' any longer."

"I don't mean to keep you in the dark after this, Perk," he was told in
jerky, broken sentences, as though Jack found it difficult to talk and
pay the proper attention to what he was doing, for the amphibian had
again commenced a steep dive, seeking a much lower altitude. "There are
too many things connected with the story to try and spin it now--just
hold your horses till we settle down on that lake, and you'll get
it--all I know, or suspect, anyhow. Just now I can only tell you that
this Kearns is a most remarkable personage, a baffling mystery to the
Department who's outsmarted the whole Service and played his game of
hide-and-seek before their very eyes--nobody so far has been able to
pick up a shred of positive evidence that would convict him.

"Gosh, amighty, we're flyin' high, buddy!" was what Perk exclaimed and
immediately his wits went into a huddle. He must get busy and figure
things out, just as football teams do when a change in signals becomes
essential.

They had been passing over the land for some little time and still Jack
kept heading almost directly into the northeast. He knew just where he
expected to make his goal, due to a close application to his charts and
maps of the Florida region.

Debarred from fishing for information while the flight was on, Perk was
forced to seek consolation in making good use of his binoculars,
sweeping the heavens for signs of other suspicious planes or endeavoring
to make out the character of the terrain over which they were speeding.

Occasionally he managed to discover some tiny light and this gave him an
opportunity to speculate as to its meaning--if isolated he concluded it
must either be a campfire made by alligator hunters, or a street light
in some small hamlet, such as he imagined might be found in this almost
wild section of lower Florida where the Everglades with their eternal
water kept settlers from picking out locations for starting truck
patches or citrus groves--all of which would probably be vastly changed
when the great reclamation plans for draining had been fully carried
out.

He often felt certain he glimpsed water below and had enough knowledge
of the country to understand what that would mean.

"Wonder jest how long he means to keep this up," Perk was saying to
himself when the better part of an hour had passed since they left the
open gulf behind, "huh! by this time we must a'gone more'n sixty miles
an' say, in places the hu