Dad shook his head, and there was another long pause as they all studied this appearance of land ahead. Jack looked at his charts and knit his brows. He went over their course on the map and shook his head, as puzzled as ever. He could find no solution.
Now the hills, instead of coming nearer, seemed to recede. It should be night now, if their clock and watches were right. The dazzling light still puzzled them.
A little later, Jack turned to the Skipper and said:
“Doesn’t that look like a plane just above the horizon?”
In another few minutes they made out several more circling just over the hilltops. And then, off to the right, they could see about a dozen planes flying in formation. They also decided that some tiny specks on what seemed to be the surface of the clouds were other planes, resting there.
A look of helplessness was beginning to cloud the Skipper’s face. There had been few times in his flying experience when he had not had a very good idea of where he was. Once or twice he had been lost in the air, and it carried with it a feeling such as one never has when lost on the ground. On the ground, even on the darkest night and in a strange country, there was always the possibility of meeting someone who could supply directions, or of finding a signboard that would locate one. But in the air there was no passing stranger or friend that one could ask for help.
The Skipper remembered the first time that he had been hopelessly lost in the air.
It had happened while he was training in England. He had flown to an airdrome several miles from his own, hoping to find there an old friend and to renew acquaintances. He had followed a railroad line, which in almost every case is perfectly visible from the air and is the shortest connecting link between cities and towns. This particular railroad skirted in a wide circle a town near the airdrome he was to visit, and it was joined there by several other branches of the road.
Locating the airdrome, he landed. As he came down a severe rainstorm had swept over the field. Upon learning that his friend had been transferred to another airdrome, he was anxious to be off and away; but those at the field counselled him to wait until the storm was over.
In about twenty minutes the heavens above the field were clear, and he took off to return to his own airdrome. Picking up the railroad line again, he was confronted with the problem of deciding which branch he must follow. Relying on his compass, which he had every reason to believe was accurate, he chose the one that seemed to lead off in the right direction.