“We better drop a little,” Bland shouted.  “I gotta keep my bearings!”

Swiftly the vague outlines sharpened.  Groves and groves and groves appeared beneath them.  And small islands of twinkling stars, set in patterns and squares, with here and there a splotch of brightness.  And single stars that had somehow strayed and lay twinkling, lost in the great squares of dark green.

“We gotta make it before dark,” Bland yelled.  “I been away a year.  I need daylight—­”

They gave her more gas, and Johnny became conscious of the motor’s voice.  Eighty miles she was doing now, on a gentle incline that lifted the earth a little nearer.  The glory before them was deepening to ruby red that glowed and darkened.  Beneath the heaped radiance lay a sea of stars—­and beyond, a smooth floor of polished purple.

“There’s Los Angeles—­and over beyond is the ocean!” called Bland, turning his head a little.

Johnny sucked in his breath and nodded, forgetting that Bland could not see the motion.

“Gimme the control—­I gotta pick out a landing!  I’ll head for Inglewood.  They’s a big field—­”

Inglewood meant nothing at all to Johnny, even had he heard the name distinctly, which he did not.  It cost him an effort to yield the control, but he pulled hands and feet away and sat passive, breathing quickly, gazing down at the wonders spread beneath him.  For this was his first amazed sight of Los Angeles, though he had twice passed through the city in a train that clung to dingy streets and left him an impression of grime and lumbering trucks and clanging street cars and more grime, and Chinese signs painted on shacks, and slinking figures.

But this was a magic city spread beneath him.  It glowed and twinkled behind the thin veil of dusk.  There seemed no end to the lights which overflowed the lower slopes of the cupped hills at their right and hesitated on the very brink of the purpling ocean before them.

Bland shut off the motor and they glided, the plane silent as a great bat.  The city disclosed houses, and streets down which lighted cars seemed to be standing still, so much greater was the speed of the Thunder Bird.  They passed the thickest sprinkle of lights and headed for dark slopes midway between the indrawing hills.  Many pairs of bright lights crawled along a narrow black pathway.  Now the ocean was nearer, so that Johnny could see a fringe of white along its edge where waves lapped up to the lights.

They swooped, flattened out, and glided again while Bland picked up certain landmarks.  The motor spoke, its voice increased while they banked in a circle and swooped again.  Now a long bare stretch lay just ahead.  The motor stopped, and they volplaned steeply; flattened, dipped a little, skimmed close to earth, touched, lifted again.