A SEA ABOVE A SEA
When Alfred Brightwood had tilted the nose of the Stormy Petrel upward and away from the threatening bank of clouds she rose rapidly. A thousand, two thousand, three, four, five thousand feet she mounted to dizzy heights above the sea.
As they mounted, the stars, swinging about in the sky, like incandescent bulbs strung on a wire, made their appearance here and there. They came out rapidly, by twos and threes, by scores and hundreds. In clusters and fantastic figures they swam about in the purple night.
Almost instantly the sea disappeared from beneath them and in its place came a new sea; a sea of dark rushing clouds. Rising two thousand feet above the level of the ocean, this mass of moisture hanging there in the sky took on the appearance of a second sea. As Vincent looked down upon it he found it easy to believe that were they to drop slowly down upon it, they would be seized upon and torn this way, then that by the violence of the storm that was even now raging beneath them, and that their plane would be cast at last, a shapeless mass, upon the real sea which was roaring and raging beneath it.
"How wonderful nature is!" he breathed. "It would be magnificent were it not so terrible."
He was thinking of the gasoline in their tank and he shuddered. Would it last until the storm had passed, or would they be obliged to volplane down into that seething tempest?
He put his lips to the tube. "You better use just enough gas to keep us afloat," he suggested.
Alfred muttered something like, "Think I'm a fool?" Then for a long time, with the black sea of clouds rising and falling, billowing up like the walls of a mammoth tent, then sagging down to rise again, they circled and circled. They were not circling now in search of adventure, to find some island which might bring them great wealth, but to preserve life. How long that circling could last, neither could tell.
When Curlie Carson left the wireless cabin of the Kittlewake, he grasped a rail which ran along the cabin, just in time to prevent himself from being washed overboard by a giant wave. As it was, the water lifted his feet from the deck and, having lifted him as the wind lifts a flag, it waved him up and down three times, at last to send him crashing, knees down, on the deck. The wind was half knocked out of him, but he was still game. He did not attempt to regain the wireless cabin but fought his way along the side of that cabin toward his own stateroom door.
Now a vivid flash of light revealed the water-washed deck. A coil of rope, all uncoiled by the waves, was wriggling like a serpent in the black sea.
"No use to try to save it," he mumbled. "No good here, anyhow."
A yellow light, hanging above his stateroom door, dancing dizzily, appeared at one moment to take a plunge into the sea and at the next to dash away into the ink-black sky.
Curlie was drenched to the skin. He was benumbed with the cold and shocked into half insensibility at the tremendous proportions of the storm. He wondered vaguely about the engineer below. Was the water getting at the engines? He still felt the throb of them beneath his feet. Well, that much was good anyway. And the skipper? Was he still at the wheel? Must be, for the yacht continued to take the waves head-on.
Short and light as she was, the craft appeared to leap from wave-crest to wave-crest. Now she missed the leap by a foot and the water drenched her deck anew. And now she overstepped and came down with a solid impact that set her shuddering from stern to keel.
"Good old Kittlewake," he murmured, "you sure were built for rough service!"
But now he had reached his stateroom door. With a lurch he threw open the door, with a second he fell through, a third slammed it shut.
One second his eyes roved about the place; the next his lips parted as something bumped against his foot.
Stooping, he lifted up a long affair the size and shape of a round cedar fencepost. It was this he had brought aboard just before sailing. It had been shaken down and had been rolling about the floor.
Having examined its wrapping carefully, he shook it once or twice.
"Guess you're all right," he muttered. "And you had better be! A whole lot depends on you in a pinch."
His eyes roved about the room. At length, snatching a blanket from his berth, he tore it into strips. Then, throwing back his mattress, he placed the postlike affair beneath it and lashed it firmly to the springs.
"There!" he exclaimed with much satisfaction, "you'll be safe until needed, if you are needed, and—and you never can tell."
The end of the seaplane's last flirt with death and destruction came suddenly and without warning. Overcome as he was by constant watching, dead for sleep and famished for food, Vincent Ardmore had all but fallen asleep in his seat on the fuselage when a hoarse snort from one of the motors, followed quickly by a rattling grate from the other, startled him into complete wakefulness.
The silence which followed these strange noises was appalling. It was like the lull before a hurricane.
"Gas is gone," said Alfred. There was fear and defiance in his tone, defiance of Nature which he believed had treated him badly "Have to go down now."
"Go down!" Vincent shivered at the thought. Go down to what?
He glanced below, then a ray of hope lighted his face. The storm was passing—had all but passed. The clouds beneath them were no longer densely black. A mere mist, they hung like a veil over the sea.
"But the water?" His heart sank. "It will still be raging."
The storm had not so far passed as he at first thought. The plane cut a circling path as she descended. Her wings were broad; her drop was gradual. As they entered the first layer of clouds, she gave a lurch forward, but with wonderful control the young pilot righted her. Seconds passed, then again she tipped, this time more perilously. But again she was righted. Now she was caught in a little flurry of wind that set her spinning. A nose-dive seemed inevitable, but once more she came to position. Now, as they neared the surface of the sea, a wild, racing wind, the tail of the storm, seized them and hurled them headlong before it. In its grasp, there was no longer thought of control. The only question now was how they would strike the water and when. The very rush of the wind tore the breath from Vincent's lungs. Crushed back against the fuselage, he awaited the end. Once, twice, three times they turned over in a mad whirl. Then, with a sudden rending crash and a wild burst of spray, they struck.
The plane had gone down on one wing. For a second she hung suspended there. Vincent caught his breath. If she went one way there was a chance; if the other, there was none. He thought of loosening his straps, but did not. So he hung there. Came a sudden crash. The right motor had torn from its lashings and plunged into the sea.
The next second the plane settled to the left. Saved for a moment, the boy drew a deep breath. A second crash and the remaining motor was gone. During this crash the boy was completely submerged, but the buoyant plane brought him up again. Then, for a moment, he was free to think, to look about him. Instinctively his eyes sought the place where his companion had been seated. It was empty. Alfred was gone.
Covering his eyes with his hands, he tried to tell himself it was not true. Then, suddenly uncovering them, he searched the surface of the troubled sea. Once he fancied he caught a glimpse of a white hand above a wave. He could not be sure; it might have been a speck of foam. Only one thing he could be sure of; his throbbing brain told it to him over and over: Alfred Brightwood, his friend, was gone—gone forever. The sea had swallowed him up.