MYSTERIOUS MOSLEM
To Mary the next lap in their long journey will always remain a blank,
but the oasis at which they arrived will stand out vividly in her
memory.
The reason for the blank was quite simple, for, as soon as they were
safely in the air, Sparky said:
“Mary, you look tired. I know you are tough as a hickory limb and
you’ve got all kinds of grit—”
“Oh, thanks, Sparky,” she grinned. “I’m glad you’ve got my number.”
“Got your number!” Sparky exploded. “Of course I have and just now you
need sleep. That secret cargo of ours won’t wait and so—”
“Sparky! Tell me what our secret cargo is,” she begged.
“Will you stop interrupting me?” he stormed. “How do I know what it is?
That’s a military secret. All I know is that China needs all the help
we can bring her, every bit! And that this cargo of ours is of the
greatest importance. I shouldn’t wonder,” his voice dropped as if he
were afraid someone were listening, “I shouldn’t wonder if the enemy
knows it’s important. I got a warning to be on my guard not an hour
ago, and that goes for you as well. This is a dangerous land. It’s all
full of Italians, wild natives, and even a few traitorous Frenchmen
that would sell us out for a dime or kill us just for fun.
“And so—” He paused for breath.
“And so—” Mary prompted.
“Let’s see, where was I?” Sparky pulled back the stick to climb a bit.
“Oh, yes! And so we’ve just got to keep right on flying. Mighty little
time for sleep. I had a dandy rest before we hit Africa. Now it’s your
turn. I’ll do this lap. You just crawl back there, roll up in your
robe, and sleep.”
All too willingly Mary rolled up in her robe and slept. When she awoke
they were circling for a landing at one of the most fascinating spots
she had ever known.
Looking down upon it, as they were, from ten thousand feet, it seemed a
green carpet on an endless gray floor.
“An oasis!” Mary whispered. “How beautiful!”
“Yes, and I shouldn’t wonder if those dark, moving spots over there on
the grasslands were giraffes or maybe elephants.”
“Yes, and there’s a camel caravan just coming in,” Mary exclaimed. “How
long it is. Must be fifty camels. And the shadows seem darker than the
camels. Oh! I wish we could stay a week!”
“Well, we can’t,” Sparky warned. “Few hours at best. Our right engine
isn’t acting properly. Has to be tuned up for this desert air, I guess.
That’ll give you a breathing spell. Make the most of it.”
The camel shadows on the desert were long. The sun was almost down when
at last their plane came to rest on that long, narrow runway there in
the desert.
Here again they found good American soldiers and mechanics. And Mary
once more found herself creating a sensation!
“Hey, fellas!” one boy with bulging eyes shouted. “It’s a lady, a lady
pilot, right out here just a mile beyond nowhere!”
“Joe! Hey, Jerry! You! Tom!” another called. “Come and see it. We got
lions an’ elephants, zebras, giraffes, and aardvarks, but this one is
different! Come a-running! See if you can name it.” He looked at Mary
and laughed happily.
They were grand boys, all of them, and those who were not on duty
showed her the time of her life. They hurried her off to mess where
they feasted her on ripe figs, bananas, strawberries, and all manner of
African delicacies.
Then one of them said, “Come on! We’ll show you something you’ll never
forget.”
“How long will it take?” she demurred.
“Only an hour or two.”
“I’ll have to ask Sparky about that.”
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[Illustration: _Mary Found Herself Creating a Sensation_]
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She found Sparky perspiring and covered with grease as he worked with
the mechanics tuning up the engine.
“Two hours,” was his short reply. “Be back in two hours if you want to
fly with me.”
“We’ll be back in an hour!” a boy from Indiana exclaimed.
“Sure! Sure!” they all agreed. “Come on. What are we waiting for? Let’s
go.”
And so away they all marched to the shelter where the jeeps were kept.
It was while on this march that Mary received a sudden shock. As they
hurried along, they met a woman dressed as a Moslem woman always is.
She wore a long, flowing robe and her face, save for her eyes, was
covered with a veil. Yet there seemed to be something very familiar
about the tall, erect figure and the brisk, springing walk.
“Jeepers! I never saw her before!” a boy whispered.
At the same time Mary was thinking. “I must have seen her somewhere.
But how could I—”
Just then the dark eyes shining out from behind the veil gave her a
sharp, penetrating look. In her shock Mary stumbled and nearly fell.
“Can she be the woman who asked me questions in that eating place, way
back there in the little city by the sea?” she asked herself. And then,
“How could it be?”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, stopping short. “I can’t go with you boys. I must
not!”
“Aw, come on!” a boy from Texas begged. “You’ll never see a thing like
it again.”
“We won’t be gone an hour.”
“Sure! Sure! You must come!”
They were such nice boys and she knew so well what it must mean to be
escorting a real American girl in such a place, that she yielded and
came along.
“And yet, I shouldn’t do it,” she told herself.
Before they were gone she received a second shock. Just as they were
all piling into the car, a small man and a camel came shambling down
the road.
“Can he be the little man I saw at the port?” she asked herself. It
gave her a shock to think that this little man and the woman in black
had somehow made their way here before them. This thought, as far as
the little man was concerned, was short-lived. When he had come closer
she saw that he was shorter than the other man, that his face was
rounder, and there was a scar across his left cheek. She heaved a sigh
on making this discovery, but her relief was not to be of long duration.
And so they rattled away, nine boys and a lady, the first they had seen
in many a day.
“I shouldn’t have come,” Mary whispered to herself once again. Had she
but known it, she was to be thinking that very thought hours later, and
with regrets.
