CHAPTER XII Desperate Haste
"Well, everything being as it is—in other words, things being as they will be," shouted out Fred Bentner after they had landed, experiencing a reaction of joy and relief at finding himself and the others safe and uninjured after the most harrowing experience of their lives, "I wonder just where we are?"
"Simple as A-B-C," Andy Flures responded, without the ghost of a smile. "We're on the good old Atlantic—nice little Atlantic—somewhere between the Equator and the North Pole."
"Yeh," Fred answered back. "As simple as I-D-I-O-T. Where on the Atlantic? is what I'd like to know. For all any of us can prove right now, we might be in the Gulf of Mexico. I feel as though we'd traveled further than that since midnight."
"We'll know where we are in a few minutes," Don promised, laying out a pad of paper, some charts and astronomical measuring instruments. "Old Sol will tell us."
"How?" asked Fred, speaking perhaps before he gave the matter a second thought.
"Why," Don answered in surprise, at the same time glancing at his watch, "it is now 8.30 o'clock. If I know the sun's exact position with relation to Halifax at 8.30 in the morning, I can pretty nearly get our position with relation to Halifax by the sun's position toward us at that time."
"I-D-I-O-T," laughed Andy, and stepped quickly out onto one of the pontoons to begin the examination of the first of the flying wires. Fred pretended not to hear the remark, and it required only a suggestion from Big Jack to remind them that their troubles and difficulties were by no means over; that the worst, although of a different character, might yet be ahead; that above all else now haste was necessary in getting repairs made so that they might speedily be under way again.
But they found more to be done than they had at first thought, because the plane had ridden so evenly after weathering the storm.