Doctor Trigg studied her. “My dear, you have given me a new thought,” he said seriously. “A perfectly new thought. Sims—sweet—well, well!”
The waiters hurriedly cleared the tables. With growing apprehension, the passengers clustered at the windows to watch the void beyond. Intervals of calm, as they passed the space between two storms, raised false hopes, for they were soon plunged into a roaring madness of elements.
Then, all at once, they were in a maelstrom of elemental fury. Above, below, around them, a gale whined and shrieked. Solid sheets of water buffeted the ship, while flashes of lightning were continuous and so vivid that the control room was bathed in an intense, livid glare. Here, there, and everywhere storms gathered, moved upon the ship, and beat her mercilessly. As the gusts beset her from all sides, she pitched madly.
They were now flying about a mile above the surface of the sea. Mr. Hammond came staggering into the control room and stood near David, but neither spoke.
Ahead of them, mountainous clouds, looking as solid as a wall, rose up as though to block their path. Rain continued to fall in torrents, with hail and snow. The thunder roared, bellowed, and reverberated.
In the salon, the passengers huddled in groups with the stoic acceptance of any situation that is characteristic of the American people. Doctor Sims calmly watched the unbelievable panorama, jotting down an occasional note by the intense glare of the lightning. Dulcie clung close to Doctor Trigg, who, also calm, strove to quiet the girl’s natural apprehension with little jokes and whimsical stories.
The majority of the crew were in the hull. The engineers of course were at their posts. Red, sure-footed as a cat, seemed to be everywhere at once. The ship quivered under the lashing of the storm like a live thing. At times she was lifted more than three hundred feet above her course, then plunged in a delirious drop of nearly a thousand feet toward the sea, before she could be steadied. She seemed wrapped in solid sheets of lightning. The duralumin framework was fully charged with electricity, and tongues of electricity were being sprayed away from all edges, points and corners. The cables were glowing with violet light.
David watched anxiously for an opening or “hole” through the sheets of lightning, through which he might contrive to drop down to the possible safety of a lower level. He was determined to make the attempt. Each time that they had been tossed upward, he had found that a worse condition, if possible, existed in the upper altitudes. They were still about a mile above the sea. The din was so great that speech had become impossible. Mr. Hammond, at his elbow, continually indicated a rise; but David had reached the place where, as long as he held the wheel, he would have to follow his own judgment. So he crept on, watching with strained eyes for a hole in the floor.
Wally, on hands and knees, had managed to reach his cabin, where he cowered, utterly undone. He buckled on a parachute and decided to jump as soon as the ship turned nose down. Suddenly he felt a forward inclination; the ship was certainly tipping. Wally slid and scrambled into the salon.
“Jump! Jump! She’s gone!” he croaked hoarsely and, reaching the window, struggled to open it. Like a cat Doctor Sims was upon him, circling him with thin wiry arms and legs. Together they rolled on the floor, and Doctor Sims slapped him smartly on the face. It brought the nearly crazed man back to his senses. They sat up, Wally making no move to escape.