The great adventure had commenced. Half an hour had sped since one impetuous fanatic had charged into the tent and persuaded the other to race out with him and offer up possibly their lives and certainly the machine in their wild quest of service to their so much berated Uncle Sam. Only half an hour! But in view of the ship that was rushing inexorably on into it knew not what, a priceless thirty minutes.
The machine hurtled ahead into the dark cloud bank, dipping and swaying and yawing like an instruction flight. Rankin was “feeling out ” the little individual peculiarities of the machine which was new to him.
Presently he settled down to a long steady climb up to his traveling level which he proposed, to make about five thousand feet in order to hold as wide a range of vision from the height as the heavy atmosphere would permit of. His face was very grim and stern; he was making no mistakes about the percentage of chances which were out against him.
“What d’you need for setting your course?” he spoke shortly into the mouthpiece.
“Where’s your ship?”
“Can’t say; don’t know her speed. Commandant said two hundred, and she’s made maybe forty or fifty since.”
“How in blazes are we going to find the blasted tub then?” Jim was feeling subconsciously the loss of ten thousand dollars.
“Say she’s making twenty, and we approximate a hundred, we ought to overhaul her in about three hours at the outside. Lay off her course on the chart from Philly to Havana; get on to it and take a high level after her.”
For ten minutes there was silence while Jim scribbled frantically with his pencil and the great machine roared and throbbed all round them. Finally:
“Huh,” came a grunt. “’Bout thirty miles out, and then south by east and keep guessing for luck.”
Rankin watched his clock for eight more minutes with infinite care, for when one is hurtling through the air at a hundred miles an hour delay means more than a little difference. Then he banked sharply over and swung round.
“Ought to be on her tail now,” he muttered. “Now figure drift and give me my variation.”
Technical sounding-stuff, but easy of explanation. Just as a boatman rowing across a tide rip has to point the nose of his boat several degrees into the current in order to hold a straight course for the desired landing, so an aeroplane rushing through a cross wind must “crab” sometimes.
Easy of explanation; but for an aeroplane flying over water with no landmarks to guide, a considerable calculation. And time! Every minute of time counted so vitally! To arrive at a correct conclusion many factors had to be taken into consideration, the least error in the smallest of which would mean many miles of difference.
The main factors, of course, were actual speed through the air and wind speed. The first was easy; an instrument gave it. But wind speed? On the ground, stationary, an instrument could give that too; but at five thousand feet in the air it had to be calculated. To do that one had to know the approximate length between the crests of the waves; and to approximate that, one had to know the exact height.
Suddenly an explosive snarl came from in front.
“Curse it! In the hurry I forgot to adjust my altimeter to sea level.”
Without a word Rankin pushed the control over into a steep dive. Within a few feet of the surface he “flattened,” and on receiving a confirmatory grunt he lifted the machine into another long climb.
Presently:
“Wave length twenty feet—gives velocity fifteen decimal four. Fierce for a landing.”
“Pitot tube gives a clear hundred and four miles per. Work it out.”
Came a whole series of grunts; and presently the movable lubber line on the dial of the Sperry, which was synchronized with the drift indicator in the observer’s hand in the front seat, began to swing round.
Rankin followed it with a sigh of thankfulness and a prayer for luck and settled down to a long steady grind of keeping her nose down to it. No easy matter in a high gusty wind; and a few points deviation meant so many priceless minutes lost at this critical time.
Two hours passed; and as the work became mechanical, Rankin’s thoughts turned inevitably to the girl. What would she say? How would she regard his fall from his promise? How could he ever make her see the thing as it was?
“Ha, ha!” He barked a short laugh. Fool! Very possibly there never would be any occasion for an explanation. He glued his eyes down to the lubber line and followed it as it shifted from one side to the other as the observer recalculated and checked up his figures from time to time.
But his thoughts kept coming back to torture him. The girl; always the girl. The imminent chance of coming down somewhere in the ocean, helpless, with gas all expended, and being battered to a wreck in a minute found no place in his mind. Suddenly the grumbling voice came across and woke him to action.
“Smoke on the port bow; three points.”
Rankin’s heart jumped up into his mouth and he peered through his windshield. Then he shot the machine down for the thin smudge across the horizon like a swooping eagle.
