“Gee, but I’m stupid!” she mumbled. “What was it that text-book I read only yesterday said? ‘In the event of general formation of fog below, an immediate landing must be made before it becomes thick enough to interfere seriously with the approach.’ Heavens, what a fool I am! Now that we’re in it, though, I might as well see if it thins out nearer the water.”
Her compass told her she was flying almost due west. Throttling down the engine, she pushed her stick still farther forward, at the same time applying right aileron and hard right rudder. As the proper gliding angle was reached, she neutralized her elevators and held the nose up as necessary. Next, she checked her wing with the ailerons and eased her rudder pressure. Then having made a quarter-spiral with a change in course of 90 degrees, she applied left aileron and hard left rudder until the wings were level laterally, and with her stick still held forward, continued to descend in a straight glide until she was within fifteen hundred feet of the water. The plane was heading directly back across Long Island Sound toward the Connecticut shore.
But each moment the fog seemed to grow more dense. To land blindly meant a certain nose-in and was out of the question. And even if the mist did not hold to the water’s level, to fly lower meant the chance of striking the mast or spar of a ship, a lighthouse, perhaps, or anything else that came her way.
“We’re up against it, Wispy,” she murmured, opening the throttle and pulling back her stick. “If we can’t go down, at least we can ‘go above,’ as they say in the Navy. Beat it for the heavens, my dear. This beastly fog can’t run all the way to Mars!”
Dorothy was not frightened, although she knew how serious was her predicament. No pilot likes flying blind in a fog. With the knowledge that what one sees, one hits, it is a nerve-wracking experience.
But Dorothy’s nerves were good—none better—and she sent her plane into a long, steady climb, hoping for the best and keeping her vivid imagination well within control.
Headed into the north, she continued her climb, leveling off every few thousand feet to ease the strain on her engine. When the altimeter marked thirteen thousand she began to worry, for the service ceiling of her plane was but two thousand higher. The cold damp of the thick mist penetrated like a knife. Hemmed in by the dank grey walls, she could barely distinguish the nose of her ship. The active needles of the altimeter and rate of climb indicator were the only visible signs that Will-o’-the-Wisp was moving at all.
Fourteen thousand feet—intense physical discomfort, added to the nervous strain, were becoming intolerable. Dorothy clenched her chattering teeth in an effort to retain her control. Then with a suddenness astonishing, the fog parted and she sailed into clear air.
Below her the heavy mist swirled and rolled like a sluggish sea, grey-yellow streaked with dirty streamers, while directly ahead loomed a towering mass of cotton-like clouds rising tier upon tier as far as she would see.
A quick glance over her shoulder and to the sides, brought forth the fact that this small pocket of free air was entirely surrounded by similar cloud formations. There was no time for thought. Automatically, her hand clasping the stick shot forward, bringing down the nose to the position of level flight, and she drove the amphibian straight at the thunderhead. Immediately afterward the plane passed into the cloud, and like a leaf caught in an inverted maelstrom, it was whipped out of her control.