Aeronaut Gone: A Hettie and Ro Historical Mystery (The Hettie and Ro Adventures Book 4) by Beth Byers & Bettie Jane

Author:Beth Byers & Bettie Jane [Byers, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2020-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Truman, Neville, Ro, and Hettie gathered in the small bridge area and reassessed their situation. Ro glared at the Longmonts, half-listening to Hettie recount their search down below.

“Douglas Longmont seems to have forgotten his manners, and is quite convinced we’re all about to die. Perhaps he knows something about the Captain’s fate and it’s affecting his personality.”

“Perhaps he’s simply an obnoxious goat,” Ro muttered under her breath. Hettie continued as though Ro hadn’t spoken.

“More likely the debt he’s carrying is weighing him down. I doubt his debts have anything whatsoever to do with our Captain’s disappearance, though. We found nothing to indicate the Longmonts had anything to do with our current predicament.”

A raucous shout from the Longmont clan caught their attention. This time Betsy and Daisy were going at each of their husbands.

Betsy’s high-pitched, nasally voice cut through the sky in an intensely irritating way. “You are a reckless fool, Douglas Longmont. You brought us into the jungle and I’ll never forgive you for it. All for what? A dying old man.”

“We didn’t have a choice. It’s not as though we wanted to come. My father said he’d cut off our allowance if we didn’t come. You do enjoy my allowance, don’t you, my darling wife?” There was nothing affectionate in the way he spoke to his wife, rather his tone was laced with derision and condescension.

In between Betsy’s accusations, Daisy filled in the gaps with her own stark criticism of Frederick. “We haven’t even seen a sloth. We are going to die here in this—this place. I’ll never forgive you, even if we live, which doesn’t seem likely.”

For their part, the twins stood there scowling at their wives, making little effort to either defend themselves or to comfort their wives. Ro had never seen so many adults playing so hard at being children.

The Longmonts were unravelling. Watching the twins turn on each other and their wives—even on their dying grandfather—made Ro extra aware of their predicament. For now, having spent the most time with the aeronaut, Neville and Truman were keeping the ship in the air and doing their best to track the river below them, although none of them knew if they were following the correct river or if they were going the right way.

Nobody knew when or how the Captain left the ship. They could have been off course from their planned destination for hours. It was clear to all of them that they were off course. They should have landed near the waterfalls by now, or very soon from now which would make them visible by air and there were no waterfalls as far as they could see.

“We need to find a place to land. I think I can recall how the Captain commanded the ship to lower altitude, but I hesitate to make any course changes until we have a plan,” Neville said.

“Why do we need to land?” Hettie asked, and Ro echoed the question in her mind.

“Water,” Neville replied low enough to keep from giving the Longmonts something else to panic over.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.