“That,” said Pant through his mouthpiece, “was the worst I ever saw.”
Johnny Thompson threw back his head and laughed. A merry laugh it was. It was easy to laugh when they were free.
For an hour the plane held steadily on its course—south by southwest. It was a wonderful journey. Weary as he was and prone to fall asleep at his post, Pant enjoyed it. Here and there they passed flocks of sea-gulls that rose screaming from the sea. Once they raced for a few miles with a honking wedge of wild geese. The presence of this flock made Pant think they must be near some land. What land it might be he could not even guess, but the thought cheered him.
For an hour, an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half, they sped on. Both boys had forgotten the question of fuel. Johnny was puzzling over the name of the contents of the chests on the wreck; Pant was wondering about the fate of the ship they had sighted in the storm, when there came a hoarse rumble from the right-hand engine, and the thunder of their drivers was lessened by half.
With trembling hand Pant threw the lever out. The other motor was still going, but he realized that it would be but a matter of moments until that one also was dead.
Instinctively, as if preparing to run away from the ocean, which, having been lashed by the storm, must still be rolling in great, sweeping waves that would wreck their frail craft the instant she touched its surface, he tilted the plane’s nose to a sharp angle and set her climbing.
They had been traveling some three thousand feet above the sea. Now they climbed rapidly. Four thousand, and five thousand, six, seven, eight, nine thousand. They were now entering a filmy cloud that sent long waving arms down to clutch them. Now and again they “bumped,” dropping straight down a hundred feet, then rising again. It was a glorious experience, even if it might be their last.
With ears alert, as are the ears of a man expecting the sentence of death, Pant awaited the last hoarse cough of the engine.
Finally it came; a grinding whirr, a tremor running through the plane, as a shudder runs through the form of a dying animal, then all was silence.
It was such a silence as none of the three had ever experienced. For hours they had listened to the scream of the storm, to the roar of breakers, to the thunder of their engines. For another hour and a half they had listened to the engines alone. Now there was utter silence; a silence so intense that, had a feather been falling from a sea-gull’s wing, it seemed that its passage through the air might be heard.