Suddenly, on the wind which came to her, she smelled a strong tang of salt water; enough so that she decided they were nearing one of the coasts and that the storm was coming from there. The air was only intermittently salty so she guessed they were still some distance away from the ocean, whichever one it was. Then through the darkness and to her right, she saw a plane flying high and carrying four lights. Almost at once the lights on Nike were flashed, then Roberta was sure that they had been traveling without them. Evidently the woman had been afraid of some one’s following after her. Now the course was changed sharply and presently Nike was racing to the left of a plane about twice as large as her own.
Although Roberta wanted to see what this was all about she dared not move, for she was sure that the other machine carried no friend of hers. Peeping cautiously she saw the machine zoom up sharply, they seemed to be going through some sort of maneuver. Mrs. Pollzoff had raised herself in the pilot’s seat as far as the safety strap would permit, then in a moment the larger plane came around to the right. The girl Sky-Pilot promptly closed her eyes lest its pilot warn the woman that she was awake.
Twice the two planes circled, then the larger one rose sharply on Roberta’s side, and a moment later she could see the underside of a monoplane; its huge floats looking like the bottoms of small flat boats. In another second something like a weight dropped into Roberta’s lap and instantly Mrs. Pollzoff caught it up, so the girl decided that her captor must be receiving a message, or sending one by the other pilot, but the next instant something dragged across her knees and unable to contain herself any longer, she raised her lids, only to close them again quickly, for the woman was standing over her. At the moment her face was raised, but then she looked down.
What the girl Sky-Pilot saw made her gasp in astonishment and fear, for Mrs. Pollzoff was hauling in a long tube, which must mean that she was going to refuel from the air and not come down at all, at least until the supply was depleted. She might take on a full supply, as much as they had had when they left Charleston, and unless the woman went to sleep over the stick, she could keep going until the following day.
Sick with horror, Roberta tried to make her brain function properly, but it was filled with the wildest terrors and in spite of warm clothing, she felt as cold as if she were wearing summer clothing. In the day time, under the best of conditions, what the two planes were trying to do could be accomplished with skilled pilots at both controls, but in the middle of the night, with a woman at the receiving end of the tube who had been disqualified as a flyer, it was a desperately risky undertaking. Nike’s nose might be jammed up into the other plane’s underpinning or drop so low that the tube would be broken and the machine sprayed with the highly inflammable mixture. A dozen things could happen so quickly to make a smash-up inevitable. She wondered dully why Mrs. Pollzoff didn’t take in new containers, which would be less dangerous, and when the girl recalled that the woman had been considered incompetent as a pilot, she was no longer surprised. Probably her examiners had realized that she was too foolhardy to trust with a license.
There were a number of slips, disconnections and reconnections during the performance, and it seemed to Roberta as if hours passed before the work was finally achieved and she felt the long tube with its heavy weight being dragged across her knees again and at last heard them thump and bump against the side of Nike while the other pilot hauled them up to his own machine. Then Mrs. Pollzoff resumed her seat and her appropriated task, but the girl felt her slip down as if weary from the strain. She opened her eyes a bit to see if the woman was able to do anything more and found that she was busy with the controls, and circling in a wide sweep, the second plane was soaring out of her way, the end of the tube extending behind. Then it disappeared from sight.
Again Roberta’s nostrils were filled with that strong odor from the sea and Nike zoomed courageously forward, carrying with her every vestige of hope that she might help herself or get help when they were forced to land. There was not a chance in the world that they could come down for hours, unless the engine gave them trouble, and no one knew better than the girl Sky-Pilot that every inch of her plane’s machinery was the best possible and that it would stand long hours of the hardest grilling without showing a sign of weakness. She wondered over and over why Mrs. Pollzoff had kidnaped her and tried to remember what the woman had said as she was losing consciousness, but her head ached with the effort. Then she thought of the glove she had dropped and resolved to get the other one off and send it after the first if possible.
Removing the right gauntlet, which was furthest from Mrs. Pollzoff’s side had been comparatively easy, but slipping out of the other which was placed close to the rip-ring of her parachute and almost under the woman’s nose, was a more dangerous undertaking, but Roberta wasn’t built of the stuff that quits; she knew that a quitter never wins and a winner never quits, so she watched until her companion was leaning far enough forward so that the motion of the arm would not attract her attention. Fortunately for Roberta, the woman decided to dim the lights in the cock-pit, so she herself could not see so easily and must keep close to the control-board to watch the dials.
Slowly and cautiously, the girl wriggled her fingers until finally they were partly out of the gauntlet, then she managed to slip it along toward her right hand, hoping to draw it across her lap and throw it as she had the other. Just then, Mrs. Pollzoff tipped Nike’s nose at a sharp angle and climbed swiftly for several minutes, then leveled and shut off her motor. By that time the smell of salt water permeated the air and Roberta was desperately anxious to get the glove over before they reached the shore line where it might be lost in the ocean. In this project Mrs. Pollzoff helped her by leaning far over her own side of the plane, searching beneath her, and Roberta clearly heard the pounding of the breakers. With a slight twist of her body she transferred the gauntlet to her right hand, and with a second flip of her fingers, sent it over the side.
Mrs. Pollzoff settled quickly back into her seat while the heavens were split with a million tongues of forked lightning, and after a breathless instant, a terrific crack of thunder boomed and crashed as if bent on the destruction of the whole universe.