The oxygen! In the excitement, he had forgotten to draw on it!
With a languid movement, he thrust the tube into his mask. A few deep breaths and his gray world brightened. More oxygen, more,—and he had changed back into his old self, ready to think and act quickly.
Now he was entering into a favorable wind that sped him in the rise. He went to thirty thousand feet.
Thirty-four thousand! Thirty-five! Thirty-six!
The cold was now intense. For all his furred garments, there was no shutting out the frigidity. It ate to the very marrow. But Hal Dane’s heart was hot within him, burning in its thrill of exultation. He was riding thirty-eight thousand feet above the earth, and riding with the whizzing speed of a bullet shot from a mighty gun. His plane, capable of two hundred miles an hour, had slid into a two-hundred-mile wind here in the upper air, and it was hurtling forward at the appalling speed of four hundred miles per hour.
Speed—speed! Hal Dane’s heart throbbed hot and wild. He was riding faster than ever mortal rode before, swooping before the mad currents of the river of the wind. The crossing of the great Pacific will now be a matter of hours—not a matter of days. And his the Viking sky boat that first dared the fierce gale of the wind path!
The gale he was riding gathered power. His speedometer mounted erratically, jerking up records of additional fives and tens of miles. Ten—twenty, thirty—four hundred and forty miles per hour.
A curious vibration of his engine startled him. But he drove away all thoughts of danger. The mileage was a magnet that held his eyes. Speed, speed! Riding high and fast! The sky was his height limit. He was reeling off a record. He must hold to it, must speed on.
Riding higher and faster than any human since creation! Thrilling thought—thrilling thought—thrilling thought—his head was knocking queerly. He leaned forward, and the instruments in the cockpit became dim and shaky. He was drifting into a semi-delirium from which he could not seem to rouse himself. His mind refused to focus upon what it must do.
His dulling senses caught a thud-thud-thud! Engine vibration so great that it seemed the machine must tear apart!