About twelve-thirty they passed Halifax, and Jack wirelessed that all was well.
Soon they passed over some broken clouds and found the air very bumpy. They were picked up and carried sometimes fifty feet before being dropped. Jack had his latest weather map tacked to a small board in front of him, and he remarked that they might expect this sort of weather, or worse, before they reached Newfoundland.
They noticed a slight haze coming up before them, and for the next hour they ran through intermittent showers.
Giving the Skipper his course to fly, after a careful checking with his drift indicator, Jack called to Kiwi and they began the transfer of five more cans of fuel to the big tank.
With the air as bumpy as it was now, this was no light task. Once, when the plane gave a sudden lurch and reared upward with one of the bumps, Kiwi lost his balance and tumbled over on the floor of his compartment; and before he could pick himself up and rescue the can some of the precious fluid had been lost. After that he was more careful, and braced himself securely against the sudden lurching of their ship.
They were twice as long making the transfer this time, but it was finally accomplished, and Jack heaved the empty cans overboard. This time Kiwi was unable to follow them on their downward flight. Often they disappeared from view within a split second of being hurled out.
The broken clouds were making the Skipper’s job of piloting much more difficult. Trying to keep the plane on an even keel and follow their set course took all his attention.
Intermittent showers beat down upon them, and big raindrops were carried back along the under side of the wings in small, hurried rivulets. To Kiwi in the back, with his nose pressed against the window pane, it seemed like summer downpours that he had witnessed from their little cabin back home.
He had become accustomed by now to the smooth roar of the motor, and was not so conscious of the strain on his eardrums. Through holes in the clouds he could occasionally see the ocean tossing black and green far beneath them.
Jack wanted to make sure of getting a last bearing on land before they swung off to the open Atlantic, and asked the Skipper if he could not drop a little lower under the clouds so that Newfoundland would be plainly seen.