Darkness and Dawn (34 page)

Stern calculated that, with Beatrice as a passenger, he could carry
seventy-five or eighty pounds of freight. The two rifles, ammunition,
knives, ax, tools and provisions they packed into the skin sack
Beatrice had prepared, weighed no more than sixty. Thus Stern reckoned
there would be a fair "coefficient of safety" and more than enough
power to carry them with safety and speed.

It was at 1:15 that the girl took her place in the passenger's seat
and let Stern strap her in.

"Your first flight, little girl?" he asked smiling, yet a trifle
grave. The barking motor almost drowned his voice.

She nodded but did not speak. He noted the pulse in her throat, a
little quick, yet firm.

"You're positive you're not going to be afraid?"

"How could I, with you?"

He made all secure, climbed up beside her, and strapped himself in his
seat.

Then he threw in the clutch and released the brake.

"Hold fast!" cried he. "All aboard for Boston! Hold fast!"

Soaring strongly even under the additional weight, humming with
the rush of air, the plane made the last turn of her spiral and
straightened out at the height of twelve hundred feet for her long
northward run across the unbroken wilderness.

Stern preferred to fly a bit high, believing the air-currents more
dependable there. Even as he rose above the forest-level, his
experienced eye saw possible trouble in the wind-clouds banked to
eastward and in the fall of the barometer. But with the thought, "At
this rate we'll make Boston in three-quarters of an hour at the
outside, and the storm can't strike so soon," he pushed the motor to
still greater speed and settled to the urgent business of steering a
straight course for Massachusetts Bay.

Only once did he dare turn aside his eyes even so much as to glance at
Beatrice. She, magnificently unafraid on the quivering back of this
huge airdragon, showed the splendid excitement of the moment by the
sparkle of her glance, the rush of eloquent blood to her cheeks.

Stern's achievement, typical of the invincible conquest of the human
soul over matter, time and space, thrilled her with unspeakable pride.
And as she breathed for the first time the pure, thin air of those
upper regions, her strong heart leaped within her breast, and she knew
that this man was worthy of her most profound, indissoluble love.

Far down beneath them now the forest sped away to southward. The gleam
of the river, dulled by the sunless sky, showed here and there through
the woods, which spread their unbroken carpet to the horizon,
impenetrable and filled with nameless perils. At thought of how he was
cheating 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 of
a ruined building, a crumpled-in gas-tank with an elm growing up
through the stark ribs of it, a jumble of wreckage, all small and
toylike, there below; then the plane swooped onward, and all lay deep
buried in the wilderness again.

"A few minutes now," he said to himself, "and we'll be across what
used to be the line, and be spinning over Massachusetts. This
certainly beats walking all hollow! Whew!" as the machine lurched
forward and took an ugly drop. He jerked the rising-plane lever
savagely. "Still the same kind of unreliable air, I see, that we used
to have a thousand years ago!"

For a few minutes the biplane hummed on and on in long rising and
falling slants, like a swallow skimming the surface of a lake. The
even staccato of the exhaust, echoless in that height and vacancy,
rippled with cadences like a monster mowing-machine. And Stern was
beginning to consider himself as good as in Boston already—was
beginning to wonder where the best place might be to land, whether
along the shore or on the Common, where, perhaps, some open space
still remained—when another formidable air-pocket dropped him with
sickening 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 calmer
lane, a glance at the sky showed trouble impending.

Over the gray background of wind-clouds, a fine-shredded drive was
beginning to scud. The whole east had grown black. Only far off to
westward did a little patch of dull blue show; and even this was
closing up with singular rapidity. And, though the motion of the
machine made this hard to estimate, Stern thought to see by the
lateral drift of the country below, that they were being carried
westward by what—to judge from the agitation of the tree-tops far
below—must already be a considerable gale.

For a moment the engineer cursed his foolhardiness in having started
in face of such a storm as now every moment threatened to break upon
them.

"I should have known," he told himself, "that it was suicidal to
attempt a flight when every indication showed a high wind coming. My
infernal impatience, as usual! We should have stayed safe in
Providence and let this blow itself out, before starting. But
now—well, it's too late."

But was it? Had he not time enough left to make a wide sweep and
circle back whence he had come? He glanced at the girl. If she showed
fear he would return. But on her face he saw no signs of aught but
confidence and joy and courage. And at sight of her, his own
resolution strengthened once again.

"Why retreat?" he pondered, holding the machine to her long soaring
rise. "We must have made a good third of the distance already—perhaps
a half. In ten or fifteen minutes more we ought to sight the blue of
the big bay. No use in turning back now. And as for alighting and
letting the storm blow over, that's impossible. Among these forests it
would mean only total wreckage. Even if we could land, we never could
start again. No; the only thing to do is to hold her to it and plow
through, storm or no storm. I guess the good old Pauillac can stand
the racket, right enough!"

Thus for a few moments longer he held the plane with her nose to the
northeast-by-north, his compass giving him direction, while far, far
below, the world slid back and away in a vast green carpet of swaying
trees that stretched to the dim, dun horizon.

