With some difficulty the motors were cranked again and the plane scuttled madly down the lane of water. With a quick jerk of the joy stick Davis lifted the plane from the water just as the open water ended and the silver sea began.
The big plane circled in the air, rising steadily as it circled, and at last headed for the west again, still flying in that incredible appearance of sky above and sky below, with the reflected sun glaring upward just as fiercely as the real sun beat down.
III.
Nita sat in the seat beside Davis' control chair, pointing to the instruments one by one.
"And that's the inclinometer," she repeated, "to tell you the angle at which the plane is climbing or descending. That's the barometer, which reads—let me see—seventy-four hundred feet. We're over a mile high, aren't we?"
"We are," said Davis, "though by the looks of things we are ten thousand miles from anywhere."
The silver sea was still beneath them, and they still seemed to be floating in a universe of air. Nita paid no attention.
"And that's the compass dial, and that——What did you call it?"
"An anenometer," said Davis again, smiling. "It's the speedometer of the air—or the patent log, whichever you like to call it."