“We did this first leg of our flight on tangents with parallel rulers. We got the distances from the map scale of miles with dividers. I reckon the dividers were loose. That’s all.”
“That’s hardly navigation,” said Roy with a half smile.
“Not even common sense,” snapped Alan.
Off St. John’s, New Brunswick, the mainland should have been in plain view but the outer buoy in the harbor, over which the Flyer passed, was made out with difficulty. But, when its vague shape was at last sighted the hour was noted as five fifty-one P. M., and the course was immediately altered to E. by N. The fog was now gathering fast and the rocks and trees of the rugged New Brunswick coast soon disappeared from sight. Watching closely for Cape Chignecto Alan headed the airship for Amherst at the tip of the Bay of Fundy, seventy-three miles distant.
A problem now confronted the pilot. The fog soon thickened to a mist that resembled a drizzling rain. The flight of the aeroplane hurled this chilling vapor through the pilot room. Alan was debating what to do. It was possible to ignore the land beneath and to begin the long compass flight to London at once. But it was wisdom to check their flight, as long as possible, with points beneath. In the fog these could not be distinguished at the height they were flying.
“We’ll have to drop to five hundred feet or less,” he suggested to Roy, “if we expect to pick up Amherst or any of the Prince Edward Island marks. What d’ you say?”
“I’d come down and I’d stay down till it’s too dark to make out the land. That’ll be about Cape Anguille on the west coast of Newfoundland. Then we’ll cut loose and say good-bye to America.”
Calling below to Bob to close the engine room doors and ports, Alan was about to head down when he suggested to Bob to see if the ports in Ned’s state room were closed. At Roy’s first step within the room Ned sprang up wildly. In another moment, wincing from the pain in his stiffened leg, he was by Alan’s side.
“What time is it?” he began as he looked with dismay out on the blinding fog.
“A few minutes after six,” answered Alan with a smile.