After him went Chick, into the twisting, swamp-bound paths.
Nor did he return until long after that!
CHAPTER VII
ABOVE THE STORMS
While he fought the blasts of wind that tried to twist the Dragonfly out of control, climbing to get beyond their influence, Don tried to decide on the best course.
His ship was not equipped for navigation. No compass or radio was provided to aid him in such a difficult situation: otherwise it would have been easy to rise beyond the storm levels, to set his propeller toward some predetermined objective where he could land safely and be within reach of a hospital to care for the injured mail ’plane pilot.
“But I don’t know wind direction at different levels,” he reflected, catching the ship as a gust of fierce wind caught the tail and swung the ship around, broadside to the wind.
“I don’t dare to run before the wind, because it has grown so black and we’ve drifted so far off by now that I might not get near the base,” he added to himself.
Garry, in the second seat, realized how difficult the situation was for the youthful pilot.
A run before the wind, he understood, might take them out over the ocean before they knew their danger: there it would be a question of time only before the gas would be exhausted.
Long Island, with the Atlantic to its East and South-East, with the broad Sound along its Western side and New York’s bays in the South, was not the best place over which to fly “blind.”