A Viking of the Sky: A Story of a Boy Who Gained Success in Aeronautics

by Joan Clark

  CHAPTER XXIV

  NIGHT

  At his swift touch, the plane reared upward and away from the dangerthat was rolling and heaving directly beneath. Peering out of the windowat his left, Hal saw in the waters a procession of monsters. In thedusky haze of the twilight, a great school of whales were disportingthemselves in hugely fantastic leaps and lunges. When a sixty-foot whalewould leap high in the air, then drop its tons of weight back downagainst the waters, it seemed that creation shook to the concussion. Atthe thunder of huge bodies smashing back through the waves in theirenormous fantasies of playfulness, Hal sent his ship rising higher intothe air. If one of those monster bodies even brushed his wing or rudder,it would mean his plane crushed into helplessness, himself adrift uponthe ocean.

  With the approach of darkness, Hal Dane's spirit seemed to reach itszero hour of loneliness and weariness. Since the dawn of day he hadmatched his strength in battle after battle with the varying phases ofthe elements. He and his frail wind craft, mere contraption of cloth andwood and some lengths of steel tubing, had come out victorious sofar--but there was still the night ahead of him.

  He realized with a start that he had not tasted food for more thantwelve hours. Even now, he felt no hunger; the long strain of matchinghuman wits and power against the winds had taken away his appetite.However, he required himself to eat a sandwich and drink some hot coffeefrom his bottle. This would help him keep up his strength. He neededthat help for strength. The darkness he was entering was a worse monsterthan those vast thrashing whale bodies he had just escaped.

  Loneliness entered the lists against him also. As far as he could seeover all the great ocean stretches, there showed no tiny pin point oflight that could be a great transoceanic steamer cruising onward withits vast burden of human lives. If anything happened to him out here inthe night, he was all alone, no vessel near to come to his assistance,no help outside of himself. If he died, he died alone--a mere atomdropped down in the ocean depths.

  With an effort, Hal forced his mind away from morbid thoughts. Heconcentrated on his maps and instruments. Already, he had come over twothousand miles. With every whir of his motor he was ticking off moremiles. A great longing rose in him to ride the high air currents onceagain, that would mean real speed. But he dared not risk his planeanother time in the icy grip of the stratosphere. He had wracked theengine enough already. Another such battle with the ice sheath and withover-speed might tear the motor bodily from the machine.

  To add to the loneliness of the night, he now swept into a stratum offog. It hung in an enveloping mass about the ship, creeping into thecockpit, clouding the instruments. As Hal rode high to avoid the fog, heswept into an area of black clouds, snow clouds. At this altitude, hefound the air filled with hail. In a moment these heavy, dangerous icepellets were rattling angrily against the plane. Like a hunted creature,Hal shot this way and that striving to dodge the zone of ice and sleet.It was no use; the ice pall pursued him, sheeted his ship. Wing surfaceswere flung out of balance with additional weight, controls began toclog. There was nothing to do for it save drop back down into the warm,foggy layers of air just above the waves. As soon as he hit the warmzone, ice began to melt, its heavy, retarding weight slid off. The speedof the ship, which had lagged below eighty miles the hour, now began tozoom back up well over the hundred mark.

  His instruments would hold him to his course, and the noctovistorinstalled on his plane would catch the red glow of any ship's light,even through the fog, and warn him of its presence. But unlightedderelict ships adrift on the sea, and floating ice peaks were dangersthat the red eye of the noctovistor could not record. His luck, alone,could carry him past such of these that happened in his path.

  Later in the night, a glow on his noctovistor told him that a ship layahead. Hal sped sufficiently out of his course to avoid any danger ofcollision. Out through the air, though, he began flinging radiomessages, and soon picked up a reply. From this ocean liner he gotconfirmation of his exact location, and the time. Brief enough messagesthey were, but Hal Dane blessed the wonderful science whose marvels hadput him in touch with other humans out here in the lonely stretches ofthe great ocean. He zoomed on into the night with his heart cheered bythis brief contact.

