“So you decided to join the Caterpillar Club, did you?” said Mr. Johnson, speaking jestingly but shaking Jimmy warmly by the hand. “I’m mighty glad to see you back, _mighty glad_. I had some real shivers when I read your telegram saying that your plane had fallen and that you had had to jump for your life. And I was more than amazed to learn that, despite your accident, you still succeeded in accomplishing your errand. It must have been a tight squeeze, Jimmy. I want to know how you did it.” Jimmy fished out one of his topographic maps. “I fell right here,” he said, putting his pencil point on the spot that represented the gap above Mingoville. “It was great luck. Had I been a mile distant in almost any direction, I could never have made that train at Tyrone.” “It was a wonderful achievement, Jimmy. I want to hear every particular of the story.” Simply Jimmy related what had happened to him, beginning his tale with the moment when he felt his plane icing up. “It’s a great story, Jimmy,” was the managing editor’s only comment. “You should have told me about it in your wire last night. I want you to tell Handley what you have just told me. It will make a great story for the _Press_. Of course we must not betray the fact that the under secretary of war lost some state papers. For the purpose of this tale you were merely bearing confidential despatches to him from the _Press_.” So it happened that Jimmy once more figured in the news columns. He disliked so much publicity. But he understood that this was a great story for his particular newspaper to print. The thing that pleased him most was the fact that he had made good. He had delivered the message to Garcia. Nor was Jimmy at all displeased when he found at the end of the week that he had been given a nice bonus for his work. His own ship was ready for flight once more within the period that Jimmy had designated as the time allowance for the job. But for some time there was again a dearth of interesting assignments. Meanwhile winter was succeeded by early spring, the snow disappeared in the region of New York, though there was plenty of it left in the far north and would be for weeks to come. Jimmy had the skis on his plane replaced by wheels, for everywhere in the territory that he was likely to cover there was now bare ground. The first break in this new stretch of uninteresting days came when Jimmy was sent to the pine barrens of New Jersey, to take photographs of a great forest fire that was sweeping through the pines. Jimmy had seen forest fires in Pennsylvania, but nothing like this crown fire that was roaring through the pine woods in a line twenty-five miles long, laying waste not only thousands of acres of timber land, but utterly destroying scores of homes within the forested area. On another occasion he was sent down the Bay to take photographs of an incoming steamer from Europe that had effected a daring rescue in mid-ocean of the crew of a sinking freighter.