
“He didn’t go down, not yet,” Janet informed her.
“No. There are people running from that row of native huts. He’d hit
them.”
“They’re like ants coming from an ant hill. They don’t seem important.”
“Oh! But they are!” Mary exclaimed. “Every human life is important.
Besides, if Sparky killed just one of them, our lives wouldn’t be worth
a penny. We’re in the wilds.”
“Probably not a white man within a hundred miles.”
“Or perhaps a thousand.”
“I wish we might go on.” A suggestion of strain crept into Janet’s
voice.
“Oh! But we can’t.” Mary’s plane was circling slowly now.
“Of course we couldn’t go on,” she told herself. “Not even if Sparky
insisted.”
Through her racing mind whirled memories of other days, those bad days
of winter convoy in America. There had been only twenty-five of them,
twenty-five WAFS, and so much work to do. Always, on her return from a
long, hard trip, muddy, chilled through and half-starved, if he chanced
to be in, she had found Sparky waiting in his car to whisk her away to
her barracks and after that to a glorious hot meal. “Thick, juicy
steaks, French fries, lemon pie, and barrels of hot coffee,” she
whispered.
And now Sparky was down there below her in his disabled plane waiting,
waiting for the last darting spot to glide from those huts into the
bush that lay beyond. No, they could not go on. “Not even for the
secret—” she spoke aloud, then checked herself just in time.
“He can’t climb,” she said to Janet. “He can only circle. And if his
other motor quits he may go crashing straight down!”
“There!” Janet breathed. “Now there’s no one!”
“Yes, just one more.”
A very small black spot, moving, oh, so slowly, went weaving this way,
then that, toward the forest.
“A child!” Mary exclaimed. “How Sparky would hate hitting a child!”
“Now!” Janet breathed.
“No,” Mary groaned. “One more, a smaller one.”
It seemed an eternity before this last child had reached safety.
Of a sudden the plane beneath them lunged downward.
“There they go!” Janet gasped while Mary’s clutching fingers fairly bit
into the stick.
But no, Sparky’s plane seemed to shudder. No doubt his motor had quit,
then gone on again.
“Why doesn’t he go down?” Mary groaned. “Here, take the plane!” She
gave Janet her place. “Just circle slowly.”
With long, swift strides she reached the plane’s door. There she braced
herself, then stood watching the plane below.
“He’s going down,” she whispered.
It was true. Circling slowly, cautiously, Sparky nursed his disabled
plane at last into a smooth glide that brought him swiftly down.
“He’s out too far,” she groaned. “He’s afraid there’s just one more
native child.
“There!” she exclaimed. “He’s down!”
She saw the big plane bump hard, then bump—bump again. It did not heel
over, but went gliding straight on.
“He made it!” she screamed aloud. “Oh! Glory!”
Bright hopes sped through her mind. The defective motors would soon be
repaired. Before the natives returned they would once again rise high
above the jungle and speed away to rejoin their convoy. She had begun
to feel dreadfully lonesome away from all that thundering flight. At
Para, they would be united and then—
Her thoughts broke off. Her lips parted in a scream that did not come.
Of a sudden the ship down there on the ground, gliding forward, had
whirled half about. Its right wing crumpled; it turned toward the black
waters of the river. After gliding forward half the distance to those
threatening waters, it came to a sudden halt, then crumpled into a heap.
With lips parted she kept her eyes glued upon the plane. Would it be
set on fire? A slow smoke rose, but no flames.
A figure came tumbling from the plane. “One more!” she whispered. “Just
one more!”
The figure that had appeared remained motionless for a space of
seconds. Then he leaped forward to re-enter the wreck.
“One of them is hurt,” she called to Janet. “Keep circling.”
It was true, for soon the single figure appeared once more, this time
bearing a limp burden.
“Janet,” Mary exclaimed as she resumed control of the plane, “we’re
going down!”
“This,” said Janet, “is a large plane. Larger than Sparky’s.”
“And easier to control. This,” said Mary proudly, “is the Lone Star,
the only plane of its kind in the world!”
“It’s almost priceless,” Janet agreed.
“Yes, and its cargo is really priceless,” Mary might have added, but
did not for that was her military secret, hers and Sparky’s. The C.O.
had told just that to her before they took off.
“I am putting it on your plane,” the C.O. had said, “because your Lone
Star is the fastest, strongest, most dependable transport plane we have
in our outfit. And I have given the plane to you because other than two
pilots that cannot be spared, you are the only one who knows her and
can take her safely through.”
This, she realized, had been high praise. Hers was a grave
responsibility, but Sparky, her good pal, was down there. Was he the
one who had been injured? She had no way of knowing.
“I’m going down,” she repeated softly.
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