"Have you any idea at all as to the direction of the light, Peggy?" inquired Jimsy at length.
"I—I really don't know," confessed Peggy, with a gulp; "everything's mixed up. It's so thick I can't tell anything and I'm deathly afraid of running into the lighthouse by mistake."
"Then for goodness sake give it a wide berth," cried Jimsy; "if we keep on cruising about for a while we'll be bound to land somewhere. Anyhow we've got lots of gasoline, that's one comfort."
It was, indeed. In the steady hum of their powerful motor the young aviators found consolation in that lonely ride through the billowing fog-banks. At all events, there was no sign of a falter or skip there.
"If only we could get some wind," sighed Jess.
"Might as well wish for the moon," said Jimsy; "the air is as still as it used to be at noon out on the desert."
"What a contrast between the Big Alkali and this!" cried Jess, half hysterically. The strain of the white drifting fog was beginning to tell upon her.
Jimsy looked at her sharply.
"Look here, Sis," he began and was going on when a sharp cry from Peggy arrested him. At the same instant the Golden Butterfly swerved sharply, swinging over on her beam-ends almost.
Right in front of them, for one dreadful instant, there loomed the outlines of another aeroplane. The next instant it was gone. But the picture of the deadly peril, its outlines exaggerated by the mist, was photographed in the minds of every one of them.