The boys exchanged looks of concern. It was most important—nay urgent—that they should get to La Merced that night, or at any rate by morning, and set their father’s mind at rest concerning their safety. A sudden wind storm would mean that the Golden Eagle would have to make such a struggle for life as she never had before.
“We’ll have to chance it,” decided Frank finally, “after all it must be some distance off and we must get to La Merced to-night. If we don’t, we may be delayed several days and in that event we won’t know what might happen. We don’t want mother in New York to hear that we are lost;” he added gravely. This consideration wiped out at once whatever hesitancy they might have felt.
The preparations for launching the Golden Eagle were simple. Judging that he could not improve on the “backing-up” method he had adopted the last time they sailed from the plateau camp, on the memorable occasion of Billy’s rescue, Frank adopted the same tactics with the result that they secured a perfect start, and shot into the darkness with the gracefulness and velocity of a homing pigeon.
It was pitchy dark and in the air there was a hot sulphurous feeling. Not a breath of wind stirred, and if one had lit a candle its flame would have gone straight up without a flicker. Before sunset a heavy bank of lurid-rimmed clouds had loomed up in the southwest.
“Something is coming,” said Frank as with one eye on the map and the other on the compass in the lighted binnacle, he steered the Golden Eagle steadily through the ominous blackness.
“Well, we’ve got to keep on now,” replied Harry, “we can’t turn back very well and make a landing on the plateau in such darkness as this.”
As he spoke a long tongue of livid blue lightning flickered across the sky to the north. It lit up every wire and stay on the Golden Eagle, as if she had been enveloped in the glow of a blue calcium light. In an instant the illumination died out and it grew as black as ever, or rather the darkness seemed all the more impenetrable to the navigators of the Golden Eagle, by reason of the brilliant illumination that had just shattered it.
As they tore along, the engine chugging steadily in a whining purr like the steady voice of a big dynamo, the flashes grew more and more frequent.
“Looks as if we are in for it,” remarked Frank.
At the same instant a few heavy drops of rain pattered down on the covering of the planes and then stopped as suddenly as they commenced.