When Wiljohn’s star pilot, Hal Dane, read the screaming black headlines of the disaster and the call for help, he answered that call by pushing glory dreams out of his mind and going down into that flood country too. The ship Hal went south in was the dog plane test model of the gyroscope. That rotor-bladed, squat-built contraption was going to get its proving in a real emergency.
CHAPTER XVII
FIGHTING THE TORRENT
To make the trip from Axion down into the flood-tortured southland without any further loss of time, Hal Dane set out to fly all night. He had already signed up with the Red Cross department in his own city, and had gotten his instructions. He was to report to Major Huntley, in charge of the Alabama flooded district, who would assign him his work.
The squat gyroscope had been planned for safety, rather than making mileage records. Yet when those limber, awkward-looking rotor blades began to reach their maximum of two thousand whirls a minute, why, the strange craft achieved a speed of near a hundred miles an hour!
Late afternoon had been hazy, with the sun going down an ominous ball of red. Now as the night wore on, Hal swept into heavy weather. Mist changed into a dense, clinging fog. The wind rolled up into a gale that seemed to strike from all sides at once. For safety’s sake, Hal rode high, at something like ten thousand feet. He had the feeling of a lone human survivor drifting above a fog-shrouded world. He must have passed over hamlets and cities innumerable, yet no glow of home or street lights penetrated upward through the fog blanket to point him a guiding beacon.
Hal’s training in blind-flying stood him in good stead here, for relying on his marvelous earth inductor compass and his instrument of artificial horizon, he managed to keep an even keel. He held a wary eye to the altimeter, however, for come fog or come wind, safety demanded that he ride at a vast height to avoid a death-dealing crash against some jutting mountain crag. Three times, the multiple raging of the gale engendered by the tempest swinging upward through the gorges, told Hal that he was crossing mountain ranges.
On through the night the aviator drove his strange rotor, dodging, twisting, tacking, riding down the wind gusts. Then towards morning nature seemed to soften and grow milder. The wind sank to a breeze. Stars came out just before the darkness lifted for the first pale pearl-gray of dawn. A rose glow spread till the whole horizon seemed aflame.
It was glorious here, high above the earth, but as Hal turned his eyes downward a dreadful view met his eyes. Dismay shot through him.
Had his famous compass failed him? Had winds driven him far off his track? Had he crossed the whole length of Alabama and the top of Florida to go drifting like a derelict above the Gulf of Mexico?
There was a sea of water below, a limitless, shoreless stretch. But instead of white-capped waves and the clear blueness of the tropical waters of the gulf, here lay a muddy, ochre-colored ocean.