  He now winged his way out of fog and cloud into the white light of thelate rising moon. Now and then in this silver glow, mirages swam intohis view. Peaks, foothills, ravines and rivers were etched so boldly inthe sky that they seemed almost real. Fantastic hills and valleys wouldcrumble away, and others equally fantastic would rise to take theirplace.

  Then dawn began to break. Streaks of light crept up behind him out ofthe western sky. Below him, land appeared, islands dotting the ocean ina long crescent dipping northwest. Land--was it real, or merely anothermirage? He flew lower. It was, yes, it must be real. There were houses,men like tiny dots, and a fleet of fishing craft that seemed mere toys,was setting out to sea.

  It was the far-flung land chain of the Aleutian Islands that he wascrossing. With a queer thrill in his heart, Hal Dane looked down overthe side of his ship. Below him was real earth. He could land here if hewanted to, be in the midst of people. Right here he could end the longloneliness--if he wanted to.

  Resolutely, Hal kept his plane headed forward. According to his chartshe must turn slightly to the south now for the last south-western curveon his crescent-shaped route.

  The longest stretch of ocean flight was over now; he felt that he hadconquered the worst. In less than twenty-four hours he had come overthree thousand miles--nearly three thousand, five hundred, in fact. Atthis rate he ought to sight the island kingdom of Japan in the afternoonof this day.

  But in his reckoning, Hal had not taken into account the treacherousweather of the northern reaches of the Pacific. Instead of making goodspeed on this last lap of his journey, he began to lose time, to dropbehind on his carefully worked out schedule.

  From now on, he swept along in a continuous storm area. Gales seemed toroar up from nowhere and burst about the plane. From his student weatherstudies, that now seemed part of a long-gone past, Hal Dane had learnedmuch about the thunderheads and twisters of the atmosphere. He knew adeal about gauging the breadth and diameter of certain type storms,their speed of movement, the velocity of the winds within these storms.Every shred of such knowledge that he had was put to severe test now. Inhis plane, he was like some hunted wild animal fleeing before the stormhounds, turning, twisting, riding now high, now low. Time and again hewas only able to avoid a crash by feeling his way around the edges ofthe storms and dodging between them, never letting his plane becomecompletely swallowed up in the maw of the storm monster. Sometimes twoor three storms came together. A low-powered airplane would have beenlost for lack of force to make headway in such a case, but the mightyWind Bird courageously battled forward on these constantly changing aircurrents.

  Then the clouds shredded away, and the glow of the evening sun lit thesky.

  Hal Dane relaxed in his seat. He had fought a long fight, had lost allreckoning of time, space, of ocean distances. He had flown far enough tobe near land--of that he was sure.

  Soon he had confirmation of his hopes. His plane swooped into the midstof a flock of sea gulls. These winged fishers of the air often flewhundreds of miles from shore--but the sight of them usually meant thatshore was somewhere in the distance.

  Right enough Hal was in his deductions. Soon after he had passed throughthe gull fleet, he glimpsed tiny dots dipping on the waves below him. Heflew lower. It was as he had hoped, these dots were men out in theirfishing boats. Soon a shore line came into view.

  When the Viking of the Sky swooped low over this land, however, thethrill in his heart changed to dire foreboding. He had come far enoughto land in Japan--but this was not Japan, land of the flowery kingdom.Those squat fishermen below wore primitive, furred garments. Instead ofpagodas and quaint paper-walled dwellings of the Japanese, here croucheda squalid village of round-roofe
d mud huts.

  Storms had sent him far out of his course. Instead of Japan, this wasKamchatka that he floated above. Away to the south of him lay the Tokioof his destination.

  In the face of a terrible weariness that was creeping over him, Hal Daneturned the nose of his craft to the south. He had already spent onenight out over the ocean, and now another night was darkening his sky.