“Too late to try that now,” Frank told him. “All we can do is to hold tight, and keep pressing straight along. We’ll hope it isn’t so very big a cloud. Steady now, everybody!”
“Do your prettiest, old Sea Eagle,” Pudge was heard to call out as the beginning of the snow squall struck them. Ten seconds later they were shrouded as in a white pall by the scurrying flakes, urged on by a wind that made the seaplane rock and dance in alarming manner.
CHAPTER XXI.
A STARTLING DISCOVERY.
It quickly became apparent that the squalls they had previously met were playful little things compared with this one. It buffeted the big seaplane about as though determined to wind up its successful career then and there; and only for the complete mastery which Frank showed over the flier, some terrible accident must surely have ensued.
M. Le Grande was plainly nervous. He realized that in this sort of a wild storm an ordinary aëroplane would not have a ghost of a show. He was also at first inclined to doubt the capacity of the American boy aviator for meeting the strain of the situation.
As he watched Frank manage, however, this doubt took wings. He even began to take note of the astonishing stability of the Sea Eagle, and decide in his own mind that its like had never before been constructed.
Meanwhile Billy and Pudge were virtually “on needles and pins.” They had all kinds of confidence in Frank, and faith in the big plane as well; but that wind did shake things up terribly, and there could be no telling how much worse the conditions ahead of them might prove to be.
None of them could see three feet in any direction. Blinded by the swiftly driven snow pellets, that stung as they came in contact with their faces, they were compelled to bow their heads to the blast, and pity Frank who was forced to stand it without flinching.
Fortunately it did not last very long. Human endurance would have been exhausted had it continued indefinitely, for Frank was becoming more or less weak under the strain, when he heard the experienced French aviator shout in his ear: