CHAPTER XVIII
THE HURRICANE
Soaring strongly even under the additional weight, humming withthe rush of air, the plane made the last turn of her spiral andstraightened out at the height of twelve hundred feet for her longnorthward run across the unbroken wilderness.
Stern preferred to fly a bit high, believing the air-currents moredependable there. Even as he rose above the forest-level, hisexperienced eye saw possible trouble in the wind-clouds banked toeastward and in the fall of the barometer. But with the thought, "Atthis rate we'll make Boston in three-quarters of an hour at theoutside, and the storm can't strike so soon," he pushed the motor tostill greater speed and settled to the urgent business of steering astraight course for Massachusetts Bay.
Only once did he dare turn aside his eyes even so much as to glance atBeatrice. She, magnificently unafraid on the quivering back of thishuge airdragon, showed the splendid excitement of the moment by thesparkle of her glance, the rush of eloquent blood to her cheeks.
Stern's achievement, typical of the invincible conquest of the humansoul over matter, time and space, thrilled her with unspeakable pride.And as she breathed for the first time the pure, thin air of thoseupper regions, her strong heart leaped within her breast, and she knewthat this man was worthy of her most profound, indissoluble love.
Far down beneath them now the forest sped away to southward. The gleamof the river, dulled by the sunless sky, showed here and there throughthe woods, which spread their unbroken carpet to the horizon,impenetrable and filled with nameless perils. At thought of how he wascheating them all, Stern smiled to himself with grim satisfaction.
"Good old engine!" he was thinking, as he let her out another notch."Some day I'll put you in a boat, and we'll go cruising. With you,there's no limit to the possibilities. The world is really ours now,with your help!"
Behind them now lay the debris of Pawtucket. Stern caught a glimpse ofa ruined building, a crumpled-in gas-tank with an elm growing upthrough the stark ribs of it, a jumble of wreckage, all small andtoylike, there below; then the plane swooped onward, and all lay deepburied in the wilderness again.
"A few minutes now," he said to himself, "and we'll be across whatused to be the line, and be spinning over Massachusetts. Thiscertainly beats walking all hollow! Whew!" as the machine lurchedforward and took an ugly drop. He jerked the rising-plane leversavagely. "Still the same kind of unreliable air, I see, that we usedto have a thousand years ago!"
For a few minutes the biplane hummed on and on in long rising andfalling slants, like a swallow skimming the surface of a lake. Theeven staccato of the exhaust, echoless in that height and vacancy,rippled with cadences like a monster mowing-machine. And Stern wasbeginning to consider himself as good as in Boston already--wasbeginning to wonder where the best place might be to land, whetheralong the shore or on the Common, where, perhaps, some open spacestill remained--when another formidable air-pocket dropped him withsickening speed.
He righted the plane with a wrench that made her creak and tremble.
"I've got to take a higher level, or a lower," he thought."Something's wrong here, that's certain!"
But as he shot the biplane sharply upward, hoping to find a calmerlane, a glance at the sky showed trouble impending.
Over the gray background of wind-clouds, a fine-shredded drive wasbeginning to scud. The whole east had grown black. Only far off towestward did a little patch of dull blue show; and even this wasclosing up with singular rapidity. And, though the motion of themachine made this hard to estimate, Stern thought to see by thelateral drift of the country below, that they were being carriedwestward by what--to judge from the agitation of the tree-tops farbelow--must already be a considerable gale.
For a moment the engineer cursed his foolhardiness in having startedin face of such a storm as now every moment threatened to break uponthem.
"I should have known," he told himself, "that it was suicidal toattempt a flight when every indication showed a high wind coming. Myinfernal impatience, as usual! We should have stayed safe inProvidence and let this blow itself out, before starting. Butnow--well, it's too late."
But was it? Had he not time enough left to make a wide sweep andcircle back whence he had come? He glanced at the girl. If she showedfear he would return. But on her face he saw no signs of aught butconfidence and joy and courage. And at sight of her, his ownresolution strengthened once again.
"Why retreat?" he pondered, holding the machine to her long soaringrise. "We must have made a good third of the distance already--perhapsa half. In ten or fifteen minutes more we ought to sight the blue ofthe big bay. No use in turning back now. And as for alighting andletting the storm blow over, that's impossible. Among these forests itwould mean only total wreckage. Even if we could land, we never couldstart again. No; the only thing to do is to hold her to it and plowthrough, storm or no storm. I guess the good old Pauillac can standthe racket, right enough!"
Thus for a few moments longer he held the plane with her nose to thenortheast-by-north, his compass giving him direction, while far, farbelow, the world slid back and away in a vast green carpet of swayingtrees that stretched to the dim, dun horizon.
