about that!” Biff laughed. Derek joined in the laughter.

For the next few minutes the boys were quiet as the aircraft taxied to its take-off runway. The four engines revved up. The plane started rolling slowly down the strip. It rolled and rolled, gaining momentum. Then it was airborne, heading out over the Atlantic toward Port-au-Prince, Haiti, nearly eight hundred miles away.

During the flight, Biff and Derek became more and more friendly. They had much in common, but Biff noticed during the conversation that while Derek was most willing to talk about his home in The Netherlands, his schooling, and other, incidental topics, he said nothing about why he was going to Curaçao.

Biff was cagey, too. If Derek wouldn’t talk about the reason for his flying across the Atlantic to visit a speck of an island in the Caribbean, then Biff felt it wise to say as little about his own visit as possible.

There wasn’t much Biff could tell, anyway. He wouldn’t know why his Uncle Charlie wanted him until he saw him. Biff did tell Derek that he was going to be met by his uncle, but he didn’t tell his new friend the kind of work Uncle Charlie did.

The plane flew high over the easternmost tip of Cuba. Near three o’clock in the morning, Haiti was spotted, a dark, shadowy mass in the grayness of the dawn. High up over the Haitian mountains, the sky could be seen lightening on the eastern horizon. Neither boy saw it. They had talked themselves out and were sleeping.

The plane went into a sharp descent for its landing at Port-au-Prince. There was an hour’s delay before the plane took off on its next leg, the two-and-a-half hour flight to Curaçao.

Derek was the first to stir. Biff opened one eye, closed it again, and settled down into the seat.

“Do you know our time of arrival, Biff?” Derek asked, his voice clear and wide awake.

“’Bout seven,” Biff mumbled sleepily. “Let’s get some more shut-eye.”

“Shut-eye? I do not understand,” Derek said, puzzled.

“Sleep,” answered Biff. “Good old sleep. But I can see this is the end of it for now.”

Wide awake, the two boys chatted in low voices until the island of Curaçao, fifty miles off the coast of Venezuela, came into view.

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