Five minutes; ten minutes. He could see Jim leaning out from his seat with the Zeiss prism glasses to his eyes. Jim waved an arm wildly to the right and ducked back into his hole.
“Blasted United Fruit boat.”
Grimly, without a word again, Rankin swung back and climbed on his course. After many minutes he spoke tersely, without emotion.
“Jim. Suppose we find her—and the waves smash us before she can pick us up. Better write a note; make a package. Maybe we can drop it.”
“Huh! If we find her we’ve been doing some flying, lemme tell you.”
But Rankin knew in the silence that Jim was scribbling furiously.
Dusk began to come. Rankin unconsciously began to strain his eyes over his wind-shield as though he had to rely on himself alone. Suddenly:
“Smoke! Way over starboard!”
Instantly Rankin dived for it with a quickening of the pulse. Testily the voice came.
“Hey! Not that, you goat. Farther over. Heavy stuff; looks like a mile of cloud bank.” In a few more minutes: “Yes, that’s the one—lower; can’t make her out; she’s smothered.”
After a strained period again, in snappy intervals, but in a passionless monotone:
“Two master—some speeder—but she’s steaming up and down and around and cutting all sorts of fancy patterns—dive to it son! Destroyer, making knots!”
Rankin dove. All he said was:
“Get your package ready.”
But in his heart was an exultant thankfulness that he had arrived in time to warn “his ship.” In a few more minutes he was able to distinguish her himself, smothering herself in foam and black columns of smoke as she smashed her sharp nose into the high-running waves. He could make out the short stumpy signaling masts, the torpedo tubes, the quick, rapid-firing guns, and—
Suddenly there was more smoke! Not from the low, raking funnels, but from the starboard quarters! Then a sharp puff! And then another! And then a spitting stream! At the same instant came Jim’s voice, vibrant and tense; and Rankin could feel through the micrometer that even that passionless man was excited at last.
“They’ve got her, by God!”
Rankin gripped the wheel and leaned forward as though he could by sheer muscular effort impart a yet greater speed to the hurtling machine. Then again the wire-drawn voice:
“Jack, it’s God’s luck! Under my—under your seat there’s another kind of package. Been doing some hand-bomb practise on a raft, and there’s two or three left! Was going out again to-morrow. Can you reach? Can you steer her?”
Rankin’s heart leaped with a wild exhilaration of sudden battle. “Steer her with my feet,” he hissed back, and he groped below the seat.
“To the right!” came a yell which jarred his ear-drums.
Rankin peered over the edge of the fuselage. At first he saw nothing but surging whitecaps; and then, cutting through them at a long slant from one gray patch of water to another, he discerned a thin streak which left ripples behind it like the fin of a shark.
Without any definite idea of what he was to do he swooped down for it like a giant fish hawk. Then he saw that all round it there kept rising an erratic shower of fountains of high-flung spray which repeated themselves half a mile farther on, and then repeated again, and again at lessening intervals.
But the phenomenon conveyed nothing to him, and he continued to rush on into the danger zone and noticed only that the ship had turned almost like a rabbit and was charging down on the same object at the same time.
“To the left!” came another ear-splitting yell.
Rankin snatched a hurried glance from the shark to look over his shoulder. There, within three hundred yards of him a long gray whale was emerging. There, was something he could see, something he could aim at. Instantly he banked over so that one wide wing-tip skimmed the wave crests, and hurled himself at it. Almost before he had regained his equilibrium he was above. His arm flashed over the side and heaved a conical black object clear of the wing, and then he was over.
There was a giant splash, and:
“Missed her!” yelled Jim, hopping in his seat to face backward.
Rankin spat a terrible oath through his grim set teeth and wheeled over again on a sixty degree slant. As he came round he could see that the whale was hurriedly submerging again. The next second he snatched another black shape from its resting place between his knees and flung it out, well forward. It passed from his view immediately.
He saw Jim’s arms go up with an exultant yell; and the same instant a terrific blast of hot air from behind him kicked the tail of the machine up with a resistless suddenness which drove its nose down at a steep angle for the water. At that height there was no possibility of regaining control. In a second there was a tearing, foaming smash, and Rankin was hurled forward onto the wheel with the force of his own suddenly arrested momentum!