Her heart in her mouth, she banked again, dropping for the second time, determined to land now at any cost. The strain had been awful the first time, but now it actually unnerved her. Inside of that cloud—on the dangerous mountain side! No; she could not take another chance, not only with her own life, but with Dot’s. Wherever she came down, it couldn’t be as dangerous as this.
Gradually throttling her engine down to a slower speed, she began her descent by a series of glides. All the while watching for a glimpse of the solid earth beneath her.
Down, down they came, but still there was no ground visible. They must have passed over the mountains, she decided, and were descending into a valley. Or level ground, perhaps. That thought was encouraging.
“There it is!” shouted Dot, almost hysterically. “The earth, I mean!”
Linda breathed a deep sigh of relief. Never before had she been so thankful to see it, unless perhaps the first time she had made a parachute jump.
“It must be the plateau!” she cried, joyfully. “We must have passed over the mountains!”
Gently the autogiro settled down to a landing on the level ground beneath them. It was a fertile spot in comparison with the other places in Mexico where they had landed. The earth was not nearly so parched or barren, and here and there, between the underbrush and the bare spots, a kind of coarse grass was growing. Perhaps, Linda thought, the land was used by someone for grazing.
“Quite a pleasant spot,” remarked Dot gaily, as if they had been on a picnic instead of face to face with death.
“See the mountains over there?” asked Linda, for they were out of the range of the cloud through which they had just passed.
“Yes. But they’re far enough away that I really don’t mind. If a bear wanders over to visit us, we’ll feed him some Mexican food.”