“That’s right,” assented Hiram, with vigor, and Elmer echoed the sentiment.
“The coast is clear—as far as Sitka, anyhow,” proceeded the young airman. “And now, fellows,” he added briskly—“business, strictly business.”
CHAPTER XVI
A SIBERIAN ADVENTURE
“Brrr-rr!” chattered Hiram Dobbs, with a shiver. “I say, Dave, have we got to stand this much longer?”
“I sincerely hope not,” replied the young pilot of the Comet, in a really concerned tone. “I hoped to outride the storm. But it appears to me the snow is coming down thicker and faster every minute.”
“I’m just about drifted in,” piped up Elmer.
The scene was a vast void, a chaos. The three young airmen were much in the situation of a ship driven before a blinding gale in unknown, fog-covered waters. All bearings were lost. The angle glide was obscured with snow; Dave resembled a great white statue. The biplane was the rushing center of large driving flakes whirling in eddies all about them.
They had run thus for nearly an hour, but now the machine, staunch and reliable as it was, threatened to depart from its usual good conduct record. The planes were crusted and over-weighted. The bulk of snow Hiram and Elmer tried to dislodge from other parts of the machine was duplicated before they could go the entire rounds.
There had been several ominous creaks. Once the Comet struck an air pocket. Through some deft but dangerous skidding the pilot evaded this peril. A sudden change in the wind almost precipitated a new catastrophe.