Towards ten o’clock, while Dot was taking her nap, they had one more terrifying experience. Suddenly, for no reason at all, they started to fall. Yet the engine was not dead, nor was their motion slow enough for a stall. There was only one explanation, of course: an air-pocket. Down, down they came, like an elevator whose cords have been broken. Dot wakened up with a scream and the beads of perspiration stood out on Linda’s forehead, for she believed that this time the sea was really about to swallow them.
But she had been flying high, and this proved to be her salvation. She tried banking the plane, first on one side and then on the other, breaking the fall, but making both herself and Dot dizzy with the sickening motion. Her head swam; she hardly knew what she was doing, and there was the black water beneath them. But at last a current of air swept under the wings, assuring her that she was out of danger once more. Making a sharp turn away from the air-pocket, she found her plane responding to the stick as she started to climb back again to the height she had lost.
The girls breathed freely again, and Dot, now wide awake, produced coffee from the thermos bottle, for they felt in need of a stimulant. But, as the plane flew fearlessly on, and the flight again became monotonous, Dot fell asleep once more, and Linda continued, waking and watchful.
She watched the stars fade gradually from the sky, and the first gray light play over the sea. Tensely alert, she glanced eagerly at her speedometer. If her calculations were correct, there were only three hundred miles more to go!
It was considerably lighter when Dot finally opened her eyes.
“Fine companion I am!” she exclaimed, in shame. “To go to sleep like that. Leaving you as lonely as you were on your Atlantic flight!”
Linda reached over and touched her hand affectionately.
“Don’t you believe it, Dot!” she said. “It makes a big difference, having you here.... And if you’re awake now, I’d like to have you take control. I want to do some figuring. Now that we’re getting so near, I want to locate the islands. Suppose we’d miss them, after coming all this distance!”
“Suppose we would!” repeated Dot. “And never realize it till we landed on the coast of Australia!”
“We’d know it before then. Our gas would give out somewhere in the middle of the ocean.”