"We'll make it easy if nothing gives way," he said.
Again they were gathering a speed even more terrible than that which had marked the first stage of their descent. When the plane was "brought to" again, it sailed landward for nearly two miles.
They were now only eight thousand feet up, and the distance to shore was probably three or three and a half miles. Jack decided to give them a little sensation. He pointed the nose of the craft directly at where the waves broke into little rollers on the shore, and let her go.
Don, sticking his head out of a window of the nacelle for an instant, thought that the top of his anatomy had been lifted off. Involuntarily he put his hand up to see if his scalp was still there.
Down, down, down they rushed, and still no alteration in their course.
They were about a thousand yards from the shore line, and approximately the same distance above the water, when Jack altered course, came to an almost horizontal position, executed a long arc and then, with the decreased speed, gradually dropped and at the same time swerved gently shoreward. Three minutes later, and without a propeller turning, without any aid whatever toward bringing them to a stop or impelling them forward, they came to the surface and to a standstill in a shoal-protected section of comparatively still water, two hundred feet from shore.
"Greatest piece of work I ever saw," exclaimed Don enthusiastically, grasping Jack's hand.
"The principal thing is that we did it, and here we are on European soil," said Jack, as, having already sounded the depth with a rope and sinker, and finding it less than three feet, he stepped overboard to wade ashore.
The others followed. From the solid ground of Ireland they looked back on the brave craft which had brought them there. A murmur of thanksgiving welled from each heart.