  When they struck the typhoon Johnny had the courage to hope that Pant might bring them out of it in safety. This, however, seemed scarcely believable. The cabin, a moment before stuffy as a clothes closet, was now as breezy as a mosquito-bar tent in a stiff wind. She was battened tight, too. The mad whirl of the plane made Johnny dizzy and sick. His ears were full of strange sounds. The creak and groan of planes, stays and guys, that seemed about to snap, was mingled with the thunder of the engines. Above all this, like the voice of some mad siren’s spirit filled with hatred and revenge, rang out the shrill scream of the wind. Johnny’s eyes were blinded by strange weird lights—red, yellow and purple—flash upon flash. “Must be in the midst of the gigantic smithy where lightning bolts are forged,” he grumbled, as he closed his eyes tight and took one more mad whirl that it seemed must be the craft’s last. But at that, the seemingly last moment, the whirling gale took a strange turn. The plane hung motionless in mid-air. By good fortune she stood right side up. Her planes were as yet unimpaired. She was a staunch craft. Not a stick, nor wire, nor screw but had been tested and doubly inspected before they went into her. Her two twelve-cylinder engines, lying one beside the other above the fuselage, were bound and braced from every side. Johnny thought of all this as they lay there suspended in space. It was a lull; he understood that well enough. A strange lull it was, too, as if the storm had taken their frail craft into its gigantic fist, as an ape holds a fledgling bird in his horny claw before crashing it against the trunk of a tree. Johnny’s lips were pressed to the speaking-tube. “We’re in for it!” he shrilled to his pal. “Yes?” came back from Pant. “How you standing it?” Pant retorted with a grim chuckle: “Not so bad. Pretty wet out here.” “What—what’ll we do?” “Going to climb. Top to this thing somewhere, maybe. Nobody knows, though. It’s a typhoon. Always wanted to see what a plane’d do in a typhoon.” “You’ll see, but never tell, maybe.” “Maybe.” “Look out—here she comes again! It’s—” “Yes, it’s—” Pant’s voice seemed blown back into him by the terrific gust of wind. The next instant, a darkness such as he had never seen; a tumult such as he had never heard; a torrent of rain such as he had never witnessed; a wild whirling such as he had never experienced, drove all power of thought from his befuddled brain, leaving him again a half-animate, over-large punching-bag, swinging in the narrow center of the cabin. Even in this dizzy state of half-consciousness he thought of Pant. When told that he might not escape disaster, he had not said, “I have escaped before.” He might have said it, for there had been other adventures; a night in a forest in India, with a mad black leopard’s eyes gleaming at him out of the darkness; an hour in a dungeon-dark cave, with murderous savages about him. There had been other adventures, too, and he had escaped; yet he did not say, “I will again.” That was the kind of fellow he was. Confident of his ability, interested in all of life, thrilled by each new experience, he stood ready to face each one as it came and do battle valiantly, leaving the results to a power greater, a mind wiser, than his own. At this moment when Johnny was thinking these thoughts, Pant was being dragged forward half out of his soggy, water-soaked harness, then slammed back into his seat, to be deluged to the drowning by a downpour that was not rain, he thought, but more like a sky-suspended tank of fresh water. He found himself surprised that the plane held up against it; that it did not sink at once into the sea. His leather coat hung like a weight of steel upon his shoulders; his eyes, his ears, his mouth were filled with water. It chilled, benumbed, depressed him. The plane was traveling with the gale; whether in a circle or straight ahead, he could not tell. The engine was shut off. Would it start again at his bidding? That he did not know. If not, their situation was hopeless. The time would come when the storm would drop them, as it drops a bird it has harried and beaten to its death. Then, with no power, they would sink helpless into the sea. And such a sea as it must be! He had not seen it since the storm began. He could imagine it, though. Black, angry water tossed into foam. Billows, mountain high. What a landing-place for a seaplane! One resounding crash that echoed above the demon laughter of the waves, then all would be over! “She must start! She must,” he muttered. Half-unconsciously he put his hand to the lever, then quickly drew it away. “No, not now, not now,” he muttered. “The dust! The dust! If only it is still dry!” Then, for a moment, his mind dwelt upon the wind. It was strange about that wind. It did not come in gusts, but flowed straight on like a stream of water. In the utter darkness, flooded by torrents of rain, carried steadily forward by that constant flow of wind, he was overcome by an illusion. He fancied himself passing beneath the surface of the sea. Only the touching of his tongue to his lips, to satisfy his mind that this was not salt water that beat in from every side, could dispel the illusion. The whole thing was so terrific, so altogether beyond comprehension, that it shunted off the powers that drove his brain to action. It was altogether unbelievable. As Johnny Thompson’s mind cleared itself of the effects of the airship’s mad whirl, it began puzzling over certain questions: What was to be the end of this? Why where they there? The truth was, Johnny did not know why they were there. They had come upon this long and perilous air journey over the sea at the request of a stranger. No, perhaps they had not been as mad as that. The man had brought with him a letter of introduction from their employer. Yet, why should he not have told them more of his intentions? How could this journey benefit tens of thousands