Chapter 6 ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND

Speedy as the Snowbird was, she could not get out from under the shadow of the strange aeroplane. That was driven at a sharp angle down upon the boys' flying machine, and it seemed to all those in the lower 'plane that a collision was imminent.

The thunder fairly deafened them all. Around them rolled the mists and the wind shrieked through the stays of the aeroplane and shook the structure like a dog worrying a bone.

Down they fell, and in an instant the rushing rain, emptied in a torrent from the clouds, swept about them, saturating their garments and beating the flying machine itself toward the distant earth.

During the next few moments Jack Darrow, Mark Sampson, and their companions were in as grave peril as had ever threatened them in their eventful lives.

The torrents of water all but beat the flying machine to the earth-and to be dashed down from such a height spelled death to all and destruction to the aeroplane.

Jack, however, had been taught to keep cool in moments of danger, and he realized that their lives depended entirely upon his handling of the great machine. They had descended below the level of the storm-cloud at a most inopportune moment. They were caught in the midst of a veritable cloudburst.

Shaken desperately by the wind, and beaten upon by tons upon tons of water, it was a wonder that the great planes, or wings, of the flying machine were not torn away. All Jack could do was to guide her the best he could, and all his companions could do was to cling to a slender hope and endure the lashing of the gale.

But Jack Darrow did not propose to be cast to the ground-and the flying machine and his friends with him-without some further attempt to avert such a catastrophe.

After the first breath-taking rush of the storm he diverted the course of the machine again upward. He could scarcely see, the driving rain was so blinding; nor could he observe the indicators before him with any clearness. But he was quite sure that the enemy that had driven him down into the storm-cloud could see the Snowbird no better than he could see that strange aeroplane that had threatened to collide with them.

So he shot the Snowbird upward again at a long slant, and put on all the power of the engine to drive her onward. The flying machine shook and throbbed in every part. The power of the engines would have driven her, under other and more favorable conditions, at more than one hundred miles an hour-possibly a hundred and twenty-five.

Jack himself was almost blinded and deafened. He was strapped to his seat, so could give both hands to the work of manipulating the levers. He brought the Snowbird through the cloud and-with startling suddenness-they shot out of the mass of rolling moisture and into the sunlight of the dawn. But they were far off their course.

The change from the chaos of the storm-cloud to the almost perfect calm of the upper ether was so great that it was almost stunning. For a minute none of the five spoke a word.

Then it was Mark who shouted:

"There's that 'plane again, Jack I Look out for her!"

The enemy had missed them. She was some miles away, and although still on a level above, at the pace the Snowbird was now traveling it would take a fast flying machine indeed to overtake her.

The pursuit of the enemy (which they all believed to be the smuggler, manned by Bainbridge and his friends) was not kept up for long. By eight o'clock the Snowbird had dropped the other machine below the horizon, and the swift pace at which they had driven the Snowbird was rapidly bringing them once more toward Canada.

The storm had broken, but the clouds still hovered below them. They descended about noon, passing harmlessly through the vapor which had so long hidden the earth from them, and so came to within a thousand feet of the ground, where they swung along at fair speed for some hours.

They crossed the line, but did not descend until near St. Thomas. They went out of their way a good bit to land near this town on the shore of the St. Lawrence, for the flying machine had been so shaken in its struggle with the thunderstorm that some repairs were needed.

They descended in a field on the edge of the town, gave the farmer who owned the place a five-dollar bill to allow the machine to stand on his land, and then engaged him to drive Professor Henderson and the boys into town.

While the professor saw the authorities and obtained a legal document recommending the exploring party to the good offices of all British-Canadian officers whom they might meet, the boys went to a machine shop to have a rod repaired. The party took supper with the farmer, and an hour later the flying machine being pronounced by both Mark and Jack in perfect order, they got off amid the cheers of the onlookers, whose numbers were by that time swelled to almost five hundred persons.

It was long after dark and the moon had not risen. It was a cloudless night, however, and as the flying machine soared heavenward the voyagers could look deep into the seeming black-velvet of the skies, picked out by the innumerable sparkling stars, and thought they had never seen so wonderful or beautiful a sight.

As they cast their gaze downward, too, they beheld the torches at the Canadian farm rapidly receding, and then, in a few minutes, they were flying over St. Thomas, where the lights twinkled, too. Then they shot over the broad, island-dotted bosom of the St. Lawrence River, and so on across country and town toward the vast Canadian wilderness.

The professor and Andy had the watch and Jack and Mark went to bed. The excitement of the previous twenty-four hours had kept the boys up; but once they closed their eyes, they slept like logs all night. Andy Sudds relieved the professor now and then in the operator's seat, and they did not call the boys until Washington White made breakfast at daybreak. By that time the Snowbird had passed Lake St. John, far to the north and east, and was heading for Hudson Bay. The earth below them was a checker-board of forest and field, with here and there a ribbon of river, and occasionally a group of farmsteads, or a small town. Suddenly they were forced down, and had to remain many hours for repair work before ascending again.

The ranges of hills-some of them dignified enough to be termed "mountains"-which they crossed necessitated their flying high. They were generally at an altitude of two thousand feet and the rarefied atmosphere so far above the earth was cool, anyway. Since leaving St. Thomas, on the bank of the St. Lawrence, they had averaged eighty miles an hour, and before moonrise they were cognizant of the fact that they were approaching a great sheet of water.

"St. James Bay, the lower part of Hudson Bay," Professor Henderson explained.

Soon the moonlight shimmered upon the waves beneath them. Jack, who was guiding the craft, deflected the wings and they slid down the airways toward the water. They traveled all night over this great inland sea, at times so close to the surface that the leaping waves sprinkled them with their spray-for there was a stiff breeze.

A gale broke in earnest over the Hudson Bay territory that day, and despite the efforts of the voyagers they could not rise in the Snowbird above the tempest. Had there been solid ground beneath them they could easily have descended and remained upon terra firma until the storm was past.

This gale was favorable to their course, but it gripped them in its giant grasp and hurled them on into the northwest at a speed that imperiled the safety of the flying machine each moment. There was no sleep for any of the party now, and Washington White came pretty near (as Jack said) "making good his name in his face"-for if ever a darkey of Wash's ebony complexion turned pale, the professor's servant did so at this juncture.

On and on they were driven hour after hour. Scarcely a word was spoken the entire time. There was no cessation of the gale. The great body of water was passed and they knew that there was land beneath them again. But each time they tried to descend they found the storm near the earth-crust far heavier than at the upper levels.

To descend through the belt of the storm might partially wreck their flying machine and the professor knew, by the study of his recording instruments, that they were passing over an utter wilderness in which no help could be obtained and from which, should they be wrecked, they could not escape before the rigorous Arctic winter set in.

Hour after hour they drove on. The speed of the Snowbird at times, when driven by the full force of the gale, had mounted to one hundred thirty miles an hour.

Great Slave Lake was far south of their route; yet the professor told them that, had it been clear, at the altitude they traveled, they could have seen and marked this great body of water.

They actually crossed the Great Bear Lake and the Mackenzie River, however, and saw the ragged peaks of the Rocky Mountains, which here almost touch the shores of the Arctic Sea. Blown on and on, with little diminution of speed, it was not many hours before the Snowbird was flying over Alaskan wilds. The flying machine had kept closely to the course the professor had laid out for her when they left Maine. They were still headed for the slopes of the Endicott Range and the native town of Aleukan.

The question paramount in all their minds, however, was this: Would they reach their destination in safety?