When the Ann rose above the valley Carl saw the Louise some distance to the south. The strange machine was still in the lead, but the boys appeared to be gaining on her. Both were going fast.
The sky was now tolerably clear, although a brisk wind driving in from the west was bringing fleecy clouds from the Pacific coast. There would be a moon sometime between midnight and morning, but the prospects were that there would be a bank of driving clouds stretched over the earth before she showed herself.
The Englishman, unfamiliar with aeroplaning, began asking questions of the boy as soon as they were in the air, but, as the racing of the motors and the rush of the air drowned his voice, he soon lapsed into silence and contented himself with such views of the distant summit as he could secure. Several times he flung out an arm—including the shining stars, the drifting clouds, the wide stretch of mountain and valley in the sweep of it—and Carl understood that he was saying in the only language available there how much he loved the wild beauty and the majesty of it all.
After a time the strange aeroplane began to seek the higher levels. She climbed up, up, up until the summit showed white and sparkling under her flying planes.
Carl saw the Louise following the stranger into the snow zone and wondered at it. To the boy it seemed that the distance traveled upward might better be gained in level flight. Every unnecessary foot of altitude seemed to him to be a foot lost in the race.
“Ben doesn’t have to follow the stranger in the air,” he mused as he shot the Ann ahead on the same level he had been traveling. “All he has to do in order to overtake her is to keep her in sight and go faster than she does. He lost several yards by following her up to the summit.”
After a time the stranger changed her tactics turning to the west and seeking the valley again. The Louise followed in her wake as before and seemed to be gaining. The Ann was traveling much faster than either of the others and would soon be within striking distance.
That was a mad race under the stars. The stranger seemed to develop new speed possibilities as she swept along. The Louise appeared to be losing ground. The Ann swept forward relentlessly and was soon close to the rear machine.
Then a remarkable thing happened. The aeroplane in advance dropped like a plummet. It seemed to Carl, watching her light eagerly from his seat on the Ann, that she ceased her forward motion and lost her buoyancy at the same moment. He could not, of course, see the bulk of the machine but he could see her light.
The light seemed to be down to the surface of the earth in a minute. The Louise, following on, dropped, too. To the watching boy the falling of the two aeroplanes seemed as if they had dropped over a precipice.