“There appears to be a little lull in the wind now,” Frank said, shutting his lips tight, as a man does when about to make a sudden plunge into unknown waters.
The remark was suggestive. Ned knew by it that his chum had braced himself for the dash.
“Here we go, then,” Ned replied. “Remember that we’ll go about eighty miles an hour when I turn the motor on full head, and that we can’t be more than five miles from the spot where we left them, so keep your eyes out.”
The aeroplane dipped gracefully as Ned touched the lever. In a minute the boys were surrounded by smoke. It was hot smoke, too, and made breathing difficult. Their eyes smarted until their faces were wet with nature’s protest against such irritation of the organs of sight. The chuck-chuck, snap-snap of the motors was in their ears, the seats they occupied—frail rests between life and death—shivered under the pulsations of the machine.
Now and then the aeroplane dipped frightfully, but the wings and the rudders brought it back again.
“Can you see the earth yet?” asked Frank, In an awed tone, which sounded like a whisper in that clatter.
“We seem to be over the fire,” Ned returned.
And that was all. There was no need of conversation. In all their lives they would never be so near to a frightful death as they were then.
First they caught sight of a rocky ridge. Ned knew where that was, and realized that he was still in the direct line of the workers. Beyond this ridge, he knew, was a valley, so he must drop down. The workers were on a level beyond the valley, a great plain of fir and pine between gigantic ranges of the Rocky Mountains.
The aeroplane trembled as she dropped, swiftly, apparently straight down. Frank grasped his upright and prepared to spring out of the wreckage when it fell, if there was anything to fall from after the trees had had their way with the frail machine.