“All of that,” was Frank’s good-natured response. “Here, give me that wheel. I’ll take a turn. Crawl over to the window and stick your head out. It’s great.”
Without a protest Phil slipped from the low chair in which he had been sitting rigidly and Frank skilfully took his place. In another moment Phil was kneeling in the black darkness by the opening.
“It’s all right,” Phil exclaimed, “and I’m glad we did it. I suppose,” he added a moment later, “that it’s the first time anyone ever did. It may be a little risky, but it’s worth while. Yet,” he added after several moments, “I guess we’ve gone far enough. There isn’t a sign of a town light in sight and I don’t know where we are. Let’s make a landing and camp out in the car till the storm is over.”
“If we do that,” suggested the boy in the chair, “we’ll stay all night. We’ll never get up again out of a wet field—if we’re lucky enough not to straddle a fence, jab a tree into us or find a perch on the comb of a barn.”
There was a grunt from his companion.
“No use to figure on all those things,” was the answer. “We can’t keep agoin’ till daylight and since we’ve got to stop sometime, we might as well take chances—”
“Right now?” broke in Frank. “All right! Now it is, if you say so.”
There was a creak as of a straining wire and the boys braced themselves against an immediate lurch forward. The glass windows or ports rattled slightly as something above seemed to check the fast flight. Phil added:
“Stand by the barometer; it’s our only guide; I can’t see a thing.”