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.