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Flying the Coast Skyways. Jack Ralston's Swift Patrol

Flying the Coast Skyways Jack Ralston's Swift Patrol

CHAPTER I
By Airline to Atlanta

“Big smoke dead ahead, partner!”

“I’ve been expecting to hear you announce that fact, Per – I mean Wally!”

“Kinder guess naow it mout be Birmingham, eh, what, Boss?”

“No other – you hit the nail on the head that time, Mr. Observer.”

“Huh! my native town, which I’m naow agwine to see fur the fust time.”

“Better get out of the habit of making such crazy cracks, brother – what if any one overheard you, and took a notion in his head you might be somebody other than just a Down-in-Dixie product from Alabama, – raised in the North, where you acquired a whiff of the dialect of a Canuck – and by name Wallace J. Corkendell, though generally answering to plain Wally.”

“Hot-diggetty-dig! that ere smoke cloud sure looks jest like an ole peasoup fog-pack we done got lost in not so far back. By gravy! I doant b’lieve we’ll even git one squint at the pesky city as we fly over the same!”

“I can easily see where I’m bound to have a lot of fun listening to you trying to talk in three different lingoes, all mixed up in one great mess – Yankee, your native brogue; Canadian patios, contracted while with the Northwest Mounted Police; and now a pidgin English, such as a Southern colored boy might use. I only hope such a mixture doesn’t queer the big game we’ve got laid out ahead for us, whatever its nature proves to be.”

“I er-reckons—yeou says I gotter use that word right along naow, ’cause no Alabama white or black boy never does guess anything – I reckons, suh, I’ll git a strangle-holt on the way a gen-u-ine cracker keeps up his end o’ a talkie – given a little time fo’ practice.”

“That begins to sound like the real stuff, comrade,” observed Jack; and despite the clamor of engine exhaust, and whirling propellers both of them were able to hear every word uttered, simply because they were wearing their usual earphone attachments, without which they never made a flight. “I’m beginning to feel encouraged to believe you’ll come through with flying colors. There, we’re directly over Birmingham, and going strong to eastward.”