Stern could never afterward recall exactly how or when the hurricane
struck 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 from
those inky clouds; so sudden the darkness that fell, the slinging hail
volleys that lashed and pelted them, that any clear perception of
their plight became impossible.

All the man knew was that direction and control had been knocked clean
from his hands; that the world had suddenly vanished in a black drive
of cloud and hail and wild-whipping vapor; that he no longer knew
north from south, or east from west; but that—struggling now even to
breathe, filled with sick fears for the safety of the girl beside
him—he was fighting, wrenching, wrestling with the motor and the
planes and rudders, to keep the machine from up-ending, from turning
turtle in mid-air, from sticking her nose under an air-layer and
swooping, 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 head
up into that cyclone and live. He swung with it, therefore; and now,
driving across the sky like a filament of cloud-wrack, rode on the
crest of the great storm, his motor screaming its defiance at the
shrieking wind.

Did Beatrice shout out to him? Did she try to make him hear? He could
not 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 deadly
peril.

As a driver with a runaway stallion jerks and saws and strains upon
the leather to regain control, so now the man wrestled with his
storm-buffeted machine. A less expert aeronaut must have gone down to
death in that mad nexus of conflicting currents; but Stern was cool
and full of craft and science. Against the blows of the huge tempest
he pitted his own skill, the strength of the stout mechanism, the
trained 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 sound
determine what speed they traveled at, whither they went, what lay
behind, or what ahead.

Concepts of time, too, vanished. Did it last one hour or three? Five
hours, or even more? Who could tell? Lacking any point of contact with
reality, merged and whelmed in that stupendous chill nightmare, all
wrought of savage gale, rain, hail-blasts, cloud and scudding vapor,
they sensed nothing but the fight for life itself, the struggle to
keep aloft till the cyclone should have blown itself out, and they
could seek the shelter of the earth once more.

Reality came back with a reft in the jetty sky, the faint shine of a
little pale blue there, and—a while later—a glimpse of water, or
what seemed to be such, very far below.

More steady now the currents grew. Stern volplaned again; and as the
machine slid down toward earth, came into a calmer and more peaceful
stratum.

Down, down through clouds that shifted, shredded and reassembled, he
let the plane coast, now under control once more; and all at once
there below him, less than three thousand feet beneath, he saw, dim
and vague as though in the light of evening, a vast sheet of water
that stretched away, away, till the sight lost it in a bank of
low-hung vapors on the horizon.

"
The sea?
" thought Stern, with sudden terror. Who could tell?
Perhaps the storm, westbound, had veered; perhaps it might have
carried them off the Atlantic coast! This might be the ocean, a
hundred or two hundred miles from land. And if so, then good-by!

Checking the descent, he drove forward on level wings, peering below
with 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 reached
that height, though all below, on earth, was dusk; and now he knew the
west again and found his sense of direction.

The wind, he perceived, still blew to westward; and with a thrill of
relief he felt, as though by intuition, that its course had not varied
enough to drive him out to sea.

Though he knew the ripping clatter of the engine drowned his voice, he
shouted to the girl:

"Don't be alarmed! Only a lake down there!" and with fresh courage
gave the motor all that she would stand.

A lake! But what lake? What sheet of water, of this size, lay in New
England? And if not in New England, then where were they?

A lake? One of the Great Lakes? Could that be? Could they have been
driven clear across Massachusetts, its whole length, and over New York
State, four hundred miles or more from the sea, and now be speeding
over Erie or Ontario?

Stern shuddered at the thought. Almost as well be lost over the sea as
over any one of these tremendous bodies! Were not the land near,
nothing but death now faced them; for already the fuel-gage showed but
a scant two gallons, and who could say how long the way might be to
shore?

For a moment the engineer lost heart, but only for a moment.

His eye, sweeping the distance, caught sight of a long, dull, dark
line 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!"

Fate meant that they should live, those two lone wanderers on
the face of the great desolation; and, though night had gathered now
and all was cloaked in gloom, they landed with no worse than a hard
shake-up on a level strip of beach that edged the confines of the
unknown lake.

Exhausted by the strain and the long fight with death, chilled by that
sojourn in the upper air, drenched and stiffened and half dead, they
had no strength to make a camp.

The most that they could do was drag themselves down to the water's
edge and—finding the water fresh, not salt—drink deeply from
hollowed palms. Then, too worn-out even to eat, they crawled under the
shelter of the biplane's ample wings, and dropped instantly into the
long and dreamless sleep of utter weariness.

Mid-morning found them, still lame and stiff but rested, cooking
breakfast over a cheery fire on the beach near the machine. Save for
here and there a tree that had blown down in the forest, some dead
branches scattered on the sands, and a few washed-out places where the
torrent of yesterday's rain had gullied the earth, nature once more
seemed fair and calm.

The full force of the terrific wind-storm had probably passed to
northward; this land where they now found themselves—whatever it
might be—had doubtless borne only a small part of the attack. But
even so, and even through the sky gleamed clear and blue and sunlit
once again, Stern and the girl knew the hurricane had been no ordinary
tempest.