CHAPTER XI
LIFE’S HAZARD OF A SINGLE GLIDE
The coming out of the storm was like riding out of night into the bright light of a new day. Pant, as he sat at the wheel, steering as in a dream, was entranced by the beauty and wonder of it. They had been near death a score of times in a single hour; now they were racing away to life. Life! What a wonderful privilege just to live! How foolish boys must be who risk life for some useless plaything—to accept a “dare” or experience some new thrill. So he mused, and then all at once he realized that they had risked their lives for a cause of which they knew little.
“Well,” he said, as he settled himself more firmly in his position behind the wheel, “we’ve come this far, so we’ve got to see it through. I wonder how far that storm has carried us off our course, and in what direction we are going now?”
Rubbing the moisture off the glass of his compass, he read their direction. Then he started. They were going north by east, and their course was set for south by southwest.
Pant stared at the compass.
“Whew!” he whistled. “At that rate, we’ll be back where we started from in due course of time.”
Then a new thought worried him. He, too, had remembered the dust in the fuel tank. It must be running low. He could not tell their exact position, but believed they were far nearer to a small group of islands which they had sighted shortly before the storm struck them than they were to their destination.
Immediately there was set up in his mind a tense conflict. “It’s better to keep going in your present direction and to seek safety with a fresh supply of fuel from those islands you just passed,” said his native caution. “You have no right to turn back, for if you do you are sure to lose the race,” said his instinctive loyalty to the cause of another.
Loyalty won the day, and with mouth grimly set he gradually turned the plane about. Skirting the fringe of the storm, he sent the plane speeding on her way.
Gradually the smoke of battle—the mists that lay low on the horizon—disappeared, and they emerged into the glorious sunlight. The ocean lay a glittering mass of jewels beneath them, jewels that sparkled on a robe of emerald green. The sky, a vast blue dome, lay spread above them, while a few white clouds skirted the horizon. Behind them, like the uplifted head of a terrible sea-dragon, the storm still reared its masses of tumult to the heavens.