Darkness had come. Switching on the lights, they went bumping over the
sand ridges.
“Rides just like that big ship of yours, doesn’t it?” said the boy from
Kentucky.
“Exactly,” said Mary, giggling like a kid. She was happy but some
sprite seemed to whisper, “Not for long.”
After rattling along for a while with the lights on, they snapped the
lights off, but rattled straight on.
A dark bulk loomed up before them. Shutting off the gas, they, all but
the driver, piled out and began to push.
“Such crazy business,” Mary whispered.
“Wait and see,” came back to her.
At last they came to a halt. The dark bulk was closer now. Mary made
out the forms of palm trees. One of the boys was dragging something.
Strange sounds came from before them, low grunts, splashes, then a loud
trumpet-like sound that made Mary jump.
“Say! What is this?” she whispered.
Someone snapped on a spot light connected by a wire to the car. Then
she knew, for there before her, like a set in a museum was a water hole
and in the water, belly-deep, stood all manner of creatures, ugly
rhinoceros, graceful gazelles, ungainly giraffes, huge elephants and
who could say what else.
“Are they really alive?” she asked in an awed whisper.
“Sure! What do you think?” The boy at her side laughed. “We got ’em
trained now. You should have seen ’em the first time!”
“Yes, an’ heard ’em,” another laughed low. “They spilled all the water
getting out.”
“It’s about all the fun we have way out here,” one boy added with a
touch of sorrow. “Oh, gee! Why don’t you stay with us?”
“I’d love to,” said Mary, “but I’ve got a job to do. There’s a war on,
you know.”
“And don’t we know it,” the boy whispered. “One night we were bombed.
Two boys were killed and three went to the hospital. Gee! Just think of
dying way out here!”
Mary was thinking.
By and by she whispered, “We’d better go back.”
Without a word they turned about to go shuffling back to the car.
“Thanks a lot for coming with us,” one of the boys shouted when they
unloaded at the airport.
“Sure! Sure!” they shouted. “Hope you come this way again!”
“I’ll be seeing you,” she called. Then with a lump in her throat she
walked to the plane where the men were just replacing the motor.
Did she see a shadow dart away from the other wing of the plane? It was
too dark really to know. “Probably a sneaking old jackal,” she told
herself.
“Sparky,” she said as they soared aloft some time later, “I’m going to
resign from this job of mine.”
“And then what?” Sparky asked in surprise.
“Then I’m going from place to place in all these lonely spots cheering
up the boys.”
“That,” said Sparky, “would be a noble purpose, but just now you’re
bound to this big plane and me. And you’ll not leave us for a long
time, not till the journey’s end.”
“Not till the journey’s end,” she repeated softly. And how soon would
the end come? Who could tell? Perhaps tonight. One never knew. She
shuddered a little, then turned her attention to the work of the hour.
That night Mary did not sleep. Sparky had first call on a time for rest
and he surely needed it. He told her to call him in two hours.
“But I won’t,” she told herself. “Not if all goes well. Something tells
me I won’t sleep if I have the chance.” She found herself haunted by a
sense of impending doom. The tall French woman, all in black, and the
stately Moslem lady were constantly being blended on the pictured walls
of her mind. And after that, with the slow sleepy tread of the desert,
came the two little men and their camels. They too seemed part of the
same picture, but just how, she could not tell.
“What foolishness!” she whispered. “Lie down, you ghosts.” But they
would not. They continued to haunt her.
She gave herself over to glimpses of the desert and the night. There
was a glorious moon. The desert beneath her was full of haunting
shadows. For the most part they were shadows of sandy hills, but at
times they loomed dark and large.
“Oases,” she told herself. “Wonder if friend or foe live here—” Sparky
had told her that this night they were to fly over dangerous country.
Little pockets of enemy resistance here had not been crushed. She was
to keep a sharp lookout and if she sighted a plane, was to call him at
once.
“We can outclimb and outfly most enemy fighters,” he had said. “But we
must not let them get the drop on us.”
So, with eyes and ears alert, she rode on through the night.
All went well. She called Sparky in three hours. He scolded her for
waiting so long.
“It was the spell of the desert at night,” she told him. “Seems as if I
could fly on and on forever. And just think! We may never pass this way
again!”
“Life is like that, so why bother?” was the reply. She went back for
her turn at resting, but did not sleep.
Was it the spell of the desert night that kept her awake? Who can say?
At least she did not sleep, just lay there, wrapped in her robe,
staring into the darkness, listening to the roar of the motors and
thinking, thinking.
Her father was somewhere in Africa. She knew that and no more. It would
seem strange to pass over him in the night and not to see him at all.
Yet, that might happen. There was no time for looking around, no time
for anything. They must go on and on.
When two hours had passed, she was back at Sparky’s side asking for the
controls.
“I can’t sleep,” she explained. “Flying over the desert is fascinating.
You don’t care a whoop about it.”
“That’s right.”
“Then why not let me have a chance at it?”
“Sure! Why not?” He yielded the controls.
As she took over, the words of an old song were running through her
mind:
“Dance, gypsies; sing, gypsies; dance while you may.”
It is in time of war that such simple songs as this take on a world of
meaning.
She had not been at the controls an hour when the first faint traces of
dawn began to appear. Then, suddenly, a signal on her board flashed a
grim warning. Instantly her fingers shut off the fuel and oil from
their left motor. The next instant she turned the carbon-dioxide snow
on that motor, as she called:
“Sparky! Sparky! Quick! Our left motor is on fire!”
Sparky was at her side in an instant.
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