At an altitude of perhaps twenty-five feet he began to draw the stick slowly backward, breaking his glide. Careful not to stall her, with his eyes on the water just ahead he allowed the nose to come gradually up until the amphibian was in level flight. In such a wind this proved a most difficult evolution, for savage squalls lashed the plane until she acted like a wild colt on a leading rope; and a crash seemed imminent.
Struggling to keep the plane on an even keel, Bill continued to pull back his stick, raising the nose and depressing the tail. Then with a final pull he stalled her, the heel of the step made contact with the top of a whitecap and amid a cloud of spray the amphibian skimmed ahead on the water. Before her nose could play off, Bill had the sea anchor overside and a moment later the heavy boat was tugging on the line to the collapsible canvas bucket that kept her head into the wind.
Bill whipped off his headphone and goggles. Then he made the pilot’s cockpit secure by cleating down a waterproof tarpaulin over the top, flush with the deck, and climbed into the rear cockpit which had seats for two passengers.
Vast clouds growing out of the southeast almost covered the heavens now, concealing the sun. And as it grew darker the wind’s velocity steadily increased.
“She’ll ride better with me aft,” he explained to his father, “and the tarpaulin will shed water like a deck. If the fore cockpit shipped one of those big seas, we’d fill up and go down like a plummet.”
“I admit that I’m not much of a seafaring man,” said Mr. Bolton, “but why you keep the plane heading into those combers is beyond me! Why not run before the gale? Wouldn’t we ride easier?”
“Possibly—but we can’t get into position to do that now. I threw over the sea anchor to keep her as she is.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because if I hadn’t, she’d have nosed round broadside to the waves and foundered with the weight of the water pouring down on her lower wing sections. If I tried to bring her before the wind now, she’d do exactly that as soon as her head played off.”
In the white glare of a lightning flash which brightened the horizon for an instant, Mr. Bolton glimpsed his son, staring into the teeth of the storm.