“There’s only one way to do that,” snapped the other; “which is by circling around, keeping our altitude, and within a range of say fifty miles; and that’s what I’m aiming to start doing right now.”
CHAPTER XII
When the Dawn Broke
When Jack thus decided it good policy to start riding that gigantic circle, reducing their speed at the same time, he knew it was really the only course left to them in order to kill time, until there arose a change in weather conditions, and the coming of daylight.
It would require the utmost skill and vigilance combined, thus to keep going over about the same line of travel, with naught to depend upon save his reliable instruments, aided by the deductions he must be continually making, with his eyes on the compass, the speed indicator, altimeter, and kindred apparatus by means of which, in conjunction, a clever pilot may cut circles around an objective at will.
All this when he has daylight to assist him, and can see the distant ground beneath; but when blinded by both fog and intense darkness it is “a horse of another color” entirely, and if successfully carried out may be considered on a par with a near-miracle.
“He c’n do it, if anybody’s able,” faithful Perk was assuring himself, as he sat and watched the other go through with motion after motion, doubtless mentally figuring up knotty little problems in arithmetic that would either prove the accuracy of his general plan of campaign, or cause him to correct any faulty upsets.
“Gee whiz! if on’y we could a climbed on that gink’s tail, an’ follered him to where he was agoin’, what a soft snap it’d been,” Perk was telling himself, as he imagined them climbing back to the level followed by the “mystery ship,” and keeping on at just a certain distance, where their presence would not be betrayed by the commotion they caused; “but it’s a hull lot too late neow to think o’ tryin’ that ere stunt aout; so what’s the use figgerin’ any more? ’Sides, they aint no chanct for even a pilot what knows his beans ’raound this pesky country, to drop daown, so long’s this soup hangs over aour heads, under aour feet, an’ plays the devil with things gen’rally. Jack’s got it all laid aout, an’ we’re on aour way to Pike’s Peak—er bust—mebbe so its jest plain bust!”
As the time drew on Perk found himself engaged in a peculiar game of guessing as to what the character of the ground below would turn out to be when they were given a blessed chance to view the same by the dispersal of the fog, and the coming of broad daylight.
He knew what it meant to be hovering over mountainous country, where all manner of weird canyons and dry water courses could be traced on the rough landscape—secluded haunt of the Rocky Mountain sheep, or big-horn; the savage silver-tip bear known also as the grizzly, most dreaded wild beast of the entire Americas, the claws of whom the Indians of the West always prized as mementos of their individual valor, when slain at close quarters, with the warrior living to tell the story of his triumph.
Then, too, he could imagine vast herds of the now almost extinct buffalo, seeking shelter and grazing during the winter in some sheltered valley among these same mountain ranges, where green grass might be found in abundance even during blizzard weather conditions.