It was the far-flung land chain of the Aleutian Islands that he was crossing. With a queer thrill in his heart, Hal Dane looked down over the side of his ship. Below him was real earth. He could land here if he wanted to, be in the midst of people. Right here he could end the long loneliness—if he wanted to.
Resolutely, Hal kept his plane headed forward. According to his charts he must turn slightly to the south now for the last south-western curve on his crescent-shaped route.
The longest stretch of ocean flight was over now; he felt that he had conquered the worst. In less than twenty-four hours he had come over three thousand miles—nearly three thousand, five hundred, in fact. At this rate he ought to sight the island kingdom of Japan in the afternoon of this day.
But in his reckoning, Hal had not taken into account the treacherous weather of the northern reaches of the Pacific. Instead of making good speed on this last lap of his journey, he began to lose time, to drop behind on his carefully worked out schedule.
From now on, he swept along in a continuous storm area. Gales seemed to roar up from nowhere and burst about the plane. From his student weather studies, that now seemed part of a long-gone past, Hal Dane had learned much about the thunderheads and twisters of the atmosphere. He knew a deal about gauging the breadth and diameter of certain type storms, their speed of movement, the velocity of the winds within these storms. Every shred of such knowledge that he had was put to severe test now. In his plane, he was like some hunted wild animal fleeing before the storm hounds, turning, twisting, riding now high, now low. Time and again he was only able to avoid a crash by feeling his way around the edges of the storms and dodging between them, never letting his plane become completely swallowed up in the maw of the storm monster. Sometimes two or three storms came together. A low-powered airplane would have been lost for lack of force to make headway in such a case, but the mighty Wind Bird courageously battled forward on these constantly changing air currents.
Then the clouds shredded away, and the glow of the evening sun lit the sky.
Hal Dane relaxed in his seat. He had fought a long fight, had lost all reckoning of time, space, of ocean distances. He had flown far enough to be near land—of that he was sure.
Soon he had confirmation of his hopes. His plane swooped into the midst of a flock of sea gulls. These winged fishers of the air often flew hundreds of miles from shore—but the sight of them usually meant that shore was somewhere in the distance.
Right enough Hal was in his deductions. Soon after he had passed through the gull fleet, he glimpsed tiny dots dipping on the waves below him. He flew lower. It was as he had hoped, these dots were men out in their fishing boats. Soon a shore line came into view.
When the Viking of the Sky swooped low over this land, however, the thrill in his heart changed to dire foreboding. He had come far enough to land in Japan—but this was not Japan, land of the flowery kingdom. Those squat fishermen below wore primitive, furred garments. Instead of pagodas and quaint paper-walled dwellings of the Japanese, here crouched a squalid village of round-roofed mud huts.