of children? They were in imminent danger of being destroyed by the storm. He felt that it would help if only he knew the reason why. There came another whirl. He caught his breath and tried to think clearly. It was a monstrous experience; he could not think of it in any other way. “Can’t last long—wonder we haven’t hit the water before this. Must have been mighty high up.” To his surprise and great relief, the plane again righted herself. This time, half on her side, she lay upon the air like a crippled bird poising for its death plunge. His lips were at the tube. “What you going to do?” he shouted above the roar of the wind. “Going—to—get—out—of—here,” came back. “Can—you?” “Can—try. Look—out. Start—engine. May—take—tailspin. Can’t—be—worse,—though.” The next instant there came the thunder of the powerful motor. “Thank God! Dust’s dry,” Pant muttered as he tried to straighten up his tilted car. When he heard the thunder of the motors, Pant could scarcely have been more thankful about anything. True, there were not another such pair of engines in the world, but there had been a strain put upon every bolt, rod, feed-pipe and screw such as had been endured by no other engines. If there had been a single break, then all was lost. When they did respond to his touch, he at once tilted his right plane in such a manner as to square her up. The wind was blowing steadily, and, he thought, less violently, though this was hard to concede, since it seemed to him that a more madly violent gale than even now was blowing would be hard to imagine. The plane righted herself gracefully. Truly, this was a marvelous bit of machinery, made by master builders. She had been designed for dependability rather than speed, yet she presented a rather rakish appearance, her upper planes jutting out over the lower ones by a full five feet. Her fuselage was built like the body of a wasp, in two parts. In the forward part was the driver’s seat, fully exposed to the open air. In the rear portion was a closed cabin fitted with two seats. These seats in fair weather might be made to collapse in such a manner as to form a bed. Thus it was possible for one aviator to rest while the other was at the wheel. But the distinctive part of the whole equipment was the engines. If Pant had felt any misgivings about the type of engine their plane was fitted with, the next few minutes made him doubly thankful that they were just what they were. Hardly had they begun a mad rush straight away with the wind, the nose of the plane tilted twenty-five degrees upward, than there began to play about him vivid sparks of fire. “Picking up lightning,” he muttered. Like lights twinkling on the deck of a steamer the sparks leaped from plane to plane. They flashed down the guy-wires and braces, leaped to the motors. Setting her firing irregularly for a second, they raced for the tail, only to flash back to the wheel and give Pant’s arm such a sudden twist that for the second he was paralyzed. The next moment his lips were at the tube. “Mighty bad,” he shouted. “Dangerous—I—I—say.” “Better—stop—her,” came back from Johnny. Pant’s hand was at the lever. The engine went still, but just at that instant a tremendous flash leaped up from the large tank at the rear of the fuselage. Pant leaped high, then sank back with a shudder. “Man! Man!” he gasped. “If that had been gasoline in that tank! If it had!” His brow wrinkled. “I only hope it didn’t rip her wide open. Anyway, we climbed some. Can afford to glide.” They were surrounded by a succession of vivid flashes of lightning. The plane was tipped to a rakish angle. Through a storm-washed window Johnny saw what lay below. The ocean, vast, mysterious, dark and terrible, appeared as a limitless open-hearth steel furnace filled with gleaming molten metal. In the very midst of this was what appeared at first to be a mere splotch on the surface, but which in time resolved itself into the form of a steamship. He gasped as he made out its form, “To think,” he muttered, “that any ship could live in this!” Yet, as he thought of it, he knew that they had in years past. He had read authentic accounts of ships riding out such a storm. Even as he watched he saw the water smooth out into what he knew to be the surface of a gigantic wave; saw, amid the flashes, the ship leap forward to meet it; saw her prow rest on air; saw her plunge; saw her buried beneath an avalanche of sea. He shut his eyes, expecting never again to see that ship; yet, when he opened them, she was still there battling with the elements. “Bravo! Bravo!” he exclaimed involuntarily. The next instant the plane tipped back into position, the engines roared, he felt her turn and knew that Pant had set her head-on against the storm. He listened to the roar of the engines and thrilled at the battle as he felt the shock of the storm. Suddenly, as the sheet-lightning flashed, he saw a dark object pass his window, then another. “The parachutes!” he exclaimed in consternation. He put his lips to the tube: “Storm—tore—the—parachutes—away.” “I—know,” came back from Pant. “No—good—now,—anyway. Can’t—land.” Then at the very thought, Johnny laughed. On a calm sea the parachutes might save them; in such a storm, never. “Saw—a—ship—down—there. See—her?” he asked a moment later. “Yes.” “Think—that’s—the—ship—we’re—racing?” “Might—be.” “If—it—is—we—win.” “If—we—live—through,—yes.” There was silence. But again there came a sound from the tube. This time it was not Pant, but the stranger who rode behind Johnny. Johnny started; he had quite forgotten him. “What—what is it?” he stammered. “Thought—I—ought—to—tell—you.” The voice was low and subdued, like a parson reading the funeral service at a grave. “Tell—me—what?” Johnny asked, bewildered. “About—the—wreck. Why—we—are—going—” But at that instant there came a blinding flash, a deafening roar, and the plane seemed to leap into midair, like a rowboat hit by a fifty-pound projectile. |
|
