everywhere these days.

This plane acted strangely. It seemed at first to be coming straight toward her. Then it took a broad sweep and began to disappear.

“Like some old marauding crow going back to tell his friends,” she thought. “Hope Sparky won’t be long. But then, of course, in that cramped place he can’t work fast. Just have to be patient, that’s all.”

The truth is that Sparky had not even started repairing the engine. There were, he had discovered, other matters that needed attending to first.

All the time Mary was watching the sky. The plane out there on the edge of the horizon had reappeared. A mere speck against the blue, it increased in size. Even at that great distance, she somehow believed this was a different plane.

Presently this plane too cut a broad circle, then began to fade.

“Like bees coming out from a hive,” she thought. “Afraid of us perhaps. Our big, fighting planes have been knocking them down of late.” If that were true she hoped they would keep on being afraid.

As Sparky crept on hands and knees through the low wing section of the plane, toward this disabled engine, he had caught a disturbing sound. “Like the hiss of a goose,” he thought. He flashed a light before him, then recoiled as if struck a blow. Little wonder, for there, not ten feet before him, was a pair of bulging eyes. Beneath the eyes was a mouth with a tongue moving up and down.

“Like a snake,” he thought.

He was not deceived. It was not a snake but, of all persons, a Jap.

“Our engine was tampered with!” His head spun, but his temper rose to a white heat.

Between him and the Jap was a trap-door leading to the desert below, providing you had a parachute. And the Jap had one, strapped to his back.

“Ready to go,” Sparky told himself. “He would have gone before this, but he was afraid. Now he will never jump.”

As if reading his thoughts, the Jap sprang forward. He was too late. Sparky was solidly settled on the door.

Hissing like a snake, the little man snatched a knife from his belt. One moment it hung in air, the next it rattled against the wing’s floor. A heavy wrench had crushed against the Jap’s arm, 

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