Actuating a lever he "locked" the wings. Like a giant seagull swooping down from a lofty cliff the aeroplane began a steady volplane towards the bank of clouds a thousand feet below.
At a speed of well over a hundred and fifty miles an hour the battleplane cleft the bank of suspended vapour. Almost pitch darkness succeeded the clear sunshine of the upper air. The sudden transition temporarily blinded the three aviators.
Desmond Blake spoke not a word. With his eyes fixed upon the dials of the manometer he gauged the earthward flight. At five hundred and fifty feet, an altitude well above that of the highest hills on the Welsh border, he checked the descent. Although the gloom was now less it was still impossible to discern anything of the country beneath. Evidently the battleplane was encountering a snowstorm heavier than she had previously experienced.
Standing by, ready to "flatten out" at the first sign of terra firma, the inventor allowed the machine to continue its downward flight, although at a greatly retarded velocity.
Suddenly he thrust the vertical rudders hard over, at the same time unlocking the wing mechanism. As he did so he had a momentary glimpse of a tall slender spire within fifty feet of the tip of the left wing. Immediately afterwards the battleplane almost skimmed a lofty pinnacle that resolved itself into another snow-outlined spire.
"By Jove!" ejaculated Blake as he set the battleplane to climb above the danger area. "We're slightly out of our bearings."
"Where are we, then?" asked Dick, who had also seen the fleeting vision.
"Over Coventry," replied the inventor. "We've narrowly escaped colliding with two of the city's three famous spires. Take her, Athol, and keep her as she is while I look at the map. It will be a compass course back, with a good deal of guesswork thrown in."
A hurried consultation told Blake that, allowing for the almost cross-set of the northerly wind, half an hour's flight in a north-westerly direction ought to bring them within recognisable distance of home.
"Birmingham's beneath us," observed Blake after a few moments' interval. "Fine city, Birmingham, but a nasty place if one has to make an involuntary landing."