.

Flying has its inconveniences, after all, for Johnny could not stop to
investigate the injury he had done to Cliff. He would have to go on,
now that he was started, but the thought that he might be flying with a
dead man chilled what enthusiasm he had felt for the adventure.

On over the ocean he flew until he had passed the three-mile limit
which he hazily believed would bar the planes of the government unless
they had express orders to follow him out. Looking back, he saw that
his hunters seemed content to wheel watchfully along the shore line,
and presently he banked around and flew north.

From the Mexican line to San Diego is not far--a matter of twenty miles
or so. Across the mouth of San Diego bay, on the inner shore of which
sits the town, North Island stretches itself like a huge alligator
lying with its back above water; a long, low, sandy expanse of
barrenness that leaves only a narrow inlet between its westernmost tip
and the long rocky finger of Point Loma.

Time was when North Island was given over to the gulls and long-billed
pelicans, and San Diego valued it chiefly as a natural bulkhead that
made the bay a placid harbor where the great combing rollers could not
ride. But other birds came; great, roaring, man-made birds, that rose
whirring from its barrenness and startled the gulls until they grew
accustomed to the sight and sound of them. Low houses grew in orderly
rows. More of the giant birds came. Nowadays the people of San Diego,
looking out across the bay, will sometimes look again to make sure
whether the sailing object they see is an airplane or only a gull. In
time the gull will flap its wings; the airplane never does. All
through the day the air is filled with them--gulls and airplanes
sharing amicably the island and the air above it.

Up from the south, with her nose pointed determinedly northward and her
rudder set steady as the tail of a frozen fish, the Thunder Bird came
humming defiantly, flying swift under the moon. Over San Diego bay,
watching through night-glasses the outlaw bird, the two scouting planes
dipped steeply toward their nesting place on North Island. Three
planes were up with students making practice flights and doing
acrobatics by moonlight. These saw one scout go down and land, saw the
other circle over the field and climb higher, bearing off toward the
mainland to see what the outlaw plane would do.

The Thunder Bird swung on over the island, banked a