“Fire your revolver, Harry!” shouted Frank, bending above the flaring sender spark.
The younger boy drew his magazine gun from his belt and fired all ten bullets it contained in a string of reports.
There came a blinding glare of lightning. In its radiance the boys, high in the air, could see below them the scene on the steamer as if in the light of day. The men on the steamer had evidently also seen them or heard the reports of Harry’s revolver, or what was more likely, received the wireless flash. Men were running about her decks and on the bridge the boys could see some one, evidently in command, issuing orders to several sailors who were casting loose a boat.
Their inspection was cut short. As the next flash revealed to them a boat being lowered over the side of the vessel and men pointing up at them, something parted with a loud crack.
It was one of the rudder wires that had carried away and a more serious accident at that moment could not have well befallen them. The Golden Eagle without her rudder controls heeled over drunkenly till, with a loud crashing sound, her engine was ripped clean out of her by its own weight.
The next minute the boys felt themselves dropping through what seemed endless space down to the roaring sea.
Even as they fell Frank realized that the parting of the engine from its bed had been a piece of good luck for them for relieved of that weight, there was a chance of the aeroplane floating by her own buoyancy till the boat could pick them up. All this shot through his mind in a second, and almost as it occurred to him he felt the aeroplane hit the water with a mighty thump. The next moment Frank felt the water close above his head and began fighting desperately to regain the surface.
Fortunately both he and Harry were skilled swimmers and as much at home in the water as Newfoundland dogs. As Frank at last found himself safe, clinging to the top of the half-submerged aeroplane, he anxiously looked about him for Harry. What he feared was that Harry might have got entangled in the stay wires or tiller ropes as the Golden Eagle fell into the sea.
To Frank’s unspeakable relief, however, at this juncture, he heard his name called right behind him, and a second later he had fished Harry out of the sea and hauled him up beside him on to the gradually sinking wreck of the Golden Eagle. They both joined in a lusty shout to attract the attention of the men in the boat they had seen lowered just before their dizzy fall.
Their shouts were hardly needed, however, for, from the bridge of the vessel, there shot out a long finger of radiance from the searchlight which, after sweeping about a few times, fell full on the boys. Drenched as they were they could not forbear waving their hands and giving a cheer as its light fell full on them.