“Eight hundred feet,” he announced. “That’s good. I picked up a light—some farmer’s kitchen, I guess—but nothin’ doin’; too dark. Drop her a couple hundred feet.”
Without comment from the boy in the chair the same creaking noise sounded once more and Phil, the electric flash centered on the altitude register, kept his eyes on that instrument.
“Six hundred feet,” he called in a few moments. “Keep her there while I have another look. We—”
Before he could finish, a flash of lightning turned the sky into the inside of a phosphorescent sphere. But it was not the gorgeous display of the wild tangle of silvered clouds that the two boys saw. Before the flare ended their eyes were fixed on what was beneath them. There was no need of an order from Phil. In the blaze of light it could be seen that Frank’s feet rested on two lever stirrups. Even before the light died, his right foot shot forward, there was another sound of a straining wire and the glass enclosed car instantly shot to the right and slightly downward. At the same time Frank’s right hand, already clutching a wheel attached vertically to the side of his chair, drew swiftly back and with it came a renewed jarring, checking motion above. Almost instantly the car, while it continued its flight to the right, became horizontal again.
“Got our bearin’s anyway,” was the operator’s gasping remark.
“If you can bank her and get down right away,” said the other boy as he sprang to the open hatch again, “we can make it in one of those fields. We’ve cleared the woods by this time,” he added with no little relief. “The way we’re headed, it’s all clear forward for a mile—”
“Except fences,” interrupted Frank. “But we’ll try it. Look out.”
“Bank her and when you’re right, I’ll give the word,” was Phil’s answer, his head disappearing through the floor opening.
The illumination had shown the two boys that they were directly above a wide stretch of timber land. Where this disappeared in the distant west was blacker low ground, which a winding stream told plainly enough was a marsh. To the right lay a straight road and beyond this miles of cultivated land in fenced fields.