With a bound upward, Bud headed the aeroplane over the trees beyond the mill-pond. Three hundred feet over the forest, he steadied the airship. But only for a moment. All was dark beneath, and yet Bud knew that the open marsh and lake were just ahead. From that point, he might as well have closed his eyes. It was all luck and instinct now.
Catching his breath, the boy lowered his horizontal rudders. With his eyes glued on the seemingly endless black beneath him, he leaned further and further forward. Twice he started upright, twice he hesitated, and then, with feverish speed, his hand shot out and shut off the engine. The propellers died away, but the car plunged ahead with its speed apparently unchecked.
Lower and lower sank the drifting aeroplane. Again Bud leaned nervously forward to catch some sign of the margin of the water. What had happened? He had surely gone a mile! In the still night air came a sudden splash. With it, rose the guttural honk of a bull frog. The sound was dead ahead and almost beneath him.
With renewed energy, he swung his vertical rudder lever and the car drifted quickly to the right. Under the impulse of the turn, it darted downward. There was a rasping brush against the tall, dry swamp vegetation and the aeroplane, touching first with its starboard end on the soft marsh bed, settled with a dragging jolt on the weeds and grasses.
There was a breaking creak, as the end of the framework struck, but when Bud knew the flight was at an end he sank back into his seat with a gulp of relief.
“I’m here,” he sighed, “right among the snakes and frogs. Maybe the machine’s busted, and maybe not. Anyway, I’ve got a fine long job of waitin’ for day.”
He was breathing as if he had just finished a race. When he had got around to normal again, he made an attempt to get his bearings. With his hands on the framework, he crawled from the car. His feet sank into the soft ground and water oozed into his deep foot prints. Then he listened. He fancied he heard the soft lap of water just ahead. That meant the lake. But it was useless to try to reach it. The margin led nowhere and it would be softer than where he was.
A good deal of the romance of his adventure disappeared at once. It was exciting enough to navigate an aeroplane through the pathless black sky; but it was far from interesting or comfortable to sit up all night with the chill air benumbing his coatless body and keep sleepless company with bugs, frogs and snakes in a damp marsh.
“And I ain’t goin’ to,” exclaimed Bud. “The marsh gets softer toward the lake, but it gets firmer toward the hill.”
He debated and hesitated for an hour, growing colder and more miserable all the time, and then, in desperation, he got stiffly out of the chair on which he had been cramped and plunged through the bog toward the high ground.