Stern could never afterward recall exactly how or when the hurricanestruck them. So stunning was the blow that hurled itself, shrieking,in a tumult of mad cross-currents, air maelstroms and frenzied whirls,all across the sky; so overpowering the chill tempest that burst fromthose inky clouds; so sudden the darkness that fell, the slinging hailvolleys that lashed and pelted them, that any clear perception oftheir plight became impossible.
All the man knew was that direction and control had been knocked cleanfrom his hands; that the world had suddenly vanished in a black driveof cloud and hail and wild-whipping vapor; that he no longer knewnorth from south, or east from west; but that--struggling now even tobreathe, filled with sick fears for the safety of the girl besidehim--he was fighting, wrenching, wrestling with the motor and theplanes and rudders, to keep the machine from up-ending, from turningturtle in mid-air, from sticking her nose under an air-layer andswooping, hurtling over and over, down, down, like a shattered rocket,to dash herself to pieces on the waiting earth below.
The first furious onset showed the engineer he could not hope to headup into that cyclone and live. He swung with it, therefore; and now,driving across the sky like a filament of cloud-wrack, rode on thecrest of the great storm, his motor screaming its defiance at theshrieking wind.
Did Beatrice shout out to him? Did she try to make him hear? He couldnot tell. No human voice could have been audible in such a turmoil.Stern had no time to think even of her at such a moment of deadlyperil.
As a driver with a runaway stallion jerks and saws and strains uponthe leather to regain control, so now the man wrestled with hisstorm-buffeted machine. A less expert aeronaut must have gone down todeath in that mad nexus of conflicting currents; but Stern was cooland full of craft and science. Against the blows of the huge tempesthe pitted his own skill, the strength of the stout mechanism, thetrained instincts of the born mechanician.
And, storm-driven, the biplane hurtled westward, ever westward,through the gloom. Nor could its two passengers by any sight or sounddetermine what speed they traveled at, whither they went, what laybehind, or what ahead.
Concepts of time, too, vanished. Did it last one hour or three? Fivehours, or even more? Who could tell? Lacking any point of contact withreality, merged and whelmed in that stupendous chill nightmare, allwrought of savage gale, rain, hail-blasts, cloud and scudding vapor,they sensed nothing but the fight for life itself, the struggle tokeep aloft till the cyclone should have blown itself out, and theycould seek the shelter of the earth once more.
Reality came back with a reft in the jetty sky, the faint shine of alittle pale blue there, and--a while later--a glimpse of water, orwhat seemed to be such, very far below.
More steady now the currents grew. Stern volplaned again; and as themachine slid down toward earth, came into a calmer
and more peacefulstratum.
Down, down through clouds that shifted, shredded and reassembled, helet the plane coast, now under control once more; and all at oncethere below him, less than three thousand feet beneath, he saw, dimand vague as though in the light of evening, a vast sheet of waterthat stretched away, away, till the sight lost it in a bank oflow-hung vapors on the horizon.
"_The sea?_" thought Stern, with sudden terror. Who could tell?Perhaps the storm, westbound, had veered; perhaps it might havecarried them off the Atlantic coast! This might be the ocean, ahundred or two hundred miles from land. And if so, then good-by!
Checking the descent, he drove forward on level wings, peering belowwith wide eyes, while far above him the remnants of the storm fled,routed, and let a shaft of pallid sunlight through.
Stern's eye caught the light of that setting beam, which still reachedthat height, though all below, on earth, was dusk; and now he knew thewest again and found his sense of direction.
The wind, he perceived, still blew to westward; and with a thrill ofrelief he felt, as though by intuition, that its course had not variedenough to drive him out to sea.
Though he knew the ripping clatter of the engine drowned his voice, heshouted to the girl:
"Don't be alarmed! Only a lake down there!" and with fresh couragegave the motor all that she would stand.
A lake! But what lake? What sheet of water, of this size, lay in NewEngland? And if not in New England, then where were they?
A lake? One of the Great Lakes? Could that be? Could they have beendriven clear across Massachusetts, its whole length, and over New YorkState, four hundred miles or more from the sea, and now be speedingover Erie or Ontario?
Stern shuddered at the thought. Almost as well be lost over the sea asover any one of these tremendous bodies! Were not the land near,nothing but death now faced them; for already the fuel-gage showed buta scant two gallons, and who could say how long the way might be toshore?
For a moment the engineer lost heart, but only for a moment.
His eye, sweeping the distance, caught sight of a long, dull, darkline on the horizon.
A cloud-bank, was it? Land, was it? He could not tell.
"I'll chance it, anyhow," thought he, "for it's our only hope now.When I don't know where I am, one direction's as good as any other.We've got no other chance but that! Here goes!"
Skilfully banking, he hauled the plane about, and settled on a long,swift slant toward the dark line.
"If only the alcohol holds out, and nothing breaks!" his thought was."If only that's the shore, and we can reach it in time!"
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