Of course there was always impending danger. Any one of a score of accidents was liable to happen, especially after the engines had been constantly working hour after hour.
Such things may bother an aviator when over the enemy's country, because if a landing seems necessary in order to avoid a fatal drop, there must always arise the risk of capture. How much more serious would even the smallest engine trouble become, once they were far out over the ocean with nothing in sight as far as the eye could reach save an endless vastness of rolling waters beneath, and passing clouds overhead?
Tom, however, would not allow himself to brood upon these possibilities, and when they flashed across his mind he persistently banished them. Sufficient to the day was the evil thereof; and if difficulties arose they must meet them bravely, doing the best they could, and accepting the results in the spirit of Columbus, who was the pioneer in spanning the Atlantic.
Jack now made a discovery that caused him to call out again.
"I believe we've left the land again, and it's water down under us right now, fellows!" he called shrilly, his voice sounding above the clamor by which they were continually surrounded.
"Well, according to my calculations," said Tom, "we should be about quit of England and striking the Irish Sea at its junction with the Atlantic. It's that you believe you see right now."
"Then before long we'll glimpse Ireland's lights!" cried the exultant
Jack. "Though we're likely to pass over only the city of Cork as we dash
on for the big sea beyond. So far everything is moving like grease,
Lieu—Colin."
"I promised you it would," the pilot told him. "And let's hope it keeps up this way all the way through."
Again they ceased trying to talk since it proved such an effort without resorting to the little wireless telephone arrangement. Jack did notify them, however, when he believed he sighted tiny specks far below that he took for the lights of some place of consequence; but Tom, who knew better, assured him he must be mistaken.
"You're straining your eyes so much you mistake other things for lights, Jack," he told the observer. "It might even be the reflection of the stars on the glasses of your binoculars. We're not near Cork yet, and there's no other place worth mentioning that we'll come near. Rest up, Jack."