Poodle was used to aviating, now. He was whistling quite carelessly and busily packing the food snugly away, and lighting the tetrahedral’s search-light, like a sailor coiling ropes as a schooner pulls out from her moorings, as the Hustle soared up to pass over the Coast Range.
CHAPTER VII
A GLIDE TO SAFETY
The Hustle was hurling herself through the night at a hundred miles an hour. The roar of the great Kulnoch motor filled the air; and through it sounded a sharp whine as the wind struck the planes. The powerful search-light bored a hole through intense darkness ahead, now and then showing a mountain peak; at sight of which Hike shot the machine up so fast that she seemed about to turn turtle. Sometimes the light, turned down on earth, picked out a mining town, with everyone asleep; sometimes, a broad river, shining in the light, between threatening rock walls.
On the Hustle dashed, never hesitating, over valleys and patches of yellow desert, from which a warm wind rose to flutter the planes; over hills and forests and long railroad-trestles where rails flashed in the light.
Hike had to think about a hundred things, but most of all he thought about keeping the Hustle going on—on to Washington—on to save Martin Priest! This was no time to lose his nerve or his wits. On; no matter how much his eyes smarted and watered in the wind. On; though his hands got cold and cramped, as they clutched the levers; and he seemed deaf for life, in the ceaseless smashing sound of the motor. He had to make the Hustle hustle!
He remembered a hundred parts of the machine all at once. He studied out where he was, on a map that unrolled from one rod upon another, and avoided bad hill-passes. He kept an eye on the dial of his aneroid barometer, strapped to his wrist like a watch. The barometer showed how high they were, and he never let the machine drop below two thousand feet, if he could help it; and so avoided the bad air-currents near earth. He watched the engine feed, tried the carbureter, saw that the fuel-mixture was right. He looked back at the rudder, and saw that it answered his lever. Most of all, he studied his roadway—the air.
Though he was heading as due east as possible, a powerful north wind was driving him southward before it. Sometimes the wind, suddenly charging from a great gap between two mountain peaks, tossed the Hustle like a leaf; picked it up and threw it almost against a hill; then let it drop two hundred feet.
The sailor of small boats is rather busy, among heavy seas, when a sudden flaw of wind strikes his sail. He has to keep the tiller on the jiggle, watch the mainsail, and be ready to let go the mainsheet almost before he can think. But sailing a small boat is as much easier than driving an aeroplane through uneven air-currents as sliding down hill is easier than sailing.
Hike had always to be ready to coax the Hustle up again, when she struck an air-pocket and fell like an elevator with a broken cable. He had to guess at what sort of currents were ahead of him, and be ready to round each tiny whirlwind as soon as he felt it slap at the planes.
He was too busy to be frightened, ever. Poodle had more time for that. Poodle kept the aeronautical map moving from one roller to another; he swung the search-light’s glare from hill to valley, and looked after the flow of oil from its tank to the distributing pipes, but mostly he sat there and watched the world jump up at them from below. Half a dozen times, when they seemed to be dashing down to the rocky ground, he felt quite certain they were killed, and wondered how he could jump and save himself. Just the same, he kept up a grin, for Hike to see when he glanced back, and, whenever Poodle slapped his arms to keep warm, he tried to be as cheery a clown as possible, so that “good ole Hike’ll have somethin’ ’appy to look at.” He busied himself with heating some coffee and broth, on the electric stove at the side of the platform, and made Hike gulp down a little of it. It was a bit curious to look down from the bubbling aluminum coffee-pot to a valley a thousand feet below, glaring in the search-light.