Chapter IX: On the Wing

As the flyers climbed aboard the plane, a spontaneous cheer arose from the crowd that increased steadily until it swelled into a roar.

Slim Tyler took his place at the controls. A mechanic twirled the propeller, the motors sang, and the _Hope_ moved forward, gathering speed as it swept down the long runway.

At two hundred yards it lifted easily, despite the heavy weight it carried, and soared into the air like a bird.

Again arose the thunderous cheering. Hundreds of handkerchiefs fluttered and hats were thrown into the air.

The _Hope_ circled once around the field, and then Slim Tyler laid her nose toward the north.

Soon she had passed from the gaze of the multitude, fairly embarked on her long and perilous journey.

At the controls, Slim exulted.

"Flies like a dream!" he exclaimed. "Just listen to those motors! Ever hear sweeter music? And see the way she responds to the least touch of the stick."

For the first few hours the weather was perfect, and the _Hope_ ate up space at the rate of a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

Then a haze began gradually to gather and presently shut out the sight of the land below. Before long it thickened into a fog that grew ever denser and denser, until the young pilot was reduced to flying entirely by his instruments.

Dick Mylert, who proved, together with his reputation as a mascot, to be blessed with an excellent appetite, remembered the hot dogs donated by Carl Stummel and suggested that they try them.

Nothing had ever tasted better than those frankfurters. Carl had been generous, but the sandwiches disappeared before the husky appetites of the three young men like magic.

The wind began to rise in fierce gusts that grew ever stronger, and the _Hope_ was soon flying in the teeth of half a gale.

"Guess I'll edge off a little to the west and try for altitude," remarked Slim.

"My sentiments exactly," agreed Jerry. "You took the words right out of my mouth."

"Maybe I read your mind."

Slim Tyler pulled the stick and the _Hope_ shot upward for a couple of thousand feet. There a quieter strata of air was found and the plane made rapid progress.

But if the _Hope_ had escaped the gale, she had not succeeded in freeing herself from the all-enveloping mist.

A roar came from in front.

"Another plane!" cried Jerry, his eyes straining through the darkness. "And it's coming straight toward us!"

Probably the pilot of the approaching plane sensed the presence of the _Hope_ at the same moment that Slim Tyler and his companions became aware of their own peril. For in that mist-enshrouded vastness of space began a weird duel, such as the young aviators could never afterward recall without a thrill of horror.

When Slim turned the nose of his plane upward in an attempt to gain altitude swiftly and so avoid a collision, the pilot of the other plane did likewise.

When the _Hope_ swooped downward like a swallow, it was evident from the sound that the other plane had also resorted to the same maneuver.

The ghost ship was not yet visible through the enshrouding mist, but Slim Tyler knew that at any second it would tear the veil asunder and charge down on them, a Juggernaut of destruction.

Slim sat grim, determined, rigid as a creation of steel, ready with a lightning movement to send the plane to right or left, up or down, as the emergency might demand.

Like some fabulous monster of prehistoric times, the rival plane loomed up in the fog.

Slim dropped the _Hope_ like a plummet, turning sharply to the right.

With a wild throb of engines the ghostly ship swept by overhead, missing the _Hope_ by the smallest possible margin.

Slim Tyler's breath whistled through his teeth.

"Gee, that was close!" he muttered. "A few inches less, and there would have been no one left to tell the story."

"Great shift that was of yours, Slim!" exclaimed Jerry. "You could run rings around lightning."

"Do you usually act as quickly as that?" asked Dick Mylert, looking at Slim with an admiration he took no pains to conceal.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Slim, a trifle embarrassed. "In this business you've got to be quick or be dead."

"I wish Dave Boyd could have seen that," remarked Jerry. "He'd have been more than ever proud of his pupil."

As though fate had played its last card and was a bit discouraged, the fog began to lift. Slowly, at first, it shredded away. The earth came into view, the sky became visible, and the young aviators felt as though they had been released from prison, no less a prison because the walls were soft and insubstantial.

One thing that had pleased the young pilot in the episode of the threatened collision had been the nerve displayed by Dick Mylert. In those few awful moments when he knew that death might claim him at any moment he had not blenched nor made a sound. He was game, Slim decided.

They had crossed the United States border now and were flying over Canada. The air was getting cooler, cold in fact, and the growing change from the temperature toward the frigid zone was met by the young aviators by a consistent increase in articles of wearing apparel.

With every hundred miles they flew farther north, the air grew keener, but no sign of trouble came until Dick Mylert found a snowflake on his hand.

"Snowing," murmured Jerry dubiously. "You know what that means in this part of the country. It may be that before long we'll run head on into a blizzard."

"One little snowflake doesn't make a winter," Dick reminded him. "Wait for a while and see. It may be only a flurry."

Some hours later they found themselves in the midst of a furious snowstorm, which enabled Jerry to say with the condescension of a successful prophet:

"Here's your flurry, Dick. How do you like it?"

"Less abundant, thank you," returned the young journalist unabashed. "Still, it started with a flurry. You have to admit that."

The snow fell heavily, hemming them in. It seemed to form an almost solid white wall, against which the _Hope_ drove endlessly. The wall gave way, only to close up again, pressing more relentlessly.

The _Hope_ gradually became covered with the clinging white stuff. It weighted the wings, the tail, and the body of the fuselage.

The wings lost buoyancy. The engines began to labor. The plane was no longer a joy to handle. She became heavy, clumsy, responding sluggishly to the hand at the controls.

"I'll let her down," observed Slim, "though we may have to come dangerously near the tops of the trees before we can see the ground."

With the increasing weight of snow on the wings it became absolutely necessary that a landing should be sought. If the aviators did not go down of their own accord, they would be forced down.

Slim Tyler chose the lesser of the two evils.

He flew down gradually in long, sweeping spirals, while Jerry and Dick kept field glasses glued to their eyes.

"Tree tops beneath!" cried Jerry. "'Ware!"

Slim pulled the stick and cleared the threatened peril.

It seemed an almost interminable time before they found a place that could by the remotest possibility answer their purpose.

The district was for the most part heavily wooded. On the rare occasions when clearings presented themselves, they were dotted so thickly with hummocks, underbrush, and the half-rotted stumps of trees that landing was out of the question.

At last Dick Mylert cried out jubilantly:

"There it is, right below us! The very thing we've been looking for! Some sort of frozen lake, I should say at a guess."

"If it's a lake, let's hope that it isn't deep or that the ice is frozen clear through," muttered Slim Tyler. "Else we're headed for a ducking."